The hand was worse, quite a bit worse. He winced when he saw the jagged bits of bone protruding whitely through the flesh. Her fingers were twisted in a way they shouldn’t be. She might never recover the full use of that right hand.

But she’d live. She’d been lucky. Kroll had been a bad shot. The sign of a man who had always paid others to pull the trigger for him. Or maybe just a sadist who wanted to take his time and cause as much pain and peripheral damage as he could before he killed her. Either way, it was over now.

‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You’ll be taken care of.’

‘Thank you’, she mouthed weakly. She tried to smile, and then passed out.

He looked at her for a moment, and reached out and caressed her cheek, leaving a smear of blood.

He stood up and looked down at Kroll. The old man lay twisted like a broken doll. The von Adler line had just ended, and with it two centuries of murder and corruption. Werner Kroll’s lifeless eyes were staring like oily porcelain. The thin wrinkled lips seemed to smile mockingly at him. For an instant Ben wanted to shoot him again.

But he had other things to worry about. Where was Jack Glass?

There was a spatter of blood on the wall. Splashes of it across the floor. They led towards the stairs. A slick red footprint on the first step. A big red splash on the second. Another footprint on the third. A bloody handprint on the banister rail. The blood led all the way up. But it was just a trail. Glass himself was nowhere.

Ben’s mind suddenly filled with a single thought.

Clara.

Chapter Sixty

Jack Glass had been shot before, plenty of times. As long as he was still functional and on his feet, he was still in the game. It was going to take more than a bullet from a woman’s gun to stop him. He knew his collarbone was broken, but he was prepared to ignore the pain if he could do what he wanted to do now.

He pounded up the stairs, his hand pressed hard against his shoulder to stem the blood. He reached the third floor, leaned against the banister rail and looked down. He could see a dark shape two floors below, moving fast up the winding staircase. Hope was after him again. Fucking blood trail was giving him away. Nothing he could do about that. He had to keep moving. Forget the pain.

He grinned. Him and Hope in the running together. It was like SAS selection all over again. But this time he had an edge, and he meant to use it. The old man was fucked, the ship was going down. But there was no way Jack Glass was going down with it.

He made it to the top floor and thundered stiffly along the corridor, soaked in sweat and blood. The doors to the garret rooms were on his left. Paper was peeling off the walls and the carpets were threadbare. It was cold up here, cooling the sweat that was pouring off him. He ripped open one of the doors to his right and staggered into the room. He found what he was looking for and tucked the small leather case under his arm.

‘Boss, you OK?’

It was the Swede. His dull face registered mild alarm as he saw the blood on Glass’s shirt.

Glass turned. ‘Never better,’ he grunted painfully.

He had to look down at most men. But the Swede, Björkmann, towered over him by nearly three inches. That made him a very big man indeed. His neck was wider than his head, as thick as Glass’s thigh. Three hundred pounds of solid muscle with an arrowhead haircut and very little brains. The kind of man Glass loved to have on his team. The big Ruger revolver was dwarfed in his meaty fist.

‘Everybody’s going apeshit down there,’ Björkmann said in his broken German. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Somebody crashed the party,’ Glass replied. He wiped the cold sweat out of his eyes and felt the ends of his broken collarbone grate. He clenched his teeth. ‘I need you to watch my back, Christian. There’s a guy on his way up here. You know what to do. I’ll come back for you. OK?’

The gigantic man nodded slowly. ‘Sure, boss.’

Glass watched Björkmann lumber down the corridor. He grinned and left the outline of a bloody hand on Clara Kinski’s door as he shoved it open.

The child was crouched in the corner, pressed against the wall, looking up at him with terror in her eyes. Glass took the syringe out of the leather case. He plucked the cork off the end of the long needle and fired a squirt of the lethal poison into the air. ‘Your Uncle Jack’s going to take care of you now,’ he said.

Clara started to scream as he walked into the room.

Chapter Sixty-One

Ben’s eyes were on the blood trail as he sprinted up another flight of stairs. His left hand grasped the polished banister rail as he climbed, his right holding the pistol ready.

The splashes of bright blood on the stairs were frequent. Glass was badly hurt, but he was running like a maniac and he was still extremely dangerous. He was heading for the top floor.

Ben cleared the final flight, his heart hammering in his chest. The blood trail led onwards down the corridor. He followed it, sweeping the gun left and right.

At the end of the long passage, a door was banging open. Through the doorway he could see curtains fluttering in the cold wind and snow blowing in through an open French window. He went into the room. All his senses were blazing. Over the thudding of his heart he heard an unmistakable sound. As he crept into the room it got louder.

It was the high-pitched whine of a powerful engine, revs building to a roar. It was coming from outside, on the roof. Someone was firing up the helicopter. He moved towards the window.

His vision exploded white and suddenly he was on his face. The gun slid away across the bare floorboards. He felt fingers curl around his collar and he was yanked to his feet with brutal force. He had a glimpse of a broad forehead and two small, fierce eyes staring down at him, and then a massive fist slammed into his jaw and sent him reeling backwards as though he weighed nothing. He crashed into a desk, sprawling over the top of it and sending papers and files, an ashtray and a telephone flying.

One of the biggest men he’d ever seen walked calmly towards him around the edge of the desk. ‘You are dead,’ the giant said simply. His English was heavily accented. In his hand was a stainless-steel Ruger.44 Redhawk with an eight-inch barrel. He tucked it into the back of his belt. ‘I no need this,’ he said. He raised his fists.

Ben staggered to his feet. The whine of the helicopter outside was getting louder. There was blood on his lips from the punch. His head was spinning. But even the biggest bastard could be brought down. He moved in fast and aimed a heavy blow at the solar plexus. He put all his strength into it and pain lanced up his arm as it impacted. It was a good punch. It would have crippled most men.

The giant barely seemed to feel it. A fist the size of a pineapple flew at Ben’s head and only just missed. If it had landed, it would have killed him.

This was getting serious. Ben aimed a kick to the groin. The giant blocked it. He jabbed at the throat. Another block. Ben retreated, aware that he was running out of space in the room. Through the open window he heard another sound, the high, keening, terrified sound of a child’s scream. He followed the sound with his eyes. The windows opened out onto a wide, flat expanse of rooftop. The helipad was surrounded by sloping gables and towering chimneys. Snow flurried on the rising wind. Thirty yards away, the lights of the Bell chopper cut a white beam through the drifting snowflakes, its rotors turning faster now. Jack Glass had Clara by the arm and was trying to bundle her into the open door of the helicopter. She was struggling and kicking. His teeth were gritted in pain and the front of his shirt was dark and clinging with blood.