anny took another couple of steps closer to them, his eyes moving calmly from one to the other, making sure they knew he was watching them. "So what happens now?" Lindsay demanded.

"I make a phone call, we wait for a little while, and then it's 'Saturday night and I ain't got no body' time, ladies," Danny said sarcastically. He reached into the hip pocket of his fashionably crumpled linen trousers and pulled out a slim mobile, flipped it open, and keyed in a number with his thumb. It looked like it wasn't the first time he'd used the technique. Lindsay wondered if he made a habit of holding a gun on people while he phoned his friends. Was this how it had been for Penny, the gunpoint hostage, then the setting up of the scene for murder made to look like accident?

A moment for the phone to connect, then Danny spoke, never taking his eyes off them. "It's Danny. I've got a waste disposal problem at the office. Two loads. I want a team round, soon as... Yeah, it'll have to be moved before it can be dealt with... See you." He closed the phone, a smile thin as a filleting knife slicing across his face. "Sorted," he said contemptuously.

"Let's hope you make a better job of us than you did of Penny," Lindsay said. In some strange way, hearing Danny transmit the order for her death had lifted the fear. It was inevitable now, there was nothing left to lose. It wouldn't take long for the hired guns to arrive and once they were there, she and Sophie were good as dead. If there was ever going to be any hope, it was now.

"Oh, I think that went off all right, actually," he drawled, his urbanity restored now he was convinced everything was under control.

"The freak accident line didn't hold for long, did it?"

A quick, careless shrug of the eyebrows. "Accident, murder, what does it matter what the filth think? I could have had her shot or stabbed or strangled or battered to death. I know specialists, men who know what they're about. Professionals. But I thought, since it was costing me, I might as well get an earner out of it. So I took one of my boys along to her flat. She thought I'd come to talk terms. She never knew what hit her. But I had some great publicity for the new book. Which I figured she owed me, since I wasn't going to be getting any more books from her." As he preened himself, his wariness was slowly receding, forced back by a tide of complacency. Lindsay wasn't the only one to notice it.

"It was a clever idea," Sophie said. "Utilitarian."

"I hate waste," he said. "But I can't think of any way of making a shilling out of you two. Shame, really."

"Another reason to avoid killing us," Sophie said, still managing to sound as calm as a midsummer pond.

He snorted derisively. "Don't give me that bollocks. I told you, this isn't like the telly. You don't get to talk me out of it. You're going to die. If you're a Catholic, I'm sorry, you're going to have to manage without the last rites."

"Without these files, we haven't got a shred of proof," Sophie said. "The cops are never going to take us seriously. They'll realise Lindsay's a friend of Meredith, that she's grasping at straws to make it look like somebody else was responsible for Penny's death. All they're going to see is the money. Why would a millionaire publisher kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? Legitimate businessmen don't do things like that, not even ones who have a bit of a murky past."

"You must think I'm a real punter if you think that bullshit cuts any ice," Danny said, his eyes on Sophie. "Anyway, if you didn't get any joy with the cops, you're just as likely to shop me to the taxman. Which is just as dangerous and probably more expensive in the long run."

Sophie shrugged. "All you have to do is send out redundancy notices and close the racket down." She inclined her head toward the chair behind them. "All right if I sit down? I've got a bad back, I can't stand for long. If I'm going to die, the least you can do is let me do it in comfort."

Danny eyed Sophie suspiciously, then took a couple of steps forward to check there was no trick, nothing dangerous in reach once she was sitting at the desk. Lindsay instantly recognized the only opportunity she was likely to get. As he nodded and said, "Okay," she gathered her strength in a crouch and launched herself through the air at Danny.

She was slower than she anticipated, muscles still suffering from being crushed against asphalt. Worse, Danny was faster than she'd thought possible. He swivelled on the balls of his feet, his gun arm straightening without a jerk, his finger squeezing the trigger. A flash, a boom, the smell of cordite, and her shoulder felt like it had hit a brick wall at something approaching the land speed record. The impact spun her round in a half-circle, but her momentum carried her crashing forward in an unintended shoulder charge.

They collided and crashed to the floor, Lindsay realising as she landed on top of him that only one of the screaming voices was hers. Beneath her, Danny gagged, trying to squeeze some air back into lungs that felt paralyzed. The gun barked once, twice as Lindsay lay on top of him, incapable of struggle, beyond even wrestling for the weapon.

When they went down, Sophie threw herself across the desk, screeching like an express train, then crouched, panting, trying to stay away from the lines of fire as Danny's gun arm thrashed pointlessly around. Her eyes raked the room for any kind of weapon. But nothing suggested itself as a potential cosh.

Necessity mothered invention. Like a crab, she scuttled round the desk, and ripped cables out of the back of the computer monitor, not caring that her fingers throbbed from the violence of her actions. All she could think about was Lindsay and the grunts and sobs coming from behind her.

The monitor came free in seconds that felt like weeks. Sophie slipped both forearms under it and lifted it clear of the desk. She turned to see Danny thrashing under Lindsay, his breath recovered. He was trying to free his gun arm enough to bring the barrel round to where he could blow a bloody tunnel through Lindsay's brain. She was incapable of stopping him, her body a dead weight leaking blood all over Danny's silk shirt and antique silk rug.

"Fuck you!" Sophie roared, standing over him. His panicked eyes rolled up in his head, and he saw her standing there like a time-slipped Greek goddess of vengeance.

"No!" he yelled, his voice outraged, his face a mask of astonishment that anyone could have the upper hand over him.

Sophie dropped the monitor.

Sophie crouched over Lindsay, a 9mm Glock sticking out of the waistband of her jeans. She was packing the hole in Lindsay's shoulder with the rags of the silk shirt she'd ripped from Danny King's unconscious body. She'd checked him for vital signs once she'd made sure Lindsay wasn't bleeding from an artery. He was unconscious, though not deeply so. She'd ripped his office phone from the wall and used the cable to tie his hands and feet behind his back in a vicious ligature that would guarantee he came round with excruciating cramps. It was, she had decided, the very least he deserved.

It was a long time since she'd worked in a casualty department, and even then she'd only ever seen one gunshot wound. It was a failure of experience that worried her, leaving her uncertain as to how life-threatening Lindsay's injury might be. She could gauge something from the blood loss, but when it came to assessing the actual extent of the injury or the degree of shock involved in such a wound, Sophie reckoned she might as well be a riveter as a doctor.

She avoided mentioning that to Lindsay, settling instead for telling her that she was going to be okay, that Sophie would get her out of here and to a hospital just as soon as she had stopped her bleeding to death. She knew that even in extremis, Lindsay would appreciate the drama of that expression.

Lindsay lay still, curiously aware of the texture of the short silk fibres of the rug against the skin of her uninjured hand and arm. She felt strangely distanced from her pain, being more conscious of the shallowness of her breathing and the fat blobs of sweat running down her forehead and cheeks. The whole upper left quadrant of her body felt so strange, so alien, it might as well have belonged to someone else for all the connection she could make between it and her past experience. "I love you," she said, aware of Sophie's hands moving over her body. It came out as a croak, but Sophie understood.

"You're going to be all right," she said gently. "I love you too. Even if you are a complete headbanger."

"Alive," Lindsay croaked.

"Yeah, you're right. Better a live headbanger than a dead sensible head. Don't talk now, darling, save your strength. You'll need it if we're going to get out of here before the execution squad arrive." Sophie wiped the sweat from Lindsay's face with a crumpled tissue, then stood up. "I'm going to see if I can find a trolley or something that I can wheel you out of here on," she said.

"No," Lindsay grunted, forcing herself on to one elbow. "Not time. For that. I can. Walk. If you just. Help me."

Sighing in exasperation at her partner's refusal to accept defeat, Sophie crouched beside her and pushed her into a sitting position. Then she slung Lindsay's good arm round her shoulder, held on to her wrist with both hands, and tried to straighten up. It was a backbreaking job which Sophie would never have managed if the lie she'd told Danny about her back had been the truth. Lindsay's feet scrabbled uselessly under her as Sophie dragged her upright. Finally, they stood together in the middle of the room, Lindsay listing into Sophie, swaying slightly, but managing to keep her feet. The door seemed a very long way away.

"Okay," Sophie said. "One step at a time." They managed a jerky movement in the right direction, then a stumble, a stuttering correction and, after what seemed an eternity, a few coordinated steps.

They had almost reached the door when the constipated quacking of a man's voice coming through a loudhailer split the quiet of the mews. "Armed police. The building is surrounded. Come to the front door and throw out your weapons. I repeat, armed police. Come to the front door and throw out your weapons."

The voice stopped them in their tracks. "Oh, shit," Lindsay mumbled.

"At least it's better than King's thugs," Sophie said. "Come on, let's get you through into the secretary's office. She edged sideways through the door, supporting Lindsay as she staggered through behind her. "Sit down a minute," Sophie said, easing Lindsay on to the chaise. "I'm going to call for an ambulance. I don't know if they'll have one, and you need to get to hospital soon as possible."

"Fine," Lindsay groaned weakly as she slumped against the back rest. The initial physical blow to her system was deepening into a more profound state of shock, her mind a place where thought was as much of an effort as movement was for her body. Things were starting to look fuzzy round the edges of her vision. The focus of her world had narrowed till all she was aware of was the growing shriek of pain in her shoulder battling with the almost overwhelming desire to slide into sleep. Dimly, she heard Sophie speak. But the urgency in her voice was lost to Lindsay, as were her words. "Soph..." she mumbled, her voice tailing off as unconsciousness absolved her from the necessity of decision or action.

"Oh, shit," Sophie cursed, watching helplessly as Lindsay crumpled before her eyes. "Ambulance? I'm a doctor. Two injured at... you've got the location? Fine. One just gone unconscious, GSW to the left shoulder, considerable blood loss. One unconscious, single blow to the head. How soon?" She compressed her lips at the estimate of seven to ten minutes, then realized it would probably take her that long to get Lindsay downstairs.

She replaced the phone and hoisted Lindsay over her shoulder in a fireman's lift. It wasn't the most sensible way to carry someone with a gunshot wound to the shoulder, but Sophie didn't have a lot of choice. There was no way she was leaving Lindsay upstairs with Danny King, unconscious or not. Besides, she knew how important first impressions were to the police, and she wanted a clear separation in their minds right from the start between the two of them and King. It was going to be hard enough to convince them she and Lindsay were telling the truth, given the flimsiness of their evidence and the undoubted weight a corrupt system would place on the word of a rich and successful businessman. "And he probably supports the Tory Party," Sophie complained to her unconscious burden as she staggered down the stairs one at a time.

At the bottom, she paused for breath. The loudhailer invaded her ears again. "Armed police. You are surrounded. Give up your weapons and nobody will get hurt. Throw your weapons out of the front door and show yourselves. I repeat, you are surrounded."

"Yeah, fine, we get the message," Sophie panted, bracing herself and heading across the open-plan office, grateful for the blinds that hid her from the police marksmen she had no doubt would be in place, fingers on triggers, nerves strung tight as a fishing line with a shark on the other end. She prayed nobody would be too eager tonight.

After what felt like half a lifetime, Sophie was across the office and into the reception area. The muscles in her thighs were trembling, but she wasn't going to open the door until she knew the ambulance was there. Legs apart, free arm straight against the wall, she stood sweating for a full minute that stretched her patience near breaking point. Then she heard the swoop of an ambulance siren, growing closer, then abruptly silenced, like someone clamping a hand over a child's mouth.

Dry-mouthed with apprehension, Sophie cracked the door open a couple of inches. "Don't shoot!" she yelled, reaching behind her to pull the gun free. She tossed it out underarm, giving it a flick of the wrist to carry it well away from her. The gun clattered on the road, then there was silence.

"I'm coming out," she yelled. "We're the victims here, understand? I've got a wounded woman here. We're the victims!"

"Come out slowly, with your hands raised," the megaphone voice quacked.

Sophie curled her free arm under Lindsay's legs and let her slide down from her shoulder until she carried her in both arms across the front of her body. Then she slowly staggered out into the street, blinking the tears from her eyes. "Get the paramedics," she shouted. "Somebody get the paramedics."