Retrieving his trousers from the floor, he did his best to wring the excess water from the crotch before putting them back on. Meanwhile, he thought of all the drunks he’d picked up over the years, smelling of piss, their faces a mess, just like his. He hadn’t been strong on sympathy then.

So now the shoe was on the other foot.

Exiting the toilets, he passed a female who looked at him in horror, her nose wrinkling in disgust. Figuring he had about sixty seconds to get what he could before being thrown out, McNab took ownership of an unwatched pint and a packet of crisps. The crisps went swiftly in his pocket, the pint he downed in a oner.

The owner, arriving just as the last mouthful disappeared, saw fit to throw a punch at him, which McNab miraculously managed to sidestep.

Then, together with his accompanying smell, he made swiftly for the door.

Outside again, he had a quick look round for his captors, who surely by now would be out looking for him. And let’s face it, he wasn’t difficult to spot among the clean, well-dressed male throng.

So where to now?

Having staggered sufficiently far away from the bar, he ducked into a doorway both to hide and to try to think. His brain, he realized, was attempting to formulate a plan, but the dregs of hallucinatory drugs, combined with the snorted cocaine, kept fleetingly reasserting themselves.

Truth was, he was a fucking mess. Plus his legs no longer worked.

He contemplated sitting down where he was, but if anyone came looking for him around here, he was in full view. He needed somewhere off the main street and preferably in the dark.

Dragging himself to his feet, he staggered off towards what looked like the opening of an alleyway. He made it in and stumbled as far as a wheelie bin, then slid in slow motion down the wall, only to meet with the current incumbent of that particular piece of London real estate.

McNab decided the face that stared out at him from under the blanket looked in better shape than he did.

‘You okay, mate?’ a gruff voice said.

‘Where am I exactly?’ McNab answered in a slur.

‘In shit alley, mate. You’re down and out in shit alley.’

54

As luck would have it, Ava was outside with Finn when she spotted the police car turning onto the farm track. Running back inside, she shouted up to Dougie that Erling was on his way, and neither he nor Nadia should make a sound.

Once she’d heard a grunt in return, Ava tried to regain her composure by pulling the kettle onto the hotplate and instructing Finn to go to his basket and stay there.

Erling surprised her by knocking, which wasn’t his usual method of entry. This alone should have alerted her to the possibility that he might be the harbinger of bad news.