‘Just a moment.’ He crossed to Meredith, let him know what they planned. Meredith in turn passed word round to Hunt and Pollard, suggested that he himself should give the countdown for a simultaneous assault by Paul and Smith on the double doors and by Hunt and Pollard on the passage door.

They positioned themselves about a yard from the doors. Mere­dith raised his voice.

‘On the count of zero. Three. Two. One. Zero!’

Paul and Smith hurled themselves at the doors. Paul felt his left shoulder and upper arm thud painfully against the dingy brown panels in unison with Smith’s effort. Both men gasped with the shock. Breathing heavily they straightened up, saw that their efforts had met with some success. There was a two inch wide vertical gap of darkness between the door edges now. Smith strode to the table, picked up a torch, shone it through the gap.

‘There’s all sorts of things piled up here. That’s what’s holding the doors. Come on, let’s give them another shove!’

Again Paul’s aching shoulder struck the door. This time he heard a grinding, creaking noise as the objects behind it were displaced a few more inches. The gap was a foot wide now. Even as he recognized that the barricade against the doors included the old-fashioned heavy kitchen table and a six-foot-tall massive double-­doored cupboard, he heard Meredith call out that the men in the corridor were having some success. Through the gap he saw torchlight from the corridor splash through the pitch darkness beyond the barrier.

His eyes shining in triumph, Smith put his back to the partially open right-hand door and heaved. The cupboard tilted, hung for a moment then toppled to fall with a resounding crash on the kitchen floor. It was easier then to push away the table lying on its side and prise open the kitchen doors fully. Almost at the same time Pollard and Hunt managed to squeeze through the gap in their doorway and enter the icy kitchen.

Lamplight combined with the torch beams to illuminate a scene of insane chaos. Apart from the fallen cupboard, the upturned table and the cupboard contents – pots, pans, cups, saucers, plates, tins and packets of food – the old cooker, fridge and washing machine had also been displaced. The washing machine stood on top of the cooker, both pieces of kitchen equipment having barred entrance to the kitchen by the passage doorway.

Silently the four men shone their torches about. Many of the food packets had burst. A number of the tins had been crumpled and even torn open. Pools of syrup held half-peaches and apricots, resembling eggs freshly broken from their shells. Mounds of beans gleamed oilily amid broken packets of biscuits.