‘They’ve evacuated your block.’

‘Is that all?’

‘They’re searching suspect houses, but they can’t start mass evacuation unless they know where the device is. They might find they were moving people into a danger area.’

‘Roger.’

For twenty minutes I sat on the window-sill and let silence go to work. With my covert radio switched on, I heard Blue leader reporting the arrival of his team at the location in Elm Tree Road, behind Lord’s cricket ground. Quickly they deployed on both sides of the house and blasted their way in, only to find the place deserted. A search revealed no sign of the bomb.

At 12.10 the big guy began to get restless, shifting his arse around on his chair. At last he said something, which Mike translated. ‘He wants to have a shit.’

‘He can have a shit if he tells us where the bomb is.’ It sounded ridiculous, as though I was bargaining in an attempt to make some child behave well. ‘Otherwise he can shit in his pants.’

The man was in obvious physical discomfort, which my answer only increased.

‘Tell both of them there’s only one way they’re getting out of here,’ I said to Mike. ‘That’s by giving us the information we want.’

Mike translated. Suddenly Barrakuda began to talk in Chechen at the top of his voice.

‘Shut up!’ I shouted – but he carried on regardless, even when I belted him across the side of the head. Soon he was yelling like a madman in a high, hoarse voice. The big guy began to bellow back, and all at once I felt glad, because I saw that stress was getting to the pair of them.

I left them to it, and from out on the landing I called Control. ‘They’ve started arguing like lunatics,’ I reported. ‘Their nerve’s going.’

‘It had better break soon,’ snapped Joe. ‘Things are getting bloody fraught around here.’

‘Same here,’ I told him.

At 12.25 the big guy shat himself. The smell was repulsive, so I opened a window. Cold air blasted in, but it was better than the stink.

Barrakuda went quiet again. At 12.40, when I stood in front of him, his face looked white as flour, and his eyes seemed to have sunk into his head. After I’d watched him for a few seconds, he said something.

‘He wants to make a deal,’ Mike interpreted.

‘Oh yes?’

‘If he gives you the information, will you guarantee him free passage to Malta?’

‘Fucking hell! Who does he think he is? Tell him not a chance. Not the remotest bloody chance.’