So he was a stickler for detail. She didn’t like the sound of that. A cover story was all about the little things at the end of the day, and if Stephen noticed some tiny detail that looked out of place…

She squashed down the anxieties and edged away from him and his hostile aura. With a jerk, she suddenly found that she’d almost backed into Archie, who was sitting on the breakfast stool. He was holding up a large knife right next to her face. She recognised it as one of her kitchen knives that he’d taken from the knife block on the counter top. She gulped and recoiled.

He drew his lips back in a smile, exposing his brown rotting teeth.

‘Good steel,’ he said, testing the edge of the blade against his thumb.

‘Is it?’ she replied, trying to sound nonchalant.

He hefted it from one hand to the other. ‘And well balanced.’

The razor-sharp blade sparkled in the light only centimetres from her face.

‘Archie’s got an impressive knife collection,’ said Rick. ‘He likes sharp things. Maybe you could show her your knife collection one day, Archie?’

‘Maybe I will,’ replied Archie, a hint of menace in his voice. All she saw was her own convex reflection in the black lenses of his sunglasses.

A chill winter breeze blew in through the open window. Bailey analysed the situation. Shane was blocking her escape from the flat; Archie was right next to her with the knife. Stephen, now in the living room, was glaring at her intensely. And Rick was sitting on the sofa, smiling almost affably as he observed her with his obsidian eyes, appearing to relish her discomfort.

Four men. One woman. Much as she was good at jiu-jitsu, she doubted her ability to survive should they decide to stab her or push her out of the window, or both.

They still hadn’t overtly addressed why they were here and it was making her nervous. As if reading her thoughts, Rick spoke.

‘I guess you’re wondering why we’re here. Well, like I told you back in the pub, we don’t just blindly trust everyone we meet.’

‘What are you saying exactly?’ Bailey infused her words with a slight tone of indignation, but inside her heart was pounding in apprehension.

‘Have you heard of eye accessing cues?’ said Stephen in his squeaky nasty voice.

Bailey shook her head, although in fact she knew exactly what he was referring to.

‘Let me explain,’ he said. ‘When you’re recalling a real event, your eyes look to the left. And when you’re imagining something, your eyes look to the right. It’s unconscious, see. You can’t control it. Left means truth. Right means lie.’

That explained why he’d been staring so intently into her eyes when he’d been questioning her in The Admiral, why he’d demanded she take off her sunglasses.

She wanted to tell him that eye accessing cues had been discredited some time ago and that the police certainly no longer used them in interrogations. However, she had the feeling he probably wouldn’t be very receptive.