Klara, as it turned out, was driving the second car – with Teresa riding shotgun beside her. Teresa marched her to a white Camry, the gun pressed against her. Ricky pushed me forward, a black duffel bag swinging from his shoulder, with Todor keeping an eye out if anyone was on the street. Todor used his key remote to open his car door. Klara got in behind the wheel, Teresa training the gun on her. She told Klara that she should put her hands on the wheel and keep them there until she said otherwise. Todor handed the keys over to Teresa. She clicked open the passenger door and walked to the other side of the car, the gun always pointed in my daughter’s direction. She got into the passenger seat. Then she used the remote to turn on the engine. It fired into life. Todor turned to me and said:

‘I want Ricky to do the driving, so you are going to program the address into his phone. Then you and I are going to sit in the back seat and have a little talk. I told the CEO that, as he put me in charge of sorting out this problem, I would be running the recovery operation by my own rules. I don’t want Teresa to have the address on her GPS. Just in case that hothead side of her comes out and she decides to get ahead of us and take matters into her own hands.’

‘What the fuck is she doing here in the first place?’ I said.

‘All will be explained. Right now Klara and Teresa are going to follow us. If we get separated I’m going to tell Teresa to call me and we will pull over somewhere and wait for them to catch up. How far is it from here?’

‘Maybe three hours.’

He checked his watch.

‘Then we’ll be there just after midnight. I’m going to talk to Teresa.’

He went over and knocked on the passenger-door window. Teresa lowered it. They had a fast exchange. She raised the window back up. Todor motioned to Ricky that we should head to the Volvo. Ricky nudged me with the gun. Before I turned away I raised my hand towards Klara. She had a look on her face I’d never seen before: pure terror.

‘Get moving,’ Ricky said to me.

We walked over to the Volvo.

‘Keys,’ Ricky said.

I pulled them out and handed them to him. He and Todor had a rapid-fire exchange, then Ricky opened the back door and ordered me in. With the gun trained on me I took my place. Then he gave me his cellphone.

‘Put in the address now – and if you fuck around, put in something false … bang.’

He shoved the gun against my head as he said this.

‘No need for theatrics, Ricky,’ Todor said, ‘especially as Brendan is going to do everything we say. Isn’t that right, Brendan?’