She could hear the sarcasm in his voice and pursed her lips. ‘Not exactly. I’m interested in what you’ve got to say.’ She wondered, not for the first time, why he always managed to put her back up.

‘Well, as I was saying, we need an idea of where to take him. Myself, I think we should try and get him when he’s off on a laydown, or else get him to play sick and be moved to a civilian hospital. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For the moment we’ll just go and have a reccy.’

Donna lit a cigarette. ‘Have we any way of getting a plan of Parkhurst?’

Alan grinned. ‘I’ve already got one, love, and a plan of Durham, just in case. Normally on a big one you go to either Durham or the Island. So in case they decide to move him before we’re ready, I’m not going to take any chances. Durham might be a better bet in a lot of ways, but it’s swings and roundabouts. Either place will be hard to get out of.’

‘Parkhurst looks pretty formidable to me.’

Alan wiped his mouth with a napkin.

‘It is. For a start off, you’ve got a twenty-five-foot wall around the place. It’s rounded and smooth at the top, you’ll never be able to get a rope up there no matter what. Then inside that you’ve got a twenty-five-foot electric fence with tremblers all over it. Anything over seven pounds lands on it, the alarms go off. On top of that is three lots of razor wire - no one is going over that! - then there’s the cameras. They are everywhere, plus floodlights, dogs, the whole shebang. The only way out is straight up. That’s where a helicopter comes into it. So as you can see, it’s a big operation.

‘Once he’s out, we need to remove him quickly. Now he ain’t going on the ferry, is he, so we need a boat of some description, then a secret destination for the boat to take him - a place where he can be picked up and subsequently helped to disappear. I think Southern Ireland’s a good idea. Everyone else legs it to Spain. Ireland’s a small place, but there’s plenty of places to hide away until we can ship him off properly when the heat dies down.’

Donna sat listening to Alan in dismay. Now it was actually happening she felt a cold hand grip her heart. Pulling herself together, she stubbed out her cigarette and said: ‘So once he’s out of Parkhurst itself, we arrange a boat to Ireland?’