‘Have you been listening to us?’ I asked, incredulous. Here I’d been so careful not to divulge any confidential information to them, but he’d been listening in all along. He’d heard my talk with Maggie, and shit, with Paul?

‘It’s a modern age. You can get wireless anything nowadays. Wireless camera and microphones; espionage has been made very accessible and easy. All I needed was the Internet and a credit card and it was delivered to the door. See – wave to the camera,’ he said and looked up at the light fitting over the table. I was damned if I could see anything.

‘You’re very nice naked, by the way,’ he said, and gave me a wink. I felt a wave of revulsion shudder through my body.

‘Enough of the talking. It’s time for business. It won’t be long before they find someone spare to throw a gun at and send up here, and by then I will be long gone.’

My options were looking pretty scant. If I drew my gun, Mum’s throat would be sliced before I could get a round off. What I needed was to get that knife away from her throat, even for a moment.

A brief flicker of movement caught in my peripheral vision, out of Phil’s view. I didn’t dare move my eyes to follow it. Instead, I made sure Phil’s attention was on me. I knew it wasn’t the cat – Fluffy was here in the kitchen, oblivious to the threat, chinny-winnying my leg, so I prayed like hell its source was who I hoped it could be. Time. I needed to buy some time.

I let my shoulders slump and tried to feign defeat. ‘Who is all this in aid of?’ I asked. ‘What was the point of it?’

He chuckled again, looking so well pleased with himself. ‘Me, of course. I had to have some sport. Life had gotten a bit dull since the girls left home, and Jude, who had promised me we’d have time for each other to enjoy once they left the nest, decided to take up every bleeding-heart cause under the sun. I was forced to find other things to do. The student was very sweet, by the way; that kept me quite busy for a while. But she wanted more – they always do. It was almost sad to have to kill her. I got far more attention from her than I ever did from my wife.’

Somehow, I wasn’t feeling sympathetic.