An hour passed before the door next opened, and two of the men who had brought us to the room entered, one of them pushing a trolley loaded with food. They left the door unlocked behind them as they handed out paper cups of oily coffee and thin, moist sandwiches that tasted of grease and fat and little else.

Before they departed once more, one of the two men turned to me. ‘We need to talk to you, sir.’ He indicated the door with his head.

I regarded him warily. ‘About what?’

‘Why just him?’ asked Chloe.

‘Relax, lady,’ the man said. ‘We’re not Patriot agents. We just want you to tell us everything that happened, Mr Beche, all in your own words. We’ll be recording it. That okay by you?’

‘Sure,’ I said, aware that saying “no” almost certainly wasn’t an option. I stood carefully, then looked around at the others. ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’

‘Famous last words,’ said Selwyn with a faltering smile.

I wondered how Yuichi was doing, wherever he was.

I followed the man out while his companion took charge of the now-empty trolley, locking the door behind us.

‘Is that really necessary?’ I asked.

‘Orders,’ said the first man with a shrug. ‘They see you wandering around, people might ask questions. And we might have difficulty answering them.’

This time I was led upstairs. They took me into a room with a table, two chairs, a microphone and a large mirror on one wall that I assumed was one-way. My predecessor’s pages were sitting on the table, arranged in a neat pile. According to the calendar on the wall, it was some time in August.

One of my guards closed the door, the other taking one seat before gesturing to me to take the other. ‘Relax, pal,’ he said. ‘My name’s Louie. Just tell me everything that happened, right from the beginning. Can you do that for me?’

I swallowed away the dryness in my mouth. ‘Sure,’ I said. And then I started talking. But I was careful to omit any mention of Haden, and more than once I reached into my pocket to confirm that the envelope he had given me was, indeed, still there. Then my fingers touched the memory card from Casey’s camera. I hesitated a moment before lifting it out and handing it over to them, explaining what it was and how it had come into my hands.

I answered questions for another couple of hours after that. By the time they took me back downstairs and unlocked the door again, most of the others had curled up where they could to try and get some sleep. Chloe opened her eyes and blinked as they brought me in.

‘What happened?’ she murmured.

‘It’s just like they said,’ I told her. ‘They asked me questions and I told them everything I knew that happened.’