A prison within a prison.

Regarded by many as Britain’s version of Guantanamo Bay, the ‘inner Belmarsh’ had been built to hold the very worst of the worst. Serial killers. Hitmen. Feared underworld figures. And terrorists.

Especially terrorists . . .

And that was where he was headed now.

Mansour could discern very little from his secure cell in the back of the prison van. Its window had been blacked out from the inside. Mansour doubted this was usual – why have windows in the first place if it was? – and the effect was disconcerting.

With no way to see out, he could not use exterior details to help guess at the van’s location in London. And without a watch or a clock for reference, he could not even be sure how long he’d been in there.

But what did time matter now anyway? As for the cell’s cold temperature and seemingly intentional discomfort, he had experienced far worse during his time fighting in Syria; this was near luxury compared to what he had suffered at home.

No. None of these things had concerned Mansour. But something else had. Something he had not expected. Because despite being the only prisoner occupying one of the six individual cells in the van, he was not making the journey alone.

His cell door had been left unlocked and open, and in the opposite cell was a guard.

Dressed in a standard uniform of black trousers, white shirt and black jumper with the company logo on the breast, the guard was older than Mansour by perhaps five years. Overweight and with short, receding brown hair, Mansour had noticed the guard’s stubby fingers and fat wrists as he sat in the open cell across the van’s gangway, steadying himself against every slow turn by placing a free hand against the wall.

Mansour had no such luxury. With less than twelve inches between either shoulder and its corresponding wall the cell was claustrophobic. And yet having a foot either way was enough for Mansour to be thrown hard against those walls with every sharp turn the van made.

It would have been helpful for Mansour’s hands to be free to protect against this. But instead each wrist was bound by a stiff cuff – tough leather and steel – with the other end of each connected to secure, immovable loops situated either side of him, on the short cell bench.

If the restraints had been designed to minimise whatever movement was still possible, they were unsuccessful. All they did was make that movement a lot more painful.

Probably the real reason for them, Mansour had concluded.

A cynical conclusion, based very much on the behaviour of the guard, who had been openly hostile from the very beginning of the journey.

Referring to Mansour as ‘Abdul’ was just the start. A crude attempt to insult him, it had been followed by a consistent campaign of verbal abuse against his religion, his country, his people. Every cruel word was an insult. Every sneer a challenge.