Not that Mansour was in any place to learn that lesson. The alcohol had failed to bring him the hoped for calm, but anything that took his mind elsewhere remained welcome.

He drained the final third of his glass in one swallow, reached deep into his pocket and pulled out the few remaining coins inside.

Four pounds sixty-five pence. Enough for one more.

The price differences between London and Aleppo had long since lost their shock value and Mansour gave no thought to the cost of his single pint order. But the contrast in strength between Syrian beer and the imported lagers popular in the UK? That was harder to ignore. Mansour was no drinker, not back home and not in London. On the rare occasions he went beyond a single order, the alcohol hit him hard.

And his next would be his third.

The Rose and Crown pub on Stoke Newington Church Street was unusually quiet for a Wednesday evening, even for early January. If Mansour had wondered why then he would have blamed the weather. Who wanted to leave a warm home for a cold beer when the conditions outside were near arctic? But the question did not cross his mind. Tonight, only a single thought concerned him.

The walk to the bar. The order. The pour. The payment. With less than ten customers in the cavernous barroom, the whole process took barely a minute. And yet not for an instant did Mansour’s mind stray from his phone.

Barely a minute more and he was back at his table in the corner of the room, Nokia in hand, its illuminated screen still blank.

‘Ibn il sharmoota!’

Mansour slammed the handset onto the table as he spoke, his frustration irresistible. The few sober eyes in the barroom turned at the sound, forcing him to regain his composure.

‘Idiot,’ he hissed under his breath, irritated by his own outburst. He pushed his fingertips deep into the skin around his eyes, as if to push the pain of his stress – the pressure – back down.

What was he thinking, calling attention to himself?

They could be in here, he thought. They could be anyone.

He couldn’t take the risk. Not after everything he had done. He had to see this through to the end.

But why have they not called?

He forced his gaze away from his phone. The obvious alternative was the large projection screen at the rear of barroom. No doubt installed to fill the bar with drinking customers, keen to see whatever sports event would attract the biggest crowd. Tonight there was no football, no rugby, no boxing. And so the screen was silent.

But it was not blank.

What Mansour had experienced in his thirty years of life had, he thought, prepared him for much. Loss. Violence. Fear. They had been commonplace in Syria and, at least for Mansour, non-existent in the UK. That had all changed five days ago. The fear had returned. A terror beyond anything he had felt before. Since then it had gripped him for every waking moment.