No. It didn’t fit with Vitrenko. There wouldn’t be enough pain. Enough horror. Enough fear.

Maria got her answer some time that she couldn’t measure later. There was a loud metallic clunk and the door of the cold store slid open. Vitrenko stood there with his new face but his old, cold, hard eyes. Next to him, armed with a handgun, was Olga Sarapenko. They both wore their outdoor coats. Vitrenko looked at Maria impassively.

‘If I talk to you, can you understand what I’m saying?’

Maria’s nod was almost lost in her convulsive shivering.

Vitrenko walked over and dragged her to her feet. She struggled to cover her nakedness and he slammed the back of his hand across her face. Again. And again. Maria felt her mouth fill with blood and was alarmed at how cool it was. Vitrenko pushed her away from him and she crashed onto the gritty, cold floor. The heat from the grazes on her skin was almost welcome.

‘If I talk to you, can you understand what I’m saying?’ he repeated.

‘Yes.’ Maria heard the quiver in her voice. She wanted to tell him it was because she was cold, not because she feared him.

‘You are alive only because I have some use for you. If you cease to be of use to me, I will kill you. Do you understand?’

Maria nodded again and Vitrenko’s heavy boot crashed into her ribs.

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes!’ she screamed at him in defiance. Something had cracked inside her but she didn’t care. ‘Yes, I understand.’

‘You are pathetic …’ Vitrenko said. ‘You think that because I made a big impact on your life you could make a similar impact on mine. Yet you are a nobody, a nothing. You think you have some importance, some worth, but you have none. You have gone out of your way to be a nuisance to me. I make examples of nuisances, you do know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Maria said dully.

‘There are two functions you can now serve. The first is as a key to the information I need on the informants inside my organisation and the extent of the intelligence on me gathered by your Federal Crime Bureau.’

‘I don’t have that kind of access …’ said Maria.