Wolfe led the way out of the door, and I followed him, conscious of Haddock’s looming form falling into place behind me, so close that I could hear his low breathing. I tensed, not liking the fact that I was vulnerable, but knowing better than to act scared.

We walked through a narrow corridor and then out into the nightclub proper — a dimly lit, windowless space of low balconies, cluttered with tables and chairs, surrounding a dancefloor and stage. The decor was cheap and tired, the two gleaming poles in the middle of the stage the only things looking less than twenty years old.

‘You ever been married, Sean?’ asked Wolfe without looking back as we slowly circumnavigated the room in single file.

‘No.’

‘You ever served time?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How long?’

‘Seven years.’

‘Where did you serve it?’

‘Parkhurst. Then Ford.’

The questions came thick and fast as we did slow laps of the club, but always delivered in a casual manner, as if he wasn’t too worried about the answers. What wing was I in at Parkhurst? Who did I know in Ford? Did I have kids? When did I get out? Did I know such-and-such the armed robber? Where did I grow up?

Wolfe was testing my legend, hoping to trip me into a mistake, but I’d learned my part perfectly, every last detail. Because if you don’t, you’re dead. You have to go through this rigmarole on every op you do, and the higher up the food chain the target, the more detailed the interrogation. I answered everything. Without complaint. And, more importantly, without a pause.

I was using an old alias I’d first used several years earlier when I was seconded to Soca, that of Sean Tatelli, an ex-con from Coventry who’d served a seven-year stretch in the 1990s for supplying class A drugs, firearms offences, and the attempted murder of a police officer during the course of his arrest.