The Increment

EIGHTEEN

Matram looked down from the window. The sun was blazing down on the car park that lay twelve storeys below his hotel room. He could see a few men, dressed only in shorts, waddling back from the B&Q warehouse with new paddling pools for the kids, and hosepipes for the garden.

Ordinary suburban life, he reflected to himself. It makes me sick.

Behind him, the TV was tuned to Sky News. The newsreader was talking about the heatwave, now stretching into its third week. The government was urging people to stay cool, and to use sun cream. The AA was advising motorists to keep off the roads. Some road-rage incidents had been recorded in the sweltering heat and, up in Hartlepool, someone had gone crazy in Tesco with a knife. 'Coming up after the break,' said the newsreader, 'we ask a leading psychologist how to stay cool in the heat.'

Heat, thought Matram. They know nothing about heat.

Snaddon and Trench were in the room with him. The other six members of the unit had been dispatched around the country. Clipper and Turnton were up in Manchester. Harton and Godsall were down in Bristol. Addison and Marley, who had replaced Kilander and Wetherall in the unit, were in Newcastle. That gave Matram a neat quadrangle. Wherever the target appeared, they would have someone who could be on the spot in a couple of hours.

When he revealed himself, he would be dead the same day.

'They've vanished,' said Snaddon.

Matram leant forwards. 'Bollocks. In fairy stories people vanish. In real life, they are always there somewhere. You just have to track them down.'

A full-scale terrorist alert had gone out on Matt Browning and Eleanor Blackman last night: Matram had made certain of that. Their pictures had been circulated electronically to every police force in the country, with officers told to keep a close watch for both. Their car registrations had been noted: if they so much as passed a speed camera, or went inside the London congestion charging zone, it would be picked up. If they used their credit cards, the police would be immediately notified. If they used their mobiles, the location of the transmission mast used for the call would be sent through to the police. Any suspicious movement on any of the tens of thousands of CCTV cameras on street corners around the country would be examined to see if it resembled the two suspects. We live in an electronic society, Matram reflected as he studied the array of different ways their location could be revealed. A man can run, but the only place he can hide is six feet underground.

'Nothing from the police?' he said, looking down at Trench.

A laptop was open on the desk, wired to a secure connection at the headquarters of the counter-terrorism unit at Scotland Yard. Any reports from local forces would be fed through to the police there, but would come through to this terminal simultaneously. They didn't want to waste time because one of the plods was on a tea break when the sighting was made.

'Nothing,' said Trench, shaking his head. 'A couple of false alarms. In Romford, they picked up a guy with some Semtex on him, but he turned out to be just a bank robber. Over in Cheltenham, they thought they got a sighting, but it was just a false alarm. Nothing else.'

'How about the financial system?' said Matram, looking towards Snaddon. 'Money is usually the key. People can survive without most things, but they need cash on the run.'

Snaddon shook her head. Her computer was hooked up to a central clearing system for both Visa and Mastercard. Any payment made by either person would show up the instant it went through the computers, giving the precise location of the cash machine used, or the place where a credit-card payment was made. 'Nothing,' she said. 'Not even a whisper.'

'Well, you know what the sportsmen say,' Matram said slowly. 'If the bird won't come to you, then you just have to shake the tree a little.'

Matt poured himself another coffee, and looked down at the plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and beans in front of him. He felt the caffeine kicking into his veins, and scooped some beans on his fork, stuffing them hungrily into his mouth.

First rule of combat, he reminded himself. Eat as much as you can, when you can. You don't know when you might eat again.

Eleanor looked across at his breakfast, lightly spreading some jam on her toast. 'You do realise that binge-eating is a common symptom of anxiety,' she said.

Matt forked another sausage. 'It's also a symptom of being hungry.'

The hotel was on the outskirts of Chippenham: the kind of place that was occupied by travelling salesmen before the new chains of Travel Inns and Travelodges went up. This is the land of the invisible men, thought Matt looking around the breakfast room. Pensioners, tourists on a tight budget, maybe a pair of asylum seekers housed here until they got sent back home. If you want to disappear, you can do it among these people.

'I'm scared, Matt,' said Eleanor. 'I don't know the endgame.'

'The endgame?'

'I don't know how we can possibly bring this all together,' she continued. 'What difference does it make when or what we discover? Even if we get the sample tested, who is going to believe us?' From the corner of his eye, Matt could see the outline of a tear starting to tumble down her cheek.

Matt paused. His breakfast was only half eaten, but he put his fork down. 'I remember one of the first really sticky firefights I got into in the regiment. We were in the Philippines. We'd been sent down there to help the local army fight some communist guerrillas out in the jungle. But the local boys didn't want to fight, they wanted to get back home. So we found ourselves holed up, four of us, facing about fifty or sixty heavily armed insurgents. We said our prayers and tried to get some sleep, but we were pretty sure we were all going to get slaughtered in the morning. Then, you know what happened? The monsoon came a week early. Freaky. There was so much rain nobody could see more than a few feet, they certainly couldn't shoot straight. It took us a week, but we crawled our way through the mud and survived.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning when you are in a war, you don't always know the endgame. You press on, and hope to hell something turns up.'

The car was an eleven-year-old Ford Escort, with cloth seats and a couple of dents in its paintwork. Matt had bought it yesterday, paying three hundred pounds, the last of the cash Abbott had given him for Kiev, at a second-hand car dealer in south London. He knew that part of town, it was where he had grown up: he knew there were plenty of dealers that sold scrappy old motors for cash and didn't ask any questions about who was buying it, or bother filling in any registration papers. So long as you handed across the folding stuff, no questions were either asked or answered.

Matt had been on the run before. In Bosnia, he and two other men had been stranded fifty miles into enemy territory, with no radios to call in air evacuation: they had to march for three days through hostile territory, knowing that if anyone saw them they would be shot on sight. In the Philippines, as he'd told Eleanor earlier, he'd had to march for days through the jungle at the start of the monsoon season.

That was different. That was in a war zone. This is in my own country, against my own people.

It's all about staying out of sight, staying anonymous, he reminded himself. So long as they didn't use any cards, or try to get any money from the bank, they couldn't be traced financially. The Porsche had been dumped in London: the car was too conspicuous, and anyway, the number plates would give them away. And Ivan had arranged for them to be supplied with a pair of false passports, in the names of Keith Todd and Helen Nuggett: if the police should happen to stop them and ask who they were, that would at least give them a chance of escape.

The Escort came to a juddering halt. The brake pads felt loose, and you had to give the gearbox a good bashing to get it out of first. The car doesn't matter, Matt told himself. It will get us around, and no one will know who we are.

They had pulled up outside Caldwell's house, in the countryside, just outside Chippenham. We must get to him before the Increment does.

It was a small cottage, maybe three bedrooms, with about an acre of garden: most of it was given over to a series of colourful, elaborate rose bushes. It was just after ten in the morning, and there was not a cloud in the sky. Another hot day, thought Matt as he climbed out of the car.

Caldwell was standing in the garden, dressed only in his shorts, a watering can in his hand. 'They'll be lucky to survive this summer,' said Matt, nodding towards the roses. Matt judged him about sixty, with thinning sandy hair, and running to fat. He looked at Matt with curiosity, but without suspicion.

'You wanting directions?' he asked.

Matt looked about him. There was a farmhouse about half a mile away and, in the valley below them, you could see a village, but otherwise they were completely isolated. 'We're looking for some help.'

'You used to work at the Farm,' said Eleanor, stepping forward. 'Professor Johnson gave us your name. He said you might be able to help.'

'And you are?'

Matt hesitated, running the risk-and-rewards calculations through his head. Tell this man who they were and they might be discovered. Lie to him, and they could lose his trust. 'My name is Matt Browning,' he replied. 'This is Eleanor Blackman. We're trying to find some information about a drug that was tested at the Farm, about five years ago.' He paused, looking at Caldwell intently. 'It might save some lives.'

Caldwell laughed: a dry, hollow laugh rooted in anger, not amusement. 'The Farm?'

'What did you do there, Mr Caldwell?' asked Eleanor.

Her voice was gentle, Matt noticed: she was probing him, trying to put him at his ease, open him up.

'Me? Just a lab assistant, nothing special. I used to deliver the drugs that were being tested, then monitor the results. That's what it was mostly about. Checking for side effects.'

'There was a drug called XP22,' said Matt. 'About five years ago. It would have been tested on soldiers. Were you involved with that?'

Caldwell sighed. A look of sadness drifted across his face, as if some memories he thought long buried had suddenly been brought back to life. 'XP22?' he said. 'You know about that?' He looked at Matt more closely, suddenly afraid. 'You didn't take it, did you?'

Matt shook his head. 'But a friend of mine did. He died.'

Caldwell bent down. With his gloved right hand, he started gripping the stem of a rose, clipping it with his shears. 'Quite a few men did.'

'How many men had the drug tested on them?' asked Eleanor.

'About fifty,' said Caldwell, turning to look at her. 'All soldiers, all serving. They were brought in, given the drug, then kept under observation for the next week. Of course, there are fewer than that now,' said Caldwell. He clipped the stem of another rose, holding the bright red flower in his hand. 'There were side effects. Five of them became uncontrollable. Monsters. They had to be transferred.'

'Transferred?' said Eleanor, puzzled. 'Where?'

Caldwell laughed: that dry, laugh again. 'That was just the term we used. The Farm was full of euphemisms. When we said they were transferred, what we meant was they were taken away.' He paused. 'And we never heard what happened to them.'

'Shot?' said Matt.

Caldwell shrugged. 'That's all I know about XP22,' he said. 'It was a nasty drug, it should never have been used. Nobody should ever have touched it.'

'There may be other side effects, longer term,' said Eleanor. 'We need to find out who those other men were.'

Caldwell shook his head. 'Then you are on your own,' he replied. 'I never knew the names. The men who came into the Farm didn't have any. They just had numbers.'

'The names,' said Eleanor, her tone more insistent now. 'We have to have the names. How else can we help these men?'

Matt could see a look of fear drifting across Caldwell's face, like a small, dark cloud moving across the face of the sun, blocking out all the light. His expression darkened, and his lips started to tremble. 'I've said enough. It's dangerous.'

'The names,' repeated Eleanor.

'No,' said Caldwell, his tone rising. 'I told you, I've said enough.'

He turned, starting to walk back in the direction of the house.

'We've got a sample from one of the dead men,' Eleanor called after him. 'Will you test it for us?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' said Caldwell. 'I don't have any equipment here.'

In the distance, Matt could see a police car advancing along the brow of the hill. Eleanor was following Caldwell, reaching out to tug on his sleeve.

'We have to go,' Matt barked suddenly.

Eleanor looked round, and saw the determination in Matt's eyes. He was already walking back to the car. 'Quickly,' he shouted. Eleanor followed him, her head bowed down, her expression concentrated.

Behind him, Matt was aware of Caldwell turning round as well, walking more quickly, following Matt and Eleanor towards the car.

'There's only one thing I can tell you. The money,' he said. 'Check out the money.'

Matt turned around. 'The money?'

Caldwell stood close to them, his gardening shears still held in his hands. 'The key thing about XP22 was… the way it was being paid for.'

Matt looked towards the hill. There were a dozen questions he still wanted to ask. But the police car was less than half a mile away.

The woman was walking by herself. Her head was held up high, looking into the sky. She was wearing a short black skirt, and a black T-shirt: her legs and arms were bare, and her skin had tanned a deep rich brown in the fierce summer sun.

'That's her,' said Matram, pointing from the front seat of his Lexus.

'In the black T-shirt?' said Trench.

Matram nodded. 'Let's wait and see where she goes,' he said. 'Follow her home, and take her there.'

It had not been hard to track Gill down. Abbott had told Matram all about her. Matt's childhood sweetheart, his fiancée, they had split up when he got sent on the Ukraine mission. That didn't matter. If anyone was likely to know where Matt was, it was her. A playschool teacher, thought Matram with a smirk. She might be able to control a rowdy toddler, but I bet she can't control us.

There had been no sign of her at the Last Trumpet. Through the Firm, Abbott asked the local police to check her out. There had been no sign of her in Marbella at all. She had vanished into thin air. But that was not the same as hiding. They had run a credit-card check on her, and she had used her ATM card two days ago. At the Barclays Bank on Putney High Street. And she'd used her mobile phone yesterday: the call transmitted through a base station based on the Upper Richmond Road. That was the key. She was staying somewhere in the Putney area.

Easy, realised Matram. She'd need money again soon: only twenty pounds had been withdrawn last time. She was one of those people who thought they spent less if they didn't take out much cash. If they waited at the bank, they'd find her soon enough.

And when they did, she would lead them to Matt. They would torture the information out of her. And if she didn't, well, Browning would fly to her corpse, the same way a vulture flies to a fresh piece of carrion.

He pulled the Lexus away from the kerb, nudging it slowly down the street. She'd already stopped at Starbucks for a coffee, and picked up a newspaper. Now she was walking about thirty yards ahead of him. She turned at the top of the road, strolling down the Upper Richmond Road, then took a left on to an avenue filled with big, suburban houses. She stopped at Number Twelve, looking around. Matram pulled the Lexus to a halt outside the house.

Gill turned the key in the latch.

'OK,' barked Matram. 'Take her. Now.'

Ivan, Eleanor and Matt were standing in the kitchen of the safe house. They had switched to another building, also one of the old IRA safe houses, but this one in Tooting: Ivan insisted they had to keep moving to maximise their chances of staying alive.

Every other opportunity to test the brain tissue had been blocked. 'If we can't do the test,' said Ivan 'we have to think harder. There's something missing about this story. Something we don't know.'

'What?' demanded Eleanor.

'Think about it,' said Ivan. 'The Increment is slowly killing the men who took the drug. One by one. But if this is really a MOD operation, then you wouldn't do it like that. You get all the guys picked up on the same day, get them sectioned, then deal with them in your own good time.'

'What are you saying?' said Matt.

Ivan shrugged. 'Just that we don't have all the answers yet.'

'Perhaps it is to do with the money?' jumped in Eleanor. 'Caldwell said there was something strange about the way XP22 was paid for.'

Ivan smiled. 'Then that's what you need to find out.'

Matt checked the van, scrutinising every inch of the vehicle, making sure nothing could be left to chance. It was a blue Ford Transit, with E.H. STEVENS, CLEANING SERVICES, stencilled on to its side in thick yellow lettering.

'You wait here,' he whispered to Eleanor. 'I'll only be a few minutes.'

He stepped out of the Escort, checked the road, then walked quickly towards the parked van. It was early evening, and the roads around west London were already clogged with traffic. He skipped past a pair of courier bikers, then walked casually along the street. One driver was sitting in the front cab of the van; a black man in his mid-thirties, dressed in blue overalls, sipping a bottle of Orangina. Alone. The radio was playing, tuned into Talksport. Matt could hear the presenters discussing the heatwave: the latest prediction was for it to last right through until September, and two more deaths from heatstroke had been reported. 'Sweltering,' jabbered the presenter. 'I don't think we can take much more.'

Matt checked the pavement. Empty. He doubled back, climbing up into the passenger side of the van. 'Hey.'

The driver looked round, his face a mixture of confusion and surprise as he saw Matt's fist hammering towards him. The punch landed just on the side of his cheek, twisting his head round. The bottle went flying from his hand, crashing against the window, then falling to the floor. 'Fuck,' he shouted. 'Fuck.'

The second blow landed hard on the back of his neck. The flesh was soft, the muscles loose and out of shape, Matt noted, as his fist pushed hard into the nerves. The driver's head fell forward, splitting against the steering wheel. 'Sorry, pal,' muttered Matt as he checked that he had lost consciousness. 'You were the wrong man in the wrong place.'

Taking advantage of the few seconds during which he had lost consciousness Matt bundled the driver over the seat, into the back of the van. He tied some rope around his neck, then slotted a gag into his mouth.

Reaching across the dashboard, Matt grabbed the keys. 'Do you think people are less civil to one another in this unbearable heat?' the Talksport presenter was saying. 'Call and tell us what you think.' Matt walked to the back of the van. Opening it up, there were uniforms, plus buckets, clothes and detergents. Matt took two uniforms, two buckets and a mop, then ran back across the road.

'OK,' he said, climbing back into the Escort. 'We're all set.'

The Tocah building loomed out of the street like a tree in a desert. Matt pulled the Escort up into a parking space, and changed into his overalls. At his side, Eleanor did the same. As she peeled down her trousers to climb into the cleaning gear, Matt couldn't help from noticing the pale softness of her skin, and the tapered perfection with which her thighs melted into her hips.

'You look nice,' he said, looking at her, grinning.

'I scrub up good,' Eleanor replied, waving her mop at him.

They walked steadily across the road. Most of the workers were streaming out of the building, heading towards the tube and the bus stops. The women were dabbing their foreheads as they moved from the air-conditioned building to the sultry early-evening heat; the men were taking off their ties and jackets as they prepared for the journey home on hot, crowded, unreliable trains.

'Ready?' said Matt, looking towards Eleanor.

'Frightened,' she replied.

'It's normal to be afraid,' answered Matt. 'The trick is to control it, confront it, not succumb to it.'

'You've learnt some psychology.'

They stepped away from the main entrance, walking around the side of the building. Cleaners were the underclass of corporate life, Matt noted. Nobody looked at them, nobody spoke to them, and nobody paid them any attention. They slipped into and out of buildings like ghosts: they moved only at night, and to most people they were completely invisible. Perfect cover.

'Passes,' snapped a security guard, sitting behind a glass screen, his TV tuned to Big Brother.

Matt flashed a pair of passes that had been tucked into the pocket of the stolen overalls. The guard's eyes flicked upwards, his expression bored and contemptuous: even down here in the minimum-wage underground of the organisation, there were subtle grades and distinctions. The guards clearly considered themselves a class above the cleaners, and this one wasn't about to lower himself by taking the trouble to check who they were.

You're in hot water when they discover who you just let into the building, pal.

The works lift ran down the back of the building, all the way to the twelfth floor. Like most modern office blocks, there was a set of main lifts for the executives and their secretaries, and a service lift for the cleaners, guards and manual workers. 'Up one flight of stairs,' said Matt.

They walked together up the concrete stairs. A small doorway was cut into the side of the wall. Matt pushed it aside, looking down. The lift shaft soared thirty floors upwards, a gloomy, dark display of cables and wires, hanging loose in the blackened air. Eleanor gasped. 'Wait for the lift to come down, then jump on top of it,' Matt muttered.

He glanced upwards. All around him, he could hear the sounds of the machinery whirring, and he could smell the oil that greased the levers and pulleys of the lift shaft. 'I did regiment training in counter-terrorist special ops. In case some terrorists took over a building and we had to go in and flush them out. It never happened, thank Christ, but if it had, we were ready for them.'

Eleanor gripped his hand tighter. He could feel the sweat on her palms. Above them, he could hear the lift descending. The chains and levers rattled as it dropped through the shaft, stopping twice then three times; each time the noise of metal clacking into concrete echoed down towards them.

'Use the fear,' whispered Matt into Eleanor's ear.

The lift swished past them, a blast of air pushing out of the door as it raced downwards. It stopped on the ground floor, two yards beneath them. 'Now,' whispered Matt.

He stepped down. He held on tight to Eleanor's hand, forcing her forwards. They landed softly on the metal roof of the lift, Matt's hand rising up to Eleanor's throat to stifle the scream he could feel rising within her. 'Keep totally quiet,' he whispered. 'We're about to move.'

Gill didn't struggle. They don't when you take them by surprise, reflected Matram. Like rabbits trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car, they are paralysed by fear. Their muscles seize, and their brains shut down. They can't move and they can't react.

Snaddon and Trench moved in first, Matram hanging back to guard the street. Gill had the key in the lock, about to open the door. She had turned round, looking up, seeing Snaddon approaching her. She hardly reacted. That was the advantage of having women in the Increment: a woman could approach another woman without provoking fear. Snaddon thrust her hand up towards Gill's mouth, clasping her hand tight over her lips. Trench followed swiftly behind, grabbing her arms, twisting them sharply behind her back. Gill would have screamed in pain, but the hand over her mouth prevented any sound from escaping from her lips: instead, the scream travelled within her, sinking down into her stomach, making her ribcage shake with confusion and anger.

At her side, Matram leant down to pick up the keys that had fallen on the floor. He glanced out on to the street, making sure they had not been seen, then calmly opened the door. Snaddon pushed Gill roughly inside, casting her down on the floor, then sitting astride her chest, slapping her sharply across the face.

Matram looked around the apartment. The main room was simply but smartly furnished. There was a sofa, a plasma-screen TV, some shelves, and a reproduction of Andy Warhol's portrait of Jackie Kennedy on the wall. A kitchen led off to the sitting room, and there was a bedroom behind that, leading out on to a small patio garden. From the PlayStation positioned underneath the TV, he judged this was probably a man's apartment. She was just borrowing it for a few days.

There's going to be quite a mess to clean up when he gets home, thought Matram. You don't see that on your PlayStation.

Matram walked across the floor, towering above Gill's prostrate body. 'Where's Matt?'

'Piss off,' she spat.

Snaddon slapped her across the face again, pushing her back hard against the floor. The sight of a woman in pain, reflected Matram, was always a pleasure to watch and always instructive. Physiologically, women had a far higher pain threshold than men — they were built to withstand childbirth after all — and their capacity to absorb torture was infinitely superior. If you wanted to learn about beating information out of people, you had to start with a female. Learn that, and the men were easy.

'Now,' said Matram, 'I'll ask you again. Where's Matt?'

'Piss off.'

Matram shook his head slowly from side to side. 'That's not the language I'd expect from a playschool teacher.' He chuckled softly as he spoke. 'I'd tell you to go and wash your mouth out with soap if I didn't have something much nastier in mind for you.' He paused, walking away from her. 'Now, I'll ask you once more, and then I'll stop being so nice. Where's Matt?'

Tears were starting to run down Gill's face, and her body was shaking with a mixture of fear and pain. 'I don't know,' she spluttered. 'We split up. I haven't seen him for weeks.'

'Don't lie to me,' snapped Matram. 'You know where he is.'

'I don't, I don't, I swear it.'

Gill looked up, only in time to see the back of Snaddon's hand smacking into the side of her face.

'I don't know where he is,' she screamed, louder this time.

'Enough,' shouted Matram. 'I don't have the time to play games with you. One more chance.' He leant down into her face, his eyes burning with anger. 'Tell me where Matt is.'

'I don't know, I tell you,' sobbed Gill.

Matram's head spun round. 'Give her the injection.'

Gill's eyes swivelled to the left, a new look of fear on her face. From his pocket, Trench had pulled a needle, holding it between his thumb and his forefinger.

'The tongue,' said Matram. 'Inject her in the tongue.'

He watched as Snaddon held her down tightly, forcing her mouth open with her fists. Gill was a fit young woman, but she had no real strength: she had no idea how to fight.

The tongue is the perfect place for an injection, reflected Matram. When the coroner does his autopsy, he won't know what's happened. Injections on the tongue leave no trace.

'What is it?' spluttered Gill.

'An anaesthetic called suxamethonium,' answered Matram. 'It's quite common, a muscle relaxant, prescribed in just about every hospital in the world. Got an interesting history though. The Nazis used to use it during interrogations. It encourages the patient to be more truthful. It relaxes every muscle in your body. You won't be able to move. You won't even be able to breathe. You'll know exactly what it feels like to die. I'm going to give you a very small injection, which will wear off after just a few seconds, just so you know… what it feels like. Then I'm going to ask you again, and then if you don't tell me what I want to know, I'm going to give you another injection. Do it,' he said, looking at Trench.

The needle jabbed into the side of her tongue, piercing the flesh, the pure liquid in the syringe shooting into the bloodstream. Matram could see her whole body go motionless, expressionless, except for a mortal terror shining out from somewhere deep inside the eyeballs. Then, she came to again, stirring slightly, and her eyes moving madly from side to side as she panicked.

'I've already told you the truth,' she said. Tears were streaming down her face now, and her hands were shaking.

'Tell me again,' said Matram softly.

'He's gone on a job,' said Gill. 'I don't know what it is, and I don't care. A man called Guy Abbott came out to Spain from the Firm. They blocked all his money. Matt was livid. Unless he did this job, he was finished.'

She paused, choking back the tears blocking her throat. 'I was furious. I told him not to do it, that it didn't matter about the money, that it was over between us if he did it. He went anyway. That was it between us. I came back to London. I haven't spoken to him since, and I don't want to.'

Matram sighed. 'More,' he said to Trench.

Snaddon held her mouth open again. Gill tried to wrench her head away, but the woman was too strong for her. 'Still,' Trench shouted as the needle jabbed into her tongue.

Another two millilitres, Matram noted. In less than two minutes she would be dead: the muscles throughout her body would slow and slow, then her heart would stop beating. He leant forward, so close to her face he could smell the despair on her skin. Her bowels had already gone, and a trickle of urine was running down the side of her leg.

'Tell me again,' he whispered.

'I've told you, I don't know where he is,' whimpered Gill. The words were offered up in a tone of sorrowful resignation. 'I don't know.'

The same old story, thought Matram. Maybe she really doesn't know where he is. Maybe she's telling the truth. But it makes no difference. I would have killed her anyway.

The sound of metal striking metal rattled through Matt's ears as the lift rode up into the sky. He sat on the cold surface of the machine, his brow sweating as it slowly made its way through the building. It was dark, with only occasional glimmers of light from the doorways penetrating the gloom of the concrete shaft. Whether they were safe or not, it was impossible to be certain: if there was danger out there, it was too dark to see it.

'How long?' whispered Eleanor.

The lift was moving faster now: Matt could feel some nausea welling up in his stomach from the unfamiliar motion. He could feel her shaking: her shoulders were wobbly, and goose bumps were pricking down the skin of her arms. Matt threw an arm protectively across her, but said nothing. Silence was crucial for the next few minutes.

The lift had stopped. Matt couldn't be sure, maybe it was the sixth or seventh floor. His plan was to use the escape hatch to avoid the extra layer of security which he knew, from his previous visit, lay on the top floor: Lacrierre's. Inside the lift, he could hear people climbing in, conversation drifting upwards. He held his breath, desperate not to make a sound. The weather. They were talking about the weather. Matt relaxed, letting the air out of his lungs. If that was all, they were probably just cleaners travelling up through the building for the evening shift.

The lift juddered to a halt. That was the tenth floor, Matt judged. The cleaners climbed out, then up it went again, climbing into the sky. The noise was getting louder now, the echoes travelling down to the bottom of the shaft, then bouncing back up again. Matt had to focus hard to shut the noise out.

It stopped. The lift fell completely still, and within seconds the echoes had died away. One of the metal ropes was swaying against the wall, but otherwise the lift was as silent as a tomb. 'Stay here,' he whispered to Eleanor.

He looked up. Ten yards above him, there was an escape hatch built into the side of the shaft. 'There's always somewhere to escape from a lift shaft,' whispered Matt. 'Building regulations.'

The hatch measured just five feet by five, enough room for anyone trapped in the building to make their escape down the lift shaft. Along the edge of the shaft was a series of metal railings, each one a step one foot apart. He started climbing, pulling himself up foot by foot. 'Quick,' he whispered down to Eleanor. 'Follow me.'

Matt pulled on a pair of protective gloves. Because the escape hatch was built to allow people trapped on the top floor to get out through the shaft, it was bolted from the outside. But the bolts were weak, and the wire mesh flimsy. Beneath Matt's fist, it gave way easily enough.

Throwing his elbows forward, Matt pulled himself out on to the corridor. He immediately turned round, reaching down for Eleanor, pulling her out on to the carpet. Then, above him, he could hear the sound of a man breathing.

He was standing ten feet in front of him, in the corridor. Neatly dressed, in grey slacks and a pale blue linen shirt, he spun around, looking directly at Matt. He had a cup of coffee in one hand, and a folder of documents in the other.

'Who the fuck are you?' he snapped.