Morgan snapped, suddenly and completely. ‘But I don’t know what went wrong. I don’t know.’ He hammered on the table with a clenched fist. ‘Can’t you get that through your thick skull?’

In the silence which followed Grant peered round the door, eyebrows raised. Miller shook his head, nodded to Brady and they joined the Superintendent in the corridor.

‘Anything?’ Grant said.

Miller shook his head. ‘No more success than we’ve had with the others.’

‘He seems genuinely bewildered to me,’ Brady put in. ‘I get the impression he’d like to know what happened as much as anybody.’

‘Right,’ Grant said briskly. ‘This is where keeping them separate might have paid off. Put them together in cell 15 and let’s see what happens.’

When the constable pushed Joe Morgan into the cell, Martin was sitting despondently on a bench against the wall. Morgan frowned in bewilderment as the door closed behind him.

‘What is this?’

Martin shrugged. ‘Search me.’

‘Maybe the place is wired for sound?’

Morgan looked the walls over carefully and behind him, the door opened again and Jack Fallon was pushed into the cell. He looked a mess. His lips were swollen and gashed, several teeth missing and the front of his shirt was soaked in blood.

He staggered forward, a wild look in his eyes and grabbed Morgan by the lapels. ‘What happened for Christ’s sake? Who was he?’

Morgan tore himself free with some difficulty. ‘Who was who?’

‘The bloke who came in through the tunnel and locked you and Johnny in the strongroom.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Morgan demanded.

‘I’m trying to tell you. I saw him on the bloody television screen. Big bloke all in black with a stocking over his face. He locked you and Johnny in the strongroom and I jumped him from the stairs.’

‘You had a barney?’

‘Not for long. Henry Cooper couldn’t have hit me any harder than he did.’

‘Maybe it was Harris?’ Martin said.

‘Do me a favour.’ Fallon laughed harshly. ‘I could break him in two with one hand tied behind my back. It wouldn’t make sense anyway. What would he stand to gain?’

‘Then why haven’t they put him in with the rest of us?’

‘Search me.’

Morgan turned away, his hands gripped tightly together. ‘Only one man knew we were pulling this caper,’ he said. ‘The man who organized it.’

‘Vernon?’ Martin’s eyes widened. ‘It don’t make sense, Joe.’

‘I’ve just got one prayer,’ Morgan said. ‘That one day they put him in the same nick as me. That’s all I ask.’

In the next cell, Grant reached up to switch off the tannoy and nodded to Miller and Brady. ‘That’ll do me. In we go.’

They went out into the passage and the constable who was standing at the door of cell 15 unlocked it quickly and stood back.