He carried on, keeping the back of his hand against the wall, feeling his way around his prison. Desperate to get out, to find Kaitlynn – and to find out just what the hell was going on here. Then, suddenly, his foot struck something hard, sending him hurtling forward onto the floor.

He lay for some moments, winded and bruised. Then, as he hauled himself back up, his face brushed against something soft and firm. Something covered in fabric. A trouser leg? It moved away. An instant later, something crashed into his face with such force it knocked him over onto his back.

As he lay on the ground, the taste of blood in his mouth, checking if he had lost a tooth – and confirming it with his tongue – he realized he had been kicked in the face. ‘Hey!’ he called out, aware his voice sounded strange, slurred, as if his jaw was broken. ‘I am your friend – ami!’

He climbed back, unsteadily, onto his feet. ‘Englishhh!’ he slurred. ‘I’m an English police officer. Je suis police, gendarme! Friend! Ami!’

He inched his way back to the wall, grateful when he finally touched it, and stood there, not daring to get too close to whoever had kicked him. ‘Police!’ he said again, his voice drowning out the sound of the door opening a short distance away. ‘Ami! Friend!’

Making his way along, he touched the leg again. This time it did not flinch. ‘Do you speak English? Parlez-vous Anglais? Raise your right leg if you do!’

An instant later, he was startled by a powerful beam of light from behind him. For a moment, it lit up an elderly man, with messy hair and terror in his eyes, his mouth and chin covered in duct tape. Beside him was a similarly gagged woman, maybe in her late sixties, also chained to the wall by her wrists.

Then, just as Jack turned his head, he felt a violent blow. He fell sideways, unconscious, to the floor.

16

‘Royyyyyyyyyyy!’

The sound pierced Roy Grace’s heart.

He heard her again. She was shouting something, a warning. It sounded like, ‘Royyyyy! Get away, run! They’re going to kill you!’

He realized that he had never, in the years he had been with Cleo, heard her scream before – apart from one time when she’d found a huge spider in the shower tray. The scream had definitely come from above.

Roy sprinted the short distance along the corridor to the tower steps and climbed them as fast as he could, hauling himself by the handrail. In the beam of his torch, as he passed the fuse box, he noticed the trip handle was up.