‘With Craig? You don’t even know where he’s going.’

‘I shouldn’t imagine I’ll have any difficulty in finding out.’

Carver frowned in bewilderment. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘A challenge, Benny. A challenge – something you wouldn’t understand.’

‘You mean Craig wants you to follow him?’

Vernon opened the wall safe and took out a black cash box. ‘That’s the general idea.’ He returned to his desk with the cash box and unlocked it. ‘This is what he’s been aiming at from the beginning – him and me in a final showdown, but he’s made a big mistake.’ When Vernon smiled he looked like the Devil incarnate. ‘I was a good man in the jungle, Ben – the best there was. Craig’s still got to find that out.’

He opened the cash box, tossed two packets of fivers across and started to fill his pockets with the rest. ‘There’s two hundred there and good luck to you.’

Carver shook his head slowly and threw the money back. ‘We’ve been together a long time, Mr Vernon. I’m not dropping out now.’

Vernon stared at him incredulously. ‘Loyalty at this stage, Ben?’ And then he laughed harshly and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘All right then. Let’s see if we can’t show the bastard a thing or two.’

‘But who turned you in, Morgan, that’s what I can’t understand?’ Miller said.

It was just after four a.m. and the pale green walls of the Interrogation Room seemed to float out of the shadows, unreal and transitory as if they might disappear at any moment.

Joe Morgan sat at the plain wooden table under a strong central light that made him look old and sunken. Brady leaned against the wall near the window and a young constable stood stolidly in the corner.

‘Nobody turned us in. The whole thing went sour, that’s all.’

‘Then who closed the strongroom door on you and Martin?’

‘I don’t know – maybe it just slammed shut.’

‘All right, miracles sometimes happen. That still doesn’t explain how we found Jack Fallon lying beaten and unconscious in the passageway.’

Morgan didn’t reply and Brady said helpfully, ‘Maybe Fallon just doesn’t like you any more. Maybe he decided to lock you and Martin in the strongroom just for kicks and took off. Unfortunately he tripped and fell in the passage, knocking himself unconscious.’

Morgan turned away contemptuously. ‘You ought to see a psychiatrist.’

‘We’ll provide you with one for free,’ Miller said. ‘You’re going to need him badly, Morgan. You’re going to sit for the next ten years staring at the wall, asking yourself the same question over and over again until it drives you out of your mind.’