‘Did he ask for the disk? Did you refuse?’

‘I wouldn’t give it up back then and now I have Josie in my life. So no way would I have handed it over. That disk is my proof that I wasn’t drinking, that Marc was partly responsible because he distracted me. And he knew it. So, no, he didn’t ask me for it. He must have decided to force me to give it up. I don’t know how he recruited all these Ogres, but he did.

‘I wish they’d taken me instead, but they couldn’t. Nobody could accompany me into this bank, Nick, because a security guard has to take me up to the strongroom. But they couldn’t just let me walk in alone, in case I raised the alarm. And I wouldn’t be able to enter the bank if I was reported missing. I had to walk into this bank as if everything was normal. So they kidnapped Josie to force me.

‘One of them told me their plan, Nick. It could have gone so much easier. They were supposed to leave us a note in Josie’s bed. We were supposed to pretend to everyone that Josie was fine and wait for a call. It was to test us. They couldn’t risk telling me what they wanted until they knew I wouldn’t cave in and tell the police everything. Then we were supposed to drive to London, get the disk, get Josie back, and pretend nothing bad ever happened. No one would ever know she’d been taken.’

‘But I ruined that plan by being awake.’

‘You fought with them and they panicked that the police were going to come because of the noise. So they kidnapped you to confuse things. They wanted the police looking at you, not me, so they made out that you owed them something. And after you escaped from that lock-up garage and would have told your story, they called me at the hospital and demanded money, so the police would concentrate on that instead. Not on me. All of it was a smokescreen to stop the police looking for a connection to me and finding out about that hit-and-run. To make sure Marc’s name never came up.’

‘So, with police everywhere, they needed a new plan. They needed to get a secret message to you. One nobody else would understand, that you could easily lie about just in case something went wrong. Eastman knew you could read Braille.’