Errol released Bob’s hundredth part and turned his attention to Toni. So far she had made no contribution to the conversation, and perhaps Errol felt some social pressure to include her. He and Mr Snuff were, after all, in a way the hosts.

‘Toni?’ he enquired. ‘Is your boyfriend a thief?’

‘Listen, Errol,’ Toni said, attempting to sound calm and considering – no easy task when one is lying prostrate and securely bound across a table – ‘we ain’t getting nowhere here.’

‘I know that.’

‘If Bob tells you what you want to hear, you’ll kill him.’

‘I’m going to kill him anyway.’

‘But you can’t kill him till he’s told you where your damn hundredth part is. So he won’t tell you. We’ll be here till Christmas.’

It was a valiant effort. That she could think at all, considering the horror of her situation, was a miracle, but to have put Errol’s problem so clearly was impressive indeed.

‘OK, Bob,’ Errol said, levelling his gun at Toni. ‘If you don’t tell me right now, I’ll shoot her.’

This was a hopeless ploy. Bob was, after all, a heartless drug dealer. The chances of his being moved by appeals to his chivalry were small. Toni knew this too, but before she had time to request that she be left out of it Errol shot her.

It was a powerful gesture: the smell of gunsmoke, the echoing report in such a confined space, the scream, the blood. All this might have moved a lesser – or indeed more honourable – man than Bob to speak up and save Toni further discomfort. But Bob was, of course, not a lesser man; nor was he a more honourable one. Nobody ever is.

‘I didn’t steal your drugs,’ Bob said.

Errol sat down at the table, oblivious of the dying woman who lay across it. He was at his wits’ end. He and Mr Snuff had searched Bob’s apartment, his car, his clothes. Where on earth could the missing drugs be?

‘Could a person get a kilo of heroin up their ass?’ he asked.