‘You don’t think they have their vengeance? The last time I saw Mr Olsen the back of his head was missing. And he sat in that building for a considerable amount of time with the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth. Waiting for you. He knew you were coming. He knew who you were and what that folder would tell you. All he could do was wait. That is a very specific sort of torture, would you not agree?’

‘They were pretty certain I was going to do it then? What I did,’ Danny said with bitterness in his tone.

The man lowered his glass to reveal a smile. ‘We’re all fathers, Mr Evans. And if you hadn’t, that opportunity would have gone to someone else and he would have waited another day. That outcome was inevitable. I’m glad it was you.’

‘That information, the stuff in that folder, where did that all come from? The police had practically nothing at all.’

‘They didn’t because all they had were the victims. Marcus Olsen was clever, aware of forensic interrogation of electronic devices, and he countered that. But I was able to find him. The source is always a lot more difficult to clean but in truth he wasn’t trying anyway. Why would he? He never considered anyone was going to turn up at his door – and when I did I was able to be a lot more … persuasive than the police ever can.’

‘Persuasive?’

‘The shotgun, Mr Evans. The police don’t point them in people’s faces when they question them, which is a real shame, you can take that from me. People talk more.’

Danny took a moment. The man was making sense; the police had their hands tied by their codes of practice, by what they could and couldn’t do. This guy didn’t. There was still something nagging him about the whole setup however.

‘So, this is nothing about me being some fall guy? This other dude not wanting to get his hands dirty?’

‘A fair question from a man with twenty-four hours to go over and over what he did. I understand, of course I do. But what you must consider is that it would have been far less risky if the same man who had hired me had also been the one to pull that trigger. The key to staying under the radar in such matters is to control the episode and that means limiting the variables as much as is humanly possible.’

‘Variables?’