Ellis Brown. She was not surprised he was here. The only surprise was that she had trusted him for one moment. She said nothing – both because she had nothing to say to him, and because she couldn’t currently find her voice. But he cracked open a glass bottle of water and poured her a tumblerful, and she was extremely thirsty. Her control was flowing back into her mind and her muscles and she took a deep draught of the water. Along with the sense in her legs, she felt the comforting press of the phone still in her pocket. If they held her here for any longer, she could call the police or Suki to come and get her. But for now, she took in the room, assessing what was happening to her.

The room was furnished like a private parlour in a gentleman’s club. Or at least it matched Petra’s third-hand image of the parlours she’d seen on Agatha Christie mysteries on TV. Dark wood and green baize, heavy velvet drapes tied back with thick gilded ropes, venetian blinds lowered over the windows. A portrait of a horse and hunter over a mantelpiece, along with a clock that was showing ten minutes past ten. Petra couldn’t tell if that was the real time or whether the clock was permanently set to advert time. Again, she resisted the urge to pull the phone from her pocket.

But the veneer of age and establishment wasn’t supported by the smell of the room. Instead of dust and must and mildew and ancient smoke and animal fats, the brewery’s yeasty funk asserted itself, overlaid by the astringency of carpet glue and printing ink. The cheap plush she’d been lying on, the paper on the wall, had all been recently pasted in for tonight only. The only organic odour came from Ellis Brown’s cigarette as he leaned against the wall near the closed door.