‘Mate of mine,’ Sam replied blandly. ‘Getting funny phone calls. Wants to put a stop to them.’

He was lying. Nicola could tell that easily enough, but she couldn’t be bothered to make a thing of it.

‘All right, Sam,’ she sighed. ‘It’ll take me twenty-four hours. Give me the number and call me tom…’

‘I haven’t got twenty-four hours,’ Sam said. ‘I need it now.’

A pause. ‘Sounds like your friend really wants to put a stop to these calls,’ Nicola remarked lightly.

‘Can you do it?’ Brusque, businesslike.

‘It’s half-past ten at night, Sam.’

‘Can you do it?’

Nicola sighed again, heavily this time. ‘All right, Sam. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Good.’ He gave her the number, then said, ‘I’ll call you in half an hour.’

Without another word, the phone clicked off.

Nicola looked at the silent handset, then longingly back at the half-run bath. Then, muttering under her breath, she went to find herself a dressing gown.

Sometimes, she thought to herself, she was just too obliging for her own good.

Sam replaced the phone on its cradle, then immediately walked away from the booth.

He was just outside a parade of shops, most of them shut apart from a kebab shop half full of pissed-up kids. Sam was hungry, but something stopped him from wanting contact with anyone else, so he walked purposefully away. The half-hour passed slowly. He found a second pay phone in about ten minutes, then spent the rest of the time hanging around waiting to call his contact again. He didn’t really know what he was going to do if he found out an address for this woman – it rather depended on where she lived – but at the moment he didn’t know what else to do. It was just gone eleven when he made the call.

‘It’s me.’

‘Somehow I thought it would be.’ Nicola sounded annoyed.

‘Did you get the address?’

‘Yeah, I got it. You didn’t tell me it was a woman.’

‘I didn’t know,’ he lied.

A disbelieving silence. ‘Look, Sam,’ Nicola said finally, ‘I don’t know what this is all about, but I’ve got enough trouble at work as it is. This isn’t going to put me any deeper in the shit, is it?’

Sam sniffed. ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ he lied. ‘I promise. It’s just personal.’

He breathed steadily as he waited for Nicola to reply.

‘All right,’ she said, her voice heavy with resignation. ‘You got a pen?’

‘I can remember it.’

‘Fine. Ground Floor Flat, 31 Addington Gardens, W3. Hope your friend likes Acton, Sam. Personally, I think it’s a dump.’

Acton, London. At this time of night he could make it in a couple of hours.

‘Thank you, Nicola. I owe you one.’

‘As far as I can remember,’ she replied, a hint of archness returning to her voice, ‘you already did.’

For the first time that day, Sam smiled. ‘Don’t let the bed bugs bite,’ he told her quietly, but there was no reply. Nicola had already hung up.

Fifteen minutes later, Sam was in the car, one finger on the steering wheel as he hurtled out of Hereford down the A road that would lead him to London. The screen of his SatNav illuminated the route, but he barely glanced at it. He knew the way well enough. The lights of the cars ahead of him were nothing but a blur – not only because the speedo was constantly tipping a hundred, but also because his mind wasn’t really on the road. The events of the day churned over in his head, a series of disjointed visions; but the more he thought about them, the more confused he became. Sam didn’t even know who he was going to find at Addington Gardens. Clare Corbett, whoever the hell she was? Or someone else? He glanced down at the passenger seat. The handle of his handgun was peeping out from under the document in its envelope. There were enough rounds in there for him to keep himself safe; he couldn’t shake the feeling that he would be discharging some of them before the sun was up.

It was gone one in the morning by the time Sam approached London. The roads were practically empty and he burned up the tarmac, slowing down only when the time came to pull off the motorway. The female voice on the SatNav was irritatingly calm as it guided the speeding Audi through the West London suburbs and by a quarter past one he was nearing Addington Gardens. It was an ordinary residential road with a long line of terraced houses on either side. Sam didn’t turn into it, deciding instead to park several streets along. Once he’d come to a standstill, he took his jacket from the back seat, secreted the handgun and the document inside then climbed out of the car. The locking lights illuminated the dark street as he walked towards his destination.

There was nobody about – just an urban fox further down the pavement who stared at him with glinting eyes for a few seconds before turning tail and disappearing. In the background Sam could hear the vague hum of traffic on the main road, but here all was still. At the end of Addington Street he loitered, his narrowed eyes surveying the scene. He didn’t really know what he was looking for, but he’d recognise it if he saw it. There was no sign of anybody at this time, and none of the vehicles looked suspicious.

Except one.

It was a white van, old, well used. Counting down the house numbers from the end of the street, Sam calculated that it was parked outside number 75. Too close to the address he was visiting for his liking. He decided to investigate further.

Sam walked casually along the pavement. As he passed the white van he saw there was nobody in the front seats. But there was a panel blocking off the rear of the vehicle, so he couldn’t see inside. On the back doors there were blacked-out windows and a little sticker: NO TOOLS ARE KEPT IN THIS VEHICLE OVERNIGHT.

With his right hand, he gripped the gun inside his jacket. He approached the back of the vehicle along the pavement side and then, with a sudden sharp jerk of the elbow on his left arm, he shattered the window, then immediately pulled out his gun and aimed it into the body of the van.

Nothing. Empty. Sam drew a deep breath and withdrew his gun from inside the window. Somebody would be cursing the vandals first thing in the morning, but he wouldn’t be losing too much sleep over that. He turned his attention to the house numbers. Number 31 was only a few paces away.

There was nothing to distinguish it from the other terraced houses along this street. It had a small front garden that had been concreted over and was now home to only a couple of wheelie bins and a few old crisp packets that had been blown in. The ground-floor flat had a large bay window at the front, blocked with wooden slatted blinds. On the wall just above the window the cover of a security alarm blinked in the night. As Sam opened the metal gate it creaked quietly, so he didn’t close it before walking up to the bright blue front door.

By the side of the door was a video intercom with two buttons, one for the ground-floor flat, the other for the first floor. Next to each button was a scrawled name tag. The tag for the ground floor was simply marked ‘CC’. Clare Corbett.

Sam took the envelope from his pocket and removed the document. Then, with one hand over the lens of the intercom camera, he pressed the button, holding it down for several seconds without releasing his finger.

And then he waited.

There was no reply.

Sam cursed under his breath. He hadn’t really considered the possibility that there wouldn’t be anybody here. His hand still covering the camera, he rang the intercom again.

Again he waited.

This time, his patience was rewarded.

The woman’s voice that came over the loudspeaker was groggy and throaty, as though its owner had just woken up. But it was wary too.

‘Who’s that?’ it demanded.

Sam put his mouth to the intercom. ‘Clare Corbett?’ he asked.