She was a girl of her word, and gave next to nothing on our drive toward the flat. She gave up no information about Frank or Clive, how she knew them, why they were looking for Kit, or who the man with the gun might've been. She didn't let go of a single card she held at her chest.

I dropped my gentle questions eventually, but didn't ask about Kit, either, even if I wanted a clue as to the legitimacy of their relationship. She just sat slumped but alert in the car seat, as the streetlights bloomed overhead of us and into the fade of night.

We came finally to a small block of flats stacked against the shade of darkness. 'Up there,' she said, as I parked and we stepped onto the street. 'Third floor.'

There was a slot of mailboxes at the rise of the outer staircase, with a third-floor apartment marked for Bailey, J. I got the joke. I turned to Maddie as she stalked behind me. She nodded forward without a word. We climbed the stairs.

We stopped at the door close by the end of the balcony, but Maddie stayed a few paces behind. 'Okay,' she said, stopping us a few doors down. 'You go inside. Check the place out, all of it. If Kit's inside, you call and I'll come in. That's it. Clear?'

'Clear enough.' I turned back and rapped my knuckles on the outer screen door. There was no sound from inside.

Maddie stepped forward and brought a key from her pocketbook to unlocked the door, before she stood rapidly back along the balcony again. I opened the door.

The flat was pitched in darkness; as I took my first steps inside, I called, 'Kit?'

No response.

I felt along the wall and flicked the lights. The room came on, dry and plain. Hardly any furniture or homewares, hardly anything for the light to touch other than a cramped spread of flat nothing.

I stepped in further. 'Maddie's here too, Kit,' I said. 'I'm working with your brother—I'm not with them.'

No sound. No movement in the small den, or in the adjoining kitchenette. There were two other doors to my left. I opened one to an empty bathroom. Then the other: a bedroom, dark. Silent. I stepped through the doorway.

'Kit?'

I felt a movement in the room, somewhere. A presence. Something.

I found a light switch and brought it on to suddenly illuminate a gun faced in my direction. A grim voice said, 'Shh. Don't move. Don't try anything. Just tell her it's all clear, or I blow your brains out right now.'

It was Clive Reed, an automatic bulking in his bony hand. We angered a look to each other over the long, deathly moment he held on me. But I had no choice.

'Okay, Maddie,' I called back, with as little life in my voice as I could manage. I hoped to God she'd know it wasn't right; that she'd turn tails and run back down the stairs, into the night, give me a moment of any kind to deal with the gun in my face myself.

I heard her footsteps drag from the balcony through the front door. They sounded hopeful.

Clive Reed stepped forward and hid at the bedroom door.

'Kit?' I heard her say from the other room, with something like light touching at her voice, softening her nerves.

It was gone when Clive blew out of the door and held the gun at her. 'Don't. Don't move a fucking muscle, or you're both dead. In the corner, both of you.'

We complied, and moved across the living room as Clive held the gun steady on us. He shut the front door and blocked it.

'Alright you two, nothing cute.' He smiled rough at Maddie; the vacant light caught his teeth, showed them yellow and crooked. 'Good to see you again, sweetheart. It's been a while.'

Maddie said nothing, her face burning fury. She stood still and upright, arms crossed at her chest, moist tears welling at her eyes but keeping themselves like hell from breaking.

'Either of you got anything to say, then?' Clive barked. 'Anything to even the score? We've all been running around like bloody chickens just trying to make sense of what that cunt's done. Where is he, Maddie?'

'I don't know,' she growled.

'Bullshit. You thought he was here. So did I. You thought I didn't know about this place?—About you and him all that time? You two should'a been a lot more careful. I know everything.'

I said, 'You don't know where Kit is.'

He turned the gun at me. 'Shut your face, pig. This is between us—' He rattled the gun at Maddie. 'Tell him who we are, honey.'

I looked at her; she didn't move. Without breath, and after a long pause, she said with a long and grave tone, 'He's my husband.'

Clive laughed a little. 'Surprised?' he said to me.

'Not really,' I said. 'After all, every beauty has to have a beast.'

He stepped forward and punted the nose of the gun into my ribs; I shocked back at a breathless moment and tried to gather myself up again.

'You're gonna tell me everything you've found out already, copper,' Clive said.

'I don't know anything.'

'Bullshit.'

He hit me in the chest again, then stepped back and rose the gun to remind me of the price of resistance. 'Where is he?'

I didn't answer. As Clive went forward for another wallop at my ribs, Maddie raised her voice with urgency and said, 'Clive—Rusty.'

The air had shifted and was out of the room in an instant; I could tell they weren't talking about Kit anymore.

Clive stopped suddenly and turned to her with sudden seriousness. 'He knows?' he said lowly.

Maddie nodded quickly. 'The cop told me he was at Frank's yesterday, looking around. He must know about all of it.'

Clive took a moment of thought. 'Huh.' He came up with a bleak smile. 'Reckon that changes things a little, doesn't it?'

'Leave the cop, Clive,' Maddie said. 'Just leave him. He's no use. We can go right now and get it ourselves. We can get away from him.'

'You think I'd trust you again, just so you can rip me off a second time? After all my bloody goodwill, all our good times together—'

'Clive...'

'Shut up. I'll deal with you later, but the cop knows too much. Something's gotta be done about him. You know that.'

He turned slowly. He rose the gun at me. He smiled.

Maddie screamed—'No!'

There was a flash as she jumped and wrenched at his arm. They became a coil as he fought, restrained, and finally threw her to the floor with a heavy thud.

I took my chance; I jumped at his back and made my own attempt at the gun. We spun enough for him to slam me at the wall, knocking a second wind out of me and causing me to collapse in a heap at the ground.

The gun was lowering to my head.

In the haze of my vision, I could see Maddie appear at my level and shoot herself to wrap at his ankles; he kicked her with a savage force and sent her rolling across the floor. I went at his legs and staggered him back.

I don't know what happened next, because it seemed as if Clive had had enough with the struggle to trying to pop a shot and brought the end of the gun down into the dome of my skull, and I was out in a flash of sudden dark.

I woke up later, might've been an hour, might've been a year. But I was still in the flat, still had a throbbing burn in my brain and a blow of dried blood spilled from the crack in my head.

I could open my eyes wide enough to find that Maddie was gone from the room, but Clive wasn't—he was laying next to me, his face the colour of white death, eyes stuck open and burst red. There were four bullet holes in his back.

But we weren't alone long, the two of us laying together on that floor like it was a mortuary. Soon enough the police arrived, pulled me up, patted me down, told me I was under arrest.