He was standing in the yard of the al-Mina prison. The space was bounded by two temporary Portakabins and the wall of the main prison building. There was a small table sheltered by a golf umbrella, and there was a monitor and three empty bottles of beer on the table. He had a half-finished bottle in his hand, and he took a long draw on it before he ducked down to look at the monitor, shielding his eyes against the glare of the morning sun.

The picture showed a young Iraqi prisoner, late teens or early twenties, dressed in a prison jumpsuit. There was an ugly bruise on the side of his face, and his nostrils were blocked up with dried blood.

“Fuck this shit,” he said to Brent McNulty.

“Tell me about it.”

McNulty was Duffy’s number two. An ex-Ranger, a tough and hard-working man who had been employed by Manage Risk ever since he had left the military.

“You reckon any of them know anything?”

“Hard to say,” McNulty said. “Sure as shit we got to find out one way or another.”

“Yeah,” he said. “This is my fifth one today.”

He shrugged expressively. “Do I look impressed?”

“How many?”

“Nine.”

“You want this one, too? Make it an even ten?”

McNulty grinned. “You’re alright, boss. I’ll have a beer and watch out here. Make it a good one. Maybe I can learn a little.”

“Ah, fuck it. Sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can go home.”

He finished the beer and handed over the empty bottle. He took a ski mask from his pocket and pulled it over his head. He started to sweat immediately. That always put him in a bad mood.

He opened the door to the hut and went inside.

He remembered the first time he had sat in on an interrogation. He had a strong stomach, but he had almost vomited from what he had seen. The sordid room, the puddles of urine and blood on the floor, the prisoner who had been beaten so badly that he had been dragged back to his cell, his head lolling insensately between his shoulders, the flesh on the soles of his naked feet scoured into one big red welt by the length of hose that the Iraqis had used on him.

He had sat in on hundreds of interrogations since.

He had conducted hundreds.

He saw them for what they were, now: a vital tool. It was a game. The prisoner had a piece of information that he didn’t want to divulge. Duffy wanted the information. It was a battle of wills to see who came out on top.

Make it something impersonal like that, and the unpleasantness is easier to ignore.

All part of the game.

And Duffy always came out on top.

The inside of the hut was like all the others. The first thing that hit you was the heat. There was no ventilation, and even though the windows were blocked by blackout blinds, the sun still beat against the metal ceiling and cooked the air inside. And then there was the smell: a toxic mixture of sweat, urine and excrement, seemingly intensified by the temperature. There were two gaunt policemen from the Basra department, waiting to the sides. They were both sweating. They had spent five minutes working over the prisoner, softening him up. It was hot work.