The bomb-proof door led into a tiny security room lined with thick bullet-proof glass. I was searched with cold efficiency. My bag and phone were taken ‘for security’. Then the officer on reception duty produced a device that looked like an iPad. He told me to press my fingers against the screen.

‘What’s this for?’

‘Records.’

When they had their records I was directed into a corridor, through two sets of doors with swipe entry, each feeling like another layer of soil above my head, into an office. Not the interrogation cell I’d been braced for. The Kazakh flag was in place behind the desk, beneath a framed photograph of the President, who looked like the Dalai Lama compared to the individual sheltering beneath his gaze. He was small, with dark eyes and a dark suit, handkerchief in the breast pocket, which suggested an ominous amount of pleasure in his role. No computer, laptop or mobile visible. The phone on the desk was a corded black Siemens.

I could tell he was senior. I tried to read the room again, noticed one other framed image on the wall: three men in traditional Kazakh clothing above a line of text: If there is no owner of the fire, your motherland will be enveloped in flames.

The man stared at me, tapping the Toby Bell passport against his desk.

I prepared myself mentally. Keep calm. But Toby Bell wouldn’t keep calm, or quiet, and one technique for interrogation scenarios was noise. The more noise you make the fewer questions they can ask, the less chance they have of tripping you up. Outrage was a kind of silence of its own.

‘What the hell is this? I’ve been here less than two days. I have no idea what’s going on, but you’ve arrested a British national for no good reason. I believe your government has close relations with the UK, that a lot of potential investment could be jeopardised if Kazakhstan is seen to intimidate visiting business people at random.’

‘You flew in last week.’ He spoke calmly, in accented English.

‘I flew in two days ago, from Kiev.’

His face was a mask, eyes showing neither doubt nor disappointment.

‘The flight number?’

‘I didn’t memorise it,’ I said. The flight number would be a step closer to tracing me to twenty-four hours in Zagreb, and I wanted to delay that revelation. He established my time of arrival and gave instructions to a man beside the door to go and check it. I wondered if they noticed that I didn’t ask to speak to my embassy.

‘And where were you before?’

‘London.’

‘But you have been in Kazakhstan previously.’

‘Never.’

‘Who do you know here?’

I told him about the meeting with Toreali, then asked who exactly I was talking to. He ignored the question, asked for passwords for my phone and laptop. I refused.

‘Why do you refuse?’