‘How would he?’ Grace asked. ‘He doesn’t know we’re coming.’

‘Let’s assume he’s as paranoid as Knowles said. Has he made us?’

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Cobb replied. ‘Doesn’t look like he’s paid us any attention at all.’

As Cobb spoke the lights turned green. Gunning his engine, Dempsey was gone in an instant. No hesitation.

Braddock did the same, keeping the bike within a visible distance.

If Dempsey had registered them then he would be waiting. Braddock knew that. And if he had not, well, they still had to stay on him. That was the job.

Either way, the sonofabitch has to die.

FORTY

Mansour wanted one thing and one thing only. Solitude.

David Carter had seemed friendly enough. Or at least as friendly as someone held in Belmarsh’s High Security Unit could be. He had seemed keen to make friends.

That was not what Mansour wanted. Not with Carter. Not with anyone.

He took the staircase to the first floor, slowly, his eyes carefully fixed on each step. With the other inmates all accounted for, he knew that he could only meet guards between here and his cell. But he did not want to speak to them either.

He just wanted to be alone.

That desire was now a driving force, brought on by his discomfort with Carter’s attention. And with the more indirect interest he had received from everyone else. Mansour had had no wish to be anyone’s focus. An unrealistic ambition for a man in his position, he realised. But it had been his hope.

All of this was on Mansour’s mind as he made his way back to his cell.

Had it not been, perhaps he might have taken a moment to look behind him as he finally reached Cell Twelve.

‘Can I help you?’

Mansour was confused as he stepped into his cell and saw a large man in a prison guard’s uniform standing at the end of his bed. A man he had not seen before.

Was this normal? Was it a search of his cell?

With nothing to compare it against, Mansour had no answer to his own questions.

‘You need to search me?’ he asked, still unsure of the protocol.

The guard said nothing, his expression unreadable. His unexpected presence had caught Mansour off guard. Had it been an inmate then Mansour would have been concerned. But a guard? That just made Mansour uncertain. Unaware of what new part of the prison routine he was about to experience.

What was it Michael Devlin had said? ‘Keep your head down, Nizar. Do as you’re told and stay out of trouble.’ He intended to do exactly that.

‘Sir, please, tell me what I must do. I do not know the rules. Please . . .’

The sound of heavy footfall on metal stopped Mansour as he spoke. More than one person. Moving fast, certainly faster than a walking pace.

And they were headed towards Cell Twelve. The very last cell on the upper floor. A place they had no need to be. And which they had no reason to reach in a hurry.