Apart from the main room, there was just a kitchenette with a greasy stove and a cockroach on the wall. Off that was a door to a tiny cubicle with a stinking toilet. On a chipped sideboard in the kitchen he found a knife. A very big knife. It had a tarnished brass hand-guard, like a sabre, and the broad blade in the leather sheath was twelve or thirteen inches long. It made him think about the brutal wounds on Morgan Paxton’s body. The kind of wounds that a heavy hacking blade like this would inflict.

He left it lying there. Stepping away, he felt a loose floorboard under his foot. It lifted up at one end when he stamped on it. He kicked it away, revealing a hollow space under the floor about eight inches high. There was a crumpled plastic bag stuffed inside.

He kneeled down next to the hole and used the gun to fish the bag out by its handle, then scattered the contents out on the floor and sifted them about with the pistol muzzle. There was a bundle of banknotes held together with an elastic band and a few other papers. Those didn’t interest him. What did interest him were the debit and credit cards in Morgan Paxton’s name, and his British Library membership card. Then among the papers he found a UK passport. He flipped it open with the gun and Morgan’s face stared up at him from inside.

He left the evidence where it lay. If there’d been a doubt in his mind, it was gone now.

As an afterthought he crouched down lower to the floor and stuck his whole arm inside the hollow space. It was a long shot, but these guys were such amateurs that anything was possible.

His fingers made contact with something that wasn’t wood or masonry. It felt rounded and smooth and plasticky He grasped it and felt it move. A few inches, and he could see it. The manufacturer’s logo in silver letters on black plastic. It was a small laptop computer.

He pulled the machine up out of the hole and set it down on the floor in front of him, resisting the temptation to flip open the lid and turn it on. No time for that now. He just stared at it instead. Was this Morgan Paxton’s laptop? The chances were that it was. Either the thieves hadn’t got around to selling it yet, or they’d fancied keeping it for themselves.

Ben grabbed the machine and carried it back into the main room. The two guys were still lying there, slumped against the wall. One of them was trying to say something. Ben laid the laptop carefully down on the glass-topped table. He stepped towards his prisoners, took the gun from his belt and pointed it at them.

‘Why did you have to kill him?’ he asked in Arabic. ‘Don’t you know what you’ve brought on yourselves, doing that? All for a line of coke. Is it worth it?’

‘I didn’t do it,’ the younger one blurted out, suddenly finding his voice. His face was twitching as he watched the gun. He pointed a finger at his friend. ‘He stabbed the guy. I told him not to. But he just kept sticking the knife in.’

‘You think I care which one of you put the knife in?’ Ben said.

The younger one was crying now. The other just stared in dumb terror.

‘What happened to the case and the papers?’ Ben asked. ‘I know they were there. You took them. Don’t lie to me.’

No reply. Just the quiet sobbing from the younger one. Then the older of the two guys spoke for the first time. ‘We burned the papers. Sold the case.’

Ben nodded. So be it. Now it was time to finish his job.

He stepped back from them. Two steps. Three. He raised the pistol and let the sights hover on their bodies. He moved his thumb up to the safety lever and nudged it until he felt it click to the fire position.

The two were squirming. The younger one put his hands out, as though he thought he could shield himself from the strike of a 9mm jacketed bullet moving at close to the speed of sound. A dark stain was spreading over the crotch of his jeans.

Ben felt the cool, smooth face of the trigger against his finger. All he had to do was shoot these two scumbags, pick up what was left of Morgan’s things and get out of here. Nobody would even know they were dead, until the rotting-corpse stink found its way under the door and out into the hallway. In the Cairo heat, maybe less than two days. But that was plenty of time. There was no way the two women were going to run to the police, either. He was home free. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

You owe this to Harry Paxton, he thought.

He let the sights settle on the older of the two. His friend was probably telling the truth-this one was the killer. He had a harder look about him, even facing death.

Shoot him first, then the other. The debt to Paxton would be paid. Ben could go home and forget the whole thing.

But staring down at the two pathetic forms through the sights of the Browning, Ben knew he’d never forget. He’d sworn that he was never going to do this again, and it would be a broken promise to himself that he’d never be able to forgive.

The gun wavered in his hands. He let out a long breath. Voices argued in his head.

They’re shits. They deserve it. Look what they did. You saw the photos.

But your days of killing to order are behind you. You’re not SAS any more.

Two bullets. Then it’s done. It’s not like it would be the first time for you.

No. You can’t.

I’m sorry, Harry.

He lowered the gun. The two men were staring at him, wide-eyed, following his every move.

He clicked the safety back on, let the pistol dangle at his side.

‘OK,’ he said to them. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’

Chapter Eighteen

Three minutes later, the two junkies were lying bound and gagged on the rug. Just two parcels waiting to be delivered, as Ben made his preparations. He carefully wrapped Morgan Paxton’s striped cotton blazer around the laptop for protection, and slipped it into his bag. Then he fetched a rag from the kitchen, sat on the stool at the glass-topped table and stripped down Abdou’s CZ75 into its component parts. He used the rag to wipe everything down and reassembled the pistol, careful not to leave any prints.

The two prisoners craned their necks to eye him nervously as he worked. He ignored them. When the gun was back together he stood up and walked over to the older one. Holding the weapon butt-first with the rag, he grabbed the junkie’s right hand and smeared his prints all over the frame, slide and trigger guard. He walked back into the kitchen and stuffed the gun into the hole under the floor along with the rest of the evidence.

Locking the door behind him, he left the flat and made his way silently down the stairs to ground level. The taxi was still there, dusty under the faint streetlights. The driver was lounging smoking in his seat, clearly enjoying what was turning out to be a lucrative and easy job for him. Ben smiled. The guy was about to get a shock.

He climbed the stairs back to the junkies’ flat, unlocked the door and went inside. Nothing had changed. The two strained to peer up at him as he walked up to them. Their eyes were bulging, faces red, veins standing out on their foreheads. He grabbed the older one by the shirt collar and hauled him across the floor. The guy struggled and mumbled behind the gag. Ben dragged him along the passageway to the door, out into the hallway. He let the guy’s head crack down on the floor as he let him go to lock the door, then grabbed him again. ‘If you think I’m carrying you down,’ he said, ‘you’re much mistaken.’

The descent was fairly brutal, and after bumping down three flights of urine-smelling concrete stairs the guy’s protests had dwindled to a sobbing whimper. Ben heaved him up over his shoulder, glanced up and down the dark street to check nobody was around, and carried him across to the car.

The taxi driver was already out of his seat. His laid-back composure slipped a little when he saw the bound, gagged prisoner. ‘What are you doing?’ he gasped.