For a moment, her mind drifted high above her body. She saw herself standing panicked in the hallway, small, insignificant and all alone. And then she heard the crash of glass from somewhere in the house and a crack of breaking wood. Her home had four bedrooms and the noise was from her left, from the spare bedroom that overlooked the garden. Had someone come up the fire escape? The building was on a slope – the back garden dropped away and so the fire escape led from the spare bedroom to the patch of neglected grass outside. That was the only other way in.

For a moment, she was paralysed. Then a surge of hot blood swept away the fear. She slammed her hand on the red panic button by the front door, slid the chain back and opened the door, which flew towards her under the weight of PC Brake’s body. She didn’t have time or the presence of mind to check if he was alive, so she stepped over his body and into the street.

Her front door was raised by five stone steps off the pavement and she flew down them in a second. Turning to look, she saw the figure of an intruder, his head hidden by a hoodie and a scarf, framed in the doorway. He held something in his hand which glinted in the street light.

Hogarth sensed she couldn’t outrun him, but she could get to a public space. Her house was in a mews off Kensington High Street and a crowded pavement with late-night shops and office workers and pub drinkers was close by. She willed her legs to move faster, but despite knowing that she would be quicker if she kept going, she turned around. At the same moment, there was a burning red stab in her left leg. She tripped and as she fell, she heard the crack of a firework, or maybe a car backfiring. But cars didn’t back fire nowadays, did they? Their engines were more finely tuned than that. She once had a lovely Rover. Or rather she hadn’t. Her father had. Leather seats. She once spilled ice cream on them. He was furious. But what a smell.

Hogarth slipped into blackness.

DAY 14

Tuesday

CTOC, St Pancras, London

Gabriel slammed down the phone. Skeffington and Bose looked up expectantly.

‘Still alive?’ asked Skeffington.

‘You’d need an elephant gun to take down Lesley Hogarth,’ said Gabriel. ‘She’s bloody lucky. Her assailant fired four times from a distance of ten metres, but only one bullet hit her and that was in the leg. She’s expected to make a full recovery.’

‘Got to be the shittiest marksman in London,’ said Skeffington. ‘What about the officer on duty outside her house?’

‘Less lucky,’ said Gabriel. ‘Took a heavy blow to his head and neck – concussion, broken skull and possible vertebrae damage. He’s in an induced coma.’

Bose shook her head. ‘Poor sod. And definitely an assassination?’

‘That’s how it’s being treated,’ said Gabriel. ‘The leading hypothesis is an Islamist retaliation.’