As I get up to leave he grabs me by the wrist. I tell him I’ll come straight back. I can feel his hot gaze branding my back as I walk away.

Sammy steps into the bar, looking dazed, and I shake my head and wave at her to step back inside. She is so outside of herself she doesn’t recognise me. I push her back into the toilets and take her into a cubicle and lock the door.

‘What the fuck?’

‘It is ok, it is me, Nico.’

‘Ah, Roomie,’ she says as she slumps against me.

‘What happen?’

‘The note.’

‘Oh, Sammy. Why you think it safe to show him?’

‘Safe?’ she says. ‘Safe?’ as if she’s never heard the word before. She spits out some blood.

‘We must get you back in car.’

‘Not sure … he is … finished with me yet.’

‘How you leave?’

She shrugs. ‘I flew …’

I unlock the cubicle door and lead her to the sink, where I pour warm water into the palms of my hands and wipe away the blood as best I can. She doesn’t seem to notice.

A young girl in spiky heels walks in, looking drunk and overly made up. ‘Ouchy. Boyfriend trouble?’ she says, nodding in Sammy’s direction. How old is she? ‘At least you have one,’ she says. ‘I can’t seem to keep a hold of any of them. Maybe he was jealous. It’s sort of romantic, that kind of thing.’ She puts red lipstick on her cheeks and lips and pouts. ‘I’m not all that bad looking, am I?’ Then she turns on her high heels and is gone. I look at Sammy, expecting peals of laughter, but she didn’t even seem to register the girl.

When we walk back into the bar, the girl with the rouged cheeks and mouth is talking to the man I was with, who sees me and salutes. Something about that curt hand gesture and the set of his jaw tells me that he knows about Sammy and the note. The air has constricted suddenly in the room and it feels as if a poisonous gas is hanging there, coating my skin in a hot damp sheen. There are a thousand pairs of invisible eyes following our every move, a thousand arrows poised in our direction.

The fat taxi man walks over and motions for us to follow him, and then he makes a miniscule movement, like he’s slitting his throat. No one else would know, unless you were studying him very closely, and as I think this I notice two guys fall silent and turn in our direction. One of them, a serious-looking young man with glasses, is staring right at him.