The day finished early—or night came too soon—so Shirley was contemplating getting into bed at a time she’d normally have been pre-loading. Midweek she rested, like any sane person—her Wednesday evenings were sacrosanct—but otherwise she’d be on the prowl, looking for something she’d recognise when she found it. A want, awaiting fulfilment. And it was in the night—in its bars and backstreets; in its clubs and on its buses—that she hunted it down, usually finding that the search itself, and the consequent adventures, placated her want for a while. But here in the San, with its well-swept floors and clean sheets, with its constant hush, she found herself all want, all neediness, and hated it. Stripped of camouflage, stranded like a chameleon against a neutral background, she was the centre of her own attention, and subject to its moods.

There were few other resources available. The bed on which she lay, fully clothed; the lamp, which she hadn’t switched on. The moonlight falling through the window, whose curtain she hadn’t yet drawn. Though she was on the third floor, the available view was of various kinds of nothing, all of them shrouded in darkness. There was no TV, no radio; they’d taken her phone “because you won’t be needing to make calls, will you?” She couldn’t decide whether it was the content of that clause or the way it was framed as a question that most made her want to punch the speaker in the face, though accepted that either on its own would have done the trick. It was as well she was maintaining the quiet dignity thing. There was a coffee-table book on a coffee table: One Hundred Things to See in Dorset. Fat chance. There was a picture of a tree. And there was almost no noise.

Which was what most bothered her. Ignore the San’s various other hatefulnesses, like its institutional odours and the trademarked smile of its staff, and that picture of a tree, and what most bothered her was its hush. It felt like a religious undertow, its effect being to magnify every unintended noise. A coat hanger shifting in a wardrobe. The chink of a cup on its saucer. The people here—the “guests”—might as easily be called ghosts. They might not move through walls, but they were careful to enter rooms quietly. The loudest thing Shirley had witnessed since her arrival had been a jigsaw puzzle. It was enough to make her want to scream, and what worried her most was the fact that she hadn’t. That she was as quiet as everyone else, after only a couple of days.

People keep getting hurt. People keep dying.

And maybe she was one of them. Maybe she’d die inside, if they kept her here long enough. By the time they posted her back to Slough House she’d be a drooling wreck, scared by sudden movements and startled by passing noise.

Which might have been why—lying on her bed, the clock effortfully dragging its way to 9:26—when Shirley heard sounds downstairs, she sat bolt upright.

Afterwards, Whelan was never quite sure what tipped him over the edge. All afternoon the impulse had gnawed at him; the suspicion that things were not as he had relayed to Oliver Nash. The possibility that an alternative reading existed. Back in Schemes and Wheezes, there’d sometimes come a point when you had to ask, were you the player or the game? And was the mousetrap you’d just built one you’d walk into yourself? He had helped create a character once, a role for an agent to inhabit, who was the precise and perfect fantasy partner for a target of interest, an arms dealer. The chosen agent had occupied the role so completely that that was pretty much the last anyone saw of him, though it was thought he and the target were living happily ever after somewhere south of Rio. In the inevitable handwashing that followed Whelan had been tasked with writing a paper addressing the flaws inherent in the scenario his team had developed, along with what the minutes chose to term a “structured corrective.” In what was, for him, a rare display of ill-temper, Whelan’s addendum read, in its entirety, Don’t use humans.

An admonition which had been swirling round his head all evening. He had been used himself, that much was clear, and had registered no objection—the Service was called the Service for a reason, and he still felt the tug of its call to duty—but he worried nevertheless that he’d fallen into the backroom habit of forgetting that actual people were involved. In this instance, for example, what precisely was Sophie de Greer’s role? Was she in hiding, or had she been snatched? Would his involvement result in her rescue, or had he helped throw her to wolves? And whose wolves: Ours or theirs?

The list of who “they” might be was a long one. But then, the question of who “we” were could be equally knotty.

There was good cause to persuade himself that, having played his part, he should put it out of mind. He remained subject, after all, to Official Secrets legislation. Besides, if the information he had relayed to Nash had been acted upon, that was an end of it: de Greer would either no longer require, or be beyond the reach of, assistance. But information was bankable, and not always spent as soon as in hand. In which case it was possible that de Greer remained where he had traced her to: the San, in Dorset. And if so, it would be straightforward enough to verify that she was safe. He might no longer be active, but he still had a name; one that rang enough bells to open a door at a remote, hardly maximum-security Service facility.

Whelan had visited the San once, on a handshaking tour. It wasn’t such a long drive. Or it was, but making the effort would ease his conscience. And while it was true that, going by her photograph, Sophie de Greer was very attractive, it was almost equally true that this played no part in the decision he arrived at. Which was to put a jacket on, find his keys, and drive to Dorset.

It had been a door closing, nothing more, but it had happened without care. Someone had come in—or gone out—allowing the door to slam behind them, instead of easing it back into place.

Even during daylight, this would have been frowned upon. Would have wounded the hush.

Shirley hopped off the bed, wondering if she’d heard the first postcard from a rampage through the building. If someone had flipped their lid, and were even now running up the stairs, prepared to scream their excitement to the walls.

If that happened, she wanted to watch.

But when she peered down the corridor, there were no sideshows in evidence. Only the dull mumble of voices downstairs.

Dinner had been served at seven. At nine, the common room was locked. There was nowhere to go but bed. Whoever was still down there must be staff.

Except the staff knew to use doors quietly. If they knew nothing else, they knew that.

Shirley didn’t spend a lot of time weighing up her next move. If the minor ruction had been caused by one of the Nurse Ratcheds having a bad-care day, and if their meltdown involved, say, a bottle of something, or a line of something else, Shirley was more than prepared to keep quiet about it. She’d be silent as a fucking aardvark. Provided whoever it was slipped her a taste of the contraband.

Trainers on, she padded to the staircase. There was a floor-to-ceiling window at its head, and she could see her reflection as she approached. If she’d been holding a candle on a gravy boat, she’d have thought herself a ghost.

Passing one of the other bedrooms, she thought she heard a whimper from inside. Night tremors.

She descended two flights silently, dropped to a crouch on the landing and peered round the banisters, like a child in a movie, eavesdropping on parents.

In the lobby below, a woman was behind the reception desk. Shirley could see the back of her head, enough to identify her as the staff member who’d fetched her from the stableyard that morning. She was capable looking, with hair nearly as short as Shirley’s, and a slightly squashed nose, and was calmly explaining to a bullish-looking man that he was in the wrong place, all the while with one hand out of sight. There’d be a button beneath the desk, Shirley knew. Press it and security would come.

She switched her focus to the visitor, who was broad-shouldered, and either worked out a fair bit, or spent part of his day lugging barrels from one side of the street to the other. Dark curly hair; stubbly throat and chin. Jeans and a zip-up jacket. She could make out a stain of some sort, unless it was a tattoo, on the back of his right hand: visible as he rubbed his jaw.

The woman said, “It’s a private facility. We have no rooms available.”

Shirley thought: Yeah, and how come he’d just wandered through the front door? The San wasn’t high security, but it didn’t put out a welcome mat. How come this character had got as far as the reception desk?

He’d tipped his head to one side. It was possible he thought this charming. “A friend’s staying here. I’m just paying a visit, okay?”

Shirley remembered from her morning walk how you could approach the house through the woods, if you had a mind to. Because they weren’t prisoners. Even Shirley was here of her own free will, if you overlooked the fact she’d been given zero bloody option. So yeah, she could walk out, anyone could, but the other side of that coin was, if you had a pressing need to get in, it wouldn’t take military genius.

“Just for a few minutes?”

The accent was familiar; so much so, it took a moment for Shirley to clock it. He was Italian. Shirley had an Italian grandfather, though she’d never met him. To be honest, she wasn’t convinced her grandmother had known him all that well. Still, blood was blood: she had that accent in her genes. She knew it when she heard it.

“For the last time, sir, if you don’t leave, I’ll have to call security.”

“There’s no need. Just a quick visit.”

Press the button, thought Shirley. He’s a threat or he’s a flake. But whatever he is, he’s not a lost tourist.

And then he said, “My friend, she’s called Shirley Dander. Just give me her room number, and we’re all good.”

Driving out of London had been easy, and traffic light. For the first half hour, Whelan listened to the news—the PM had just shared his vision of post-Brexit Britain as an imperial powerhouse, its weights and measures system the envy of the world –then a podcast on rising racial tension in the wake of low vaccine take-up in minority communities, before deciding silence was preferable. This carried him through the next sixty miles, and by the time he was approaching the small town nearest the San he recognised familiar territory, though one ravaged by recent events. About half the retail premises were shuttered, and a canvas banner reading “Food Bank—Tues/Thurs” had been hoisted across a car park gantry. London, he knew, had taken a battering. But this felt like a disaster zone; a community flattened by history, and not yet back on its feet.

It was a relief to be out the other side; to leave the main road and bear left, heading uphill along a single-track lane. On his previous visit, in early summer, this landscape had been all greens and gentle browns, the British countryside at rest. Now the car was surrounded by waves of blacks and blues, shifting in the wind. On both occasions, the lane approaching the facility took its time; it bent round fields, and went some distance out of its way to admire a farmhouse. Driving slowly, nervous of curves, Whelan was starting to have doubts. It was nine thirty; late to be paying a call. On the other hand, the San was a medical institution. Not all of its guests would arrive in daylight; some would be delivered as wreckage, under cover of the small hours. And he was still a figure in the Service; his name would ring bells, open doors. Besides, if memory served, when the car crested the next hill he’d be almost there; in his headlights’ beam he’d have a view of the San below; its elegant driveway behind its tall iron gates, the long wall bordering its eastern side. All of it at ease with the peaceful countryside.

But memory didn’t serve. It was the next hill but one that allowed the remembered view, and when it arrived, it had altered. Whelan’s car dipped, and its headlights picked out the long wall, but in place of the iron gates was a twisted mess: one still hung on a hinge, badly buckled, and the other was no longer there. The red tail lights of a large vehicle, a truck or a bus, were heading up the elegant driveway at speed. Whelan had the sense of other shadows, swarming in the darkness. All this in the half-second or so that his lights illuminated the scene. And then the lane curved again, showing him only the darkness ahead, which would in another minute reach those broken gates. Before he’d driven half that distance a bright light appeared at the side of the lane, directed straight at him, and a silhouette flagged down his car.

“Shirley Dander. Just give me her room number, and we’re all good.”

“I’m calling security now.”

“Okay,” the man said, but not to her; he was speaking into the mobile he’d produced from his pocket.

“Would you put that away?”

“Sure,” he said, but instead leaned forward and hit her in the face.

The same moment the woman toppled backwards, Shirley heard a distant revving followed by an elongated crash, one which started with a metallic crunch and continued for some while as a twisted, scraping form of torture.

The woman was shrieking, and on the floor, but Shirley didn’t think she’d reached that button. No alarm was sounding. Or not until Shirley jabbed her elbow into the little glass panel at the top of the staircase, triggering an electronic howl that came from everywhere at once. The man froze, then froze again as Shirley took the stairs three at a time—can you freeze twice? Don’t ask me, I’m busy—sweeping a vase from its sidetable as she reached ground level and sending it hurtling at his head: it would have been nice if it hit him. But it struck a wall and shattered: water pooled on the floor, flowers rearranged themselves. Someone else was coming through the door, and he didn’t look like security. The first man pointed at Shirley and shouted an instruction she couldn’t hear. But she wasn’t an idiot: she spun and ran back up the stairs.

. . . He used my name. No particular shock attached to the knowledge. There was, if anything, a sense of comfort. Here she was, miles from anywhere—exiled, even, from Slough House—and she was still the centre of events. Still pursued by bad actors.

Of whom this particular example turned on some speed, enough that he could grab her by the ankle. As she reached the top of the stairs, Shirley hit the floor face first.

“What seems to be the problem?”

Odd how he fell into deferential mode as he lowered his window and craned his neck to address the shadow. Something to do with being English, he supposed. Or everything to do with being Claude Whelan.

It was a young man with a long face, sideburned and stubbled. Whelan could smell alcohol as he crouched to speak through the window.

“Accident.”

“Is anyone hurt?”

“. . . Eh?”

“Is. Anyone. Hurt?”

The young man nodded vigorously.

“Many. Yes. Big accident.” He put his hands together then moved them apart slowly, to indicate the violence of whatever had just occurred. “Boosssshhhhhhhh . . .”

From the direction of the San a fire alarm burst into life.

“Well, that should bring help,” Whelan said, and pressed the button to raise the window.

The young man put his hand in the gap, preventing it from closing.

“What are you doing?” said Whelan.

“You have to go back.”

“The road seems clear.”

“No. All blocked. Go back the way you came, yes? No worries.”

“I see. Yes, fine. All right, then. I’ll go back the way I came.”

He studied his wing mirror for traffic, then made doubly sure by looking over his shoulder, one or other of which actions satisfied his new friend that he intended to reverse to a passing place and turn the car around. The hand was removed from the window.

Whelan nodded politely, closed the window and drove forward, the car leaping a little as if eager to be on its way. In his mirror, he saw the young man prancing about: Was he shaking his fist at the car? Whelan rather thought he was. That was pleasing. His own arms were tingling in a way that might have been worrying in another context, but in this one spelt energy, coming off him like sweat.

He turned where the gates used to be, and there was the San at the end of the driveway, its ground floor lit. The truck that had ploughed through the gates had parked by its entrance; it was in fact a people carrier, now flanked by a pair of cars, their doors wide. A number of motorbikes were lined up behind, like an honour guard. And meanwhile a fire alarm pulsed steadily, beneath which Whelan could make out a different rhythm, one he had no name for, but recognised from crowd scenes: demonstrations turning edgy; railway stations when trains refused to arrive. Even inside the car he could feel the drumbeat. It was the wrong place to be—like the moment you drop a cup, before it hits the floor. Something’s going to break. He stopped abruptly just short of the other vehicles, and changed gear. Then flinched as a face appeared by his window.

A fist rapped on the glass.

There was someone behind him, too, blocking his exit.

He reached for his mobile and fumbled it, dropping it into the footwell, when the fist bashed against his window once more. Words were shouted.

Open the door. Get out of the car.

Not going to happen.

He unclipped his seatbelt and bent for his phone. As he did so the fist hit the windscreen again, hard enough to make the car wobble, and causing Whelan to bang his head on the steering wheel. Sudden pain, and with it fear: What the hell had he been doing, driving into a mini-riot? And he sensed, rather than saw, other figures clustering round the car, casting shadows onto its interior.

Another thump. How much would the windscreen stand, and what if they used something other than bare fists?

He found his phone, slid back upright, and all four car doors rattled as their handles were gripped and tugged.

The San was open, light spilling onto its forecourt. And maybe these are patients, thought Whelan. Maybe this was a multiple-medication failure . . . But they were all male, and much of an age, not the diverse range of the damaged the San hosted, and how was this happening? Where was security, for god’s sake? Even as he had the thought a man in a blue shirt, dark trousers, came flying through the front door to land sprawling on the gravel. He’d barely hit the ground before one of the marauders leaped out after him and kicked him in the head. Then did it again.

Whelan’s innards tightened. If they pulled him out of the car, he’d be compost in minutes.

If Claire could see you now.

But she couldn’t, and nor could anyone, save this bunch round his car.

But the Park must know the alarm was ringing; help must be on its way. There was no one to call, nothing to do except leave, now, quickly. Dropping the phone into his lap, he grabbed the wheel with one hand, reached for the brake with the other, and the car lurched, throwing him forward again, and then he was leaving the ground—Christ alive, he was in Chitty fucking Bang Bang—and then falling back to earth with a crunch, an impact felt in his teeth, in his eyes, in his spine. He was surrounded by mad laughter, the men howling with glee as they pounded his car with their fists.

On the gravel, yards away, the security man tried to push himself upright, and someone stamped on him.

Whelan’s face was wet. Nose bleed. His glasses had disappeared. An image of Sophie de Greer careered through his mind, blonde, glasses, suit and tie, and who on earth was she really? Couldn’t they just grab her and run, leave him alone? And now the bastards were lifting his car again and Christ here goes they were dropping it—

Something came loose with that second crash, something broke. He shook his head, which was wrapped in gauze. Noises were muffled, and reached him through sound-baffling voids; vision helter-skeltered, a whirl of headlight and shadow. Figures spun, slowed, went into reverse, and then a shape rose out of fog and into focus, wielding a lump of rock. Whelan flinched, and the rock hammered down onto his windscreen. Safety glass spiderwebbed, and peeled away from the edges. Cold air swamped the car, and noise pumped back up to maximum, the fire alarm drilling into the back of his head. Hands tugged at the broken screen, peeling it away like a door on an advent calendar, revealing Whelan as the little surprise nestled inside.

The man had climbed onto the bonnet, and was reaching for him.

Whelan had only soggy thoughts left. Now they’d drag him onto that gravel, and stomp him into mush.

“Fucking copper, yes?”

This was the man crouching on his bonnet, his face inches from Whelan’s own, his fists wrapped round Whelan’s lapels.

“I fucking hate coppers.”

And then a body dropped from the sky and flattened him.

Her head pressed against the carpet, a man bent low over her, his breath hot in her ears: give or take a gender preference, it might have been a quiet evening in.

The kidney punch, though, was bang out of whack.

The carpet’s weave dissolved along with Shirley’s vision, and when she gasped for breath, it was all dust and hair.

She felt his hand on her head; his weight brought to bear.

“Shirley Dander. Know where she is?”

Right that moment, Shirley couldn’t have said for certain.

But a voice behind her could. “I do.”

The man raised his head to see who was speaking, so the book that hit him broke his nose.

His weight slipped off her and she rolled free. He was on his side, cradling his face in his hands, and the best she could manage was a two-fingered jab into his throat. Not her most powerful shot, either; not after being rabbit-punched. Still, her second go had a little more force, and the third was the charm.

“You might kill him,” said the voice, but not in a discouraging way. More like: FYI.

“Ungh,” Shirley said, partly in warning. The man who’d punched the woman in the lobby was coming up the stairs; not in a hurry, and apparently amused by the fate of his companion. He said something nobody heard.

The corridor was busy; all doors open, and nervous faces peeping out. Like Watership Down on fireworks night. Shirley got to her feet before Man One reached the top of the stairs.

Someone called, “Is this a drill?”

“Use the other exit,” Shirley’s saviour said. It was Ellie Parsons, the woman she’d met in the gym, and she was brandishing a bloodied book, One Hundred Things to See in Dorset. “I wondered why they left copies of this. Now we know.”

“‘Panic attacks’?” Shirley managed. Breathing was painful.

“Oh, I’m medicated up to the eyeballs, dear.” Parsons smiled, gently. “I’ve called this in. But I imagine some kind of response will be automatic, don’t you?”

I work in Slough House, thought Shirley. Expecting anything other than blind indifference was optimistic. But anyway, here he came, Man One, shaking his head. Man Two was prone and gagging, unless that was a death rattle. She couldn’t find it in herself to give a toss.

“It’s getting a little, uh, busy,” Man One said. He wasn’t kidding. The fire alarm, the crashing about outside, the breakage downstairs, some to-and-fro yelling. If he hadn’t been using the top of his voice, they wouldn’t have heard him. Given that he was, his accent was more noticeable. Uomo Uno, Shirley amended.

“Yeah, you might want to fuck off now. There’ll be men with guns in a minute.”

“For a care home?”

Parsons raised both eyebrows. She spoke to Shirley. “Do I look like I belong in a care home?”

“How do you think I feel?”

“We can sort this out simples,” said the man. “We’re looking for Shirley Dander. We find her, we leave.” He spread his palms. “Nobody needs to get hurt.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Shirley.

Yet another pair were coming up the staircase; one bald and bearded, the other clean-shaven and raggy-haired, like alternates in an identikit parade. Both wore expressions bordering on glee, as if this wild rumpus were the stuff of daydreams. Without looking round, Uomo Uno held an arm out to stop them.

The corridor was bustling. The fire exit was at the far end, and dressing gowned figures were shuffling that way, though two men had approached Shirley’s end and stood behind Parsons now, evidently expecting trouble. One was elderly; the other Shirley’s age. He had thinning blond hair, a wispy goatee, and a nervous twitch that pulled his face to one side at irregular intervals. And he carried a bedside lamp, its shade removed, its flex wrapped round his wrist.

Uomo Uno regarded them with amusement. “If you want a fight, I can spare a few seconds. Don’t think we’re all as easy as him.”

This with a gesture towards his broken-nosed companion, who chose that moment to groan.

The elder of the men behind Parsons said, “Naples? I’m hearing Naples.”

From downstairs came the sound of shattering glass.

Uomo Uno said, “One last time. Shirley Dander?”

“I’m Shirley Dander,” said Ellie Parsons.

“No, I’m Spartacus,” the nervous twitcher said, in a surprisingly deep voice.

“Okay, so one of you’s going to break a bone now,” said Uomo Uno. “You, I think.” He pointed at Spartacus.

To do them credit his back-up pair recognised their cue, but their execution lacked finesse and it all fell apart before it got going. When the first of them hard-shouldered Shirley aside she dropped to the floor, but grabbed him by the beard as she did so, pulling his head low and making it a simple target for Spartacus’s lamp. This caught him square in the mouth, not hard enough to satisfy Shirley, but she was aware she could be over-critical. His companion, meanwhile, reached for Spartacus just as Parsons kicked his kneecap: not a high-scoring move, but again best judged by results, because when he stumbled the elderly linguist put both hands to his chest and pushed him back into Uomo Uno, who caught him in an embrace at the top of the stairs. For a moment they were vulnerable, one good heave away from toppling down the staircase, and Shirley released the beard intent on precisely that, but someone grabbed her ankle: Man Two. She’d forgotten him. Too many people in not enough space was the problem: this needed a big finish if it wasn’t to end in farce. She collapsed onto all fours again, assuming the size and rough shape of an occasional table, while Bearded Man, now upright, spat a tooth and lunged for Ellie Parsons. This brought him square into the track of Spartacus’s lamp once more, which he was swinging as if creaming a full toss over the bowler’s head. The resulting crunch, with liquid notes, wasn’t quite drowned out by the alarm, and helped Shirley picture the impact later—at the time, she was preoccupied with stamping her heel into Man Two’s face. But she felt Bearded Man all the same, as he reeled backwards and tumbled over her as neatly as if the whole thing had been choreographed, with the big window waiting to welcome him. The noise he made passing through it had an orchestral quality: one big boom accompanied by a thousand tinkling minims. And then he was gone, and a cold wind was blowing into the corridor, while the wailing alarm slipped out through the wreckage and howled away into the night.

The man who’d been scaling the car’s bonnet was a bloody mess, his face mashed into the crumpled windscreen inches from Whelan’s own. He remained there while whoever had just landed on top of him slid sideways onto the gravel. Glass was falling from the sky, glistening like snowflakes, turning the scene into a zombie nativity, except that, instead of gathering round like adoring shepherds, the gobsmacked crew that had surrounded the car were fleeing like frightened sheep. Whelan’s hands were trembling; his whole body felt scraped to the bone. Dimly, through his now barely connected windscreen, he understood that a new noise had joined the raucous soundtrack: a bass-like whump-whump overhead that was possibly the wrath of God.

His soggy thoughts solidified. He was master of his car now, rattled as it was. He reached for the brake, forgetting he was in reverse, and the car shunted backwards, releasing its bloody cargo, which sprawled on the ground in the wash of his headlights. The shock caused Whelan to spasm: the car skewed slantways, and he felt the crunch of metal hitting stone. The whump-whump grew louder, and assorted marauders were looking skyward. Out of the San’s doorway tumbled another pair, and what had looked like an unstoppable invasion appeared to be becoming a rout. But there was no sign of Sophie de Greer. She might be lying dead in a room. The invaders might be on their way because their job was done.

Whelan shook his head, then realised that his glasses, thought lost, were balanced neatly on one shoe, their arms hugging an ankle. Retrieving them, he slid them onto his nose, and the world shifted into focus: it was still a confused mess, but only because it was a confused mess, and not because he wasn’t seeing it clearly. A motorbike roared to life. One of the cars flanking the people carrier was pulling away; at the same time another car was arriving: big and black, with tinted windows, and he didn’t need to see its sleek, dark-garbed occupants emerging to know the professionals had arrived. Not that order immediately fell. There was shouting everywhere. The fallen security man was still in a heap, and that, thought Whelan, was certainly something he could deal with. He climbed out of his car and was kneeling by the wounded man, the alarm still blotting out most things bar that overhead clatter, when more figures came crashing onto the gravel: one of the marauders and, in hot pursuit, what looked like a slightly wider, much less hairy, Tasmanian devil, wielding a baseball bat.

There’s nothing like putting someone through a window for altering the dynamic of a situation. Uomo Uno and his bosom companion stood staring at the empty space where Bearded Man had been a moment before, and for all the attendant noise, which now included something airborne and getting nearer, seemed lost in a reverie. Shirley, meanwhile, was continuing to kick Man Two in the face, a placeholder activity while she determined her next move. His grip on her foot had long since loosened, along with any sense of enthusiasm. Spartacus was studying his table lamp, his face still twitching, but satisfaction evident there too. His companion was removing a hearing aid, which was as good a way as any of pressing Mute. And Ellie Parsons was glaring at the pair on the staircase, her crimson copy of One Hundred Things to See in Dorset tucked under an arm, in case she planned to add a hundred-and-first later.

Quiet evening in, Shirley remembered.

The two on the staircase reached a wordless conclusion and fled, Uomo Uno’s previous nonchalance as shattered as that window. Outside, scattering gravel announced the arrival of more cars, and Shirley felt a lurch inside: it was over, would be over in the next few minutes, and she had no idea what it had all been about. Scrambling to her feet, nodding a farewell to her erstwhile comrades, she hared after them, the sound of battle still raging below.

At some point during the last five minutes, her want had stilled. The needy voice crying out for something, she didn’t know what, had quietened.

Unless she just couldn’t hear it for all the crap going on.

At ground level she found a scrum. Reinforcements had arrived, and two black-clad professionals in semi-riot gear—heavy vests, but no shields or helmets—were facing six of the marauder crew. The newcomers were wielding wicked-looking truncheons; the old firm relying on low-tech battery, with two lengths of lead piping and one baseball bat between them, though one hardy nutcase was attempting a headbutt as Shirley arrived, a move both ill-advised and brief. He hit the floor like a badly tossed pancake. In other circumstances, a sympathetic Shirley noted, the truncheoneer would have enjoyed the opportunity to lather his victim a while, but there was no time for such luxuries, and he was already engaged in a one-two with the baseball fan. Uomo Uno was holding back, fists bunched, eyes on the door, and Shirley padded toward him, not sure what she planned, but confident of spoiling his day. But the room shifted, or its gladiatorial epicentre did; the marauders wheeling round as the pros moved towards the reception desk, and the door became accessible. Uomo Uno seized his chance, and as Shirley followed something struck her on the ankle—she sprawled, reached out, and her hand found the baseball bat, which had come skittering across the tiles, liberated from its wielder by a truncheon. Shirley grabbed it, thanked her good-luck fairy, and was on her feet in an instant, following her prey into the night.

In the pool cast by the helicopter’s searchlight, the San’s forecourt had become a circus ring, in which a troupe of Service muscle was knocking seven bells out of twenty assorted hard cases. This should have been a picnic, had everyone been reading from the same script, but while the professionals knew what they were doing, and tended towards the swift and economical, the hooligans had the advantage that they viewed violent encounters as leisuretime jolly rather than occupational necessity. Those knocked down kept getting up for more, and those upright took the windmill approach: fists and feet flying; teeth ready to take a chunk from anything within reach. It was like fighting wild dogs, with the added interest of not knowing what diseases they carried.

Surveying the mayhem Whelan wondered if any of the players remembered what the evening’s objective had been, or whether the whole thing was just a mad game of Chinese Whispers.

Weaving between separate clusters of violence, he helped the battered security guard to his feet, and together they crunched across broken glass to the building, where Whelan propped him against the wall. “Best stay upright,” he said, having no clue as to established practice, but reasonably sure it wasn’t a good moment for a lie down. Looking round, he prayed for signs of sanity, and at that precise moment the alarm shut off.

Ridiculous to pretend that what followed was silence, but for half a second it felt like it: a relief from aural torture. And then chaos poured back through the evening’s open wound: the clashing of bodies and armoured sticks, the whoops and yelps of the warriors, the techno-beat of the hovering chopper, and even his own puny car alarm, which Whelan hadn’t noticed until then, a limp whimper more likely to incur embarrassment than attention.

But in that oasis of imaginary quiet, he’d heard a woman’s voice laying down a challenge.

“I’m Shirley Dander,” she’d yelled. “Who wants to know?”

When Shirley ran through the door the helicopter was hovering twenty feet up, drowning the forecourt in light. Pitched battle was raging: a people carrier was parked slantways, frozen waves of gravel at its tyres; a small car had reversed into the front of the building; and the goon she’d helped through the upstairs window appeared to have landed on one of his comrades. Double score! A blood-smeared middle-aged man in glasses was an unlooked-for absurdity, crouched over a floored figure in security guard’s black-and-blue livery and victim’s red-and-white head wound, but she didn’t pause to question the sight. The baseball bat felt good in her hands, and Uomo Uno was well within reach. He looked like he was running for the carrier, the chicken. Empty-handed, but holding the answers she sought.

Why did you come for me?

As he reached the van she hurled the bat. It bounced off his head and he sprawled against the vehicle, testing its suspension. She paused to retrieve the weapon, and by the time she’d done so he’d steadied himself, turned and thrown a punch all in the same flow, aiming for her face probably, but missing by half a mile. She had his number now. He was a thug, plain and simple. Put him in a boxing ring, he’d be canvas-patterned in a moment. But put him in a cage and he’d rattle the bars loudly enough that you wouldn’t want to enter.

The good thing about snap judgements was that you could be doing something else while making them. In Shirley’s case, this involved swinging the bat into his thigh, keeling him sideways like a broken tree. The fire alarm she’d triggered a hundred years ago ceased its screaming then, the same moment she chose to scream herself: “I’m Shirley Dander. Who wants to know?” He didn’t reply, but more pressingly, someone was rushing her from behind: she knew this the way you’d know if a bull was approaching. Bulls have never mastered the surprise attack. If this newcomer planned to, he could start by making notes as to what happens when you give your position away early: in this case, a full-bodied swing of a baseball bat. Shirley felt the impact in her shoulders. Her attacker felt it in his ribs, and probably every other bone holding him together—not since she’d hit a bus with an iron had Shirley felt quite so fulfilled. I am fucking invincible, she decided. That was a fresh learning right there. I am fucking invincible, and I’m taking these bastards down one by one.

That was the last thought she had for a while, as the sun rose and set in the blink of an eye, all of it inside her furious, buzz-cropped head.

So that was Shirley Dander.

What interested Whelan was that she wasn’t Sophie de Greer, despite what he’d told Nash; that Lamb’s got something going on, that he’s stashed de Greer in the San, under the name of Shirley Dander. Assertions that had made sense that afternoon. From his new perspective, sense was the other side of the county line. It was the quiet warmth of his study, where he should have stayed. Sorry, Oliver. I’m retired. How hard would that have been?

Someone was rushing Dander from behind, but she seemed to have matters under control: even Whelan felt the resulting blow, and he was twenty yards away. The villain hit the ground like a cartoon piano. Dander’s glee outshone the helicopter’s searchlight; evil and innocent at the same time, it made a pumpkin lantern of her face. And then someone blew her candle out.

It was the man she’d been chasing, the one she’d had spreadeagled against the carrier a moment before. Whelan couldn’t see what he’d hit her with, but her baseball bat dropped to the ground, followed by Dander herself, and then she was scooped up and tossed inside the van: all this while fighting raged on; the Service troops heavily outnumbered, but not, on the whole, too bothered by that. Various lumps on the gravel were conquered invaders, their groans audible now the alarm had ceased. The carrier’s door shut and Dander’s attacker was easing into the driver’s seat. The helicopter shifted overhead, and the world tilted as its spotlight slid across the ground. Whelan said, “Wait here,” and let go of the wounded security man, who remained on his feet, which was a good sign. The whirring rotor blades were artificial weather, and Whelan crossed the forecourt like a mime. Someone backed into him, avoiding a truncheon; Whelan pushed and the man staggered forward, straight into the truncheon’s upswing. There was a spray of blood, a destroyed face: all a blur, even with one hand holding his glasses in place, but Dander’s abandoned baseball bat was there at his feet and he collected it without thinking. The people carrier lurched forward, Dander inside, the man she’d been chasing at the wheel . . .

Whelan stood, bat in hand, as the vehicle careered onto the lawn and headed off round the building.

This was what you got when you took your eye off the ball. Something landed on your head; either part of that helicopter—not an essential part; it was still airborne—or an improvised sledgehammer put together by the Italian thug who was just now learning to drive. Shirley had been flung across a row of seats, but rolled onto the floor as the carrier went into an interminable curve. A car was bleating close at hand, and ignorant armies were leathering away at each other, their repetitive clatter and thwock the motor’s backbeat, but all she could see was carpet. A pain at the back of her head was coursing through her body, and when she tried to pull herself up, her hands slid from the seat covers. Whatever the bastard had hit her with, she wanted one. Any moment now she was going to make her way to the front of the vehicle and feed him whatever came into reach, but for the time being was lost in a pinball machine, rocking and rolling with every lurch of the van, which was off the gravel now, crashing over the lawn, swerving the copper beech, and scattering the residents who’d gathered behind the building after evacuating their rooms. And then they were on gravel again. Full circle. The van was back on the drive, heading for the road, and taking her with it—mission accomplished, presumably, though she’d yet to discover whose mission, and what outcome they had in mind.

It occurred to her that the evening’s row of triumphs, from ushering one invader through an upstairs window to kicking another repeatedly in the head, was washed away by this end result, her having become a piece of luggage. As soon as her headache went, she’d do something about that. But meanwhile—

But meanwhile an angry metal howl ripped the night, as the van ran over something which brought it screeching to a halt. Uomo Uno swore loudly and thumped the steering wheel. Now’s the time, thought Shirley, and was halfway up when the van reversed with a lurch, scraping another scream of inanimate agony from whatever lay under its wheels. She went sprawling again, and then, after a rabbit hop and another tearing sound, the van was away once more, turning right, past the stable block she’d wandered round this morning.

Its motion was lopsided, its balance punctured by its recent encounter.

A moment later she flinched, as something crashed onto the roof.

Still holding the bat, Whelan ran for his car. He might have been wearing a magic ring, rendering him invisible; on all sides, the San’s defenders and attackers slugged it out, but he moved unhampered past them. The truth was, he was of no consequence; a pencil pusher, pointless in a brawl. If the marauders won, one or other would snap him in two as an encore, but while there was fighting to be done, he was surplus to requirements. Which suited him. He reached his car, but it was hors de combat. And the people carrier was out of sight.

He kept running, the San’s geography returning to him; there was a stableyard by the gates, or where the gates had been. He remembered a staircase, a vantage point. From there he could see which direction the carrier went . . . It was less a plan than a displacement activity, but he had to do something. Besides, his body was on automatic, pursuing an agenda he hadn’t known was there.

There always came a moment, didn’t there, when the mild-mannered drip found his inner Tarzan?

He was down the driveway, yards from the stables, when he heard the people carrier at his heels, its headlights grabbing his shadow, hurling it in front of him. He braced for impact, expecting to lose contact with that shadow and everything else, but the moment didn’t come: he felt the van’s weight as it rushed past, but he was out of its path; was careering into the stableyard while it headed for the main road. There was copper in his mouth, a pounding in his chest, a sudden metal shriek as the vehicle screamed into the corpse of the wrecked gate, and then Whelan was in the stableyard, memory sending him to the far end. He hadn’t run in years; was amazed to find the ability existed. Wouldn’t have been surprised if it deserted him now, leaving him a puddle on the stones. But his newfound energy carried him on, and there it was; the external staircase by the furthest stable, leading up to the hayloft. Onestep, threestep, fivestep, seven. His knees trembled but held. Watery muscles were a childhood memory. At the top he leaned on the thigh-high wall. The people carrier was emerging onto the road, listing heavily—that broken gate had torn a hole in an offside tyre. A horrible idea grabbed Whelan’s mind and squeezed.

It wasn’t possible. He wasn’t built for this. But the van had lurched across the road, was passing slowly beneath him.

And he was, or had been, on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Hadn’t he?

If you could see me now, he thought, unsure whether he was addressing that same Majesty, Claire, Diana Taverner, Josie, or even Sophie de Greer, whoever she was. Then he clambered onto the wall and dropped onto the roof of the lumbering van.

Whose flip-flopping was its own funeral dirge, da-duff da-duff, a lament already winding down: within the minute, that burst tyre would be a roadside python. But the thump on the roof was something else and Shirley was wondering what—who—had just landed there when a baseball bat slammed into the windscreen, making a porridge of the oncoming view. Screaming his rage, Uomo Uno thumped the steering wheel, which didn’t improve the situation. The baseball bat crashed down again, and the vehicle swerved from the wrong side of the road to the right, sending something banging into Shirley’s knee. A three-kilo training weight. This was what the bastard had used to knock her out of gear.

Visions of clouting him round the head with it, pasting what passed for his brains across the dashboard, had to be put on hold. She couldn’t stand for the rocking, not to mention the wavy motion inside her head: a dull strobing light behind her eyeballs. That taste in her throat—she didn’t remember throwing up. Another outburst from Uomo Uno; another lurch from the wayward bus. These last minutes were a movie trailer; had begun with Shirley on her bed, hungry for something, she didn’t know what. Then staircases and chase scenes and fights and action . . . And someone on the roof, come to rescue her. They didn’t know about the Dander jinx, that teaming up with Shirley offered poor long-term prospects. Or maybe they did, but had risked it anyway; jumping onto a moving vehicle wielding a baseball bat . . . Whoever it was probably thought themselves the hero. And then that notion was swallowed, along with everything else, by blinding light, as the helicopter dropped its searchlight onto the limping van, and hovered above it for its last few moments of motion. A loudspeaker was shouting instructions, which almost certainly included the word Stop!, but whether that was the clinching argument, or whether the people carrier had simply run out of life, was hard to tell. With a final squealing complaint from a tyreless wheel the vehicle crunched to a halt and Uomo Uno spilled out beneath the helicopter’s all-seeing eye, in full view of the approaching police cars with their angry swirling lights. As Shirley fumbled with the door, she could see the blue devils these lights released capering across pitch-dark countryside, scaling trees, hurling themselves into hollows; each followed by another and another and another . . . Uomo Uno was sinking to his knees in surrender when Shirley fell onto the road and looked up at the stars, though they were way too distant to see. Instead, she found herself focusing on a face looking down from the top of the people carrier.

“Shirley Dander, I presume,” it said.

“Who the hell are you?” said Shirley, then closed her eyes and grabbed a little rest.