‘Now? Already?’ Luke heard her say. He saw her look at her watch. ‘Okay, take them to the side office. We’ll be there in a moment.’

And just as she spoke those words Luke spotted it, out of the corner of his eye: a mobile phone. Still lit up and unlocked. One of the two ‘scientists’ must have just put it on the corner of the table, so very nearly within his reach. Was this a test? Luke’s eyes swept the cabin like a radar scanner. No one was watching him: all eyes were on the pair working on the canisters. He edged closer to the table, his heart beating faster, a plan forming in his head in double-quick time. If he could only lift it, conceal it inside his jacket, press a couple of digits to stop it relocking itself, then tell them he needed the loo, he would lock himself inside and alert Angela and the team at Thames House. It would take seconds, that’s all. He began to reach out, pulse racing. Suddenly a hand was on his shoulder. Someone was behind him.

‘Steve.’ He turned to see Niamh’s earnest face. ‘We have visitors,’ she said casually. ‘They’re early. It’s the money people. They financed all of this.’ She nodded towards the row of deadly canisters. ‘They’ve been part of the movement since the start. Now they want to see it through. They’ve come to witness the final preparations. That’s a nice touch, don’t you think? Come, I’ll introduce you.’

Luke felt both relief and frustration as they stepped out of the cabin. He hadn’t felt safe for a second in there, knowing what those canisters contained and what it could do to the human body. But he had also missed his chance to grab the phone and knew he might not get another. They walked back through the warehouse in silence to the cramped little side office with its noisy metal door, the space where only a few minutes earlier Luke had passed his final entry test. He was the last to go through, but already he could hear the clamour of voices on the other side of the door and even laughter. The money people.