‘Good girl.’

The street smelt of dried olives and raisins. It was around midday now, and there were no people on the street of the tiny village. There were some fruit and vegetables on sale at the single shop, but Hassad had already walked through an open doorway ahead of them. Porter took Katie’s arm, guiding her forward. She was walking unsteadily, like a toddler. ‘Ever broken a leg?’ Porter asked.

Katie shook her head.

‘You’ve been strapped to a stake for a week by these bastards,’ said Porter. ‘The nerves in your legs have packed up, same as when you have a plaster cast on. It takes a week or two to learn how to walk properly again. You’ll need some physio. You can get used to anything.’

‘Like your fingers?’ she said, looking down at the hand that she was holding on to.

‘Yeah, that took a lot of getting used to.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘That bastard’s lot right up there,’ said Porter, nodding towards Hassad.

‘How …’

‘It’s a long story,’ interrupted Porter. ‘I’ll tell you about it over a long cool beer when we’re tucked up on a couple of first-class seats on the British Airways flight home.’

‘That would be nice,’ she said, attempting a smile.

As her lips creased up, Porter could see that the cuts and bruises covering her were making her wince with pain. They were following Hassad into a small building two doors down from the shop. It was basically one room, measuring twenty feet by fifteen. There was a kitchen at one end, and a curtain sealing off a bedroom area at the other. The only light was coming through a couple of skylights built into the roof. Close to the door, there was desk and a chair, and a collection of elderly pieces of medical equipment: some scales, a blood-pressure pump, a stethoscope and a few reusable syringes.

Out of the shadows, there emerged a woman. She was dressed entirely in black, with a face like a pickled walnut. Her eyes were piercing, but her skin was dried up as if she had been left out in the sun for too long, and she walked with a slight stoop. From the way she looked up at Hassad, it was clear that she knew him, but there was no smile, nor any kind of a greeting. She merely pointed at the chair, and waited for him to sit down.

Hassad took off his sweatshirt. The woman examined the shoulder silently. The knife had dug into the skin, then been twisted, creating a nasty corkscrew wound. Porter had seen those kinds of injuries before, indeed he’d taken a few himself over the years, and although they hurt like hell, he knew they weren’t serious. Taking a swab of cotton wool, the woman drenched it with raw alcohol and pushed it hard into the raw skin. Porter winced. He knew how painful that was: he admired the way Hassad sat there impassively, taking the pain, with nothing more than the clenching of a fist to suggest what he was going through.