He checked his watch. Eight-twenty.

Jacket, Nemex. He chewed up the codeine tabs on his way down in the lift, swallowed the powder and went out hurriedly into the sun.

It took him a little longer than he expected to find India Street. He remembered the breakfast bar from a damage limitation strategy meeting he’d had there once when he still worked at Hammett McColl. But because he associated the place with the reinsurance brokers at the meeting, he misremembered the address and found himself in an alley off Fenchurch Street with the wrong name. He cast about for a couple of minutes, blurry with the onset of the codeine, before the mistake dawned on him. Working off the new memory, he plotted a vague eastward course and set out again through the tangle of deserted streets.

He was walking north up the glass-walled canyon curve of Crutched Friars, when someone yelled his name.

‘Faulkner!’

The word echoed off the enclosing steel and glass walls, bounced away down the curve of the canyon. Chris jerked around, sludgily aware he was in trouble. About twenty metres away, blocking his way to the right turn into India Street, five figures stood spread out across the width of the road. All five wore black ski-masks, all five hefted weapons that to his untutored eye looked like shotguns. They were faced off against him in the ludicrous cliche stance of a Western gunfight, and despite it all, despite the abrupt knowledge of his own rapidly approaching death, Chris felt a smirk creep out across his face.

‘You what?’

Maybe it was the codeine. He laughed out loud. Shouted it.

‘You fucking what?’

The men facing him shifted, apparently discomforted. They glanced inward to the figure at the centre. The man took a step forward. Hands pumped the shotgun’s action. The clack-clack echoed along the street.

‘Go foah it, Faulkner.’

The knowledge hit Chris like cold water. He opened his mouth to yell the name, knew he would be shot before he could get it out.

‘Just a minute.’

Everyone looked round at the new voice. Mike Bryant stood at the mouth of a side alley about ten metres behind Chris, panting slightly. He raised his left hand, right floating close to his belt. Gripped in the upraised fist was a thick wad of currency.

Makin faltered behind his mask. The shotgun lowered a couple of degrees.

‘This has got nothing to do with you,’ he called.

‘Oh, but it does.’ Mike ambled out of the alley and drifted up the street until he was lined up beside Chris. There was a thin beading of sweat across his brow, and Chris remembered he couldn’t be more than a day out of the hospital. He still held the wad of cash before him like a weapon. ‘You take down one Shorn exec in the street, where’s it going to end? Eh, Nick? You’re breaking the fucking rules, man.’

And out of the corner of his mouth, he muttered to Chris.

‘You carrying?’

‘Yeah, I’m carrying.’

‘Loaded this time?’

Chris nodded tautly. A surge of adrenalin punched through the codeine vagueness, a savage pleasure at the comradeship in the man at his side and the will to do harm together.

‘Good to know. Follow my lead, this is going to go fast.’

‘We only want Faulkner,’ shouted Makin.

Mike grinned and raised his voice again. ‘That’s too bad, Nick, because you got me too.’ It was the bright, energetic tone Chris had last heard when Bryant crippled and blinded Griff Dixon in his own living room. ‘And before we start, gentlemen, just look at tonight’s wonderful prizes.’

He held up the fistful of bank notes again. His voice resonated in the steel canyon acoustics, loud and game-show fruity.

‘For the winners! Twenty thousand euros, in cash! Lay down your weapons and walk away with it all! Tonight! Or, take the gamble, lose and die! Ladies and gentlemen, you decide!’

He hurled the money up and outward. It was bundled together with a thick metallic band that glinted as it turned end over end, high in the bright morning air.

‘Now,’ he snapped.

After that, it all seemed to be happening on freeze-frame advance.

Chris tugged out the Nemex. It felt appallingly heavy in his hand, appallingly slow to bring round and point.

Beside him, Mike Bryant was already firing.

Makin’s contingent were still staring up at the money. Mike’s first slug took the man on Makin’s right under his back-tilted chin, tore through his neck and dropped him in a shower of arterial blood.

The remaining four scattered across the perspectives of the street.

Chris held the Nemex out, memories of a hundred shooting-gallery hours like iron tracery in his right arm. He squeezed the trigger, felt the kick. Squeezed again. One of the men ahead of him staggered. Hard to see blood against the dark canvas clothes. He squeezed again. The man folded forward and collapsed on his face in the street.

A shotgun boomed.

He pointed and fired at Makin. Missed. Out of peripheral vision, he saw Mike Bryant stalking forward, face fixed in a grin, Nemex extended, shooting in an arc. Another of Makin’s men went down, clutching at his thigh.

Another shotgun blast. Chris felt a thin stinging of pellets across his ribs. He spotted Makin, pumping another shell in. He yelled and ran towards him, firing wildly. Makin saw him coming and took aim.

Another figure stumbled into Makin’s path, shooting across the street at Mike. The two men tangled. Chris shot indiscriminately into them both.

Makin got clear, raised the shotgun again. There seemed to be something wrong with his arm.

Chris emptied the Nemex into him. The gun locked back, breech open on the last shot.

And it was over.

The echoes rolled away, like trucks moving off down the street. Chris stood over Nick Makin and watched as he stopped breathing. Off to his left, Mike Bryant walked up to the shotgunner he’d hit in the thigh. The injured man flopped about weakly. Blood was leaking in astonishing quantities from his twisted leg. Beneath the mask, his head shifted back and forth between Chris and Mike like a trapped animal’s. He was making a panicked moaning noise.

‘Look, you’re going to bleed to death anyway,’ Mike told him.

The Nemex shell punched him flat. The ski-masked head jerked about with the impact. A new rivulet of blood groped out across the asphalt from the torn wool and gore of the exit wound. Mike knelt and checked his handiwork, then looked up at Chris and grinned.

‘Five to two, eh. Not bad for a couple of suits.’

Chris shook his head numbly. The Nemex hung at the end of his arm like a dumb-bell weight. He unlocked the opened breech, put the weapon away, fumbling with the holster. Post-drive shakes, setting in.

‘This is nice.’ Mike picked up the dead man’s shotgun and hefted it with approval. ‘Remington tactical pump. Fancy a souvenir?’

Chris said nothing. Bryant got up, tucked the shotgun casually under his arm. “s okay, I’ll talk to the police, get one for both of us out of evidence, when they’ve finished with it. Something to show to your grandchildren.’ He shook his head, talking a little fast with the adrenalin crash. ‘Fucking unbelievable, huh? Like something off a game platform. Ah. See you got Makin pretty good then?’

‘Yeah.’ Chris looked incuriously at where the other exec lay, still masked. Up close, you could see the wounds in his chest and belly. His whole body was drenched with the blood. ‘Dead.’

Mike looked around judiciously.

‘I think they all are. Oh, wait a minute.’ He crossed to the man Chris had hit when he tangled with Makin. He crouched and put two fingers to the man’s neck, shrugged. ‘On his way out, I reckon. Still.’

He got up and pointed the Nemex down at the man’s masked face. He was already turning away as he pulled the trigger.

‘How did you know I’d be here?’ Chris asked him.

Another shrug. ‘Carla rang me this morning at home. In tears. Told me you’d had a row, you’d got out in the middle of the zones and now she couldn’t get hold of you. I came in looking for you. Had to break into your office. Sorry about that, I was pretty worried. Anyway, I spotted that message from Liz. Thought I’d catch you up. Took a while, my ribs are still killing me.’