She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back. She let the kiss become passionate. She closed her eyes. She let his tongue into her mouth. Okay, so she was now the full-on scarlet woman. Damn it.

She had to stop this before it got too intense and in a moment he’d think they’d be going inside to—

He broke away. She opened her eyes. He was looking at her with the most gorgeous, scared, vulnerable expression. His hands dropped from hers.

‘Good night,’ he said. With a smile that again had just that hint of the cat that had got the cream about it, he got into his car.

She stood there while he drove away. After his car turned the corner, she dropped her head to one side, confused. ‘Oh,’ she whispered, ‘well played.’

*   *   *

Quill woke from dreadful dreams that he couldn’t now remember to find himself sweating in his duvet, and his phone once more ringing.

‘Would you please tell him,’ Sarah groaned, ‘to kill people in the morning?’

Quill answered his phone. It was Lofthouse. ‘A third murder, same MO,’ she said. ‘It’s open season on rich white males.’

Chapter Eight

EIGHT

The bar in Hoxton was called Soviet, all sofas and low tables and big red projections of Stalin on the wall, so deeply ironic that Quill wasn’t sure he quite followed it. It had been packed at the time of the incident. There were dozens of witnesses, who were now slouching around looking vaguely annoyed, glancing at their expensive watches, as uniforms and Scene of Crime Officers moved between them. There was a huge splatter of blood on the ground between fallen tables, from where a body had recently been removed. Only Quill’s people could see that there was also a splatter of cold silver, which continued across the establishment, right to the window, where this time entry as well as exit splatters could be seen on both sides. An enormous dripping mass of it also covered the far wall. The name of the deceased was Rupert Rudlin, twenty-eight years old, worked for Challis Merchant Bank as an analyst. Parents in Twickenham, single, one sister living in the States.