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echoed as they hammered along, emerging fifty yards later in what had once been an internal loading bay, a series of concrete platforms abutting into a hangar-like space where HGVs were once accommodated. It was filled with litter and old leaves, and stank of oil.
    There was no further access from here. Panting, Heck could only gaze at the huge folding steel doors that separated them from the outside. Again, they heard feet reverberating along the service passage behind.
    ‘Fuck!’ Farthing hissed.
    They scrambled through a smaller-sized doorway on the right, entering a confused sprawl of interconnecting offices and corridors. Again, all were cluttered with rubbish and cross-cut by shafts of light penetrating from various external windows, though most of these had been closed off with corrugated metal. They turned several corners, before blundering into a final room, and finding there was nowhere else to run.
    They slid to a halt, sparkling with sweat. Farthing made to double back, but Heck motioned for silence.
    Seconds passed as they listened.
    Suddenly, there was no other sound.
    ‘Let’s kick our way out,’ Farthing said, lurching towards the window, which no longer sported glass beneath its metal cladding.
    ‘Wait!’ Heck whispered.
    They froze again. Still there was no sound. Had the maniac lost them? Or was he creeping up even now?
    ‘Fuck this!’ Farthing said, but Heck grabbed his arm.
    ‘Just wait! He’s had a couple of chances to pop us, and he hasn’t taken them. It may be he needs to get close.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So hang on! We don’t know how solid that shutter is. It could take us five minutes, and if we make a racket it’ll bring him right to us.’
    Farthing licked his lips. ‘You go see where he is … I’ll try and get it loose quietly.’
    Heck padded back to the door, stopping alongside a low shelf, on which someone had left a wrench. It was old and rusty, but still satisfyingly heavy. He grabbed it, and peered out into the half-lit corridor. To his left it right-angled out of sight; to his right it ran straight for forty yards before vanishing into shadow. He glanced back, to where Farthing was feeling around the edges of the corrugated metal. With a slight creak, it shifted. The PC gazed at Heck.
    ‘Couple of kicks and this is gone, I’m telling you!’
    Heck motioned to him to wait just a second, and slipped out into the corridor, walking to the nearby corner. Around it, the passage led twenty yards to what looked like a fire-exit. He hurried up there and shoved down on the escape-bar, but there was no budge in it. As he pondered this, there came a series of thundering blows from behind. He knew that it was Farthing – hammering on metal.
    He darted back to the corner and around into the main corridor, just in time to see the tall shape of Cooper loom out of the shadows at the far end, gun levelled.
    ‘You total prat!’ Heck shouted, barging back into the office.
    Farthing was still working on the corrugated metal, half of which had been bashed through, though the rest of it wouldn’t shift. ‘Didn’t know where you were!’ he wailed. ‘I thought he’d nabbed you!’
    ‘Fucking idiot!’ Heck grabbed up an office chair, hurling it through the air.
    The impact was cacophonous, and the rest of the corrugated shutter fell away, more dim light spilling inward. Farthing vaulted out through the empty frame first. Heck followed, sensing the figure appear in the office door behind.
    ‘Oh shit!’ Farthing screamed.
    They weren’t outside.
    They were in another enclosed space; some kind of garage, empty except for dust and debris. Farthing staggered across it towards a set of double doors, the central cleft of which promised daylight. Heck twirled back to the window. Cooper was framed on the other side, bloody-chinned, gazing along his pistol barrel.
    Heck threw the wrench.
    It flashed through the air, a spinning blur, and struck its target in the middle of his chest. Cooper went