The final piece of the puzzle is right here in front of me. We may have done well tonight, but unless this behemoth of a computer is destroyed , we lose.

Once Pearce had stopped talking McCormick could hear faint gurgling sounds, which must have been the coolant liquids in the walls. If Marshall’s hearing was as good as his own, that gurgling must have been hell to work with, unless the impact was softened by the music that came from the speakers.

It didn’t seem like the kind of music that Iain Marshall would enjoy, given how well the rest of his office illustrated his personality. When Marshall spoke, he confirmed McCormick’s suspicions.

‘Great,’ Marshall snarled, as he joined Pearce and Roth in the middle of the room. ‘He’s playing Bach, in my office.’

‘Nothing wrong with a bit of Bach,’ came a heavy but lively voice from the entrance behind them, ‘he was the original father of harmony. Beethoven’s words, not mine.’

McCormick had heard the man’s voice before. Less than an hour earlier, on the other side of Roth’s radio. He knew the man’s identity without needing to turn around.

‘I’d have thought Bach was a bit churchy for your taste,’ McCormick replied.

A hand grabbed the bone of McCormick’s shoulder and turned him around, and he was met with the formidable sight of the most hated man on Earth. Dressed in the smartest of tailor-made suits, with a full head of shoulder-length white hair, the face McCormick had only seen on television had found its way into real life. The man greeted him with an entertained smile, his body giving off the enthusiastic energy of a televangelist. He clamped McCormick’s hand in a vigorous handshake, releasing him moments before cracking his finger bones.

‘My name is Nicholas Grant.’

‘…Dr Joseph McCormick.’

A discomforting smirk settled on Grant’s face as he glanced up and down his prisoner’s body. His head and shoulders swayed back and forth, as if he were a snake readying himself for a strike. After a judgemental shake of his head, his voice rose to a piercing bellow.

‘This is the man I got dressed up to meet?’ he asked. ‘I waited a full year to make contact with the great Joseph McCormick – the leader of the only rebel faction in Britain – the man who united thirty-two people on Takeover Day and turned them into an actual miniature army – the man whose soldiers spent a year burning and sabotaging their way through New London – the man who even convinced my daughter to live among him and his minions… and this is who I end up meeting? An exhausted man in torn clothing, gasping for his final breaths after a simple walk up the stairs, aged in his mid-sixties but with the stench of death already buzzing round him. And on top of that, the good doctor happens to be really fat.’