Jo looked at her phone. Had he been cut off? Or had he hung up on her deliberately? She looked at her legal pad, at the name Patrick, and then waited a couple of minutes to see if he was going to call again. When he didn’t, she switched to her landline, dialled the number logged in her cellphone and waited for it to connect.

But it didn’t even ring.

The number he’d called from was completely dead.

57

When I came around again, it felt like no time had passed at all and yet I was tied to a chair in the corner of a room I hadn’t been into. My knees were touching the walls and all I could see was wallpaper. No furniture. No doors. No way out.

I felt drowsy, my head a fog of pain and confusion, but I knew enough: I was upstairs. I could hear the same noises outside – the city, its hum, the occasional car engine and siren – it was just the carpet and wallpaper that had changed.

I tried moving.

My hands were tied to the arms of a large oak chair, impossible to shuffle or move on the carpet, and my ankles were bound at the legs. I turned my head, pushing as far as I could to my left, and – at the fullest rotation of my neck – I saw him: he was right at the periphery of my vision, sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room.

Zaid.

‘I’ll let you in on a little secret, David,’ he said.

My neck was starting to ache already, but I held it there, watching him. He’d changed: he didn’t have his tracksuit on any more, or his training top, he was dressed in a suit – all black, except for a charcoal shirt. He’d been sitting with his legs crossed, but now he uncrossed them and came forward in the chair, his elbows on his knees.

‘I still don’t know if I trust Isaac.’

I was forced to face the corner of the room again, my neck stiff, the unnatural position I had to reach to even look at Zaid sending sparks of pain into my skull.