She transfers her whisky glass to her left hand and reaches behind her with the right, to touch the violin case.

“I demanded some more background. Vakilabad has been busy for the past few years. He wouldn’t tell me how many people they’d hanged there, but when I guessed over a thousand he didn’t correct me downwards. Seems the execution parties had been troubled by odd sounds, emanations, chills and thumps and wails for some time; they’d put it down to, well. You can guess. I checked, then, and the background thaum reading was off the scale. Executions are a form of human sacrifice, after all, and this was death magic on a huge scale.”

She takes another sip. She’s draining the glass steadily; I reckon she’s only got ten or fifteen minutes left before she drinks herself into a stupor. What she’s telling me suggests I ought to join in, lest I have some very bad dreams, so I knock back a burning mouthful of spirit. It’s singularly disrespectful to a portwood finished single malt, but it’s too late to go back to the bathroom cabinet to check if there’s any Temazepam left—mixing drink and sedatives is dangerous.

“I had a dilemma, love.” I feel her shoulders relax slightly. “If it had been a normal exorcism I’d have had no problem helping out. But they wanted the death chamber clearing down and neutralized so they could go back to hanging people. Nobody gave a shit about the thaum count until it got in the way of them strangling illiterate peasants. But then it was all, oh, INTERPOL will know someone who can help us out! Won’t they?”

She falls silent for a moment. Then, fiercely: “I will not be complicit, an enabler for judicial mass-murder!”

“I—” I swallow. “You refused? But what—”

“I tried to refuse at first. The Pasdaran officer was really angry, although Ahmad said he understood. They had a big shouting match. I mentioned the European Convention on Human Rights and the recent EU Commission ruling on withdrawal of coordination of drug interdiction until they ceased executions and pointed out I’d be violating our own policy guidelines if I didn’t obtain a legal waiver from the Home Office first.

“Then Firouz—the Pasdaran lieutenant—threatened to make me stay in the death chamber until I cooperated. With a Greek chorus of corpses chanting in the background and a thaum level off the scale. And he had his hand on his pistol—still holstered—and he was giving me the eye. You know? Well no, you probably don’t: you’re male. But anyway, I lost my temper. So I nodded and smiled and took out my violin and made the dead men dance.