When we have travelled some half hour, the man reaches into the darkness at his feet, retrieves a hood, and pulls it over my head. He might be putting blinders on a horse. I could struggle, but his touch is so deft, so simple, neither rough nor gentle, that I don’t have the heart.

At first I find I do not mind the hood. It absolves me in a way. I no longer need to shout and protest, or pay attention to the road we are taking; need not muster courage for resistance or escape. It is only when we alight and I am ushered into a building that the blindness begins to transform into fear, then abject panic. There are sounds around me, you see, sounds I cannot place. Typewriters, I think, and once a shrill little peal. Men talking at a distance in a serious manner, never laughing, nor raising their voices. A place of business. Large, it seems to me, subterranean. We keep descending stairs. A scream, not far from us, like a cat with its tail caught in a slamming door. But this is no place for cats. I am weak in the legs when they push me down upon a stool and pull off the hood.

An office. A carpet, a bookshelf, a desk at the centre, the fat man behind. No windows. A smell to the place like boiled dish towels. A coiled beast of a radiator dispensing too much heat. There are no guards in the room. My captor offers me a glass of water that he decants from a large pewter jug.

For the longest time he does not ask any question but simply sits there, reading various letters arranged on his desk. The stool I am sitting on turns out to be very uncomfortable. It is an inch or two shorter than a regular stool, and my knees jut up awkwardly when I plant my soles. I consider re-rehearsing my protestations, or at least requesting a different chair, but despite the glass of water my throat is very dry.

At long last a younger man enters the office without knocking. He is impeccably dressed, rounds the desk without looking at me, bends down to the fat man, and whispers something in his ear. Then he passes over a folder full of papers, before retracing his steps and leaving the room. His boots were muddy and he has left prints on the floorboards (he avoided stepping on the carpet). I keep looking at these prints whilst my captor studies his papers. From my vantage point, lower than his, he appears cut in half: the top half leaning forward on his elbows, the lower, beneath the desk, impassive. He has crossed his legs. Oxford shoes. Unlike his clerk’s boots they are unsullied by dirt.