The sergeant sat in front of Gabriel co-ordinating the team on the ground spoke into his headset. ‘Are the lights on upstairs?’

The reply was a negative.

The sergeant turned. ‘Ma’am – there is enough evidence to suggest this is Fletcher. Do we hold back and observe or crash in now?’

Gabriel tapped her hand on the table rhythmically. Under normal circumstances, the safer call would be to wait for the target to come out. Storming a house with no knowledge of Fletcher’s mood or weapons was risky. But they didn’t have the luxury of time.

‘Get the CTSFOs in position, front and rear,’ she said firmly. ‘We’ll go in,’ she looked at the digital clock on the wall, ‘in five minutes.’

Bose came over. ‘What do you reckon, ma’am? Is this Fletcher?’

‘Got to be, Eva. We’ve linked him to this house, we know he’s around here, and someone’s acting weirdly inside. I’m not in the habit of wandering around my house at night in the dark with the lights off. But then I don’t live in South London. Who knows what constitutes normal behaviour down there? But I’d say we’ve got him.’

She sounded more confident than she felt. Just get him in one piece, she said to herself.

‘Two minutes,’ said the sergeant. ‘All ready?’

There were a series of ‘Yes, sarge’s from the armed team. Then a woman’s voice crackled out urgently. ‘Sarge, woman is approaching the house. Long brown hair, grey overcoat and bag. She’s outside the front door reaching into her bag. Looks like a key. She’s going in. Hall lights now on.’

The sergeant spun around. His voice was calm. ‘We have a potential hostage situation, ma’am. Do we send in CTSFOs now?’

Shit, thought Gabriel. Another deep breath. Weigh it up quickly. Is she known to Fletcher? Possibly. She could be his handler. She could be debriefing him. She could be their way into the NRF. But what if she wasn’t? What if she was the house owner – a lodger maybe? Someone who didn’t know Britain’s most wanted – a man capable of cold-blooded murder – was inside in the dark. She had to make this call in a fraction of a second. Get it wrong and Gabriel wouldn’t just be facing an outraged media tomorrow morning, this woman could die.

‘Send them in,’ she barked and, out of sight of Bose and the team around her, she crossed her fingers.

#

Fletcher was in the sitting room when he heard the click from the front door. He had been upstairs for the last twenty minutes, unable to stem the torrent of diarrhoea. Was this Pete, back early? The light came on in the hall, shining a rectangle of light that stretched across the fawn carpet and rested on the tips of his socks. Fletcher stood and stepped back into the shadows. The footsteps on the hall tiles could belong to a man or woman. He pressed his back against the curtain in front of the bay window. There was the gentle thump of a bag dropping, then steps of someone going upstairs. He moved as silently as he could into the hallway and into the kitchen and grabbed at the largest knife from the block by the bread bin.