Nowak came back shouting at his men in his mother tongue. ‘Let’s go! Now! Put the cash back in the bags! Move, move, MOVE!’ They dropped the bags on the floor and began sweeping the cash into them. Nowak looked afraid, almost as if he knew what was to come.

Razi Khan watched the violence unfold as he stood outside the travel agency, his brother beside him. They waited in silence, their holdall bags in their hands, as Asian men swarmed up the street. Row upon row of faces advanced, hidden under scarves or cloaked with hoods, filling the usually quiet street with the roar of angry men. Police vehicles were parked bumper to bumper across the road, closing it and signalling where the stand-off would be. The officers remained ready behind sheets of riot gear.

As the roar grew louder Raza flinched, but Razi Khan put his hand on his brother’s shoulder to calm him. They had come too far to lose their nerve. The crowd surged ahead of them and stopped, unable to move past the police and unwilling to move back. Pushing the men aside like a Spartan on a battlefield, Razi Khan moved to the middle of the crowd. He looked around at the men and waited. He placed his gym bag on the ground next to him, then dropped to his knees as if tying his shoelaces. Once there, he unzipped the bag and pulled it wide open. On the other side of the road, his brother had done exactly the same. Their eyes met and they calmly walked away, moving seamlessly back through the crowd.

Idris tried to push open the trapdoor, but it felt jammed, as if something heavy was on it. He turned to look at Jia. ‘It’s a rug. Push harder and it will budge,’ she said. Idris did as she asked, using his shoulder to force the door up – she was right. When he managed to wedge it up, he could see the rug hanging over its edge. He pushed it aside and climbed out into the light. He squinted through his mask, his eyes reacclimatising, before reaching down and helping Jia up. Nadeem and Malik followed. Jia put her finger to her lips and they listened. To the backdrop of the angry crowd in the street outside, came Nowak’s voice from an office across the room; he was shouting in a language they didn’t understand. The door was slightly ajar and they could see the men packing the cash into bags, an urgency in their movements.