The Sons of Scarlatti. John McNally

next week, honest…”

      She caved in. “I’ll do my best.”

      “Brilliant! Wet food in the morning, dry at night, and just give him a blanket to lie on. Oh and walk him when you can, but it’s just as easy to let him wander.”

      “And don’t kill it,” added Al.

      “But I will have to tell your grandmother about this!”

      “Don’t worry, Al will do that. He’s in enough trouble as it is.”

      She watched Finn jump back in beside his unreasonably handsome uncle and gave a little sigh.

      Al put his foot down and the Mangusta razzed off, Yo-yo chasing them halfway down the lane.

       Trust yourself.

       Be yourself.

       Just keep going.

      It wasn’t much of a legacy, but it was all he had.

      “Can we go on holiday now?” asked Finn.

      “We can go on holiday now,” replied Al.

      The sun was shining and they were roaring through the English countryside in an Italian sports car, headed for the continent on a school day in possession of various bits of scientific equipment, a tent, two fishing rods, half a tube of Pringles and not a care in the world.

      Could things be more perfect…?

       The beast whipped at the flank of the sow badger again and again and again.

       It was an attack so frenzied, venom leaked from the beast’s abdomen, spattering the animal’s hide.

       The effects of the cold store and anaesthesia had left it sluggish most of the morning, but the moment it had locked its barbed extendable jaw into the badger flesh, rich blood overwhelmed the beast’s senses and only one thing flashed through its crazed nervous system –

       Kill kill kill kill kill kill…

       Three Tyros ¹ watched.

       Two stood well back in Kevlar bodysuits. Fully masked.

       The eldest, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, stood close by in just a hoody and jeans.

       It was he who had positioned the badger, crippled but alive, on the north side of the wood. A farm animal would have served just as well, but in the remote chance a walker happened across the body, a dead cow might have given cause for concern and a phone call to a farmer, whereas a dead wild animal was just… nature.

       He’d held the beast as it woke. He had touched it: him it would taste, but not attack.

       He had released it carefully, directly on to the badger’s side. Now he watched as it drank its fill.

       After eight minutes, the beast unhooked its jaws. The sow badger was unconscious. In a few minutes she would be dead.

       The beast, fat and drowsy with blood, felt an instinctive urge as its abdomen strained and cells divided and extended in a race to become full, viable eggs.

       The Tyros withdrew, as planned, and split up without a word.

       Nothing remained of the release operation but an electronic eye concealed in a nearby tree.

       THREE

       “Help-me-Mrs-Murphy – come to my aid!

       You’re gonna flip the pin on my love-grenade!

       I-mean boom I-mean bust I-mean whom I-mean us!”

      “I wrote that. I was in a band. Do you ‘dig’ that? No. Because you lack the life experience to appreciate the majesty of—”

      “Do you see that helicopter?” interrupted Finn, looking back out of the window of the Mangusta.

      “That what?”

      Al believed in the to and fro of vigorous debate on long journeys and, as such, he and Finn had spent much of the morning arguing about wind turbines, football, whether Concorde could be revived and adapted to fly into space, whether snow was better than powered flight and, if the Nazis had taken over, which of Grandma’s friends would have turned collaborator.

      They were just starting on Al’s assertion that “rock music is wasted on kids” when Finn first noticed the chopper.

      He craned his neck to get a good look back up the road. Al tried to locate it in his mirrors.

      The route was winding and the tree cover heavy, as they were on the edge of the New Forest, but unmistakably, less than a couple of hundred metres behind and above them, a helicopter was swinging back and forth, following the line of the road, getting lower and lower as it went.

      “It’s getting really low,” said Finn. “What do you think they’re doing?”

      “I hope it’s not your truant officer…” said Al, letting the joke trail off as he became more concerned.

      The chopper was approaching fast now, almost skimming the tops of the trees. A couple of cars behind them had both slowed and pulled over.

      Al carried on – the chopper didn’t have police markings after all – but as they came over a ridge into more open country it closed in, violently large and loud, bringing itself right up alongside the Mangusta.

      “What are they doing?” said Al.

      Then a voice echoed out of a loudhailer on the chopper’s belly.

      “DR ALLENBY, PULL OVER.”

      “They know you?” squealed Finn, impressed.

      Al slowed to a halt. The chopper went to land in the road ahead.

      “What is this? What’s going on?” said Finn.

      Al paused for a moment. “I’m not sure, but at the very least it’s bad manners.”

      He suddenly put his foot down. The car shot off. Then Al threw it into a screeching handbrake turn which spun them back the way they came. The V8 engine roared and Finn felt himself pushed back into the leather seat as the acceleration bit – there was no doubt about it, these cars were built to thrill.

      “Why aren’t we stopping?” Finn shouted.

      “Might be agents of a foreign state… Might be an old girlfriend trying to kill me… But don’t worry, we can lose them in the woods up here.”

      Was he joking? He must be joking. Then Finn noticed that Al’s knuckles were white where he gripped the wheel. Finn hunkered down lower in his seat, heart hammering with excitement.

      “Drive fast, Al.”

      “Check.”

      They were closing on the woods, but the chopper was almost upon them.

      Again came the voice from the chopper’s loudhailer: “PULL OVER, DR ALLENBY, BY ORDER OF COMMANDER KING.”

      Al cursed, slammed on the brakes and spun the Mangusta back to a halt at the side of the road, just short of the trees. The chopper descended gently on to the grass beside them.

      Finn was transfixed. “Al…?” he started to ask, but his uncle, too furious to