A lot of people were going to get screwed because of that coin flip.

Especially me.

There’s only so many bananas you can eat and outside the plantation we flagged down a car which unfortunately had three undercover cops inside. Our football shirts and accents were a bit of a giveaway and before I could say, “I want to see the British ambassador,” we were separated and driven to a cell block in an underground bunker near the airport.

The riot at Playa de las Americas all over now and the rioters being held under Spanish antiterrorism laws. A guard cheerfully told me that we were all going to get ten years.

The cell was deep underground, a yellow bulb in the ceiling giving off a little light. Cold, damp. Impossible to tell if it was day or night. But I’d been in worse. Much bloody worse. They fed you three times a day, there was a bog that flushed, and the fauna situation was manageable.

I was sitting on the cot reading How Stella Got Her Groove Back for the third time when the cell door opened.

I stood.

A man and a woman. A tall man carrying a chair and a water bottle. He was wearing a linen jacket, white shirt, Harrow tie. It was difficult to see in the dark but he looked about thirty-five, forty at the outside, hard-faced, blond-gray hair. He held himself like a high-ranking army officer: straight spine, shoulders back, stomach in. He unfolded the chair and sat down. A revolver peeked out next to his armpit. Interesting. The woman also had a chair. She was late thirties, wearing a sundress and sandals with red hair tied behind her in a ponytail. She was heavy but attractive-Rubens plump, not lesbian-biker plump. She took out a notebook and sat back in the shadows. He was the man and she was the assistant. They fell immediately into their roles, which wasn’t smart, but despite that I still didn’t like the look of either of them.

“You’re British,” I said to the man.