The Doctor was young, with the aloof stamp of his trade.

Into the cell, opening his bag, taking the place of the Orderly. The Deputy Governor hovered behind him. The Doctor enacted his routine. Pulse, blood-pressure wrap on the arm, stethoscope to the chest. He spoke gently to the man who had been a spy, reacting to the faintest twitches of the eyebrows.

'Where's the pain, Demyonov…? Just in the chest…?

In the left arm as well…? Does the pain go further…?

Problem with breathing…? Has this ever happened before… ?'

The Doctor eased away from the bed, stripped off the wrap, laid the passive hand back across the man's chest.

'I want a 999 for an ambulance – he might have a chance at the Hammersmith. He's none here. His blood pressure's down in his boots.'

'If he's to go out of here to hospital, Home Office have to sanction it.'

'If he doesn't get to the Hammersmith, he'll be going out of here in a box.'

'It has to be cleared…'

'The ambulance or he's dead,' snapped the Doctor.

It was not a quick affair, the transfer of Oleg Demyonov some eight hundred yards from the Scrubs to the Hammersmith Hospital. Authorization to be granted, the patient to be carried tortuously on a stretcher down the steep staircase from the upper landing, locked gates to be negotiated. The prison was a whispering murmur of information by the time that the high wooden gates reluctantly swung'open, and the ambulance roared into a left turn past the gaunt homes of the gaol's staff. As if sensing freedom, the driver played a tattoo on his siren, though the road ahead was well lit and clear of traffic.