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stream. He started to convulse, back arching, fingers clawing at the floor, eyes still open. The blood was already puddling around him, spreading quickly across the boards.
    Tom started to shake uncontrollably. He put the shotgun down. Sara was clutching something that must have been a hunting rifle. Something very large calibre. There were telescopic sights, but she was staring past them, watching the man, her eyes wide, her face trembling with shock. Tom pushed himself into a standing position. He could hear shouting from outside. Her eyes came off the man. She looked at Tom and he stared back at her. ‘We have to get out of here,’ she said. ‘Right now.’

9
    ‘It’s kidnappers,’ Sara said, her voice breaking. She was over by a small window, opening it. ‘Jean-Marc got me on the intercom. They were coming for him …’ She turned back to him and her eyes crossed the body on the floor. She flinched, then started to cry. ‘It’s finally happening,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘I’ve had this fear all my life. Now it’s happening. They’ve come for me. We have to get out of here. I think they killed Jean-Marc. There are more of them. They will be coming. They’ll kill you, kidnap me. We have to get out.’
    Tom looked back at the body. It was trembling, like there was still life there. He should walk over to it, check it, do first aid, he thought. He was standing in the middle of the room uselessly, in a daze. But if the man were alive, what could be done? She had shot him through the chest. He could see the hole where the round had entered. If they got him to a good casualty unit within minutes he might live. But the exit wound would be a mess, too big to patch up with any facilities they might find here, if they had time. And the nearest hospital was hours away.
    Was the man what they called a pirate? He looked like one. He looked like all the Somali pirates Tom had ever seen on TV, the same height, the same distinctive facial features.
    ‘I think I killed him,’ Sara said, very faintly.
    ‘He might not be dead …’ Tom had seen dead people before, seen violence, but never anything like this, never anything so close up. All his muscles were tight with the shock of it. He didn’t know what he should do. Then, from the stairwell beyond her door, he thought he could hear voices, raised, getting nearer. He wrenched his eyes from the body. ‘How do we get out?’ he asked, his voice betraying his panic.
    ‘Down here,’ she said, her voice rushed. She was pointing at the open window. ‘There’s a ladder. It’s a fire escape.’
    He moved quickly to the window. Outside he could see a ladder on to a roof section. ‘Is this the only way?’
    She nodded. ‘They’re in the house, below us. I can hear. We can’t go down the stairs.’
    ‘OK. You go first,’ he said. ‘Give me the gun. I’ll cover us.’
    ‘Do you know how to shoot it?’
    ‘Point it, pull the trigger.’
    ‘It’s not that simple. You go first. I’ll cover you.’
    She was right, of course. She’d already proved that. ‘Just go,’ he said. ‘Go now. Hurry. I don’t know where I’m meant to be going. I’ll follow you.’
    She slung the rifle over her shoulder and went straight over the sill. He was immediately behind her, over the short wooden sill and down on to the metal-runged ladder fixed to the wall of the house. He went down expecting a shot to hit him, or that he would fall off, clatter across the roof, give them away. But he made it down despite his sweaty palms, then stood panting in the warm darkness, on the short sloping first-floor roof, beside her. She was listening into the silence. ‘We jump down from here,’ she whispered. ‘Jump down and run over there, to the lab block.’ Like she had a plan. There wasn’t time to ask her about that, but to get over to the lab block made sense. There was plenty of shadow, bushes against the wall. They could crouch down and hide, think about it.
    She went a second