‘It’s too warm here for you to be cold. But take your clothes off if they’re uncomfortable.’ There was harshness in the woman’s voice.

‘No,’ the child said quickly, more through instinct than understanding.

‘We’ve got to talk to the others,’ insisted Cool impatiently, at the doorway.

‘We don’t want her to catch cold, in wet clothes.’

‘Come on!’ protested the man.

Felicite hesitated before shrugging reluctantly. She grabbed Mary’s arm again, holding too tightly, thrusting her towards the blank, peep-holed doors. ‘This is the room where we play games…’ she said as they scurried across it. She opened the door to the left, pushing the child through. ‘… and this is where you’re going to live.’

There were five men waiting in the upstairs room they entered minutes later and the excited expectation was palpable.

‘We saw you arrive,’ said Jean Smet. ‘She’s pretty.’

‘There’s a problem,’ blurted Cool.

The atmosphere was still palpable but very different from when they had entered. Felicite sprawled in the huge, encompassing chair she’d adopted as her own – her throne – when they used this house, not trying to hide her contempt at their instant response to what they had been told.

There were six men in the group that Marcel had brought together, a disparate gathering with only their sexual predilection in common. None, in fact, particularly liked each other. Jean Smet and Michel Blott were lawyers, Smet usefully in the Justice Ministry, Blott in richly rewarding private practice. August Dehane was a senior executive in Belgian state telecommunications, Belgacom, and Henri Cool, who had just identified Mary McBride as an ambassador’s daughter, was a deputy headmaster. Gaston Mehre ran an antique gallery in Antwerp and provided a home – and protection – for his mentally retarded brother, Charles. It was Charles who maintained the beach house when they were using it, a willing slave to them all. He was also the most unpredictably dangerous.