‘Somebody tipped off the cops. He was dead long before they got there. Massive heroin OD, and they found drugs all over the house. It looks like he was involved in it big-time. Either OD’d by accident, or it was suicide or murder. Nobody knows. The police are all over the place. It’s already turning into the biggest scandal they’ve seen here for years. Nothing like this ever happens on Corfu.’

Ben was thinking hard. None of this was making sense. The drugs and the sudden appearance of the money went well together. Heroin, cash and death. A classic combination. But if Nikos and Zoë were mixed up in some kind of drugs business, the story he’d told Charlie was bizarre. He wouldn’t even have approached Charlie. Wouldn’t have drawn attention to himself like that. Unless there was something else they were missing.

And what about the prophecy? He couldn’t even begin to understand what that could be about.

‘And there’s another thing,’ Charlie said. ‘Someone’s been tailing me.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since pretty soon after I got here. After I started asking questions about Zoë Bradbury.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

Charlie nodded. ‘I’m certain. They’re good, but not that good that I didn’t spot them. They’re working as a team.’

‘How many?’

‘Three for sure, maybe a fourth. A woman.’

Ben frowned. If a former SAS soldier said he was being followed, that was how it was. ‘What about now?’

Charlie shook his head. ‘Pretty sure I lost them. So what do we do? Do we tell the cops what we know? Just hand it over to them?’

‘I don’t like dealing with the police,’ Ben said, ‘unless I absolutely have to.’

‘Then I don’t see any way ahead,’ Charlie said. ‘At least, not for me. This was meant to be a straightforward job. That’s what I told Rhonda.’

The kid with the ball was making another pass through the tables, bouncing it as he went. He ran past the table where the man with the laptop had been. It was empty. The guy had left. The boy suddenly stumbled, and the ball bounced away from him. He ran after it, towards the edge of the pavement. The ball rolled into the road.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ben was suddenly aware of what was happening. There was a van coming down the street. It was green, battered, some kind of delivery vehicle, moving fast, in a hurry to get somewhere. And the boy was chasing his ball right out into its path.

Charlie was talking, but Ben didn’t hear. He turned and looked at the oncoming van. The driver was talking to his passenger, eyes off the road. He hadn’t seen the child.

The ball stopped rolling. The kid crouched to pick it up. Saw the van and froze, wide-eyed. It wasn’t slowing down, and Ben realized with a chill of fear that it couldn’t stop in time to avoid him.

When the mind is working at extreme speed, things seem to happen in ultra-slow motion. Ben burst out of his chair and launched himself into the road. Cleared the six yards between him and the kid. He bent low as he sprinted, wrapped an arm around the boy’s waist and scooped him off the ground. He heard a grunt of air escape from the kid’s lungs with the impact.

The van was almost on them. Ben dived across its path and hit the ground sliding, using his body as a shield to protect the child from the road surface. The kid was screaming.

The van brakes screeched and the wheels locked up, leaving snakes of rubber on the road. It slewed around and came to a halt at a crazy angle between Ben and the café terrace, rocking on its suspension.

Time restarted. Ben could hear cries and shouts from the tables as people realized what had happened. He could feel where his shoulder had scraped the tarmac, pain beginning to register. Over the bonnet of the van he could see Charlie up on his feet on the café terrace, staring wildly, one hand gripping the back of his chair.

Then the world exploded.

Chapter Sixteen

One instant, a café terrace, families and friends sitting having breakfast. The next, a blast of fire engulfed everything, blew everything apart. The shockwave rolled across the pavement and out into the road, tearing down everything in its path. Pieces of tables and chairs and parasols were hurled into the air, tumbled and spun burning in all directions. Flying glass exploded across the street like a giant shotgun blast. The shock lifted the van off its wheels and threw it sideways, its windows bursting outwards.

Ben had been clambering to his feet, still holding on to the child, when the stunning force of the explosion blew him down. He instinctively rolled his body across the boy’s to protect him. Wreckage rained down.

Just as suddenly, and for one eerie moment, everything was completely still. Then the screams began.

Ben’s ears were ringing badly and his head was swimming. His first thought was for the boy. He slowly raised himself up, kneeling in the broken glass. The boy’s eyes met his, wide and terrified. Ben checked for injury. There was no blood. The kid hadn’t been touched. He was just rigid with shock.

Then Ben thought of Charlie. He staggered to his feet, suddenly aware of terrible pain in his neck and shoulder. His shirt was ripped and wet with blood. He raised his hand up to his neck and his fingers felt something there that they shouldn’t. But he ignored it. He stepped out from behind the burning van and saw the full devastation of the explosion.

It was carnage. Blood-spattered corpses and smouldering body parts were strewn across what used to be the café terrace. People were screaming in horror, others moaning, calling for help, others dying. Some of the wounded were already up on their feet, staggering dazed through the wreckage. Black smoke and the acrid smell of burning filled the air. The street was littered with little fires.

Ben shouted for Charlie. Then he saw him.

Charlie’s hand was still gripping the back of his chair. The hand ended at the wrist. The rest of him was spread across the pavement. Ben looked away and closed his eyes.

It wasn’t long before the screech of sirens drowned out the screams of the survivors and the urgent shouts and chatter of the people flocking to help them. Then all was frantic activity. Paramedics waded in hard and fast, like soldiers through the wreckage. In minutes the street was flooded with emergency vehicles and equipment. Police streamed everywhere, yelling into radios, working fast to cordon off the scene, holding off the hundreds of onlookers crowding in from neighbouring streets. People were crying and hugging each other, faces contorted in anguish.

Meanwhile the ambulance and coroner’s teams carried out their grim work. The dead were covered with sheets where they lay, waiting to be bagged and loaded. The medics did what they could to patch up the wounded before the ambulances took them away. One by one, vehicles screeched away up the street, fresh ones arriving in a steady flow.

Ben watched the whole thing from across the road. Beside him on the edge of the pavement, the boy sat quietly with his ball between his feet, staring at the scene in front of them. He looked up at Ben with questioning eyes. There was a cut oozing blood above his left eyebrow. Ben patted his shoulder.

Then the boy seemed to see something. He straightened up and then jumped to his feet and ran off before Ben could stop him. He disappeared into the crowd and then was lost in the milling chaos.

After another minute, a paramedic pointed Ben out to his team-mate. They jogged over to him, and he remembered that his shirt was soaked in blood down one side. He hardly felt the pain any more. He was numb all over, and he couldn’t hear properly. He tried to protest as they wrapped a blanket over his shoulders and attended to his wound. He didn’t understand what they were telling him, but they seemed to think the injury was serious. He didn’t have the strength to resist them as they walked him to an ambulance.