‘Nothing to say? All right.’ Tibbot went to the top of the stairs and looked down. ‘We’ve got days. I could call in sick to work, spend a week here working on you. Leave you sitting in your piss all day, all night. You haven’t told anyone you’re here, we know that.’ He walked back and sat down with his back against the wall. For a while there was just the sound of Grest’s laboured breath. ‘My daughter died because she couldn’t breathe.’ He looked down at his hands and the truncheon he was holding.

The adrenalin subsiding, I turned to stare at the wall, but I couldn’t help glancing back to see Tibbot sit Grest up again so that the back of his head was against the bannister. He smacked Grest across the bridge of the nose with the butt of the truncheon – not a hard blow, but enough to make Grest’s eyes stream with water. Then he pulled back his arm, ready to strike him fully across the face.

I wanted it to stop then and there. I rushed over, pulled Tibbot’s hands away and dragged Grest’s head up. ‘Tell us!’ I cried.

Tibbot thrust me aside roughly and grabbed Grest. ‘I’m telling you now.’ Tibbot shook his head. ‘I’m telling you now that this time, when I start, I’m not going to stop. I’m too fucking tired of this.’ Grest twisted his face up. ‘So now, for the last time, I swear it’s for the last time, what did you do to Lorelei Addington?’

Grest held his gaze on Tibbot. His chest rose and fell with rasping air. His lower lip was split and a line of blood was running from it. ‘Held her under the water,’ he mumbled.

Tibbot wiped his face with his sleeve. He stood silent for a long time, collecting himself. ‘What did you want from her?’

Grest shut his eyes. ‘The medicines.’ He slowly licked his lips.

‘What medicines?’

‘Antibiotics. Other stuff.’

‘American medicines,’ I said. Tibbot stared at me. God, I had been a fool. I had sat there in a blank room with Grest, telling him things he already knew. It probably took all his effort not to laugh at me. What he had wanted all along was the book. And then I had blundered in and presented an easy way to find what he wanted. He had followed me right to where he thought I had it stowed. After that he could have done to me what he had done to her.