Janković looked him up and down. Then suddenly he placed his left hand on the table and, gripping the knife, stabbed the wood between his splayed fingers at a rapid speed. A quick-fire bang! Bang! Bang! He left the blade sticking up in the table and gave a triumphant laugh. ‘Pretty good, no?’ he said, flexing his unscathed fingers.

Justin stared. The man was off his head.

‘Serbian army,’ said Janković. ‘Little trick I learned. In the boring bits. When we had no surveillance to do. Of course, now it’s all different. Not possible to hide. Technology changes everything. Now I can find out anything I like about anyone. Where they go. Who they speak to. If they run.’

Justin swallowed. I will not be intimidated by this thug. ‘What if I tell you and your paymaster to stick your threats up your own arses? What if I tell everyone what you did?’

Janković picked his helmet up off the table and smiled. ‘Now you know not to do that. It’s not a good idea. Not a good idea at all.’

He turned and left, and Justin sank into a chair. He had a desperate urge to just pick up the phone and call the police. Pray for some salvation. But he couldn’t do that. He would be dead.

He had to get himself out of this situation. Only trouble was, he didn’t know how.

FORTY-ONE

The machine beeped as it scanned Kate’s ticket and she pinned it onto her suit jacket – the one she’d bought earlier in the year for the AGM – then she was into one of the cavernous halls of the London Excel conference centre.

She looked at the floorplan that had been thrust into her hand, a detailed layout of this year’s ‘Agrochemical Britain’ conference. Some of the larger companies and organizations had booked stands. Mini pop-up representations of their multi-million-pound corporate successes. The place was awash with delegates strolling, striding, back-slapping and hand-shake pumping. There were hardly any women.

Kate found the section for Senerix’s stand. The person she wanted to talk to was Dr Roger Harris, a man in his fifties who had been with the company for over a decade and was a senior scientist in the R&D department. She’d tried contacting him numerous times, via email and phone, each missive requesting an interview.

Not once had she got a reply.

Kate prowled surreptitiously around the periphery of the stand with its green-and-yellow logo present at every opportunity. She pretended to read leaflets and study the displays flanked by bottles of their products but was actually gauging who Roger was. At one point another Senerix employee, a younger man with red hair, asked if he could help with anything, and when she politely refused, he looked at her strangely before eventually moving off. She caught him glancing her way once or twice again from across the stand and it began to unnerve her – what was his problem?

After a couple more minutes, Roger bade farewell to the man he’d been deep in conversation with and, with much mutual shoulder-squeezing and hearty laughing, the man finally left, and Roger was alone.