‘Come and have a look at this,’ she asked. It felt like an order. He was happy to comply. He looked into the boot and saw a big canvas bag, a builder’s bag.

‘What’s that for?’ he asked.

‘Did you not see the car, going past on the main road?’

‘No.’ For the first time a little tickle of anxiety pierced the swoon of well-being.

‘Vigilantes. I recognised two of them. If they see you, you’re finished. They have guns.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Hide in the boot, they won’t see you. You’ll be safe.’

He looked at the builder’s sack and the cavernous interior. ‘It’ll be dark. I don’t like the dark. I get panic attacks. Ever since I was in solitary and the power failed.’

‘Just try it. There’s a little light I can turn on. It will only be for a few minutes.’

He looked again. He wasn’t sure. It felt wrong. Something cautionary was trying to emerge in his befuddled brain, to warn him. ‘I will if you give us a kiss, pet.’

She hesitated. ‘Okay, I will if you behave. Lean back against the car and close your eyes. Properly shut.’ He did so, resting his hands behind him on the lip of the boot, and waited for contact from her lips.

Something was clamped over his mouth, and as his eyes flew open he saw her jump at him, her knee swinging. His groin exploded like a supernova. An enormous inhalation, to power a scream, was blocked by the damp pungent rag clamped tightly over his face. He sucked in some oddly perfumed liquid and the excruciating pain transmuted quickly into darkness. The last thing he felt was that he was toppling backwards into the boot.

Verity Winter tipped the unconscious man on his side and folded him up, knees to chest. She had hoped to persuade him to climb in, but had to admit to enormous satisfaction from using her knee, holding his shoulders down to get her full weight behind it. That one long-practised movement alone had justified the self-defence courses she had been forced to take in her teens, back in the darkest days when all was fear and foreboding. From a small plastic bag under the canvas sack she brought out a dozen foot-long cable ties. She bound his wrists and ankles, making them wickedly tight, so they cut into the flesh.