‘All I said was that it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.’

If it hadn’t been so serious, a casual observer might have laughed: the almost Gothic nature of the scene was in such stark contrast to the banal conversation that accompanied it.

It was early afternoon on the day of the Oscars, and the captives were being held in a dark and dingy cellar. Toni, a woman in her early twenties, lay on her back across a table, her ankles and wrists chained to its legs. Her boyfriend, Bob, hung from a chain on the wall. His clothes had been cut away, and he looked rather sad dangling there in the tatters of what had once been an Italian suit.

The man who had made the remark about haystacks was called Errol. He and his companion, who answered only to the title of Mr Snuff, were gangsters. They carried enormous pistols wedged under their arms, which must have been very uncomfortable, and their conversation was continually punctuated with the word ‘motherfucker’. Errol and Mr Snuff were of the opinion that Bob was holding out on them in the matter of some missing drugs. Bob denied the suggestion, of course, and a search had been conducted, unsuccessfully, prompting Errol to draw the ageold comparison with the needle in the haystack.

A comparison which irritated Mr Snuff not a little. ‘And I’m saying it’s a dumb thing to say,’ he snapped unkindly. ‘There ain’t no haystacks any more. Leastways, not in the experience of the average individual.’