I knew I was in trouble before I even opened my eyes. For a start, I was sitting up. If everything that had happened up until now had been a horrible dream—which it should have been—I would be lying in my nice warm bed in London with the kettle whistling in the kitchen and maybe Tim doing the same in the bath. But not only was I sitting in a hard, wooden chair, my feet were tied together with something that felt suspiciously like packing tape and my hands were similarly bound behind my back. When I did finally open my eyes, it only got worse. Tim was next to me looking pale and confused . . . by which I mean even more confused than usual. And Bastille and Lavache were sitting opposite us, both of them smoking.

The four of us were in a large, empty room that might once have been the dining room of a grand château but was now empty and dilapidated. The floor was wooden and the walls white plaster, with no pictures or decorations. A broken chandelier hung from the ceiling. In fact quite a lot of the ceiling was hanging from the ceiling. Half of it seemed to be peeling off.

I had no idea how much time had passed since they’d knocked us out and bundled us into the back of a delivery van. An hour? A week? I couldn’t see my watch—it was pinned somewhere behind me, along with the wrist it was on—so I twisted around and looked out of the window. The glass was so dust-covered that I could barely see outside, but from the light I would have said it was early evening. If so, we had been unconscious for about fifteen hours! I wondered where we were. Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard singing, the sound of a choir. But the music was foreign—and not French. It sounded vaguely religious, which made me think of churches. And that made me think of funerals. I just hoped they weren’t singing for us.

“Good evening,” Bastille muttered. He hadn’t changed out of the dirty linen suit he had been wearing when we met him the day before. It was so crumpled now that I wondered if he had slept in it.

“What time is it?” Tim asked.

“It is time for you to talk!” Bastille blew a cloud of smoke into Tim’s face.

Tim coughed. “You know those things can damage your health!” he remarked.

Not quickly enough, I thought. But I said nothing.

“It is your health that should concern you, my friend,” Bastille replied.

“I’m perfectly well, thank you,” Tim said.