She did not cry out, and when it was finally all ripped away, she stood there defiantly: she was damned if she was going to show these men her fear.

Almost four hours she had spent in the 4x4, being bounced around the cramped interior on the rough roads, and fighting to keep her sanity. Several times she had almost lost control, her mind and heart racing, the panic rising as she imagined she was suffocating, dying in this tiny, claustrophobic box.

If she could survive that, she could survive this.

Dark Eyes looked her up and down, and grinned lasciviously, a bucket of brackish water in one hand.

‘You are a filthy whore,’ he said, in gutturally-accented English. ‘You must be cleansed.’

He stepped forward and tipped the bucket over her head.

Charlotte stood stock still, looking him defiantly in the eye, until he looked away.

A small victory.

He left the room, and returned a few moments with a sheet, which he threw at her. She wrapped it around her dripping body, and then followed his pointing finger to a shabby Persian carpet against the far wall on the dirt floor.

She sat cross-legged on the rug, and looked around her. The rough-plastered room was lit only by a single, bare, low-wattage bulb in an inspection lamp on the floor in one corner, but it smelt curiously pleasant, of bread and coffee.

Sure enough, a moment or two later, the man disappeared, and then he limped back in, holding a flat bread and a steaming glass.

‘Eat,’ he said. ‘And drink.’

Charlotte took the bread and the glass, which was so hot it hurt her fingers.

Slowly, deliberately, and staring into the depths of his black eyes, she tipped the coffee onto the floor beside herself.

Then she spat on the flatbread, and held it out to him.

‘Piss off,’ she said.

He leaned forward, smiling.

‘Maybe I fuck you later,’ he whispered.

Then he turned on his heel and left.

Charlotte hurled the bread after him, and immediately realised that she’d made a mistake. She needed to eat and drink; without that, her strength would fail, and her ability to prepare mentally and remain focused would be inhibited, and she would never get beyond this ordeal.

Against the far wall, the two men who had carried her inside now sat, unsmiling and silent, AK47s across their laps. They stared at her unwaveringly, but appeared completely detached from her situation, as if having an Englishwoman seated on the floor in the dirt in this place was the most natural thing in the world.

Charlotte stared back at them for a while, and then decided to find a better use for her time.

She closed her eyes and conjured up a mental image of the face of the man who had killed Emily Souster, and she worked to slow her breathing and imagine his death.

She was not a violent person, but something within her had changed.

Before this she had never hated anyone; now she truly knew the meaning of hatred.