Last time I’d been here, it had been in pristine order, with everything in its proper place. But not today, not anymore. The place was a complete mess, with broken crockery and smashed glass all over the floor and the bed, along with what looked like the contents of all his food packets and tins. Corn flakes, mixed with sugar, instant coffee, baked beans and some indistinguishable brown stuff had all been ground into the erstwhile spotless carpet, and someone had squeezed tomato ketchup all over Marcus’s bed in long thin lines.

‘You okay?’ I asked from over his shoulder.

‘No,’ he said, without turning or looking up. ‘I think they’ve broken my bloody collarbone. Why didn’t you come?’

‘Because, Marcus, then we would have both ended up just like you are now. Or even worse.’

‘He said he only wanted to check your mobile phone.’

‘And you believed him?’

He gestured with his head towards his kitchenette.

Lying on the worktop by the sink were the remains of his own phone, totally shattered beyond any hope of repair.

‘He was after the video I made of him on Monday.’

‘Did he watch any of it?’ I asked.

‘Only a few minutes at the beginning. He wanted to know where I had hidden the phone. I told him it had been in the teapot. He went over and took the teapot down from the shelf and stamped on it, but it didn’t break, and he also hurt his foot trying. That made me laugh, but that was a big mistake because he got angry and told the other two to smash the whole place up. Then he took the SIM card out of my phone before getting one of his men to hit the rest of it with a wooden bat they’d brought with them in a golf bag. Used all his strength, too. Hit it over and over. About six or seven times.’

Looking at the tangled mass of what was left of the phone, I wasn’t surprised. Valance had clearly been trying to remove any trace of the video. That’s why he’d wanted to check my phone. But little did he know that Chico also had a copy of it.

Perhaps it would be wise to make a few more copies. Maybe I’d even lodge one with Charles, or with a solicitor.

‘Then they hit me with the same bloody bat,’ Marcus said. ‘One of those brutes held my left arm out and the other one hit me really hard on the collarbone. I heard it snap. How could anyone do that?’

I thought back to my encounters with the same two men, first in the Catterick Racecourse car park and then in my own garden. I’d clearly got away quite lightly.