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was being burned by something inside the metal box, my core temperature remained extremely high and my heart was beating so fast it felt in danger of bursting out of my chest.
    And I was still sweating buckets.
    I quickly climbed out of the box, feeling my way back onto the bench and then onto the floor, where I lay down on the wooden slats. It was the coolest spot.
    Gradually, the temperature began to drop.
    I noticed it because, unbelievably, I began to shiver.
    I searched around in the darkness for my shirt and put it on.
    It was now time to get out of this prison.

4
    A s my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I noticed, in fact, a small amount of light in the sauna.
    There was a very small gap around the door and another spot on the far side where the wooden planking of the walls must not be quite in line, allowing through a tiny sliver of illumination.
    I held my watch up to the gap around the door. It read ten-thirty. I reckoned I had been in this sweatbox for about half an hour, much of that time with the temperature well above the boiling point of water, and of blood.
    It was a wonder that I was still able to think at all.
    But think I did.
    Why would Dave Swinton lock me in his sauna with the temperature turned up to maximum and drive away? He must have known my life would have been in grave danger. Even if I’d had my phone in here with me, it would have probably taken the police more than twenty minutes to come to my aid. By that time, without me having disabled the heating elements, I would have been dead.
    What did he have to gain in killing me?
    True, I wouldn’t then have been able to report him to the BHA Disciplinary Committee for purposely losing a race, but that would surely be the least of his difficulties with a dead body in his sauna to explain away.
    It didn’t make any sense.
    Now I had to get out of here—maybe before Dave came back to finish off the job properly.
    But how?
    I tried again to shove the door open, but it didn’t move. I threw all my weight against it. Still nothing.
    I wondered how long it would be before anyone noticed I was missing.
    It was Sunday and the offices of the BHA in London would be closed, not that it would have made any difference. Although I had a permanent desk at HQ, I spent much of my time working away from it and it was hardly unusual for me not to appear there for days, sometimes even for weeks.
    A year ago, my absence would have been noted by my then fiancée, Lydia, but not anymore—Lydia was no longer a part of my life.
    I suppose it was my own fault.
    I had procrastinated and evaded for so long, finding it difficult to commit to marriage, that by the time I had finally got around to it, Lydia was already casting an eye elsewhere.
    And I hadn’t seen it coming.
    I had believed all was well, apart from the fact that I knew she didn’t like my job. It had become a source of increasing friction between us. She thought it was too dangerous and maybe she had a point, especially if one considered my present predicament.
    But it was not as if she had given me an ultimatum or anything. There had been no
choose between me or the job
stipulation.
    I had come home from work one day the previous January to find that she had simply packed up and gone.
    She had left me a letter on the mantel to say that she was very sorry but she had met someone else whose job was safer and she was moving in with him—and thanks for a great five years. The envelope had also contained the engagement ring I had bought for her only eight months previously.
    I remember having stood there reading the letter over and over in total disbelief. It might have taken me much too long to get around to asking her to marry me, but, having done so, I had been fully committed and we had started discussing a venue and a date for the wedding.
    At first, I’d been angry.
    But I was angry more with myself than with Lydia. How had I not realized? I was an investigator, for