Jules hobbled over to sit herself up on the desk next to Shah, feeling her bruises and strained muscles every inch of the way. Her neck was so stiff and sore, she had to turn her whole body rather than just moving her head. She needed a long hot bath, a cold G and T, and some answers. She needed to know the Rhino was going to pull through, and that Cesky was going to leave off. She didn’t need him brought to justice, or anything so fucking infantile. She just wanted to be left alone. Perhaps, with one of his hirelings now in her possession, they could come to an understanding: he could give up his vengeance kick, and she could keep her mouth shut about it. She was about to speak, to ask their prisoner why he was trying to kill her and her friends, when somebody wrapped gently on the office door.

Shah bid whoever it was to enter, and Nick Pappas appeared. He smiled at Jules and said, somewhat cryptically, ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes.’

Shah seemed to understand what he meant.

‘This the last of the Mohicans, is it?’ Pappas said, pointing at Parmenter, who still hadn’t spoken.

The Australian was holding a phone, identical to the one he’d given her at the café yesterday morning. Unlike Julianne, Pappas knew exactly what he was doing. The screen lit up as his fingers danced over it, and after a few seconds he held up the mobile to compare their prisoner with an image that appeared on screen.

‘What do you reckon?’ he asked, passing the phone to Shah. The old soldier took it and spent a few moments considering the likeness. He nodded at the young Gurkha, fluttering his fingers under his chin. Grabbing a handful of Parmenter’s lanky grey hair, Baran pulled his head back with brute force, so that they could all get a look at his face.

‘Fuck you,’ he growled in a recognisably American accent. He sounded as though he hailed from the north-east, like the Rhino. Jules wondered how he’d got into this line of work. Ex-military? Mafia? He didn’t look the type. Creepy rather than hard.

Shah passed the phone to Julianne. She couldn’t immediately make out what she was looking at, but the meaning of the image soon resolved itself. It was a still, taken from security footage at the Gonzales Road Marina. A man was walking away from the Rhino’s mooring. A long-billed baseball cap hid his face, but there was no mistaking the unusually tall frame nor the stiff, inelegant gait of a man who was all knees and elbows.