But the communication with to the kidnappers had cooled. Despite intense pressure, Arthur couldn’t get the practical details in place on how the money should be handed over. It seemed to him as if those responsible had lost interest in closing the matter, and his network wasn’t having any luck in obtaining clear answers.

The reason was probably that the relationship had become strained between Abu Suheib, the Iraqi head of ISIS in Azaz, who had taken Daniel captive, and Abu Athir, the Emir of Aleppo. For Arthur, it was crucial that the person he was negotiating with also had the keys to Daniel’s cell. He sensed that the Iraqi was interested in negotiating a release, while Abu Athir seemed to want to hang on to Daniel. And Abu Athir had the keys.

At the same time the war was raging in and around Aleppo, where Daniel was being held. The insurgent groups were fighting among themselves and against the Assad regime, which continued to bomb the populous city.

An increasing number of reports were coming in that poison gas was being used against the rebel-controlled areas. In Raqqa, a city north-east of Aleppo that the rebels had taken control of in March 2013, there were rumours that ISIS was winning more influence and had pushed out Jabhat al-Nusra and the other factions.

Susanne and Kjeld followed the news from Syria and feared for Daniel, sitting imprisoned in the midst of war. They watched powerlessly as the bombs fell on Aleppo.

· * ·

Daniel was in the boiler room with seven Syrians. A couple of them were in their teens, while others were family men in their forties who didn’t speak a word of English. However, there was one young man in his twenties with whom Daniel could communicate and play games. They scratched out a chequerboard on the concrete floor with a nail and used stones to represent the chequers. One player’s chequers were large stones, the other’s small ones. Daniel tried to disappear into the game and forget about the cords dangling from some pipes in the ceiling, and what they might be used for.

‘Sometimes they torture in here,’ his fellow prisoner told him. Daniel shuddered at the thought of sitting in the room where the torture took place. Occasionally he and the other prisoners were taken to the toilets across the corridor while someone screamed for fifteen minutes inside the boiler room. Daniel was paralysed by the screams, while his fellow prisoners took the opportunity to wash their clothes in the sink or go to the toilet.

Daniel didn’t dare spend too long urinating. If the guards had worked themselves up after beating a prisoner, it could mean a beating for him if he wasn’t finished in the toilet by the time they came back.

There was often noise in the corridor, because the toilet and wash basins lay directly opposite the boiler room and prisoners were constantly being led in and out. Daniel discovered a small hole in the boiler room’s metal door and when he looked through it he felt the breeze that filtered through. His poor eyesight became noticeably better when he looked through the hole towards the door to the toilets. His eyes could suddenly focus like a camera through the small opening. He was soon using it as a way of passing the time, by keeping up with what was going on outside the room and seeing who walked by. And he knew he was unlikely to be discovered, since the guards would have to first unlock the door, giving him time to move away from it.

One day he heard voices speaking English in the corridor. From his vantage point, he could see that there was a group of prisoners in a queue for the toilet.

‘what’s your name?’ shouted a guard. The answer came loud and clear.

‘my name is james foley.’

The guard repeated his question to three other prisoners, and Daniel heard them answer: John Cantlie, David Haines and Federico Motka.

He moved away from the door, dumbfounded. How many of us are there? he thought. He watched through the hole on a daily basis when there was noise in the toilets.

In particular, he was surprised that James Foley was in the basement. The last news he could remember about the missing American was that he had been imprisoned by the regime in Damascus.

It wasn’t long before he spotted two men he also hadn’t seen before. One of them was in desert boots, jeans and a white shirt. The other one wore a checked shirt and trousers, where the lower part can be zipped off. Daniel smiled when he saw that the man was wearing boat shoes. They had to be westerners too.

Daniel began counting. There were the two Frenchmen, Didier François and Edouard Elias, whom he had shared a cell with, but had not seen for a while. There were the four men who had been asked to say their names by the toilets: James Foley, John Cantlie, Federico Motka and David Haines. And then the two men in boat shoes and desert boots, whose names he didn’t know. And then there was him.

I’m obviously not the only idiot, he thought, and suddenly became optimistic. The more of them there were, the more focus there had to be on their release. He wept with relief.

When he had been in the boiler room for five days he was led into the guard room, where Abu Ubaidah sat in jogging trousers at a table with a computer in front of him. Also on the table was the message that Daniel had tried to smuggle out with the Syrian prisoner.

‘Why would you do such a thing?’ Abu Ubaidah said quietly in English. ‘We’re treating you well, aren’t we?’

Daniel explained that he hadn’t told them where he was and offered to translate the letter from Danish to English.

‘No. We’ve already had it translated,’ was the reply.

A few days later he was taken into a dark room with a wooden door. Sitting there was the man in the white shirt and his partner with the boat shoes.

Pierre Torres and Nicolas Hénin introduced themselves and gave Daniel a proper hug as a welcome. Pierre had longish dark hair, a broad white face and a wide, open smile.‘Welcome to our room,’ he said kindly, and Daniel felt overwhelmed by this warm reception.

The two Frenchmen had each been kidnapped separately in Raqqa more than a month ago, on 22 June. Pierre was a marine biologist, but had become a freelance journalist after the Arab Spring. The movement had awakened his activism and he had been in Egypt, Libya and Syria several times.

At the end of May he had gone to Raqqa, where he was living with a family. ISIS was gaining ground in the town, but not without resistance. There were daily demonstrations against Jabhat al-Nusra, whom people called the Islamists, but Pierre’s experience was that most of the combatants had already switched their allegiance to ISIS. Raqqa was full of hooded Islamists, but also democracy-hungry activists rebelling against the Islamist hegemony, which they didn’t want to replace the tyrannical regime. Pierre was fascinated by these ideological clashes.

The day he was kidnapped he had had an upset stomach, but was nevertheless walking to the city centre to witness another demonstration against the Islamists. A few blocks from the governor’s building a small car drew up beside him. The men wore hoods, which didn’t concern Pierre very much because most of the fighters did. However, when they pointed their weapons at him, he was afraid that they belonged to one of the regime-backed militias. He resisted and tried to escape, but each time he pulled away they slammed his head on the roof of the car. Eventually he was thrown into the back seat with blood dripping from his forehead and driven to a house outside the city, south-east of Raqqa. There he met Nicolas Hénin, who had been taken the same day.

After two weeks they were moved south to the children’s hospital in Aleppo, where Daniel was the first westerner they had met, although they were aware that there were others.

They had communicated through a hole in the wall with Didier and Edouard, who were sitting in the next cell. They also knew that the aid workers David and Federico were there.