There wasn’t any peace at night, either. Daniel lay listening to prisoners being dragged out of other basement rooms and beaten. The screams and blows of the whip reached into the cell, where he counted them to shut out his anxiety. Counting helped. The victims howled and whimpered, sometimes for maybe fifteen minutes, other times for several hours. The torture made Daniel sleepless and paranoid.

On 20 June, after more than a month in captivity, a guard came to fetch him and told him to follow. Daniel crossed the hallway and was led into the guards’ room. It was a long room with a television and a table at one end, where two guards were sitting. One of them was a burly man with a long beard, who stood ready with a camera on a tripod. The burly man told him to sit on a chair by the wall. Daniel was going to appear in a video.

‘It’s to your government,’ he was informed.

Daniel sat in a camouflage jacket and tried to look at the camera, even though it was too far away for him to see it properly without his glasses.

‘Pull your sleeves down over your wrists,’ said the cameraman, adding, ‘and hold them down between your knees.’

Following instructions, Daniel said who he was and that he wouldn’t be released unless the Danish government paid a ransom. ‘Please pay so I can come home,’ begged Daniel, followed by greetings to his family: ‘I’m well. I miss you. I love you, Mum and Dad. I love you, Signe.’

Then they turned off the camera.

‘Thank you,’ said Daniel, relieved that a video message would finally be sent to Denmark.

‘You should thank yourself,’ said the burly man, blindfolding him and taking him back to the cell.

· * ·

More than a month had gone by since Daniel disappeared. It became a permanent part of Susanne’s morning routine to follow the news about Syria and write in her diary.

She also developed habits she had never had previously. Every evening she said a prayer, asking God to take care of Daniel, no matter where he was or what he had done. In the bedroom she had placed two wrought-iron hearts containing strings of lights, which she lit every evening at dusk. She also began taking the time to chase flies out of the window to freedom instead of smashing them with a fly-swatter as she usually did.

Susanne and Kjeld were both spending a lot of time on the phone. In the space of a few weeks a previously unknown man had become the most important person in their lives. Arthur was their lifeline to Daniel and he called them frequently from Turkey with new information.

‘Daniel has probably been brought before a sharia court in Aleppo,’ he reported in a loud voice. ‘It’s being said that he has been accused of having brought pornographic images.’

Arthur explained that, within his network of informants, rumours had flourished at first that Daniel had been sentenced to death and that the sentence had already been executed. Shortly afterwards it was reported that he was alive and could escape sentencing if the family paid a sum for his offences. Arthur suggested that, with his help, Susanne and Kjeld should write a letter to the sharia court to influence the judges to release Daniel on payment of a fine. It was still unclear whether the information had come from influential sources in the hierarchy around Daniel, yet Arthur sent word to his network that he wanted to get proof that Daniel was still alive and to start negotiations. The hope was that this message would also confirm that Daniel had been detained in Aleppo as alleged.

An amount of approximately $700,000 had been mentioned by Abu Suheib, according to an intermediary. This was money that would have to be paid by Daniel’s family, because Denmark doesn’t pay ransoms to kidnappers. The political parties in parliament had rarely been more steadfastly in agreement than they were on this issue. They didn’t want to incite terrorist organizations and other criminals to take more Danish hostages. Denmark thus belonged to the group of countries that was trying to curtail the hostage industry by slamming shut the cash box. The State didn’t want to become involved in what the ministries behind closed doors had dubbed the ‘Daniel affair’, either by paying a ransom or any other costs associated with the search for him.

On the other hand, the Foreign Ministry was willing to play a liaison role and made rooms available for meetings between various actors in the case. It was also incumbent on the Ministry’s Citizens Advice Bureau to provide information to Susanne and Kjeld, who, along with Anita, regularly attended meetings at the Ministry concerning Denmark’s position on the case and the latest news about Daniel, although very often they had already received this information from Arthur.

There was no doubt that the network that had taken Daniel was just as ideological as it was money-grubbing. The hierarchy among the suspected kidnappers slowly became clearer to Arthur and it led straight to the top of the ISIS leadership. At the bottom of the hierarchy sat the Iraqi ISIS leader in Azaz, Abu Suheib, who was most likely the one behind Daniel’s kidnapping in the first place. Further up was the head of the prison in Aleppo, the Dutchman Abu Ubaidah. Operationally, they shared the same boss, Abu Athir, who was the Emir of Aleppo and was at the top of the hierarchy as a member of the Shura Council under Baghdadi.

All lines of command led to Abu Athir and Arthur learned from his network that it was he who decided whether hostages should live, die or be brought before a sharia court.

The family couldn’t take the risk of not trying to raise the $700,000 that might bring Daniel home. Kjeld contacted the family’s banker and on 20 June Susanne overcame her misgivings. She and Kjeld signed for a loan of 3.7 million kroner, guaranteed by Daniel’s insurance. Susanne dropped off the signed loan documents at their local bank branch before going to work at Legoland, where she earned $23 an hour.

She told herself that the staggering amount they had borrowed was just a number on a piece of paper.

· * ·

No one ever saw the video in which Daniel appealed to the government to pay a ransom, because it was never sent to Denmark.

Daniel, who was unaware of this, survived on the slim hope that the appeal would help to get him out. In the meantime, he had been moved back into the large basement room, without Didier. The cell was now full of Syrian prisoners, who had placed their blankets as far from the toilet as possible. The atmosphere in the room was sultry and stagnant and the only fresh air that occasionally reached them came from the small toilet window.

Daniel lay between a thin man, Bashir, who was in his fifties, and his stout friend Mohammad, who had sixteen children; there were a lot of medicine bottles by his blanket, because he suffered from diabetes. They welcomed Daniel and let him eat more than them.

In the morning the Syrian prisoners got up early to pray, while Daniel usually slept until the first meal, around midday. He tried to establish daily routines to regain his strength. He felt weak when he tried to walk around in the cell, but reminded himself that if he got some exercise his body would begin to absorb nutrients rather than expel them. He counted eighteen steps back and forth across the cell floor.

Bashir smiled at him and told him in English about his son, who was at university, and his two wives, who were good friends, even though they shared a husband. The guards told Bashir that they had imprisoned that son and one of his wives. He cried every time he prayed, fearing the worst.

‘They aren’t real people. They are insane,’ Bashir sobbed. He was convinced that he would never get out alive. ‘I wish the revolution had never begun,’ he said. ‘The only ones still fighting are the bandits. The good people left long ago.’

The walking helped and, soon enough, Daniel was pacing back and forth on the floor for hours talking to himself. He played several voices at once, and he imagined that God was one of them.