‘Please, call me Darius. We start to know each other now.’ Janulis was looking intently at him. ‘Because I am not these things either. And as you can see …’ he swept his arm at the room behind him ‘… I have different tastes. But some of the people I know here in Vilnius, they are not very accepting of others, shall we say?’

‘Go on.’

‘Do you mind?’ Janulis reached across Luke’s lap and retrieved a packet of Winston cigarettes and a lighter from beneath a cushion. He lit one, offered it to Luke, who declined, then took a drag, tipping his head back and blowing a plume of smoke up into the room.

‘So, when I joined the company,’ he said at last, ‘that is, Matulis ChemExport, I was “encouraged” – yes, I think that is the word – I was encouraged to join a certain society, a secret group, if you like.’ Janulis looked at his feet, then up abruptly. ‘Do you know about WaffenKrieg90?’ he added, fixing Luke with an intense stare once more.

‘Do I know about WaffenKrieg90?’ Luke repeated, giving himself a moment to think. The name sounded familiar from briefings he’d attended at Vauxhall, but somehow not quite right. ‘You mean Atomwaffen Division,’ he corrected him. ‘That far-right outfit in the southern USA?’

‘No,’ Janulis replied. ‘I do not mean them. I said WaffenKrieg-90.’ Luke had to admire the directness of East Europeans sometimes. They didn’t beat about the bush, they told you exactly what they were thinking. ‘WaffenKrieg90 is an organization here in Europe. It has connections everywhere. Here in Vilnius, in the police, in the government, in America, in England …’

‘In Norway?’

‘Yes! In Norway too.’ Janulis suddenly gripped Luke’s arm, his sweat-shiny face moving close to his. ‘These are bad people, Mr Carlton. They do terrible things. They hate so many people: Jewish, Muslim, African, Arabs, even gay and lesbian. They hate … they hate anyone who is different.’ He looked deflated and his shoulders slumped perceptibly.

‘What d’you mean, “they do terrible things”?’ Luke prompted him. He remembered Jenny saying Janulis had told her the same thing in the Ten Commandments Bar.

‘You want me to go into detail?’ Janulis’s eyes were wide open now, his eyebrows arched. ‘I am talking about sulphuric acid thrown into people’s faces, people burned alive inside their homes, brakes changed on someone’s car so they crash and end up a broken person for the rest of their life.’ He shook his head. ‘Shall I go on?’

Disturbing as this was, it wasn’t getting Luke anywhere. He needed to pin down the link to Svalbard, if there was one. ‘Can you tell me about their international connections?’ he asked.

‘You remember Christchurch?’ Janulis said. ‘The shootings in New Zealand at those mosques in 2019? So, they are saying that it was one of their “brothers” who did it. Yes, that’s what they call them. “Brothers”.’