‘You just made it before you turned thirty. Happy birthday, my dear Pierre.’

· * ·

Late in the evening on 19 August Arthur opened the door to his hotel room in London. He had been to a series of meetings and threw his computer bag on the bed and checked his phone. There was a message from one of his contacts in Syria.

It was a question: ‘Have you seen the video with James?’

There were also several missed calls from his security colleagues in the United States. Arthur immediately called back.

‘I’ll send you the link,’ his associate said. ‘It’s a video. I think they’ve killed him.’

‘OK, I’ll take a look and call you back in a minute,’ replied Arthur. He fished his computer out of his bag and hurried to download the video from YouTube before it could be censored.

A picture appeared with someone who looked like James Foley in an orange prison uniform kneeling in a desert. Beside him stood a black-clad, masked man with a knife in his hand and a gun in a holster. The video was entitled ‘A Message to America’.

James recited some clearly rehearsed phrases. It was a political message to his government: ‘I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government,’ began James. ‘For what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality. My message to my beloved parents: save me some dignity and don’t accept any meagre compensation for my death from the same people who effectively put the last nail in my coffin with the recent aerial campaign in Iraq.’

He spoke to his brother John, who should think about whether those who had decided to go to war against IS had thought about him and his family.

‘I guess, all in all, I wish I wasn’t American,’ he concluded.

Then the black executioner took over as he put a hand on James’s shoulder.

‘As a government you have been at the forefront of the aggression towards the Islamic State. You have plotted against us and gone far out of your way to find reasons to interfere in our affairs.’

The executioner proclaimed that an attack on IS was an attack on Muslims all over the world.

‘So any attempt by you, Obama, to deny Muslims their rights to live in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people.’

The executioner brought the knife up against James’s neck. At that moment, the video went black and the next thing Arthur saw was an orange-clad body laid out on its stomach, the head placed between the shoulder blades.

Arthur played the video three to four times and tried to focus on his task: to analyse what he was watching. He noted the way the film was edited. At the moment of execution, it went black. Could they have faked the killing? Was the decapitated head really James’s? Why didn’t IS want to show the actual moment of death? Was it out of respect? Was it because it would be too triumphant, or had they learned from the 2004 video of Kenneth Bigley, which frightened off al-Qaeda support?

Arthur played the video in slow motion, frame by frame, to interpret James’s facial expressions and body language, as the knife met his neck, and compared it with other images he had of James. It didn’t look like a fake. It looked like a murder.

For Arthur, it was the tragic culmination of nearly two years of searching. It was now clearly all over. A heaviness weighed on Arthur’s mind. James’s family had believed that he could do the same for James as he had done for Daniel.

He took a deep breath and called his colleague in the United States.

‘I’m not in any doubt about it. It’s James. He’s dead.’

They talked about the strongly worded appeal addressed to James’s brother, who was in the US Air Force, and to his family about not accepting a meagre compensation from the US government.

‘If we’re going to do anything to retrieve the body, we have to move fast. You must ask the family if they want us to try,’ said Arthur. If that were the case, he would quickly get hold of his contacts in Syria. ‘I have to run. There’s someone I have to talk to as soon as possible, so that he doesn’t get the news another way,’ Arthur said and hung up.

Then he dialled Daniel’s number.

· * ·

It was dark and the English country road twisted in front of Daniel and Pierre as they sat shrouded in music inside the car. They had taken the ferry from Calais to Dover, where they had driven ashore and were now heading towards a small town that was lit up in the distance.

Daniel loved the tranquillity that oozed out of the nerdy marine biologist when he held long, enthusiastic monologues about fish and water fleas. Pierre was the sort of person who would never buy a smartphone and was completely satisfied with his little old flip phone.

Suddenly the ring tone from Daniel’s iPhone interrupted Pierre’s speech. He could see on the display that it was Arthur.

‘Do you have time to talk? I have a message,’ said Arthur.

‘I’m driving,’ said Daniel.

‘Then pull over,’ said Arthur.

Daniel could immediately tell that Arthur sounded different and that he hadn’t said, ‘What’s up, you idiot?’ or fired off a stream of jokes.

Daniel hung up while he found a place to pull in and turn off the engine. Pierre looked at him.

‘Why are we stopping here?’

‘It’s Arthur. Something’s happened,’ said Daniel and rang Arthur back.

Arthur’s voice sounded heavy.

‘A video has just been made public. It shows James in an orange prison uniform in a desert, where he is being killed by a masked man.’

‘No! How?’

‘Yes, well, that’s it – he was decapitated.’

Daniel stiffened.

‘I have more bad news,’ continued Arthur. ‘They showed Steven afterwards. He’s the next in line.’ Daniel thought about his old prison companion, whom he had wrapped up in a blanket in December when he had been Steven’s Secret Santa.

Daniel was beside himself. It was unbearable to think of James’s brutal murder, and the fact that Steven had been forced to witness the killing, after which he would have to sit in a cell, knowing he would be next. His worst fears had become reality.

‘I knew it could happen,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘That’s the way things were going.’

‘I need your help,’ said Arthur.

He wanted to send Daniel the video.

‘Could you listen and hear if it’s James’s voice?’ asked Arthur. He wanted to get a clear confirmation or denial as to whether it was actually James.

‘You just have to listen while he speaks. Stop the video after that,’ warned Arthur.

Daniel hung up, his eyes empty. Pierre stared at him expectantly.

‘They’ve beheaded James,’ said Daniel. ‘Steven is next.’

Pierre’s eyes welled with tears and Daniel reminded him of the terrible last days in prison, when the Beatles had been agitated, violent and obnoxious. Everyone had sensed that it could end this way.

They got out of the car, unfolded a small camp table and sat around it. Daniel connected his computer to the mobile’s network and downloaded the file Arthur had sent. In the darkness, they watched James in silence as he knelt in an orange suit in the middle of the desert, while he spouted what he had been told to say. It was James. Daniel and Pierre were in no doubt; the voice, the torso and his characteristic underbite.

‘I think I recognize the landscape,’ said Pierre. It looked like James was standing on a mound in the desert, where the Euphrates River, some green areas and the outlines of an urban environment were just visible behind him. It could be Raqqa.

They let the video play and watched the black figure standing with a knife in his hand beside James.

‘It’s John!’ exclaimed Pierre, as the executioner began to speak.

He recognized his accent, his posture and his rhetoric – the way he put pressure on individual words: ‘YOUR government.’

Daniel called Arthur back.