And now he was in the building, only seconds away. Was this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning? she wondered. The former, she hoped. She had to escape this place of stasis, this state of life on hold.

She cast her mind back seven days, everything that had passed since flickering past in a blur. Her surroundings were the same but the world looked different; the eyes that viewed that world, those surroundings, altered far more.

Some things had not changed, however. Once again she was sitting in Jim’s office, contemplating his absence and what deeds might lie behind it. Once again Detective McDade was on his way here, intent on removing evidence and about to encounter someone he was not expecting.

‘Remember, you’ll be covered at all times,’ Fallan had assured her.

Why did people think putting more guns into the equation made things safer?

The office door opened and McDade walked in.

There were no lines scripted for this part: just the appropriate expression on her face and the composure of her body language as she stood by the window, expectantly cradling the cardboard scrolls.

She stood there helplessly, offering them towards him, clutching them just a little too tight so that they bunched together and one threatened to spill to the floor. McDade strode over swiftly to relieve her of them, which was when he felt cold steel against the base of his skull.

‘Hands up and to the sides,’ Fallan commanded. ‘You’ve got a Heckler and Koch Mark 23 plus suppressor pointed right into your brain stem, and unlike your effort on Saturday, this one’s armed with subsonic low-velocity ammunition, which will very quietly bounce around back and forth inside your skull until your brain is mush.’

Or at least that was what Fallan told him. It was, in fact, a length of pipe, but that mattered little, as there would be a silenced automatic in Fallan’s hands in only a few seconds’ time.

‘Where’s your piece?’ he asked.

McDade went to reach inside his jacket.

Fallan moved the pipe and pressed it into the base of McDade’s spine instead.

‘Slowly,’ he warned. ‘Barrel between your fingers. And in case you were thinking you might have a window here to try something because I won’t shoot you in the head, you’d be right. I need you alive. What I don’t particularly need is for you to be able to walk. Ever again.’

McDade very slowly removed a silencer-fitted handgun from his jacket, holding it as instructed. Fallan took it from him and quickly examined it, ejecting the magazine for a moment then slamming it home again.

‘You’ll be Fallan’s boy, then,’ McDade stated evenly. ‘Not quite as under arrest as I’d been led to believe,’ he added, eyeing Jasmine with accusatory malice.