‘Sharp, Abbott, really sharp. This is exactly how we want you for the game. It’s good that the sedative didn’t take that out of you,’ said Kilgore.

As it was, no zip-ties were produced. Instead, the five of them trooped out of the staffroom and back along the balcony. Kilgore knocked on a door, which was opened by another guy touting an M-16, who nodded them through into what looked like a small anteroom, the kind of place that a nervous job applicant might sit prior to an interview.

But nobody took a seat at the small sofas lining either side of the room. They were taken through to the next room, a big conference room. In here sat the Norton family.

Chapter 50

CHAPTER 50

‘Thank you very much, Kilgore,’ said Lady Norton. Abbott looked at her and tried to square the image before him, the one of the slightly elderly but still very elegant multi-millionairess with the person he had seen on the video, presiding over the very worst sort of depravity.

And found that he could not. Because even though she was evidently a person capable of something so terrible – and indeed by the simple act of being here and competing in this sick charade was participating in something also quite evil – he still could not compute. That look. That Agatha Christie way of expressing herself. It didn’t fit. Even though he knew it to be true.

He cast his eye across the other members of the meeting. Next to Juliet Norton was a spare seat that Kilgore now took. Beside him was Clifford Levine. Next was a surprise. Sitting beside Levine was a fixer that Abbott knew from The Circuit, that collection of commercial security operators who worked all over the world but mainly in the Middle East.

The Circuit was where Abbott had gone after SF. It was where guys like him went when they couldn’t bear to leave the life behind. They either joined big security firms or they relied on work which mainly came through fixers, people like this guy here. His name was Monroe. He and Abbott were hardly what you’d call buddies. As far as Abbott could remember, they had once exchanged a few words in Baghdad, of all places. But still, he knew Monroe and Monroe knew him. Their eyes met across the room, but Monroe’s gaze slid away, and if Abbott had been looking for help in that direction, then he was looking in the wrong place. Monroe’s presence told him something else. That whoever his opponents were – his true opponents, the ‘proxies’ – they would not be paid thugs off the street. They’d be the cream.

Next to Monroe was a man that Abbott recognised as Ross Norton.

Norton was slouching. He wore an open-neck shirt and an air of relaxation shared by nobody else in the room. That was interesting, thought Abbott. Did that mean anything? Should he read anything into that?