‘Oh for Christ’s sake. This is just some nutter. Deal with it.’

‘Of five million pounds.’

‘What the . . .’

‘Or they’re going to post video footage on the internet of her fingers being chopped off.’

‘Call the fucking police, then.’

‘And they say if we do that, you’ll find her head in the left luggage lockers at Tokyo Station.’

‘Five million quid?’

‘That’s right.’

Rocky thought for a moment, and then said ‘The way things are going, I ain’t got it.’

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

That night, after a labour that lasted for nearly seventy-two hours, Victoria gave birth to a baby boy, nearly three months premature. He was immediately taken away from her into the neonatal intensive care unit where he was put in an incubator and pumped full of antibiotics. He was suffering from jaundice and respiratory distress syndrome but, said the doctors, had a pretty good chance of survival. The next twenty-four hours would tell. Was there anyone Victoria wanted to call, before they gave her a sedative and allowed her to get some much-needed rest? Victoria thought for a while, and then said no.

Isabelle and Maya were in a room that looked very much like one of the tutors’ rooms at Saint Martins, about ten feet square with some battered office furniture, dirty industrial carpet on the walls and malfunctioning fluorescent tubes let into the ceiling. A poster on the wall reminded them that they were in Tokyo, with a blue-and-black photo of the city skyline.

The door was locked, and no matter how much Maya shouted, nobody came. There was a jug of water on the table, and a metal bin in the corner, which would have to make do as a lavatory. Their handbags had been taken from them, as had their shoes, which, rightly in Maya’s case, their captors thought could be used as offensive weapons. They didn’t get a good look at the men who brought them there. They were all Japanese, well-dressed, in their thirties or forties, it was hard to tell.