‘Blood stains… of sufficient quality for forensic testing.’ His eyes roved over the stable, his nose wrinkling. ‘And we have to act fast. We can’t assume we’ll have this place to ourselves all day. I did the best I could yesterday but they’ll pick up a trail sometime. If the stables were the prison, let’s start with those. Then be selective. I can’t see the main house offering anything, the captives would never have been taken there.’

‘There’s what Sami called the big hall with the platform.’

‘That must be the barn opposite the house. Let’s look before searching the stables.’

They ran across the courtyard. The clouds they’d seen in the distance were floating over. The rectangular courtyard, sun reflecting from the farmhouse’s windows, was transformed in no more than a moment to a menacing gloom. As she entered the barn, Sara jumped at something tickling her face and neck.

‘Cobwebs,’ said Patrick. He raised his arms and walked up and down, clearing thread after thread from wooden beams and corners.

‘The platform’s still there.’ She imagined Kareem sitting in the centre like a Sultan on his dais, Maryam his consort on one side, the burly apparatchik on the other. The clouds erupted and what sounded like giant raindrops beat down on slate tiles sitting flush on the timber roof trusses.

‘Creepy,’ she whispered to Patrick.

The rain crashing onto the cobbles, each drop seeming to ricochet like a bullet before it settled, ceased as suddenly as it had started. Over a watery softness streams of sunlight decorated the courtyard with bright diagonal strings. They crossed back into the stables.

She heard a rustling in the far corner of a stable and crept toward it. She screamed. Patrick ran in to see her frozen, half-crouched, staring ahead. Coming alongside, he saw a giant rat, fattened on the detritus of the shed. It stared at them from the pink beads of its eyes, then scurried past their ankles.

‘Eaters of flesh and blood,’ he said. ‘Destroyers of evidence.’

Hours later, between them they’d searched every stable and the connecting passage. Their prize was a single item, a pair of soiled, caked underpants buried beneath straw in a stable corner.

‘You never know. There might be some blood traces,’ said Patrick as they regrouped. He produced a cellophane bag and inserted the pants.

‘When I spread the palms of my hands across those cold walls and harsh squares on the floors,’ said Sara, ‘it’s blood I keep thinking of. That this was some kind of mini Lubyanka, now left to rot and hide its sins.’

‘Imagination isn’t evidence.’

‘Sami was terrified here. He wasn’t faking.’

‘But he’s alive.’

‘Yes, he survived.’

Patrick checked his watch. ‘Hell, it’s nearly four.’