His voice was deep and self-confident, with a West Yorkshire cut to the vowels. He moved out of my line of vision — I was getting nothing from my left eye — and I heard the squeak of heavy leather boots as he went out of the room. A minute later a nurse in a blue uniform slipped a needle into my right arm, and I went under again. As I did so I wondered why I needed the services of a policeman to guard me. My name is well-known enough, but I’m certainly no celebrity.

As I became unconscious I wanted to ask about Leo, but I had left it too late.

Third time lucky. I was improving a little when I woke, and I knew it. My overall ache had progressed to sharp points of individual agony, but the feeling of being disembodied and unfocused was much less. My head still buzzed and reeled, but it felt like my head and not some anonymous cauliflower. I came out of a strange dream of my childhood, back before Leo and I were reunited. The familiar views of Middlesbrough and Stockton where I had grown up were overlaid with alien images of surf, flat palm trees, and fast-moving freeways. The harder I tried to concentrate, the more the images mixed and moved.

I finally worked my eyes open, to see the same fat man sitting there staring at me. He had taken a big clasp knife out of his pocket and was opening it when he saw my eyes blinking at him. He put the knife away again and moved quietly out of the room, still betrayed in his movements by the squeaking boots. When the nurse came in to crank my bed to a higher position for my head I turned to look at her.

“What’s happening?” My voice was still rusty, but in better control. “Why do they need a policeman here to watch me?”

She looked worried, shook her head, and slipped out of the room again without answering me. I heard her voice nearby.