‘You said no pain.’ Bloom’s words were detached, a comment on a technicality rather than his distress. But when she glanced at him, he was sure he saw something. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared, but he knew he hadn’t imagined it. He had worked with the woman for five years. She might have fooled Seraphine, but not him. He knew her better than anyone else. He had seen her ability to read people, assess a situation and make good decisions. And he knew she’d be relying on him to remember that. That’s what he’d seen. A message meant only for him. Brief but clear. A message that said, Trust me.

‘He wanted me to do it. He enjoys being the macho hero, don’t you, Marcus?’ Seraphine tapped his arm to lift the veins, then selected a plump one running diagonally across his skin. ‘I never took you for the strong, silent type. You were always very vocal with me … especially in the bedroom.’ She looked at him briefly before refocusing on the vein and moving the needle close to his skin. She sighed. ‘I’m really going to miss that.’

Jameson felt the needle make contact with his skin. What if he was wrong? What if he’d imagined that look? The mind could be a great conjuror when you really wanted to see something.

‘What did Libby call your boy, Stuart?’ Bloom’s question was so out of context that every pair of eyes fell on her, including Seraphine’s. Bloom continued to look at Stuart, her eyebrows raised slightly, expecting an answer.

Stuart shook his head gently. He looked from Bloom to Seraphine, then back again.

Seraphine sat upright, the syringe tilted away now from his vein. Jameson studied it in her hand. The taut rope binding his wrists to his ankles restricted his movement, but if he moved his left foot and left hand together, maybe he could reach the syringe?

‘Isn’t that what your text message was about?’ asked Bloom.

‘How did you know that?’ Stuart’s thick black eyebrows bunched together.

Jameson hoped his partner knew what she was doing. This was not a group to fuck with. In the past, he’d sometimes suspected that someone might be a psychopath – the agents on both sides, for instance, who walked away from a killing without looking back. But he’d never been sure. They might simply have been good at compartmentalizing. But these people in this room were self-confessed and validated psychos. The real deal. And he could feel it in the air.

‘I expect you instruct your players to dump their phones and acquire pay-as-you-go versions so they remain incognito,’ said Bloom. ‘Is that something you relax once they’re in your pocket?’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Stuart.

Seraphine sat back further and the syringe moved a little further away. Jameson needed to grab it soon, before she moved again.