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removed the screws at the base of the unit. Off came the cover. Inside, where a tangle of cables and circuit boards ought to have been, was a neat row of white tubes.
    ‘That’s everything?’
    ‘Uh, let me see. No, I decided to keep some so I could go into dealing.’ Wright rolled her eyes, picked at a scallop. ‘Of course it’s the lot. Unless you want to count and weigh ’em.’
    ‘No, I believe you. Honestly, you did good.’
    The voice was accompanied by a hand sliding across the middle of her back. She flinched a little. Flinched because his hands were colder than those of any man she’d known. A little, because she knew that resisting John was a bad idea. This wasn’t part of the original deal, but the first night they rendezvoused in Rio, she’d been drunk and off guard and curious about the imposing Scotsman with the dark past and the darker features. She knew better now. But now was too late.
    He let her unbutton her shirt and take off her shoes. A small mercy. She spent a couple of minutes undressing down to her panties and bra. It took far longer than she’d otherwise have done.
    ‘When you get into something,’ her mother had once told her, her face all puffed up, ‘it’s hard to pull yourself out of it.’
    There were men who liked it rough, and there was John. He ripped off her bra at the seams. He was playful
at first
, because that’s how he liked to start things. Then he slapped her. Then he smacked her. When they were both fully naked, he pushed close to her and gripped her neck with a gnarled hand. As she struggled to breathe he whispered in her ear the unspeakable things he’d do to her if she ever dared betray him.
    She could hardly breathe as John fucked her. But she knew if she resisted, he’d only tighten his grip. She let him do his worst. He fucked her hard and his grip only loosened when he finally came inside her. Three minutes that felt more like thirty. She got through it by picturing herself disappearing out that hotel door and into the night, fifty grand in her back pocket. A new life.
    The bed sighed as he rolled off her. Then she heard the jangle of his belt buckle as he slipped on his jeans.
    ‘I need to go,’ she said, her voice cracking like thin ice. ‘We’re off again tomorrow morning and all hands have to be on board by 0300.’
    No response.
    ‘You’ve got my money, right?’
    ‘Right here,’ John said, patting a travel bag resting on the armchair. He smiled at her. ‘Relax. No one’s suspected you of anything, have they?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘No, they haven’t. Or else you’d have been detained by the police. Look at it this way: you’re about to be £50,000 richer than you were this morning. All in all, that’s not a bad deal.’
    ‘I guess.’
    ‘The Navy plays such an important role in the war on drugs. Ironic when you think about it.’
    ‘Yeah,’ she said distantly.
    ‘All the time the
Lizard
’s seizing shipments, they’ve got the jackpot right on board.’
    She stood up. The white bedsheet stroked her figure.
    ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
    ‘Shower,’ she said.
    Hot water stabbed her skin. She blinked soapy water out of her eyes and saw a shape through the frosted-glass frame, half pink and half blue. John. What the
fuck
did that arsehole want now? Wright tugged on the cubicle slider. The glass revealed John grinning at her. Yes,
grinning
. Like she was the butt of some terrible joke.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Nothing,’ he said.
    The first punch knocked her backwards, water cascading on top of her. She tried to get up, but another fist to the face flattened her. Teeth loosened. Blood swam across her line of sight. Each blow vibrated around her skull. He punched and punched. Her world darkened to a bloody twilight.
    She blacked out.
    Woke up with no sense of time, or place. But she remembered John’s face. He planned to kill her. Too badly injured to move, she moaned as John drew a razor blade across one of her