‘How can I not ask?’

  ‘Because my answer’s always going to be the same.’

  Miller had run out of road. He felt gutted, helpless, but he was determined not to let those feelings show on his face. He obviously didn’t manage it.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, OK?’ Finn put her completed roll-up into her tobacco tin and closed the lid. ‘I’m sorry you miss her so much.’

  ‘Don’t you miss her at all?’

  Finn looked away, spoke to the floor. ‘The last few years . . . no, more than that, she was just someone who stopped to give me money every day. That’s about it.’ She swallowed and sniffed. ‘I miss the money.’

  ‘I’m not sure I believe you,’ Miller said.

  Finn shrugged, half-hearted. She gnawed at her nails for a few seconds then began tugging at her hair.

  ‘Christ, this is hard.’ Miller was staring at the photograph of Alex next to the TV.

  ‘I know,’ Finn said, well aware where this was going. ‘Because—’

  ‘You look so much like her.’

  Now, they were both staring at the picture of Alex and this time the silence was very awkward. Miller knew it was his job to try to ease the tension. ‘I mean, with a few less piercings obviously, and I think she washed her hair a bit more often than you do.’

  Miller looked at her, but his smile was not returned and, seeing her shove her tobacco tin into her backpack and get quickly to her feet, Miller could see that she was in no mood for jokes, however tenderly they were meant.

  ‘Finn . . .’

  She stomped across to the front door. ‘Thanks for breakfast.’

  ‘God, you’re every bit as stubborn as she was.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have come if I’d known there’d be strings attached.’

  ‘Come on, that’s not fair.’ Now Miller stood up too, and held out a hand. He called her name again but, in the end, he could do nothing but watch Finn storm out and slam the door behind her.

  Fred and Ginger crept to the bars of their cage and watched, like they could sense Miller’s mood as he stood there for a minute or more, frustrated and furious. Finally, he cursed loudly enough to send the rats scurrying back to their bed and marched into the kitchen. He tossed what was left of the tea away, slammed the mugs down on the draining-board and stood trying to calm himself, his knuckles whitening around the edge of the sink.

  Every bit as stubborn . . .

  How dare she eat a lovingly prepared breakfast, then stomp out of there in high dudgeon? In any kind of dudgeon come to that? And what the hell was dudgeon, anyway? For crying out loud, he’d only been doing what he knew was right. What Alex would have wanted him to do if she was around. Miller turned to make sure she wasn’t, which was when he glanced out of the window and caught sight of the figure on the other side of the road.

  Watching the house.

  The anger was immediately replaced by something else. It gave way to incomprehension and bewilderment and then horribly quickly – because how didn’t matter – to fear.

  How didn’t matter, because Miller knew why.

  He moved slowly to the kitchen door and peered round it. He’d have a better view through the living room window. He was hoping that he’d imagined the whole thing; that he’d see nothing out there but trees and sea and sky, or a harmless passer-by who by now would be fussing over a dog or been joined by the friend they’d been innocently waiting for.

  The figure was still there, stock-still in a long dark coat.

  Miller could not make out the face, shadowed by the peak of a baseball cap, but he didn’t need to, because he knew. He knew who was out there and why they had come. When he saw a hand reach into the pocket of that long dark coat he knew exactly what was in there, too.

  It wasn’t a dog-treat or a packet of Polo mints.

  He bolted into the living room and grabbed his mobile, thanking God and anyone else who might be listening that Finn had left. Stabbing at the screen while trying to keep out of sight, he thought how ridiculous it was that the quickest way to send for help was to simply dial 999, the same as someone might if their cat was stuck up a tree or if they had their head trapped in some railings.

  When he’d identified himself and been put through to the control room, he said all the things he needed to say, even if they might not have come out in an altogether comprehensible order.

  Firearm . . . real and credible threat . . . yes, now would be good.

  As soon as Miller had hung up, still with one eye on the figure across the road, he sent much the same message to Xiu, hoping that she was awake and that caps would stress the urgency of the situation.

  KILLER IS HERE.

  SERIOUSLY.

  HOW FAST IS THAT MOTORBIKE . . .?

  He laid his phone down on the table and stood desperately trying to decide what to do, his mind racing through his options, such as they were. He watched the figure look left then right, before stepping into the road and starting to walk calmly towards the house.

  There was only one thing he could do.

  Miller ran across the room and charged up the stairs.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Xiu could not have been any more pumped up than she was, but the crowd pressed up against the cage – baying for blood and punching the air as they chanted her name – was certainly not harming her cause.

  XIU, XIU, XIU . . .

  When she turned to give her fans a clenched fist salute, the noise only got louder.

  XIUUUUUUUU . . .

  She was starting to perspire more than a little in the black leather one-piece, but only because it was so hot in the arena. She slapped her thighs and grunted aggressively, her palms slipping against the oil she’d lathered over every inch of exposed flesh. That was when she realised it was actually cooking oil, which would account for the sizzling noise and explain why she smelled like a roast chicken.

  It didn’t matter. She had a job to do.

  Xiu glared across at her opponent, who was hopping gingerly from one foot to another in the opposite corner of the cage. Justin Bieber looked nervous and he had every right to be. The screams and roars of Xiu’s fans were far louder than the pitiful squeaks coming from his, because the Beliebers knew what was coming.

  She smiled, baring her teeth as the countdown began.

  J-Beebz tried to smile back, but the Canadian teen-idol-turned-rapper couldn’t quite manage it. The only thing ready to rumble was his perfectly toned tummy, bless him.

  The bell rang and Xiu rushed across the ring, ready to do some serious damage . . .

  . . . and opened her eyes.

  The room was lit only by her phone-screen on the bedside table and Xiu realised that the ding in her dream had been an alert; the sound of a text arriving. She looked at the clock. It wasn’t even seven-thirty yet and a message this early could only be work-related and was likely to be important. She inched across the bed, nervous, yet excited and also a little annoyed because she knew she could have taken Bieber inside the first round.

  Still not fully awake, she reached for the phone.

  There was a soft moan from the other side of the bed and an arm slid across Xiu’s chest to draw her back. Xiu glanced down at the tattoo on the inside of the wrist; the rose, inked delicately in red and green that she had first noticed the night before. A not-so-shy wave after their eyes had met, which was when Xiu had begun moving through the crowd in the packed room above the King’s Arms, neither she nor the tattoo’s owner paying much attention to the heavy metal any more.

  DoomToilet, rocking like monsters.

  Xiu had seen and touched all the other tattoos since, of course – the mermaids and the birds and the pierced heart in a very saucy location – along with everything else she’d imagined beneath the leather and the denim. The softness, the smoothness; those curves she’d noticed moving in time to the music the night before. It was exactly what Xiu had been looking for. Mostly, the choices she made depended on her mood, but sometimes she just wasn’t in the market for a hairy chest and all the bits and pieces that (usually) went with it.

  Her phone dinged again, the text message still unread.

  That arm across her chest tightened a little and the young woman pressing herself into Xiu’s back, whispered, ‘Leave it . . .’

  Xiu really wanted to.

  Several miles away, what Finn really wanted was to punch something, or better yet, somebody. The next unlucky sod she ran into. She stopped at the end of the road, swore at a seagull perched on a parked car, then stamped out the roll-up on which she’d been furiously dragging since she’d slammed Miller’s front door behind her.

  God, she hated feeling angry and it was always worse when she couldn’t decide who she was angriest with.

  She was angry with her mother (no change there and not just because she was dead) and she was especially angry with Miller, even if she couldn’t quite work out why. Probably because in his own daft and unmeaning way he’d managed to push all her buttons. Because he’d made her feel pig-headed and ungrateful.

  Which wasn’t fair.

  Not really . . .

  Worst of all, she was annoyed with herself, for letting Miller get to her, and as she watched the seagull squawk, every bit as ill-tempered as she was, before flapping grudgingly down into the road, she began to feel guilty.

  It was even worse than being angry.

  Maybe she should go back and at least thank Miller properly for the breakfast, which to be fair was amazing. She wasn’t going to back down on the other stuff, the moving in business, but it couldn’t hurt to let him know that she appreciated the effort. Because obviously she did. She didn’t want him to think that he was only around to provide handouts and that she didn’t feel anything.

  She turned to walk back, having made up her mind, then stopped when she saw the figure in the baseball cap crossing the road towards Miller’s house. Walking nice and calmly, like it was just an early morning stroll, but with weird little looks to check there was nobody around.

  Instinctively, Finn moved to conceal herself behind a tree and kept watching.

  She saw a hand come out of a pocket carrying what was quite clearly a gun – WTF? – then clamped her hand across her mouth to stifle a shout when the figure stepped calmly up to Miller’s front door, pointed the gun and blew the lock off. There was no sound, but it was obvious enough; there was a . . . recoil or whatever it was called. Finn watched, shaking her head when a foot was casually lifted to push the door open before the figure disappeared inside.

  WTAF . . . ?

  She stepped from behind the tree, fighting to catch her breath, then pulled out her phone to dial 999, taking three goes to punch in the numbers correctly because her hand was shaking so much.

  She blurted out the address, said there was a gun, told them to come.

  Finn had spent most of her life ignoring stuff. She’d ignored her mother when Alex had said that living with one addict had been bad enough and there was no way she was living with another. She’d ignored Miller and the advice he’d given her more times than she could remember. Now she ignored the voice in her head telling her very clearly that she was being phenomenally stupid as she began walking back towards the house.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  The silenced pistol sweeping the space ahead of them, the killer-for-hire – whose name was only the latest in a long line of aliases – moved swiftly through the downstairs rooms of Miller’s house. They pointed the gun into the small toilet by the front door, before walking through the living room (pausing momentarily to shudder after spotting the rats) and checking the kitchen.

  Empty.

  It was mildly annoying, because getting in and out quickly was always best, but not the end of the world.

  Because hunting would be fun.

  Back in the living room, the gun was laid down and the cap and the overcoat quickly removed. The coat was good for masking appearance, but might inhibit movement if there was a need to move or get a shot off quickly. Picking up the gun again, the uninvited visitor noticed a familiar mobile sitting there on the table. The policeman was obviously still in the house somewhere – the kitchen still smelled of fried food, the girl had left alone and the moped was parked outside – and it was a delightful irony that, wherever Miller was hiding, he did not have his phone with him.

  That phone would be the undoing of him, after all.

  The sudden noise from directly above made the target’s whereabouts very obvious. The muffled cursing and the clattering. It was looking like the job would be relatively quick, which was actually a shame, because anyone who chose to keep . . . vermin in their house deserved to suffer at least a little. On cue, one of the rats squeaked indignantly and the decision was made that, once Miller was out of the way, his pets would be dealt with, too.

  The killer crept to the foot of the stairs, listened for a few more seconds, then began to climb.

  Miller winced a little as he dropped down, knackered and breathless behind his makeshift barricade. He’d done himself a minor mischief dragging the chest of drawers across the bedroom, but it was a small price to pay. A mischief of any sort was preferable to what would almost certainly happen if he found himself staring down the barrel of what ballistics had identified as a suppressed Ruger Mark IV Hunter (presuming the killer was carrying the same weapon used to kill Barry Shepherd and Adrian Cutler).

  Did hired assassins have a favourite gun?

  Was this one superstitious about those things?

  Maybe they had a lucky pair of killing socks . . .

  Miller reminded himself that he had rather more important things to think about.

  He looked up at the ad hoc fortifications he’d assembled and stacked up against the bedroom door, wondering if it would do the trick. The chest of drawers, an old armchair, the pine box that Alex had kept shoes in and two unsteady-looking bedside tables. He seriously doubted that the wicker litter basket perched precariously at the top of the pile would make much difference one way or another, but to be fair, he had been in a hurry and hadn’t been thinking very clearly.

  Would it be enough to keep a smart and ruthless killer at bay? He thought there was a fair chance because, as he remembered—

  Miller heard a creak on the stair and knew he was about to find out.

  A few seconds later there were two gentle taps on the door. The metal of a silencer against the wood. Then a voice he’d last heard on a phone recording the night before.

  ‘Knock, knock . . .’

  Miller remembered a conversation he’d had with Xiu, five days earlier at the Majestic Ballroom.

  I just want to open the door . . .

  He could only hope Posh Gravy was on her way, though he couldn’t even be sure she’d received his message.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Miller asked.

  The killer sighed and leaned close. ‘Unfortunately, this is not a joke.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Miller said.

  Sofia Hadzic stepped back, raised the gun and fired through the door.

  Inside the bedroom, Miller flinched at the pffft of the silenced shot and the far from silent smashing of the full-length mirror on the wall opposite the door. He sank as low as he could to the floor, instinctively folded his arms across his head and tried to keep the terror from his voice.

  ‘OK . . . so you won’t be surprised to hear that I have questions.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Sofia sounded perfectly reasonable, pleased even; right before she fired through the bedroom door again.

  Miller gasped as the bullet flew over his head. When he’d started breathing again, he looked up to see that the panel in the door was already starting to splinter. ‘I mean, you’re obviously here because somehow you saw that text I sent this morning. Come on, I’ve got to ask . . .’

  ‘It’s not complicated,’ Sofia said. ‘When you interviewed me in the manager’s office, you went out of the room for a few minutes and left your phone behind. The same phone which is sitting on the table downstairs, which is how I know you’re not cowering in there calling for back-up.’

  ‘Oh, I’m definitely cowering,’ Miller said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But how do you know I haven’t already called for back-up.’

  ‘Well, let’s listen, shall we?’ Sofia waited. ‘No, I don’t hear any sirens.’

  Sofia believing that he hadn’t sent for help was the best weapon Miller had. The only weapon. Now it was just a question of keeping her there – on the other side of that door – until that help arrived. ‘So . . . what about my phone?’

  ‘When you left it, it was easy enough for me to get your email address and then I just sent you a spam email with a keystroke logger attached. You were foolish enough to open it.’

  ‘OK, now I feel like an idiot,’ Miller said. ‘Because I was warned about that. But when you saw the text, how come you weren’t in Venezuela or something? A fancy contract killer like you, I would have thought you’d be miles away by now.’

  ‘Normally, I would be,’ Sofia said. ‘But another job came in which is not too far from here. Pontefract?’

  ‘Very nice,’ Miller said. ‘You should visit the castle if you’ve got time.’

  ‘So, lucky for me. Not so lucky for the businessman I will be shooting later today in Pontefract, and definitely not lucky for you.’

  ‘No, I get that—’

  Sofia fired again, leaving a bullet hole next to the bedroom window and, rather more worryingly, another large crack in the door. Miller could see that his barricade – even taking the wicker basket into account – was going to be worthless if she fired enough shots to create a hole in the door big enough to lean through. Could a Ruger Mark IV Hunter do that? How many more shots would it take? That ballistics seminar was another one Miller wished he’d paid a bit more attention to.