‘I remember the Sangin Six,’ I said. ‘Sangin is a district in the east of Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Six of our servicemen – and women – were in a patrol vehicle in Sangin that got hit by an IED. They all survived the blast but then they were torn to bits by a mob. They didn’t show it on the mainstream media because it was too gruesome. Body parts hanging from bridges while the locals danced in the street.’

The camera tracked slowly across the faces of the six dead soldiers. I looked across at Tara Jones who was running voice biometrics on the film.

She saw me watching her.

‘Are you picking up any dialogue, Tara?’ I said.

‘Just ambient sounds,’ she said. ‘It’s not traffic. Sounds like some kind of major building work going on nearby.’

‘Abu Din was vocal in his praise of the killers of the Sangin Six,’ Whitestone said. ‘He insisted on calling them the Six Crusaders. The elderly grandmother of one of the Sangin Six said that he should be hanged.’

‘Then why didn’t they?’ Edie said.

The camera zoomed in for another close-up on the empty noose. And then the image froze.

‘Maybe it’s a trailer,’ Edie said. ‘Stay tuned for the main event.’

‘Maybe they think hanging’s too good for him,’ I said.

The early morning crowds filled the Imperial War Museum. But it was very quiet in the basement room where I sat with the young woman in a wheelchair. I had met Carol through my first SIO in Homicide and Serious Crime Command, DCI Victor Mallory. It was because of him that I could come to her for help at any time.

‘I was in Camp Bastion when the Sangin Six died,’ she said. ‘It felt like a turning point in the war on terror.’ A short laugh. ‘That’s when it started to feel like terror had declared war on us.’

She moved her wheelchair closer to the desk and scrolled through some images of hell. Jubilant crowds. Scraps of human remains. The pitiless sun of Afghanistan.

‘I don’t know how much you want to see of this stuff, Max,’ Carol said. ‘There’s plenty that they couldn’t show on the evening news, but I’m not sure you can learn anything from it.’

I checked my phone again for a message from Edie Wren. We kept expecting the execution to go live. But the morning after the abduction of Abu Din, it still hadn’t happened.

‘I really wanted to sound you out about Abu Din,’ I said.

‘The Mental Mullah,’ she grinned. ‘They took him, didn’t they?’

I nodded. ‘Who would want to string him up, Carol?’

‘Are you kidding? Anyone who served. Anyone who loved someone who served.’ She slapped the sides of her wheelchair without anger or self-pity. ‘Anyone who came home in one of these.’