‘I have not seen any other women here, Malcolm.’

‘Roland got one here . . .’ he stammers. ‘A woman, I mean . . . Roland brought a woman here . . .’

‘Roland?’ Safa calls out. ‘Is that true?’

‘It is,’ he calls from his office quickly, very quickly.

‘You said no one else knows apart from us . . .’

‘I promise you,’ Roland says, appearing in his doorway. ‘It was a woman.’

‘If you are lying to me I will kill you all. Are we clear? Good. Now be quick. I expect you back in one hour.’

‘One hour?’ Konrad says, taking back the tablet to look down the list. ‘But . . . they . . .’

‘One hour,’ Safa snaps. ‘The world is depending on us so hurry up. One hour.’

‘Yes, miss,’ Konrad shouts as they run for the door.

She walks on, marching through the corridor to the main room to find Harry at the big table pouring coffee into three earthenware mugs while Ben rests his head in his hands at the one remaining intact table.

‘They’re on it,’ she says brightly, her tone immediately changed. ‘I gave them a huge list and said they had an hour . . . and I also said I would kill them if I found out they washed and changed me. Apparently they had a woman come here and do it.’

‘Who?’ Ben asks, lifting his head.

‘Didn’t ask,’ she says, shrugging. ‘You’re the investigator, not me.’

‘You’re a copper,’ he says.

‘I told you already. I’m shit at investigating.’

‘Whatever,’ Ben groans as Harry plonks a mug of coffee in front of him.

‘What did you put on the list?’ Harry asks, sitting down heavily.

‘Boots and clothes, nothing too difficult. Are you sure you’re with us on this, Ben?’

‘For now,’ he replies honestly. ‘How does Roland know we won’t just do one on the first job?’

‘Do one what?’ Harry asks.

‘Leave, just walk away,’ Ben says.

‘Do one means to leave?’

‘Yeah, sort of, like slang. You’d say do one mate to someone you wanted to go away or you might say I’m doing one if you wanted to get out of somewhere. So anyway, how does Roland know we won’t just walk off on the first job?’

‘We do the mission,’ Harry says with a stern look at him.

‘This isn’t a war now, Harry.’

‘He said the world ends,’ Harry says. ‘We’ve got to stop that.’

‘We’ve got to stop the world from ending.’ Ben says it back quietly while his head spins.

‘We did it before.’

‘When?’

‘The Germans. We stopped them.’

‘Harry, this isn’t like that,’ Ben says.

‘Don’t overthink it.’

‘Mate, this isn’t about overthinking it. This isn’t a war with planes and submarines . . .’