“Miss?”

I started. The motorcyclist—helmet removed to reveal a young, cheerful face with a goatee and a silver nose stud—was at the other open door on my right, holding a heavy set of wire cutters. Cold wet air touched my face and throat. I was suddenly very thirsty.

“Don’t be alarmed. I’m just going to get your legs free. Excuse me.” He bent, and with hardly any effort clipped through the cable that fastened my ankle restraints to the seat. “Have to leave the others on for a moment,” he said. “If you’d like to take my arm, I can help you out of there. That’s it.”

In spite of the adrenaline rush and frantic figuring (was this Jake’s doing? Was I being busted out?) it was good to stand straight after the cramped hours in the car. I lifted my face to the rain. The night air was delicious with the smell of damp woodland, streaked with the odours of wet tarmac, cordite, diesel and the seductive whiff of the motorcycle leathers. This close to transformation the Hunger goes through me in surges that take all the strength out of my legs. I swayed, almost fell. The surge subsided. We were under thick cloud but the moon knew I was there. I get it in the roof of my mouth, my teeth, the palms of my hands, my belly, my cunt. (One of the hells of jail had been the dumb persistence of sex. Jerking off under the covers or in the shower even though I was sure there were cameras, despite Poulsom’s assurances otherwise. He’d said, “I know rising libido is going to be a problem for you as we enter the waxing gibbous phase.” For a terrible moment I thought he was going to offer me the use of his men, or a vibrator, or, God forbid, himself, but he went on: “Please understand, Talulla, surveillance stops at the door to your room. The space you occupy beyond it is one of complete privacy, I promise you. We have absolutely no desire to make things any more difficult for you than necessity dictates.” Which presented one of the other hells of jail: trying to be civil to Poulsom. Truth was I hated him on sight, and he knew it, but he also knew I wasn’t going to risk pissing him off. I read an interview once, someone—an actress—complaining that Christopher Walken—or it could have been James Woods—smelled or maybe even tasted of formaldehyde. Either way I could believe it, and Poulsom had the same deal, the fish eyes and the waxy skin, that look of having been under fluorescents too long …)

The Hunter spoke into a headset: “Okay, we’re good here. Come ahead.” An armoured van crept from a concealed gap in the trees and pulled up behind the people-carrier. While the medics were closing the ambulance doors and setting the bike upright, Poulsom and I were escorted to the van’s rear, where the motorcyclist opened the doors. The vehicle’s interior was occupied by a steel cage, snugly fitted and bolted down. No sign of lock or key, only a mystifying plate of what looked like dark glass in a metal housing where the lock should be.

Not mystifying for long. The Hunter pressed his palm flat against it. With a string of blips and a gasp of what sounded like hydraulics the cage door popped open.

“Inside,” the Hunter said. Poulsom clambered in, gracelessly, and in a moment had been seated on the floor and secured, cuffs to bars. The motorcyclist helped me in, fastened my wrists to the cage, then released and removed the ankle cuffs altogether. “Better for you like this,” he said. “Save you getting tossed around like a lettuce.”

The Hunter leaped up into the van and stood over Poulsom. Shouldered the automatic and pulled out a pistol from a side holster. Pointed it at Poulsom’s head. “Phone,” he said.

“What?”

“Call in. You’ve drawn heat. You’re going round about. They wait for your update but Ellis is green for go. That’s all.”

“They’ll know—”

“They won’t know shit without any of the alert words, all of which you know I know. Are we clear?”

Pause.

“I’m not going to ask twice.”

Poulsom opened the phone.

“I dial,” the Hunter said.

Poulsom’s performance was surprisingly convincing, considering he had a gun at his head, a blend of tension, weariness and irritation; he was the horrifically overworked dictator who had to suffer shit luck and universal incompetence.

“Good,” the Hunter said, pocketing the phone. He gave the motorcyclist a nod, not looking at me. Palpable contempt came off him. Not for me personally but for all women. I had an image of him choking a young girl while sodomising her, his face testifying that it wasn’t enough, nothing was enough. My nose has sharpened for these things. He knew I knew, which made a disgusting claustrophobic intimacy. It was then I began worrying again about getting raped. Rape was his default. To him the only obstacles were practical. But fear was a practical obstacle. He knew what I was. This, I had to hope, would keep him off. Another surge of the Hunger went through my thighbones. My face was hot. He turned and jumped down from the van.

The motorcyclist produced a small capped syringe from his pocket. “Bobo time, doc,” he said. Poulsom’s face quivered—fear and a look of sensuous revulsion—as the motorcyclist approached him. “Relax. It’s a sedative, that’s all. Hold still.”

“Whatever you’re doing,” Poulsom began—but the motorcyclist belted him, hard, a backhander; my armpits went suddenly hot—across the face.

“Hush. And relax. There we go.”

“Where are you taking us?” I said.

“Can’t tell you, miss. Sorry. Not far, though. Don’t worry.” He saw me eyeing the syringe. “You’re not having any of this.” He winked, then went to join the others. Poulsom’s eyes had closed.

“Let’s move ourselves, gentlemen,” the Hunter said. I heard the people-carrier doors slam and the ambulance start up. The whole ambush had taken no more than two or three minutes.

A slight weight shift said our driver had left the armoured van, and a moment later a man in his early forties wearing Securicor overalls appeared alongside the Hunter. “Thought you should know, sir,” he said. “Looked like a tail a couple of miles back. Can’t be certain. Probably paranoia.”

“Vehicle?”

“Land Rover, white, Alfa Lima two five five Juliet Papa Romeo. Single male driver. Nothing, really, one mile too many, maybe.”

“It’s because it was white,” the motorcyclist said. “You notice white more. It’s the Moby Dick effect. What sort of moron tails someone in a white car?”