‘I’m serious about that castle,’ he said. ‘It’s where Richard II died apparently. Oh, and in case you’re interested, during the English Civil War, it was the site of some really famous sieges. Ironically . . .’

  FIFTY-NINE

  The voice in Finn’s head was far louder and getting distinctly sweary as she poked her head around the front door.

  What the f**k is wrong with you? You saw the gun. Are you completely f***ing mental?

  She eased the front door open as quietly as she could and crept into Miller’s living room. The only signs of life were small and furry, peering up at her through the bars of their cage. She took out a phone and sent Miller a text.

  where r u?

  A second later she heard a ding and turned to see Miller’s phone on the table. Maybe he had seen whoever was coming and legged it through the back door before the front door was blown open. If so, then the intruder had almost certainly followed him. She walked into the kitchen, only to discover that the back door was locked.

  Miller and the gunman were both still in the house.

  Now the voice in her head was really giving her a talking to, screaming and dropping more F-bombs than a Tarantino movie, but Finn took a breath and shouted over it.

  ‘Miller . . . !’

  Sofia had heard the message alert from the phone downstairs and stepped away from the bedroom door. She was standing at the top of the stairs, her finger still caressing the trigger of her gun, when she heard the girl shout from below.

  She had trained herself to remain calm when situations altered, when a change of plan was called for. Hadn’t that been exactly what had happened at that hotel almost a week before? Sometimes, you just had to adapt and think on your feet. If anything, at moments such as these she became even more relaxed. It was like a Zen mind control thing, or maybe she was just a stone-cold psychopath; she wasn’t much bothered either way.

  Clearly though, someone in the house was getting a little jumpy, because suddenly there was an awful lot of noise from the other side of that bedroom door.

  Sofia moved back to the door and leaned close to it.

  ‘Don’t go away. I won’t be a minute . . .’

  Miller had heard Finn calling his name and the jolt of panic and horror had pulled him instantly to his feet. He was dizzy with adrenalin. Suddenly he was no longer concerned about the bullets that might be coming through the door and all that mattered was clearing away the barricade so that he could reach Finn as quickly as possible.

  Now, he needed to get out.

  Sweating and shouting with the effort, he threw that stupid litter bin across the room, pushed the bedside tables aside and lifted away the pine box.

  Why the hell had she come back?

  Why had they had that stupid argument?

  He grabbed the edge of the chest of drawers and began to heave. He had certainly done himself some damage when he’d dragged it into position five minutes before, but the pain didn’t matter. All that mattered was keeping Finn safe and now he could sense Alex just behind him, willing him on, and he knew how very much it mattered to her.

  Miller heaved again, and yelled.

  ‘Finn! Get out . . .’

  Sofia moved slowly down the stairs, ignoring the thumps and the shouting behind her. She held the gun ahead of her, ready to use it at the slightest movement. She paused on the bottom stair, then stepped quickly out into the living room, two hands wrapped around the pistol.

  There was no sign of the girl.

  She moved into the kitchen, saw it was empty and checked the back door. It was still locked. She walked back through the living room then slowly across to the toilet by the front door.

  The door was closed.

  Was that the way she’d left it . . .?

  ‘Wait . . .’

  She heard the footsteps crashing down the stairs and turned to see Miller come charging into the room. He was panting and looking around the room desperately. The relief on his face was clear enough when he did not see the girl, but quickly changed when it dawned on him that the situation wasn’t quite as rosy as it seemed. He raised his arms.

  Then he shrugged.

  ‘Go on then.’

  Sofia trained the gun on him.

  ‘The girl knows nothing,’ Miller said. ‘She’s no threat to you, so you should really just shoot me and leave.’

  ‘I shoot you, then I shoot the girl,’ Sofia said. ‘Or the girl then you, it doesn’t matter. Then I shoot your stupid rats.’

  Miller could see that she meant it and he knew that, if he did see Alex again, when the two of them were in the same boat deathwise, she would almost certainly tell him what an idiot he’d been.

  There was nothing to do other than close his eyes and wait for the gunshot, but before he could do so he saw the door of the toilet swing open and watched as Finn crept out carrying the heavy porcelain cistern lid.

  Dry-mouthed and desperate, he tried not to let Sofia know that he’d seen anything, but she caught the change of focus and the flare of panic in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, right,’ Sofia said, smiling. ‘You want me to think there is somebody behind me, yes?’

  ‘Believe me, I’d very much rather you didn’t,’ Miller said. ‘But there is, and she’s armed.’

  He watched, horrified, as Sofia’s smile slowly evaporated and she began to turn. Now he closed his eyes, which is why he didn’t see Finn charging forward, swinging the cistern lid. He did hear the clunk when she smashed Sofia across the back of the head with it.

  Miller opened his eyes just in time to see the hitwoman hit the floor, spark out.

  The pair of them stared down at the body.

  ‘Is she . . . ?’

  Miller stepped forward, kicked away the gun and then, because he thought he’d better, he bent to check for a pulse. ‘Sadly not.’ He looked up to see Finn staring into space, wide-eyed, as though she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done. He watched as she let the cistern lid slip from her grasp on to the carpet. He said, ‘I hope you flushed.’

  Before Finn could respond, the door was kicked open and a scrum of armed officers burst into the room, shouting and screaming like over-enthusiastic extras from Line of Duty.

  ‘Armed police!’

  ‘Down on the floor. Oh . . .’

  As the weapons were lowered and confused looks exchanged, Xiu appeared behind them and pushed her way through. She quickly took in the scene, but was clearly every bit as bewildered.

  Miller looked up at her and shook his head. ‘Honestly, I’ve had pizzas get here quicker.’

  SIXTY

  ‘It was quite a bizarre conversation actually,’ Miller said. ‘Though I did feel like a bit of an idiot when it clicked. The whole “asking the wrong question” thing.’

  ‘You weren’t to know.’ Xiu glanced down at the woman in the bed. ‘He wasn’t to know.’

  Miller shrugged then stared, looking for any sign of a reaction. He pressed on. ‘Anyway . . . when I saw him in the hotel lobby I mentioned your name to Paul Mullinger . . . remember him?’ Miller waited a few seconds, but again there was nothing. ‘And after he’d very helpfully given me the address of your flat—’

  ‘Which we forensicated thoroughly,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Yes, thoroughly . . . he told me that you’d left for good. I can’t say I was very surprised, obviously, but he said – because he didn’t know then why you’d scarpered – that he couldn’t really blame you. Because of the trauma you’d been through. Because nobody expects to open a hotel room door and find a body, do they? I said, “Well, I suppose not . . . not even in a Travelodge.” Then he said something like, “Certainly not on your second day” and that’s when it clicked. That’s when I remembered asking him on that first morning if any members of hotel staff had left unexpectedly. I mean . . . d’uh! What I should have asked him, of course, was if any members of staff had just started.’ He leaned a little closer. ‘Which you had, of course, because you’re very clever.’

  ‘Or think you are,’ Xiu said.

  Sofia Hadzic’s eyes were closed, but Miller knew she could hear every word – that she was well aware he and Xiu were sitting at her bedside – because he’d seen her close them. He could see her eyeballs moving behind the lids and her fingers clutching at the edge of her blanket. The fingers on the hand that wasn’t handcuffed to the bedframe.

  To be fair, it was understandable that the woman might not be in the chattiest of moods. Her injury had not been life-threatening, but there was a neck-brace and a thick bandage around her skull. There were wires and tubes and assorted machines beeping every few seconds.

  All the same, Miller had been hoping for a bit more back and forth.

  ‘ “I could see the blood where he’d been shot in the head”.’ Xiu inched her chair a little closer to the bed. ‘That’s what you told Detective Sergeant Miller when he first spoke to you in the manager’s office.’

  ‘You were ever so upset,’ Miller said.

  ‘He recorded your conversation,’ Xiu said. ‘Remember?’

  Miller held up his phone and waggled it. ‘Handy little trick, if you forget things. You should try it, Sofia, because you’ve obviously forgotten quite a few things.’

  ‘Like what you could see when you opened that hotel room door.’

  ‘So, you could see that Adrian Cutler had been shot, could you?’

  Xiu nodded. ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘Well, that’s more than I could, until they turned him over. Cutler was lying face down and he was shot from the front.’ He leaned towards Sofia Hadzic and tapped his forehead. ‘Here, see? I actually checked all this out for myself with the help of a . . . friend of mine. We staged a re-creation of the scene that I would say was ninety-nine point nine per cent accurate.’

  Xiu looked at him across the bed, her face asking the question.

  Miller looked back at her. ‘I’m knocking point one of a per cent off due to the absence of penguins on my boxer shorts, but I really don’t believe that made any material difference.’ He turned back to Sofia. ‘So, unless there’s some X-ray vision thing you haven’t mentioned, how did you know he’d been shot at all?’

  ‘It’s a mystery, don’t you think?’ Xiu asked.

  After a few more beeps, some moaning and a slight shifting on the bed, Sofia slowly opened her eyes. ‘No comment.’

  Miller sighed. ‘Oh, we’re not doing that, are we?’

  ‘This isn’t even a formal interview,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Plus, we brought you some fruit!’ Miller pointed to the bowl beside the bed. ‘Detective Sergeant Xiu wanted to get grapes, but I told her they were boring, so we opted for something a bit more tropical instead.’

  ‘You can stick your fruit,’ Sofia hissed.

  ‘Well, that’s charming,’ Miller said. ‘You got any idea what a mango costs?’

  The door opened and a nurse poked her head around the door. She tapped her watch. ‘Time’s up, I’m afraid. The patient needs to rest.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ Miller said. ‘We were having such a great chat.’

  Xiu stood up. ‘Perhaps you’ll feel more like talking when you’re feeling a bit better.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Miller stood up too. He moved to the end of the bed and reached down to give Sofia’s foot, or what he estimated to be her foot, a squeeze through the blankets. ‘You look after yourself.’

  Sofia glared up at him, steaming.

  ‘No, I mean it, because the sooner you’re on the mend, the sooner we can get the whole silly interview/charge/trial/prison business out of the way, and then you’ll never have to see me again. I mean, it’s not like I’ll be visiting, is it?’

  Sofia tried to raise her head and spit, but the neck-brace meant it ended up dribbling down her chin.

  ‘I need you to leave now,’ the nurse said.

  Miller turned to look at her. ‘You’re quite . . . fierce, aren’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t even started,’ she said.

  Miller and Xiu walked towards the door. ‘You will look after her, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course, if we’re given the chance.’

  Miller turned to give Sofia Hadzic a final wave, then nodded to the woman who was still waiting impatiently for them to leave. ‘Carry on, nurse.’ The nurse sighed, long-suffering, then moved to close the door, but Miller nipped back in and hurried across the room. ‘Sorry, I forgot my fruit.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  ‘Concussion can be a nasty business . . .’

  Miller knew that the Force doctor was right. He’d once seen Ransford and Nathan clash heads during an over-exuberant group routine, after which the older man had not been himself for several days. He doubted that the possibility of Sofia Hadzic’s being unable to carry off a decent cha-cha-cha would be a major legal issue, but Miller well understood that a decent defence brief might call into question any statement given in evidence, if proper recovery time was not allowed.

  ‘If she claims later on that she’d felt a bit dizzy or confused in the interview room,’ the doctor had said, ‘the whole case could get thrown out. Ridiculous, but what are you going to do?’

  The bottom line was that Miller would not be able to further question the woman who’d tried to kill him for another fortnight. Two weeks during which he found himself extremely busy, not least because Blackpool’s criminal fraternity was working overtime.

  A cousin of Wayne Cutler was found washed up near the pier, with injuries unlikely to have been caused by a fish, unless that fish had been armed with a lump-hammer. Three days later, a senior member of Ralph Massey’s staff at the Majestic Ballroom was trampled to death after a hoax bomb threat had started a stampede of mashed-up ravers. Perhaps most challenging of all was an incident during which an intoxicated holidaymaker from Chorley, who’d got lippy with a bingo caller, was almost beaten to death with a giant stick of rock.

  Miller triumphantly announced that it had been an ‘accident waiting to happen’.

  Murders, attempted murders, assaults . . . marking out the days.

  Miller and Xiu worked the majority of cases together. Miller was happy with the arrangement and his suspicion that Sullivan wasn’t thrilled about it made him even happier. Though Xiu would never be one to ‘bring the bantz’, her tolerance for Miller’s jokes had seemingly reached a level where she didn’t simply stare at him quite so often. For his part, Miller became a far better judge of when was and when was definitely not the right time to tell his partner what was on his mind. He grew to respect and even to be afraid of that slight twitch around Xiu’s eye. He learned when it was time to shut the hell up and back off.

  Though it nearly killed him, Miller didn’t mention the heavy metal/sex thing again for almost thirty-six hours, before frustration got the better of him and he asked her innocently if men who were into AC/DC could do it ‘all night long’. He was inordinately pleased with himself, but equally relieved that he did not elicit a twitch.

  There were also several funerals to attend.

  Barry Shepherd’s was a quiet affair; a small church and a couple of dozen mourners. Miller had talked to Barry’s parents and brother, then been studiously ignored by Ravi Varma who was the only representative of Tech That! The Cutler funeral was predictably a little more lavish, with plumed horses, top-hatted undertakers and Adrian’s name spelled out in flowers. Miller did not get the chance to speak to Michelle, who was ushered from place to place by a phalanx of protective family members, but they exchanged nods outside the church. He thought she looked a little less fearful than she’d seemed that night at his house. He hoped she found the strength to get as far away from them all as possible.

  Chesshead’s send-off was basically a massive piss-up. Miller thought that the chess set on the coffin was a nice touch, but from that point on it was just an excuse for every housebreaker, car thief, forger and extortionist within a ten-mile radius to descend on a local pub and do their utmost to drink it dry. Which they did. There were a good few fancy watches on display (even if most of them were fake) and more ankle-tags than you could shake a blunt instrument at. Ralph Massey brought Coco Popz out of retirement for the occasion and, though Miller didn’t hang around, he heard afterwards that Wayne Cutler was seen tearfully joining in with Miss Popz’s moving rendition of ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’.

  Taking advantage of a brief but convenient lull between stabbings, Miller seized the opportunity to go up to Manchester and visit his mother. She spent most of the time ignoring him and the rest of it believing him to be someone called Colin.

  Miller had had better days.

  His father – who was certainly not called Colin – predictably failed to get in touch, though Miller was able to stay abreast of his whereabouts via the Computer Aided Dispatch system. It was quite handy, really. His old man had been done for disorderly conduct in Warrington, nicked in Glossop for driving without due care and attention, and was currently on bail having been arrested in Huddersfield for stealing a car and then driving without due care and attention.

  The days went by.

  And Miller danced . . .

  He waltzed with Gloria. He got through a somewhat unorthodox bolero alongside Howard and even managed to get back on the horse that Mary was always banging on about by nailing a paso doble. He loved every minute of it. The rest of the crew were ticking along, even if some ticked a little more sporadically than others. Ransford took a week off for a cataract operation and Mary’s angina inhibited some of her bolder moves, though it didn’t keep her away from the pub. The younger members of the team were in fine fettle though and Nathan had even modified his preposterous stance on the Beatles a little (‘I don’t mind that one about the submarine’). Miller was not surprised to see that Nathan still fancied his chances with Ruth and, while taking care not to encourage the lad, he didn’t quite have the heart to tell him she was seeing a carpet-fitter from Lytham St Annes.