I would have stayed longer with him, taken the whole day out if needed, but I was scheduled to return to the Interrogation Centre with Donovan. If I could have thought of a way out of it, I would have played that card. I’d already given it a shot by asking Greenberg to tell Donovan that I was needed for something pressing and he should find someone else, but he had looked at me coldly, told me it was outside his control and then added for good measure, ‘You’ve made your bed, Michael, and now you must lie in it.’

My apprehension wasn’t eased by Donovan’s sullenness that barely acknowledged my existence and when I trailed after him down dismal corridors I felt like a bellhop, with my temporarily needed skill unwanted and burdensome baggage. He seemed smaller, drawn into himself, his shoulders a tight ridge that strained against his jacket, and his heels smacked and echoed in the narrow maze of passageways that seemed to burrow us deeper into the abyss. The room we were shown into looked the same as the previous one but I wasn’t sure whether it just shared the same sense of a confined space where there was nothing unnecessary, nowhere to hide, nowhere to offer a window to the outside, permeated with the smell of drains, of stale sweat and piss that seemed to ooze from the very walls. We sat at the table in silence and waited and then the door was pushed open and two guards dragged in the prisoner.

As soon as Donovan saw him he jumped up and started shouting, ‘Who did this? Which one of you bastards did this?’ And as the guards bundled the prisoner into his seat, ‘I’m taking this to the highest level. Heads are going to roll for this – you better believe it.’ But the guards merely shrugged and lowered their eyes, and as we heard their footsteps in the corridor Donovan eased the prisoner into a more comfortable position then steadied him with a hand on his shoulders.

‘Get some water, Mikey, and tell those fuckers I want a doctor sent for or somebody’s going to get burnt.’

When I returned Donovan was still standing at the prisoner’s side, his hand resting on his shoulder, and then with the tip of a finger he angled the man’s head to inspect the damage. One side of his face was a swollen pulp, the eye almost closed and his mouth a bloodstained cicatrix. Taking the glass of water, I saw that the prisoner’s hands were also bloodied and they shook so much that Donovan had to hold the bottom of the glass to stop it spilling. The prisoner had never looked at us since coming into the room, and I was grateful. I felt sick, like I couldn’t breathe, and I had to stop myself beating on the door and hurrying outside to gulp cleaner air.