CHAPTER ONE

      GERARD FINDLAY was watching his fax machine roll out another irritated message from his news editor when he heard the screaming.

      The noise took him back nearly three months, to the moments that haunted his sleep every night. He began to shake, waiting for the machine-gun fire, the deafening thud of rockets landing on their target, the smell of burning, the clouds of brick dust rising in the air, then his mind cleared and he remembered where he was, realised what he was hearing.

      The noise came from the house next door and he was safe in London.

      ‘Those girls! Those damned girls!’ he said through his teeth, angrily aware of the perspiration trickling down his back. ‘One day I’ll wring their necks!’

      From the day, six months ago, that he’d moved into a little mews cottage a stone’s throw from Chelsea Bridge he had been driven mad by the girls who lived next door. They were either having a party, playing loud pop music or yelling at each other from room to room. He had banged on the wall, gone next door to complain, and got nowhere. In the end, he had complained to the agent who had rented him his cottage.

      ‘One of them is the owner’s stepdaughter,’ the agent wryly told him. ‘The redhead.’

      ‘Oh, her,’ Gerard had said, remembering a girl who walked like a dancer, tall, slender, amazingly graceful, with a mop of vivid red hair and green eyes that reminded him of the slanting stare of an angry cat.

      The agent had grinned at him. ‘Easy on the eye, isn’t she? Mind you, so is her friend, with the long black hair. They’re both models, you know.’

      Incredulously, he had said, ‘You mean there are only two of them? There always seems to be a whole mob in the place!’

      The agent had laughed indulgently. ‘You know what young people are like! Partying day and night. Look, I’ll report your complaint, but I can’t promise anything will come of it.’

      Gerard had no idea how the landlord had taken his complaint. He had been unexpectedly dispatched next day, with a camera team, to cover a civil war in what had once been a peaceful little country, when the team who had been out there for some time showed signs of battle fatigue. It was unwise to leave them under strain of that kind for too long; their reports always deteriorated. Gerard himself had felt the strain before long, although he had only been in the war zone for a matter of weeks.

      When he’d got back home from the hospital he’d noticed that the only tenant of the tiny cottage next door was now the owner’s stepdaughter, the redhead who moved as if she danced every step she took. Every time they saw each other, coming or going, she ignored him in a very pointed, icy fashion.

      It was obvious that she knew he had complained to the agent about her and her friend, and she resented it. Had her stepfather blamed the other girl, the dark-haired one? And asked her to leave? Gerard felt guilty about that; he had rather liked the dark girl. When he’d first moved in, she had come round with sandwiches and a pot of good coffee while his removal firm was shifting furniture around. The removal men had been wide-eyed and fascinated. When she had gone they had wolfwhistled and said, ‘You lucky man, you! We’ll move in with you, with neighbours like that. Did you see her legs? Wow.’

      Gerard might have been more interested, himself, if he hadn’t just quarrelled with a girl he had been dating for months. He had discovered that while he was abroad for weeks Judy usually dated other men, and Gerard resented it.

      ‘You mean you never stray while you’re away?’ Judy had been cynically incredulous and when he’d insisted that he didn’t she just wouldn’t believe him. It had been the end of the affair. He had been badly hurt, jealous every time he imagined her with another man. It had left Gerard too sore to want to get involved with anyone else just yet.

      The dark girl had invited him to one of their parties, the following weekend, but he had been busy and had forgotten all about it. The next time they bumped into each other coming or going from