‘Yeah, I know,’ McCracken said. ‘You’re just a grunt, aren’t you? Your job is to keep your mouth shut and to soldier. Well, not any more … maybe. You guys hand your pieces over, and everything won’t just be okay, it could actually be better than okay.’

It wasn’t a difficult decision. One by one, Spicer and his men offered their firearms. McCracken took them, passing them to his own men.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Where’s Bill?’

‘In the boardroom,’ Spicer replied. ‘Waiting for you.’

‘Excellent.’ McCracken slid his Walther back into his shoulder-holster and straightened his jacket. ‘All the rest of you … go through into the bar. Relax, get yourself a drink, make friends again. Just like me and Wild Bill are going to.’

Chapter 45

‘Well, well,’ Ivana whispered into Lucy’s ear. ‘If it isn’t the agent of all our misfortunes.’

Unable to draw breath, Lucy clawed at the wire, but couldn’t get so much as her little finger underneath it. She was walked backward, so hurriedly that she almost tripped, and then turned roughly around, so that the rest of the room lay before her. It was near enough empty, apart from an old school chair with the cardboard cylinder depicting the bulldog lying on top of it, and in one corner a pair of large and solid plastic drums. These latter were streaked down their sides with a gummy brown residue and had a pair of heavy stone slabs, clearly pried up from the floor, laid over the tops of them as improvised lids. The stink was still unbearable, the walls and ceiling coated with a foul, slimy clag.

With a weird, whickering giggle, Alyssa Torgau emerged from the shadows. She was pale-faced, with sweat-soaked hair and cheeks streaked by mascara, but her eyes glinted with a new, crazy kind of glee. She reached into the cradle and switched off the iPhone, finally silencing the wailing child.

‘Like the baby trick? That’s how we lured that raggedy old slut with the cats.’

Lucy still couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. The strength was seeping out of her, her knees threatening to buckle as her hands dropped to her sides. But the pressure of the ligature, though intense, had slackened a little. They weren’t trying to kill her – not yet.