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handgun from the drainer beside the sink and pressed the barrel against the woman’s cheek. She opened her eyes and, for a moment, the banging stopped.
    ‘ Mes enfants . . . ’ she whispered. ‘ Elles sont trop petites . . . ’
    The words meant nothing to Skinner. He muttered one of his own – ‘Bitch’ – before turning his head to one side and squeezing the trigger.
    The woman’s head thudded against the table for a final time.
    Skinner’s hand and weapon were covered with blood. He rinsed his fingers briefly under the tap, shook them dry, then walked over to the little cot where the two newly orphaned babies were lying, the pieces of dishcloth still stuffed in their mouths. He raised his gun and pressed the butt of the suppressor against the cheek of one of them. A rectangular smear of their mother’s blood transferred itself to the child’s skin. Both babies lay very still. It was as if they knew their lives were in the balance.
    They were hardly worth a bullet. He had another idea. There was enough duct tape left on the roll for him to bind the two of them together, like Siamese twins joined at the belly. They screamed as he did it, but this was the sort of place where the screams of children went unheard. He picked up the monstrously swaddled bundle and carried it over to the little bath. It was stained yellow, and encrusted with limescale around the plughole. He put the plug in, then laid the wailing babies in the bath.
    He turned on the taps, leaving the babies to their watery death. He didn’t even glance at their mother’s corpse as he left the bedsit, closing the door silently behind him.

TWO
    The MoD policeman at the entrance to RAF Credenhill approached the black car with a neutral expression on his face, neither welcoming nor threatening. He waited while the rear-right passenger window slid silently down, then accepted two identity cards from a hand with neatly trimmed nails and a gold signet ring. He examined the cards, then bent down to peer into the back of the car.
    ‘Mr Carrington?’ he asked.
    The man nearest him nodded. Steel-grey hair, black-rimmed glasses. His face matched his photo.
    ‘And Mr Buckingham?’ The policeman turned his attention to the man next to him. Much younger, thirty maybe. Absurdly handsome, with a pleasant, open expression, a thick head of black, slightly floppy hair and a healthy tan. Hugo Buckingham nodded respectfully. The MoD policeman handed back the identity cards and waved the vehicle through the gates.
    Hugo would never have admitted it to anybody, but he’d been rather looking forward to today. SAS headquarters. Not everyone got to see inside this place. In the five years he’d been with the Foreign Office he’d had to acknowledge privately that, for the most part, intelligence work was dull. Oh, he’d had the opportunity to travel, no doubt about it. There was barely a British embassy in the Middle East he hadn’t set foot inside, and he’d had his share of contact with agents on the ground. In reality, however, he was little more than a glorified secretary, filing the correct bits of information in the correct place in the hope that the analysts back in London could use them to join up some dots. Whenever his old school friends – bankers, most of them, already planning to retire and spend a bit more time with their money – tried to get him drunk in the hope that he could be persuaded into some juicy indiscretion, Hugo Buckingham would always touch the side of his nose slyly and deliver his favourite line: ‘It’s government business, my friend. That’s all you need to know.’ A useful phrase. It sounded at once good-natured and jokey, made it sound as though he might know a great deal, and hid his ignorance of anything remotely resembling a state secret.
    But a visit to SAS headquarters? Now that was something to dine out on.
    The car slid to a halt outside the main Regiment building, which was disappointingly bland and utilitarian. The