It was almost three hours before Abdul came back downstairs, by which time Frank had finished cooking. Karel, Nick, Viktorya, and the guests ate in the living room, and the men who were standing guard ate outside, leaving Frank alone in the kitchen.

He was still sitting at the table, his plate of food untouched, when Nick brought a stack of empty plates in and dumped them on the ledge. Watching as the man opened the cupboard and took out the bag of drugs, he said, ‘Where’s Irena?’

Nick walked out without answering, and Frank shoved his chair back and scraped his now-congealed food into the bin. As he was running hot water into the sink to do the washing up, the man who’d helped him with the bags came in with his and his friends’ plates.

‘Cheers for that,’ he said, putting them down on the ledge.

Frank paused what he was doing and, twisting his head, watched as the man walked out of the room.

‘Yo, Gaz . . . check this vid,’ one of the men in the porch said when he opened the front door and stepped outside. ‘It’s one of them—’

The door closed before Frank could hear any more, and he frowned thoughtfully as he turned back to the dishes. The man, Gaz, wasn’t like the others. There was intelligence in his dark eyes that made Frank wonder why he’d got himself mixed up in all this. He appeared to be around Evan’s age, and he was a good-looking lad, so why was he holed up here with these criminals when he could be making something of his life?

Before Frank could think any more about it, the living room door opened, and he glanced back over his shoulder when Karel, Viktorya, and Nick came out into the hall, followed by two strangers, one of whom was quite tall and muscular, while the other was as wide as he was tall, with thick rolls of fat cascading down his neck that made it impossible to see where his bald head ended and his shoulders began.