'Foxhill Avenue, Nettleston. Number ninety-eight.'

'Alone?'

'D'ye 'hink anybody would live wi' that fat ugly cunt?'

'Takes all sorts.'

'If he's gettin' any, he's payin' for it. You plannin' tae drop by?'

'Briefly, yeah.'

359.

'Bud says your money'll be already spent. It's been a week. Fagan owes a lot of people. Heavy people.'

'Aye. He owes me. But it's not just the money I'm bothered about.'

'Didnae think it was.'

'Fat bastard, did you say?' Simon asked, already deciding how this man he'd never met would die within the next few hours.

'Aye. Greedy in mair ways than wan. Why d'you ask?'

'I'm going to need some heroin. About three grammes. Pure stuff, not the shite on the streets.'

'Pure is expensive. Three grammes of pure is very expensive.'

'I'll take it off what you owe me.'

The goon gave him a dark grin. 'Come back here in an hour. What's your mobile?'

Simon, still running on balls and brass neck, was about to parrot it out automatically when he remembered that he was just a marketing exec playing at being a hitman, and it was the marketing exec's name and address on the mobile bills.

'I'll be back in an hour for the H. I'll let you know how to get in touch once my business with Mr Pagan is complete.'

Simon thought the bluff sounded confident enough, but was still worried the guy might start laughing at him as he walked away.

'You know, you don't look the type,' the goon said instead. 'For your line, I mean.'

Simon turned around. 'And how long would I last if I did?'The goon delivered on the smack, which Simon tested for 360.

adulteration in his car with a bottle of mineral water. Pure heroin dissolves clear and tasteless in cold water; all that nonsense with lighters and teaspoons was only necessary because of the shit it was cut with. The sample was a little cloudy, but was probably about as clean as anyone in this city had ever seen it.

He drove past Fagan's house to make sure he was home, looking for the light of a TV against the curtains in the drab wee council semi, sitting in a street of identical drab wee council semis, amid a scheme of identical drab wee streets. Having ascertained that the thieving chancer was home, Simon took a detour to a petrol station and bought a cheap baseball cap (mandatory delivery-driver attire), then progressed to the nearest Indian takeaway for a curry. He brought the food back to the hire car and opened the tinfoil container on the dashboard, stirring the heroin into the rich massala sauce before replacing the cardboard lid and putting it all back inside the poly bag.

It took Simon three goes at ringing the bell before Pagan grudgingly dragged himself away from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and answered the door.

'Chicken Tikka Massala, pilau rice, keema nan, Bombay potatoes,' Simon said, holding up the carryout.

'Whit? I never ordered this.'

'I know. Mr Khan says it's on the hoose, tae make up for the wee misunderstandin' last night. Hing oan, you are Mr McGraw, aren't you? Ninety-nine Foxhill Avenue?'

'Whit? Eh, aye. McGraw, that's me. On the hoose, you say?'

'Aye.'

'Magic.'

'There's your curry, then.'

'Cheers.'

361.

Mickey Fagan, you had thirty thousand pounds. You now have enough heroin to kill Keith Richards. Thank you for playing.So his graduation from revenge killer to professional assassin was as inadvertent as it was instantaneous, though its fortuitousness was a factor of time, not destiny. It became very obvious very soon that he and murder were star- crossed, and it had merely been a matter of them finding one another.

Simon had improvised the means of Pagan's untraceable death in a twinkling, then proceeded from concept to realisation in a near effortless matter of hours. And what had really taken him by surprise was that he got a greater rush from killing Pagan, a man he only clapped eyes on at the moment he handed over his deadly gift, than he had from killing Morris, with whom he had a decade of scores to settle. The latter had been all gut-tangling emotion; the former nothing but raw power, coursing through him, energising him, making him feel he could do anything - and kill anybody. It was the most vivid, thrilling, invigorating sensation he had ever experienced, and he already knew he'd want more.

Besides, 'professional killer' sounded a far cooler way to think of himself than 'marketing exec'.

He stopped off one last time at the snooker club, where he left instructions on how he could be contacted. The hotmail address he quoted didn't exist yet, but he was pretty sure the username would not have been taken. If his services were required, Hannigan had to email him: the message would be meaningless, but the number of letters in each word would provide a newly bought pre-pay mobile number for Simon to call, once he'd nipped to the 362.

supermarket and bought a new pre-pay of his own. After that, details could be offered: names, locations, motives, money.

Nothing happened for quite a while; long enough to begin to feel like it had all been a delusional fantasy, and in a more coldly rational light, long enough to think that they hadn't taken him seriously, and might even throw him to the cops if it would somehow benefit them. Mitigating against that was the fact that they had comped him three grammes of uncut smack, but it was still difficult to reconcile the ice-cool figure who'd negotiated that deal with the suitful of frustration stuck in the Persley Bridge tailback every morning.

Then one Wednesday night he was checking his email and felt his whole body electrify when he saw that a message was coming in from the new account, addressed to thebacchae@hotmail.com. Never have the words 'Retrieving message 1 of 1, had such life-changing significance; when Simon saw them, he knew nothing would ever be the same again.

When he called, it wasn't Hannigan who answered, nor even one of his underlings. The voice was accentless middle-class English, newsreader neutral.

'I got your details from a Bud,' the voice said, by way of introduction and explanation, then rhymed off the info with no pause for formalities. 'Paul Noblet. Forty-six. Planning officer, Teasford County Council, Yorkshire. Interested party believes Noblet's successor would be more sympathetic to his petitions. Accident or no fee. Fifteen offered; that's minus twenty per cent commission. Interested?'

Simon had more bother sorting out a pseudonymous PO box to receive the unmarked bills than he had despatching 363.

the unfortunate Mr Noblet. The lot of the professional killer was far less arduous than he could have possibly imagined. No briefcases, no dossiers, no hasty assembly and dismantling of high-powered rifles inside towerblock windows, and not even a binding obligation to dress in black.

The targets were not heavily guarded statesmen or senior underworld figures, but ordinary men (occasionally women, but generally they tended to be the ones holding the invoice) who someone else considered it advantageous to be rid of: husbands, lovers, bureaucrats, rivals, bosses, creditors, none of whom had any idea what was coming. Simon took it as an unspoken gauge of improving western living standards, among the items and services that not just the rich could afford: in the Sixties it was television sets; in the Seventies it was foreign holidays; and these days it was assassination.

He regarded it as a point of professional pride as well as a valuable security consideration not to repeat the same method, and even made a principle of not using firearms, like Queen had made a principle of not using the otherwise ubiquitous synthesiser on their first ten albums. This kept his imagination finely tuned, as well as providing constant fresh perspectives on the risks of detection; the simplicity of a bullet in the head could engender sloppiness borne of complacency. Like Queen recording The Game, eventually he decided he did need a gun, but by this time he knew that in the end, the method didn't matter: if you had the will, everything else was merely detail. And if you didn't, then it made no odds what weapon was in your hand. It was the will people were paying for - that and the security of being several clandestine removes from the man who wielded it.

364.

What they'd make of the fact that that man was still nine-to-five-ing for Sintek Energy, he didn't like to contemplate. Flexi-time arrangements made for a few midweek sorties, but he was constantly reminded of Billy Connolly's song about the Territorial Army: 'And we'll have the revolution on a Saturday, 'cause I've got to work through the week.'

Until Marseilles, that was. He was tipped off that something was different when he carried out a traceroute on the incoming email, something he always did to confirm the source: the quoted address varied, but the English middleman's relay server was always the same. The traceroute revealed that it had arrived via a French ISP, confirmed by the accent that answered the phone.

You know you've really arrived when you start your first European tour.

The target was a Parisian businessman, Jean-Pierre Lacroux, who had humped one too many secretaries and good-time girls for his wife's liking, and now she fancied his life insurance as compensation. He was given a copy of the bloke's itinerary for a forthcoming business trip to Marseilles, including flight times and hotel details, hotel rooms having proven a happy hunting ground thus far.

Simon arrived the day before Lacroux and checked into the same hotel. He hired a car, made the purchases he required, had an excellent dinner and then retired to his room for some shuteye, a good night's sleep always bulwark number one against stupid mistakes.

He was woken by sunlight shining through a gap in the curtains, which even without the attendant grogginess would have been confusing, as the last thing he had done the night before was close a set of blinds. The room had shrunk, as had the bed, while the number of doors had been reduced by two. More disturbingly, his travel bag and 365.

all of the room's furniture had disappeared, a glimpse through what turned out to be a porthole behind the curtains revealing that so had not only the entire city, but the land as well.

The cabin's door opened, and in walked two men who both had to bend to get through it.

'There's someone who'd like to speak to you, Mr Darcourt,' one of them said, his voice the same as had relayed the now apparently bogus details about Monsieur Lacroux.

Simon followed them through several corridors and a steel-glinting kitchen up to the sun-kissed deck of a luxury yacht (luxury as in the ten million notes category; the word, he now appreciated, having been previously rather over- liberally applied). His sense of geography told him he had to be somewhere in the Med, but there was a seaplane moored off the aft and he felt woozy enough to have no idea how long he might have been unconscious, so he couldn't be sure. He was led to a canopied area, where a bottle of champagne sat in an ice-bucket on a table, next to two flutes. To the side of it was a TV and VCR, and in front of it were two sunloungers facing the prow, backs to Simon.

'Marcel, pour Mr Darcourt and myself some champagne, would you?' said a voice, revealing one of the sunloungers to be occupied. 'And Mr Darcourt, please come here and have a seat.'

Simon walked around the table as one of the man-mountains poured the drinks, the bottle looking like a miniature in his hands. There was a bald, podgy little man in sunglasses sitting waiting for him, a laptop resting on his thighs, a telephone at his elbow on a short wooden table. He was Caucasian but not white, Simon unable to discern 366.

whether his skin was merely dark from the sun or from ethnicity. The man smiled and gestured to Simon to take a seat. Simon, still in his T-shirt and boxer shorts, felt a microscopic bit more comfortable to observe that his host was dressed only in a pair of extremely ill-advised G-string trunks. Proof, he very quickly appreciated, that this was a man who was far too powerful for anyone to dare offer any sartorially constructive criticism.

'I've had my eye on you,' he said, his accent as unplaceable as his origins. 'And I think we might do business together.'

The man-mountain Marcel handed them both their champagne, serving the bald man first.

'I'm sorry, I'm at a bit of a loss here,' Simon said. 'I don't believe I've had the pleasure.'

'You haven't. And if you're angling for my name, nor will you. But to ratify future communications, you should refer to me as Shaloub N'gurath. On a sunny day like this, however, you can call me Shub. Cheers.'

They talked for hours; or rather, Shub talked for hours, with a garrulousness that suggested he maybe spent too much time floating on the ocean, where visitors had to be brought, drugged, by overnight seaplane. However, for all his loquaciousness, he nonetheless had a disciplined gift for not telling the listener anything concrete, never mentioning names, locations or indeed any specifics whatsoever. If Simon had walked into the first police station on dry land, intent on alerting them to this uniquely dangerous Blofeld-alike, he would have been hoofed into the street as a time-waster half an hour later. 'No, I don't know who. No, I don't know where. No, I don't know how. But there was this guy on a boat. No, I don't know where it was. No, I don't know what it was called.' Boot. After 367.

which Shub's people would have picked him up and . . . well, he wasn't going to be walking into any police stations, he was damn sure about that.

'Criminals cannot help but talk,' he told Simon. 'That is why I do not employ criminals. I employ professionals, and professionals do not talk. They do not talk to each other, they do not talk about each other. In this world, happy is the man who does not know his comrade's name, for he does not have to worry that his comrade will slit his throat tonight. Most important of all, professionals do not talk to the authorities. Do you know why?'

It seemed a rhetorical question, but Shub was staring intently at him as though demanding a response. Simon couldn't think of any way of articulating something so monumentally obvious without resorting to platitudes that would make him sound like a schoolboy. That was when he realised he was floundering because it was something of a trick question.

'Because professionals don't get caught/ he answered. 'Very good/ Shub said. 'Professionals do not get caught. However, I am experienced enough to know that nobody is perfect. Accidents can happen. How is it your own poet puts it, Mr Darcourt? The best laid plans of mice and men . . .'

'Gang aft agley.'

'Go often wrong, yes. The professional knows when the situation is retrievable and when it is not. If it is not, he knows when to walk away, and he knows to clean up the mess. If you compromise yourself, as far as I am concerned, you have compromised me. Remember that, any time you consider taking a risk. If you fear you are contaminated, it is your responsibility to amputate and cauterise before the infection spreads. You find yourself on the run? You do not 368.

run to me. If you can stay hidden, stay hidden, but always remember my people will be looking for you too. And this is what will happen when they find you. Marcel.'

Marcel wheeled the sunloungers around so that they were facing under the canopy, where he put a cassette into the VCR and switched on the TV. The picture warmed from black to show a male face, sweat-drenched, contorted and hyperventilating.

'Sound, please,' said Shub. Marcel pressed the remote. Simon could now hear fevered breathing, and a whimpering beneath it.

The camera pulled back to reveal that the man was strapped naked to a steel table like he had seen in the yacht's kitchen, resting upright against a portholed wall. On either side of him stood one of the man-mountains, dressed head to toe in white plastic overalls, each of them holding a two-handed power drill.

Marcel placed the champagne bottle on the table and tossed the ice overboard, returning with the bucket in time for Simon to vomit into it a few seconds of videotape later. This, he felt, was ample evidence that Shub's point had been made, but he was wrong. Shub sipped champagne and stared at the screen, motionless, unflinching, for a full ten minutes.

'If the authorities reach you first, we will get to you wherever you are held,' he said, holding out a beckoning hand into which Marcel placed the remote control. 'We will break you out if possible, to find out what you told them. We broke this guy out. If that's not possible, we can get to you inside. There's a lot of things we can do inside too, but ideally we'd bring you back to the boat. These are double-length tapes. It lasts more than three hours.' Shub turned up the volume until the screaming and the sound 369.

of the drills was deafening, turning to observe Simon's stomach-wrenching discomfiture. 'I'm sure you'd agree/ he shouted above the noise, 'a bullet in your own head would be much quicker.' With which he suddenly switched off the TV, silencing the cries, the drills and the grinding, leaving only the lapping of waves and the calls of gulls.

'Professionals do not get caught.'Simon heard the rumble of the truck and the hiss of its air brakes before he glanced in the rearview and saw May's Espace come round the bend ahead of the convoy.

'Showtime,' he said to Taylor, who hit the accelerator and led the procession into the entrance tunnel.

Simon lifted the two SPAS-12 shotguns from the seat behind and slotted gas pellets into each one's grenade launcher.

'Steady hands, Freddie,' Taylor said. 'Remember the Twilight Queen,' the cheeky bastard referring to their first abortive approach to the Black Sea cruise liner. This had ended in four of them having to dive off their speedboat after Simon accidentally launched a CS gas canister from his weapon when they hit an unexpectedly large wave. Fortunately, the wind was blowing away from their target and they were able to reboard unseen and resume attack a few minutes later.

'You worry about the driving and don't fly over any speedbumps like you flew over that fucking wave.'

'Roger.'

Simon glanced in the wing mirror. The truck was in the tunnel at their backs, behind the vans and one of the speedboat-towing Mondeos. May and his Espace would be bringing up the rear, after locking the main gate behind 370.

them. The shield door would remain open for now, at least until the morning shift came on at eight.

He ordered Taylor to stop about ten yards before 'the crossroads', as the staff referred to it, where the entrance tunnel intersected a second cutting, accessing the tailrace on one side. On the other, there was an offshoot ramp leading to an observation deck above the central cavern, which was where they took the tourists to get a medium- distance look at the machine hall. The entrance tunnel was wide enough for two lanes of traffic, which allowed the truck to pass them and pull in ahead, its rear level with the intersection.

All engines were cut and no words were spoken as the team assembled at the rear of the lorry. The sound of the generators covered any noise they were likely to make, but by this stage nobody needed to be told what to do. They formed into coordinated groups, checked their weapons and pulled on their filter masks.

Simon checked his watch. The new shift would be in the control room for Changeover Report, which in theory was supposed to be a detailed breakdown of current operational status, but in practice meant a cup of brew and a blether about who was going to win the football tomorrow. In Simon's experience, terrorists were about the only people in this world who turned up for their job and just got stuck in, rather than scratch their arses and read the paper for half an hour before thinking about doing a hand's turn.

He and Taylor led the incursion squad into the central cavern at a soft-footed jog, leaving Cook, Deacon, Steve Jones and May (when he caught up) to unload the truck. They split into three groups at the machine hall's main floor level. Simon led Matlock and Lydon up the near stairs, while Taylor, Headon and Strummer strode quickly and 371.

quietly beneath the control room's observation window to the flight at the end. Simon and Mick Jones headed below to the turbine's lower access levels, in case somebody was down there getting an early start and fancied trying to be Bruce Willis.

Simon led his team silently along the upper corridor, almost reaching the control room door by the time Taylor and his men came into view from the other end. Once in place, he and Taylor readied their weapons, while Strummer gripped the doorhandle and the rest took position either side.

Upon confirmatory nods from both Simon and Taylor, Strummer counted down from three by holding up fingers. On Go, he pulled the door open long enough for them to each pump two gas pellets into the room, then slammed it closed again, the three of them bunching up against it as the inevitable desperate ramming began.

If anybody in there kept his head, he might grab the phone and dial for help instead of joining the melee battering at the door, but by the time the switchboard had answered and asked which service he required, he'd be as unconscious as his colleagues.

They waited until the thumping ceased - a matter of seconds - then opened the door. Simon stepped over the tangle of bodies while the others began removing them, two to a man, taking them to the storage chamber, where they'd be bound and gagged with heavy-duty tape then locked behind a reinforced steel door. Matlock had asked why they had to use a non-lethal gas instead of just getting it over with, but that was why he was unlikely ever to enjoy inner-circle status. No matter how well you've planned something like this, it never hurts to have some leverage in case of emergencies - especially when you've 372.

just cooped yourself up inside a giant hole in the ground.

The phone had indeed been removed from its receiver, and was dangling from the desk. Simon put it to his ear.

'. . . repeat, which service do you require, sir?' asked an impatient female voice. 'Another toddler playing with the phone, I'll bet,' she said more quietly, to whoever was sitting next to her at the switchboard. Simon lifted the filter mask from his mouth. He could smell the gas immediately, but it was dissipating rapidly since the door had been opened.

'Hello? Sorry about that. It's Dubh Ardrain control room, yeah. Somebody jumped the gun a wee bit, thought we had a fire. No, it's nothing. Sorry to trouble you. Okay, cheery-bye.'

Simon disconnected the call by putting his hand down on the cradle, looking at the receiver to take note of the number printed on it in punch-tape. He took out his radio and relayed it to May. Radios would be fine for use around the main cavern, but those working topside would have five hundred metres of rock between them and their comrades, and the only means of communication would be to call the control room directly on their mobiles.