‘Where?’ I gripped her bicep and gave her a fucking good shake. ‘Where have they taken him?’

She wasn’t going to let the grinding of her broken ribs steal her moment of triumph. ‘I wouldn’t tell you … even if I knew …’

A smile began to take shape on her no longer flawless features, but never made it to the finishing line.

She heard the crackle of flames at the same time as I did.

I sprang up and accelerated through the bedroom and into the corridor. Grey smoke was billowing up the stairwell from the ground floor.

I rammed the weapon back under my belt and spun back into Lyubova’s bathroom. She hadn’t moved.

I soaked a hand towel under the shower. Folded it into a triangle. Covered my mouth and nose with it and tied it around the back of my neck. Then gave another the same treatment. Wrapped it around my head like a shemagh.

I was vaguely aware of her watching me, but she’d had her moment. I didn’t need her to slow me down any more than she had already.

I ran through the smoke, two steps at a time. When I was halfway down the second flight, a jet of superheated propane from one of the cylinders blasted through the polythene sheeting opposite the kitchen and enveloped the space below me. The shockwave of the explosion that followed drove all the air from my lungs, lifted me off my feet and punched me against the wall.

I lay on the cold stone steps long enough to be reminded that the bit of my back which Claude had hammered with his fence post still hurt like fuck. And that I had to get moving before the rest of the propane and white spirit accelerant ignited above me as well. This might have been designed to look like an accident, but there was no way it was. I wondered whether whatever triggered it had been on a timer or detonated remotely. The van in the layby, maybe?

I hauled myself up as the smoke thickened. The far side of the hall was an inferno. I pulled one towel further down my forehead and the other up on to my cheekbones. The heat seared the strip of unprotected skin between them.

The fire began to consume the stairway. If the cylinders kicked off on the floor above, I’d be completely fucked. There were a whole lot more of them there. When they ignited, I’d have a major bleve on my hands.

I couldn’t get back to Lyubova, even if I’d wanted to.

Fuck her.

Whoever was pulling the strings was clearing up after himself. First Frank’s BG. Now his ex. It was no accident that the dogs, the security crew, the maids and whoever else had pissed off. And now I had to as well, before the emergency services arrived.

I legged it up to the landing and dived through the polythene I’d sliced on my way in. I whipped off my shemagh and wrapped it around the nearest propane cylinder. It sizzled like bacon fat but saved my palms from being fried long enough for me to hurl it through the nearest window.

Glass and shutter disintegrated. I clambered over the sill and on to the planking. The big hole I’d made would help fan the flames, but there was fuck-all I could do about that.

The heat was suddenly fucking outrageous up there too.

The mouth of the telescopic chute was two metres to my left. The shutter one metre beyond it burst outwards. A swirling eruption of glass and splintered wood, debris and dust. But I knew worse was to come. I vaulted over the retaining scaffolding pole while I still could, raised both arms and went into the chute feet first.

It was like one of those water slides you should never make the mistake of going down on a stag weekend in Portugal, but without the jets and the chance to level out before you hit the pool. I managed to slow myself with my boots and my arse and my elbows, and hoped that I’d land on a pile of plasterboard and insulating fibre rather than metal and slate and brick and chunks of wood with nails sticking out.

It was metal and slate and brick and chunks of wood. I couldn’t feel any nails. My right knee took most of the pressure of the fall, and my arse didn’t enjoy the experience either. I lay in a heap for a moment, counting the seconds until the boiling liquid expansion vapour explosion took out the front of the wing and everything immediately in front of it.

I took a breath or two and tested all the bits of myself I needed most right now. Then I hauled myself out of the skip and hobbled across to the van.

Three or four more windows on the upper floors at the centre of the house burst outwards as I went, showering the ground with razor-sharp shards, which sparkled like diamonds in the evening sunlight. Lyubova would probably have liked that. I didn’t look up. I needed to get out of range, double quick.

Two more went, sucking in air to feed the fire and superheat the propane.

I whipped out the Sphinx. Ripped open the driver’s door. Shoved the weapon under my thigh. Rammed the key in the ignition. The engine coughed, then died, then caught. I threw the gear stick into first, floored the accelerator pedal and sprayed gravel across the tarpaulin as I took off.

No flashing lights yet. And no sudden reappearance of the Dobermanns or their handlers.

I slowed as I approached the gates and skidded to a halt between the sensors that prompted them to open for outgoing vehicles. On went the baseball cap. Now I could hear sirens. I waited for the metal railings ahead of me to shudder and swing back.

They didn’t move a millimetre.

I felt my shoulder and jaw muscles clench as I willed them to release me. The entry and exit system might have been fucked by the fusing of the ring main, or whatever had sparked up the blaze. I’d have to get out and wrench the fuckers open.

The tone of the sirens changed as they drew nearer. I knew what that meant. It meant they were reaching the end of their journey. I gripped the pistol and was reaching for the Expert’s door handle when the gates gave a shudder. Then another. And a gap between them began to widen.

I eased the van forward and, with the pressure wave of the bleve kicking in behind me, I was out of there.

11

My knee throbbed as I put my foot on the gas and headed away from the sirens and the flashing lights I could now glimpse through the trees to my half-right. There was no sign of the smoker in the layby.

I didn’t want to get nailed for speeding, but needed to separate myself from the chateau, then get to Stefan as quickly as possible. I took the second left, hit the brake, then the third right, then left again.

After a couple of Ks I pulled off the road. I wasn’t in cover, but about a hundred from the nearest house, and with a fair amount of foliage close by. I dusted myself off and peeled both decals off the side panels. Then I slid back the door and chucked them into the rear toolbox.

I dug out a screwdriver and swapped the registration plates for the first of the Swiss ones. The original set went into the toolbox too. This was turning into a weapons-grade gangfuck, but I had to grip it, not lose it. The remote drive for the chateau security cameras would be well out of reach of the fire, and the first place any halfway competent investigator would look. Moving freely right now was vital, especially if the van was pinged, and I was in the frame for what Hesco and Dijani had done there.

I put the degreaser down by the partition, then extracted myself from my overalls and bundled them in too.

I glanced in the wing mirror as I rejoined the main and pointed the van north towards the beach where I’d left Stefan. Smoke spiralled into the sky from the chateau behind me. The traffic ahead pulled into the kerb to make space for the two fire engines screaming towards us.