I laughed and half-turned to look at the man by my side.

‘You’re the big man in town, right? Cleaning up the mean streets—’

I caught my breath as he placed the razor blade against the lid of my right eye.

Very gently, almost lovingly, he drew the sharp edge of the razor blade across the thin layer of skin that covered my eye, demonstrating how very easy it would be to slice it open, how little would be the effort required on his part, how pathetically fragile I was.

I thought of what had happened to Justin Whitestone and fought to control my breathing. My eyes, I thought, and my heart wanted to burst.

And I thought that was the end of all conversation. But the black figure holding the razor blade pressed against my eyelid leaned in close so that only I could hear what he had to say.

‘And you protect the filth, little man, don’t you? And that is why you have no friends any more. You stand guard at the door while the Pakistani child groomers rape our children and you tug your forelock while rich men murder the innocent and you devote yourself to cleaning the shoes of the scum of the earth. More than any of them, little man, you are the one who deserves to hang.’

And it was a voice I thought I knew from somewhere.

Once upon a time. Long ago and far away. My muscles twitched with pain and my mind was foggy with shock.

But I had heard that voice before.

He pressed the blade against my eyeball and, as stray muscles in random parts of my body still spasmed with shock, I tried very hard to not move.

Perhaps they’re cops after all, I thought.

There was no change of vehicle. Perhaps they had learned their lesson with Abu Din. Perhaps the switch vehicle had been used to sucker the Armed Response Vehicle. And to sucker me, too. But there was no stopping this time.

We drove.

Fast but not that fast. There was little traffic around at this time of night, but the driver kept below the speed limit, like a good criminal should. Then we seemed to go slower and I thought we must be moving into town rather than driving out of it. There was no opening up on a motorway, only slowing down to an inner-city crawl.

Then we were on rough terrain, bumping over uneven surfaces, and going down.

The transit van stopped.

We had reached our destination.

The razor blade was drawn across my eyelid. I felt a sharp sting of pain and I cursed as a dribble of blood ran down my face like a teardrop.