It was a strange thing, but as recently as one day ago, if you’d asked Brian Kelso which of two desperate criminals you’d expect to be the most unrestrainedly violent – the older one, or the younger one – he’d have opted for the younger one every time.

But of course, the last nine hours had not just changed his views on that – it had changed everything.

‘Are you listening?’ the guttural voice wondered.

Again, the guy sounded as if he was from East Yorkshire. Again, Kelso made a mental note to remember this, so that he at least had something he could tell the police, though both he and Justine needed to survive this ordeal first.

‘Yes, I’m listening,’ he told the throwaway phone they’d supplied him with.

‘Drive out of the north end of town along Welton Road. You know it?’

‘Yes … I know it.’

‘You’ll see a bus stop at the junction with Horncastle Lane. Slow down when you get there, and stop. That’s when you’ll receive further instructions.’

‘OK.’

‘Before you set off … how much did you manage to get?’

‘Erm …’ Kelso’s mouth, already flavoured like mud after what seemed an age without even a sip of water, went fully dry. He glanced over his shoulder at the four heavy haversacks, now zipped and buckled tight on the rear seat of his Peugeot. ‘About two hundred … I think.’

There was a protracted silence.

‘Two hundred?’ came the eventual response. ‘I thought we’d agreed three at the very least?’

‘Look … I was on my own, OK? The staff were due within the next hour. I got as much as I could in the time available. Surely you understand that? It’s not like the Dunholme branch is crammed with cash anyway.’

‘I suppose it’ll have to do.’ The tone was deeply grudging. ‘But I’m not happy with you, Brian. I’m not happy at all.’

The line went dead.

‘Wait, please!’ Kelso shouted. ‘Is Justine all right?’

Only the dial tone purred back at him.

Just about managing to suppress the cry of emotional agony set to burst its way out of him like a piece of actual anatomy, he dropped the phone onto the passenger seat next to him, and slumped forward, his forehead striking the steering wheel.

Justine, whom he’d been married to for the last twelve years, had never hurt anyone in her life. She was good-natured, kind-hearted; she rarely nagged him or got crotchety, and God knows, there were times when he’d deserved that from her. Even though she’d been so grief-stricken to learn that she couldn’t have children, she’d refused to let it get her down, determinedly continuing with life, filling what might otherwise have been a yawning desolation for both of them with her bubbly personality and busy demeanour, looking after herself to the nth degree, looking after him, looking after their detached, four-bedroom house, ensuring that it was permanently like a new pin.

And now those bastards had … had …

Kelso shook his head, hot salt-tears coursing down his cheeks as he struggled to negotiate the icy surface of Market Rasen Road. Whatever the outcome today, he knew that he’d never forget the image now branded into his mind’s eye: of his lovely soulmate, stripped naked and bound X-shaped with pairs of her own tights to the lower banisters of their staircase, her head drooped, her chestnut hair unbound and hanging in long, ratty hanks, her slim, marble-white body mottled with bruises, streaked with blood.

‘You have to understand,’ the older one had said some time

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