Sweaty shook his head. There were dark stains at the armpits of his England shirt.

‘Don’t tell me you can’t say,’ said Abbott. ‘Don’t you dare.’

‘They’ll kill me if I do.’

‘I’ll kill you if you don’t.’

‘You said you weren’t going to kill me.’

‘I said I wouldn’t kill you if I got the answers I wanted. Am I getting them?’ He shook his head. ‘Not right now I’m not. Tell you what, let’s get you started. Who’s Kilgore?’

‘You know Kilgore?’

‘I’ve heard the name once or twice. He in London, is he?’

Sweaty nodded furiously. ‘He works for them.’

‘Works for who? Juliet? Is it something to do with a woman called Juliet?’

A change had come over Sweaty now. Where before he’d been nervous but relatively composed, just about holding on, now he began to tremble. His hands went to the arms of the chair in which he sat, his eyes travelled to the bullet hole between his legs as though trying to make an assessment, attempting to calculate which evil was the greater, the one who stood before him holding a weapon in his face, or the other one – the one he couldn’t see but who clearly held him in his thrall.

Abbott watched his thought process with the interest of an anthropologist, knowing what Sweaty would decide. That however scared he was of this other unseen presence, it was the threat before him that was most imminent. And Abbott would leave here with the information he needed.

His eyes flicked to the screens.

Old and empty Hobnob packets. Images of child sex abuse.

And at that very moment, he decided that before he left, he’d put one in Sweaty’s brain. He’d put a round in Sweaty’s brain and do so without a second thought or backward glance. He’d take no pleasure in it, but he’d do it for his brother Chris and every other poor kid who had suffered abuse because of Sweaty. And when he was done with Sweaty, he’d get Doyle. And when he was done with Doyle, he’d get whoever it was that Doyle answered to.

‘Who are they?’ he asked Sweaty. ‘Who is Kilgore? Who is Juliet?’

The gun was held steady. Fear in Sweaty’s eyes.

Abbott’s gaze went up. To the monitors. Seeing the rooms, the prisoner kids, the . . .

Barman.

The barman with the dreads was moving across the floor of the main pub upstairs. He was moving towards the cellar door.