The punch came from nowhere – a right hook that sent Stackpole staggering backwards for a couple of paces until he stumbled into another couple and fell to the floor.

  The man paid no attention. He put his arm around Saffron’s waist and pulled her close against his bulk, so she could feel his arousal, then pinned her arms to her sides. His breath was even more noxious than she had expected as he mumbled obscenely in her ear: calling her a whore, a slut and a bitch, painting a graphic picture of what he intended to do to her. Then he opened his mouth wide and licked up the side of her face, from her jawline, across her cheek and over her ear.

  For a second, Saffron felt as though she was back in The Hague. She was already on edge, imagining enemies lurking in every shadow on every street between the hotel and the club. Now she could feel her self-control slipping away as panic gripped her, but then suddenly her mind cleared, her focus returned, and her SOE training took over.

  The next few movements were as choreographed as a chorus girl’s routine.

  Saffron stretched her trapped arms to grab the hem of her dress and yank the tight skirt a few inches up her thighs. The thug now seemed the embodiment of all the men who had ever tried to hurt her. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, thinking that she was playing along, and reached down to get his hand between her legs. The dress rode higher, exposing Saffron’s legs further . . . and freeing them.

  Saffron raised her right leg and then stamped down as hard as she could, focusing all the force of the impact through her high heel into the top of the man’s left foot, feeling the bones break like dry twigs. Barely a second later, before the excruciating pain of the impact had even registered in her would-be rapist’s brain, Saffron had driven her right knee up and slammed it into his testicles.

  He doubled up. His head came down and Saffron met it with the heel of her right hand, hitting him hard on the underside of his chin, while the freshly filed and painted fingernails of her left clawed at his eyes.

  She stepped back to avoid the man’s wildly flailing arms. He was crouched over, groaning, hobbling on one foot, unable to see. Saffron dodged the punches, then stepped up close to him, pressed her fingers tight together and aimed a single hard chop with the edge of her hand at the man’s exposed neck.

  He dropped like a sack of wet cement and Saffron could feel the floor juddering beneath her feet. Stackpole was still down, but propped up on one elbow now, shaking his head to try and clear it. The band had stopped playing. But none of the other dancers had had time to react to the unexpected explosion of controlled but brutal violence.

  From the moment when the man had licked Saffron’s ear, to him hitting the deck, fewer than ten seconds had elapsed.

  She stood over him for a second, catching her breath. Her training had taught her that a fight wasn’t over until the assailant was definitively disabled – preferably dead. But this was a nightclub, not a battlefield. The man no longer posed an immediate threat to her.

  Saffron looked at the men and women standing motionless around her. Now that the fight was over, no one seemed to know what to do. A sardonic flicker of a smile crossed Saffron’s mouth as she imagined their predicament. When a slender young woman had beaten a man twice her size to a pulp, what was there to do or say? She walked over to Stackpole, who was getting groggily to his feet, thinking, So much for tonight and, Memo to self – never wear a tight dress if there’s the slightest chance of a fight.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Embarrassed,’ he said. ‘Got caught by a sucker punch.’

  He ran a hand up the side of his face and moved his jaw from side to side.

  ‘What’s the diagnosis, doctor?’ Saffron was looking into his eyes.

  Stackpole gave a rueful smile. ‘I’ll live.’

  Suddenly a camera flash went off. Saffron blinked to clear her vision and looked around. A man’s voice said, ‘Over here, siss!’ Without thinking, she turned her head and the camera flashed again, catching her looking into the lens.

  ‘Damn!’ Saffron muttered. The last thing she wanted was her face all over the New York papers. A moment later she saw the photographer pulling the flashbulb from its mounting, with another to replace it already in the palm of his hand. She turned away, putting a hand up to deny him another view of her face, and saw Frank Costello gesturing towards another man who was standing at the bar. Costello jabbed a finger in the photographer’s direction. The man nodded and began walking swiftly towards the photographer, who was now trying to make his getaway, darting between the tables towards the exit.

  He looked like a slippery little ferret, used to scrapes like this, and Saffron was sure he’d manage to slip away before Costello’s man could get to him. But just as he got to a pair of double doors leading out to the street, another of Costello’s heavies appeared in front of him. He turned with what Saffron had to admit was impressive agility and started sprinting in the opposite direction, but he had barely taken ten paces when a forearm like a leg of mutton shot out in front of him, catching him neatly across the throat and sending him crashing to the floor. He lay there, gasping for breath, while one of Costello’s men stomped on the camera he was still clutching in his hand. Someone in the audience yelled in appreciation and started clapping, and soon the whole audience was joining in, releasing the pent-up tension of the last sixty seconds in riotous applause.

  Stackpole managed a battered smile. ‘Just another quiet night at the Copa!’

  As Stackpole dusted himself down, Saffron noticed that Stephenson was standing beside them.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t have caused such a fuss.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You had every right to defend yourself. Though perhaps you didn’t need to be quite so thorough.’

  ‘Of course, no, sir.’

  Saffron glanced towards Costello’s table and saw Sinatra’s piercing eyes and that impish smile. She smiled back; it was impossible not to. And then she saw that Sinatra was pointing at her. No, wait . . . he’s pointing behind me.

  Saffron let go of Stackpole’s hand and turned around.

  The assailant she thought she had disabled was staggering towards her. He was limping, wincing in pain every time his left foot had to bear his weight, and still bleeding from the scratch marks her nails had left on his face. He was slightly stooped, too, one hand pressed to his aching groin. But there was no disguising the fury in his eyes or his implacable determination to get his revenge.

  Stackpole tensed, ready to defend her.

  Saffron held out an arm to stop him. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  She waited until the man was close enough to strike. And this time I’ll make sure he doesn’t get up, she thought to herself. But instead of trying to grab her, the man started to reach inside his jacket, and Saffron cursed herself for underestimating the threat he posed.

  Her breath caught in her throat, but the man did not pull a gun from his jacket. Instead, he pulled out what looked like a black leather wallet. He held it out towards Saffron and flipped it open.

  There was a badge inside, shaped like a sun with golden rays. She read the words CITY OF NEW YORK POLICE and beneath them, LIEUTENANT.

  The man’s voice was slurred with drink and the force of the blow that Saffron had landed on his chin, but the words were clear enough. ‘Yer under arrest . . . assaultin’ a police officer.’

  He gestured with his other hand. ‘Hands toward me, together.’ And as he pulled his cuffs from his back pocket, he leaned into Saffron’s face, and said, ‘I’m gonna make you pay, bitch. You hear me? I am gonna make you pay.’

  There was a moment of silence, followed by a burst of chatter mixed with boos and shouts of protest. Saffron heard a man call out, ‘Leave the dame alone!’ and the woman beside him added, ‘You attacked her, you bully!’

  She looked round and saw that Sinatra’s seat at Costello’s table was empty. He must have slipped out while everyone was distracted, Saffron thought. His presence at the club would be enough to make the fight a story. She was not surprised that he didn’t wish to make the news for the wrong reasons if he could avoid it.

  Then Saffron noticed that Sinatra was not the only character in the drama to have left the scene. Walter Winchell had made his exit, too. She winced. It was one thing making a spectacle of herself in front of the gossips at the Copa, but if Winchell’s boasts were to be believed, he gossiped to the whole of America. Gubbins told me not to get involved in rough stuff and not to cause trouble, and I’ve done both, Saffron chided herself.

  She thought for a second. No, this doesn’t have to be a problem. Winchell has no idea who I really am. Thanks to Stephenson, he’s only got the name Jane Smith. And Costello made sure there were no photos. With any luck, it will blow over and no one need know it was me.

  Costello, meanwhile, was taking charge. ‘Proser, get this show back on the road. Start up the band, hand out free drinks, whatever it takes. Now, let’s go talk about this somewhere quieter.’

  ‘The hell we will,’ the cop growled. ‘This woman’s coming with me.’

  ‘You gotta be kidding, O’Bannon,’ Costello replied.

  Oh, so he knows him, thought Saffron. Then: a policeman, in his club – of course he knows him.

  ‘You walk her from here to the exit, you’ll start a riot,’ Costello said. ‘Come with me, we’ll get this sorted nice and peaceful.’

  O’Bannon glared at Costello’s two silk-suited heavies. ‘Okay, but those goons ain’t comin’ with you. I don’t want no funny business.’

  ‘You think I’d try something? Seriously?’ Costello asked, sounding genuinely amazed. ‘What, I don’t know you belong to Vinnie Mangano? I ain’t looking to start a fight with him.’

  O’Bannon shrugged and grunted. ‘Okay . . . but I’m cuffing her first.’

  Costello rolled his eyes. ‘Suit yourself.’

  O’Bannon held up the pair of handcuffs. Saffron put out her hands and he snapped the cuffs shut around her wrists.

  Costello’s two men led the way towards a pair of swing doors at the back of the club, keeping the Copa’s clientele at bay, followed by Costello, O’Bannon and Saffron, with Proser, Stephenson and Stackpole following behind them. The mood of the crowd had quietened, anger giving way to curiosity.

  ‘This way,’ Costello said, as they went through the door into a kitchen that was almost as big as the club itself, filled with busy chefs.

  Stackpole kept close to Saffron as O’Bannon prodded her forward.

  ‘How is it?’ she asked, seeing Stackpole prodding the side of his face and moving his jaw.

  Stackpole grimaced. ‘I don’t think anything’s broken.’ He glanced at O’Bannon. ‘Can’t say the same for him.’

  ‘At least one severely fractured metatarsal,’ Saffron said. ‘Possibly more. Assuming I did it properly.’

  ‘Can it, you two,’ O’Bannon growled, still trying to play the tough guy.

  Costello led them into a private office and leaned against the front of the desk. Behind him, the walls were covered with autographed photos of celebrities.

  Saffron found herself in the middle of the room opposite O’Bannon. The other men were in a rough circle around them. Stephenson lurked unobtrusively in the background.

  ‘Hey, Proser, you keep any booze in here?’ Costello asked.

  ‘Sure, Frank, in the cabinet. I can fix you anything you want.’

  ‘Make it Scotches all round.’ Costello looked around. ‘That okay with you gentlemen?’

  There were murmurs of agreement. ‘How about you, sweetheart?’ Costello asked Saffron.

  ‘I’ll take it straight, no ice, no water,’ she said. The adrenaline rush from the fight was giving way to an edgy, unstable sensation, like a skidding car on an icy road. Flashes of memory were flickering in her mind – O’Bannon grinding himself against her, his words in her ear, his tongue against her cheek; Schröder in The Hague; the motorbike rider in his hotel uniform, grinning at her from the far end of the corridor – a jumble of images, past and present, all at the same time.

  ‘The hell you will, bitch,’ O’Bannon said, taking a step towards her and then wincing as he put weight on his injured foot.

  ‘For Chrissakes, O’Bannon, give us all a goddamn break,’ Costello said.

  ‘Shut your guinea mouth, Costello. I’m taking her in.’ The words were muttered more than spoken, but Saffron could see from the look of pure hatred on O’Bannon’s face that he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he’d paid her back in full for humiliating him.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ asked Costello, incredulously. ‘How many times were you the heavyweight champ of the NYPD? Three, was it?’

  ‘Four . . . undefeated.’ O’Bannon was talking to Costello, but his eyes were fixed on Saffron, running up and down her body, mentally stripping her.

  ‘And now you’re going to go back to the precinct house, looking like you just got run over by a truck, and you’re gonna tell the guys there that some dame did that to you?’

  ‘Sure I’m going to take this frickin’ slut back to the station. Then I’m going to stick her in a cell, by herself, no one else around. Then I’m going to wait a while, till it’s all nice and quiet. Then me and my buddies are going to go in there with our nightsticks and—’

  Before O’Bannon could finish his sentence, Saffron closed the distance between them and stamped on his wounded left foot for a second time. As he bent double, howling in pain, she batted aside Stephenson’s arm as he reached out to try and restrain her, then looped the chain of her cuffs around O’Bannon’s neck while kicking the back of his standing knee. As he started to fall, she took a sharp step backwards, pulling the chain tighter in a vicious chokehold. As she listened to O’Bannon’s frantic gurgling as he fought to breathe, she could hear raised male voices, but they seemed to be coming from far away and she could make no sense of what they were saying. She only had one thought in her mind: to kill the man who had threatened to rape her.

  Suddenly there were hands on her, grabbing her around the waist, forcing her arms up and over O’Bannon’s head, then pulling her away from him. The red mist slowly cleared from Saffron’s head, and as O’Bannon floundered on the floor like a fish on a trawler’s deck, she became aware once more of her surroundings and the other people in the room.

  A muffled voice was saying, ‘Saffron . . . Saffron . . . Look at me.’ She realised it belonged to Clay Stackpole. He was looking into her eyes, with a shocked expression on his face.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ he asked.

  Saffron nodded.

  ‘Okay, that’s good. You almost killed him just now, you know that?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Not that any of us would have blamed you, but, still . . .’

  Stephenson handed her a large glass of whisky. ‘Drink it,’ he said. ‘That’s an order.’

  Saffron nodded, took the glass and drank, closing her eyes as she felt the warmth of the alcohol spreading through her, calming her. She brought her breathing under control, keeping it slow and steady. ‘Thanks,’ she said, handing the half-empty glass back to Stephenson.

  O’Bannon was struggling to get back on his feet.

  Costello looked at his two men. ‘Hold him. Get his keys.’

  One of the men hauled O’Bannon up while the other patted him down and extracted a bunch of keys from a trouser pocket. He unlocked the cuffs.

  ‘Thanks,’ Saffron said, rubbing her wrists.

  ‘You goddamn wop greaseballs,’ O’Bannon croaked, trying to summon some vestige of authority. ‘You’ll be sorry for this.’

  ‘Trust me, O’Bannon,’ said Costello, ‘I ain’t the one with the problem. You think Mangano’s gonna be happy when he opens the newspaper tomorrow morning and reads Winchell’s column, all about how his pet flatfoot, the famous boxer, got his ass handed to him by a dame in front of half of New York? And then some wise guy tells him, “Yeah, boss, then she whipped O’Bannon a second time, even after he’d cuffed her!”

  ‘You know how it is, Lieutenant. If you look bad, Mangano looks bad. If you get laughed at, he gets laughed at. And let me tell you, Vincenzo Giovanni Mangano is not a man who likes being laughed at. Not one little bit.’

  Costello paused and then casually added, ‘They don’t call him “the Executioner” for nothin’.’

  There was real fear on O’Bannon’s face now, as well as pain, but he tried not to show it. ‘Kill a cop? Are you kidding me? He knows the rules, same as you do.’

  Costello shrugged. ‘You better hope so . . .’ Then he nodded at the man holding O’Bannon. ‘Let him go.’

  O’Bannon stumbled forward, placed his weight on his left foot and fell to the floor again, crying in pain as he did so.

  ‘Here, let me have a look,’ Stackpole said. ‘I’m a doctor, and broken bones are my specialty.’

  ‘Get away from me,’ O’Bannon growled.

  Their evening together might have just ended in disaster, but something important about Stackpole suddenly became clear to Saffron. O’Bannon, who had hit Stackpole with a cowardly sucker punch, was feeling sorry for himself. Stackpole, who had taken the punch, was trying to help him. That was the difference between a bullying braggart and a real man.

  ‘Listen, Lieutenant,’ Stackpole said forcefully. ‘You need to go to an emergency room right now, before your foot swells up so bad they’ll have to cut your shoe off.’

  ‘Okay . . . okay . . .’ O’Bannon conceded, his spirit broken. A taxi was ordered, with instructions to go to the club’s service entrance. A burly sous-chef was assigned to help O’Bannon make his way across the kitchen.

  Back in the office, Saffron was rubbing her wrists where the cuffs had chafed them and thinking about the second attack on O’Bannon. She knew now that what triggered her rages was not dark water, sudden noises, or any other form of unconscious stimulus. The trigger was vile, bullying men trying to rape her. And what happened next was that the men got what was coming to them. I can live with that, she thought. Case closed.

  ‘Time we were on our way,’ Stephenson said, clearly including Saffron in the ‘we’.