‘Why? You know my reputation. I represent villains. I’m not a terrorist’s brief.’

‘You also represent the innocent, Will. At least you used to. And from the one time I saw you doing that, you do it fearlessly. Fearless is what Nizar Mansour needs.’

Duffy felt the smile returning to the corner of his mouth. He pushed it away, but he would not deny that he enjoyed hearing what Bull had just said.

Duffy’s reputation was built on his status as lawyer to London’s leading crime families. It was a reputation well earned, and was itself a side effect of two things.

First was Duffy’s personal background: a street fighter from the east side of Glasgow who had dragged himself out through a combination of intellect and ambition, he understood the criminal underworld more intimately than any other solicitor.

Second was his willingness to take on the establishment; it was his gut instinct to fight, wherever that fight might take him.

Still, Duffy had set out to be more than a ‘villain’s brief’. He had seen men dragged into a life of crime, just to feed their children. And he had sworn that when he could, he would protect those men from the system that had created them in the first place.

In the years since he had enjoyed only a few chances to live up to that promise. Including the case on which he had first met Bruce Bull.

And so this opportunity was difficult to pass up.

‘Tell me about the Secret Service,’ he finally said, indicating his interest.

‘There’s not much I can tell you. Except I have no doubt that Meyer knows Mansour. And Mansour knows him. Nizar was absolutely terrified at the sight of the man.’

‘Terrified?’

‘Literally pissed himself with fear.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Jesus is right,’ Bull continued. ‘All Agent Meyer wanted was time alone with him, until I pointed out the cameras. Whatever he intended to do – however he intended to do it – I’m far from sure that Mansour would have left that room alive.’

‘You’re not serious?’ Duffy couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. A murder in custody? If the suggestion were coming from just any man he would have dismissed it. But this was Bruce Bull. ‘You reckon he’d have killed him? Inside a police station?’

‘You think it can’t happen?’ Bull replied. ‘And you think the Americans wouldn’t try it, if they had good cause? They basically own us, Will. What they say goes. So who knows what we’d let them do. Maybe they don’t even know themselves.’

Duffy took a moment to consider what Bull had said. All of this – the question of international relations – was far outside of his experience. Or it had been, at least.

‘What about the confession?’ he finally asked. ‘You said he admitted the whole bloody thing. That’s a problem, eh?’

‘The only part of that confession worth a damn is what he said when he handed himself in. That he put the bomb on the plane. I believe he did that. But my instinct tells me there’s more going on here. That this man doesn’t seem capable of killing hundreds of people.’