‘Why should I give them to you? I haven’t done anything.’

‘What would we find?’

‘Nothing.’

He asked who I had previously worked for, and then before that, going back years. After a while, as I’d been trained, I just refused, played indignant. I considered making noise about legal representation.

‘When did you begin working for Vectis?’ he said. So he had that much. Not great, but it made me quantifiable at least.

‘I don’t know any Vectis.’

‘Saracen?’

‘The oil company? I’ve got nothing to do with Saracen.’

He nodded as if he’d expected this disappointment, nodded to one of the guards. I was lifted up and removed from the room. Then things turned nasty. My hands were cuffed behind my back. We reached the top of steep concrete stairs down into darkness. Someone tripped me and caught me before I fell.

‘Be careful.’

‘Get the fuck off me.’

I felt the rising panic of powerlessness. Then I was slammed face first into the wall. Blood began to trickle into my mouth. The front of my skull throbbed, but I hadn’t blacked out.

‘Next time you fall down them.’ One man turned me around and the other punched me hard in the stomach. I dropped to my knees, winded. There was a voice close to my ear.

‘You think anyone knows you’re here?’

It was a good question. The Lion Hotel’s sleepy receptionist had some awareness of my predicament. Callum Walker knew I was in Astana; he didn’t strike me as someone who’d make much noise in the event of my disappearance. Hugh Stevenson might raise the alarm after a week or two. Was I about to find out how Joanna had vanished? About twelve people had witnessed me in the hands of the Kazakh state, and not one of them would remember if they were told not to.

I was uncuffed, given a wad of blue hand towels and taken back to the office. My interrogator hadn’t moved, only the papers on the desk had been rearranged.

‘You are sabotaging our country. You come here and bring trouble with you. We are peaceful and you create war.’

I shook my head and staunched the blood.

‘You think there is no law here?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been in this country less than two days.’

‘We know who you are, what you are doing here.’

‘Apparently not.’

He opened a file and pushed a printout towards me, a poor-quality image of a man walking between a dusty Mercedes and a residential building with steps and an intercom. It took me a few seconds to think where I’d seen him before. It was the man with me in the fake clip. Here, he wore an open-necked shirt and sunglasses.