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twelve out of twelve?"
    Darren Pugh made to put his hand up, but then dropped it to the tabletop, with a smile that he might have thought was impish but looked to everyone else like a malicious leer.
    "Nah," he said. "Not interested. Mainly because if ginger tits there" - he jerked a thumb at Sam - "is in, I don't want anything to do with it. And also because, you know what? This is bollocks. All of this. Heap of utter, steaming bollocks. You, Mr Landyman, Handyman, whatever your name is, you're talking shite. You can't beat the Olympians. No one can. I don't believe you've got any marvellous plan at all. You just like the idea of thinking you do, and you've roped in all these losers, got them halfway to believing your scheme, your fantasy, whatever this is, and nothing'll come of it, you mark my words. It'll all turn out to be some half-baked nonsense and the whole thing will fall apart.
    "You know what you remind me of?" Pugh went on. "A posh version of those blokes you hear talking down the pub, the ones who say they know how they'd get rid of the Olympians, this is what we should do, and they've got some huge, complicated method, use poison gas or smuggle in a suitcase nuke or some such, and if only the government would listen to them then this whole thing would be sorted... But it's all just pie in the sky, just bullshitters bullshitting. And for all your money, your fancy invitations, your island and your World War Two bunker, you're no different from them."
    "That's a no, then, I take it."
    "Yeah, you could say it's a no. The only way you could kill the Olympians, I reckon, old man, is by boring them to death. Which, longwinded as you are, I wouldn't put past you. Other than that, though..." Pugh glanced around the table. "Good luck in your little happyland dream, all of you, and I'll keep an eye on the television for news reports about your bodies turning up charred and mangled in a field somewhere. That's assuming anything more comes from this meeting, which I seriously doubt'll happen."
    He stood up, scraping back his chair.
    "Now, I'd like to leave, if you wouldn't mind. I've been here long enough, and I don't enjoy being kept in places where I don't want to stay."
    "I'll bet you don't," Sam muttered under her breath.
    "What?" Pugh rounded on her. "What did you just say?" He took a step towards her, squaring his shoulders.
    Ramsay stood up, ready to lunge.
    "I asked you a question, she-pig," Pugh spat. "What did you just say?"
    Sam locked gazes with him, at the same time motioning to Ramsay not to intervene. She could handle this. She'd fronted down far larger and far angrier men in the past.
    "You don't like being detained against your will, Mr Pugh," she said. "That's understandable. So go. Go now. Don't make a fuss about it. No one wants any trouble."
    Pugh took another step closer to her. His head was twitching. His eyes flicked to a table knife, just within his reach. Not particularly sharp, but a useable weapon all the same.
    "But if you do want trouble," Sam went on, evenly, "I will give it to you. Come at me with that table knife, and I will break your wrist before you even get near me. Then I will break your elbow. Then I will break your nose. And while you're down on the floor screaming like a little girl, I will take out one of your ankles. And then I will get started on your crotch - and not in a good way. If you ever want to walk normally again, walk now, straight past me, out of that door, and don't come back. That's the one safe, sane course of action open to you right now. Try anything else, and you will regret it."
    She kept her voice low, steady, to indicate that she meant every word she said. It was no bluff. She did.
    Pugh weighed up his options. He could fathom only one way out of this that didn't involve losing face.
    "Fuck it, you're not worth it," he growled. "Anyway, I don't hit women."
    Sam wondered if Pugh's estranged wife, were she still alive, might have had something different to say