‘Not yet. But you’d assume it will be on the twenty-four-hour channels very soon.’

‘Anything on what they want? Any demands?’

‘Not in the video. They say they’ll be in touch soon. But they aren’t as clever as they think they are.’

‘Oh?’

‘We can tell that the shooter’s a Chechen from his accent. So far, so standard. But the man with the camera has given away his name.’

Justin Nicholls sat up, suddenly alert. ‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Just before he switches it off the guy says under his breath, “Perfect, Khasmohmad”. You can barely hear it, but when the techs enhanced the audio…’

Nicholls offered up a silent prayer of thanks: it sometimes felt like the only thing keeping the security services in the game was the incompetence of their opponents.

‘Do we know any Khasmohmads?’ he said

‘Several. Plus, we can narrow it down further. Going on the known size of the kneeling women, we’re putting him at around 130kg and 1.9m to 2m tall.’

‘What’s that in English?’

‘Around twenty stone and six foot five, six foot six. He’s a big bastard.’

‘So do we know any Khasmohmads of that size?’

‘We’re checking. The audio might help there. The linguists have it and they think they might be able to narrow it down. In fact, here’s one of them now. Can you hold on one second…?’

‘Sure,’ said Nicholls.

In the background, he could hear a man speaking to Kate Carver.

‘…very hard to tell, based on the little we have, but the consensus from the accent is it’s one of the Laamaroy dialects, probably Chebarloish. He’s certainly a Southerner, from one of the mountain tribes.’

Carver said, ‘That’s great, thanks.’ Then, to Nicholls, ‘Did you get all that?’

‘Yes. When will we have his full name?’

‘Depends if he’s in our system, or the Americans.’ I’ll know in half an hour, tops.’

Suddenly wide awake, all thoughts of home banished, Nicholls stood.

He went into the ante-room to his office to get another coffee, and sat drinking it, willing Carver to get back to him.

Half an hour came and went, and he resisted the temptation to chase her – she’d be doing all she could.

His phone finally went again forty-five minutes later.

‘Kate?’ he said. ‘What have you got?’