The man continued to frown at him suspiciously as a loud stream of questions in a woman’s voice came from behind him. He shouted back noisily, and Cormac simply showed him the name printed on the file, at which he sniffed and pushed open the door.

The tiny flat, with its thin walls and cheap doors, was clean but full. Undeniably full. Through open doors, Cormac saw mattresses on the floors of each room, and in the sitting room, bedding was piled beside two ancient worsted sofas. Men and boys sat around the living room, and where there was space they sat with their heads pressed against the wall. There was a smell of cooking as well as a lot of drying clothes, sweat, deodorant. The shower was running, the washing machine.

“Mergim!” said the man, somehow making it sound totally different from what Cormac had said, and in the corner a man raised his hand. They spoke to each other in an unintelligible string, then the first man turned back to Cormac.

“Doctor,” he said, pointing at him.

“Actually I’m a nurse,” said Cormac, but everyone ignored him as he approached Mergim, who was sitting in the only armchair and had his leg up, his cheap tracksuit bottoms turned up to reveal a skinny white leg thick with black hair.

What Cormac saw was an absolute mess. He looked at it, blinking, for a minute. He had stitches to take out, but the wound itself was a total mystery; it wavered up and around like a whirlpool or a drunk.

“What did you do to yourself?” he asked, undeniably interested. He’d never seen anything like it.

Mergim—he was twenty-four, according to Cormac’s file—didn’t say anything, looked inquiringly out into the throng. Eventually a slender man with glasses who had been sitting to the side reading a comic in English got up, sighing. He hissed something at Mergim—probably along the lines of “Speak English!” Cormac guessed—and reluctantly came over.

“Hello,” he said. “I Zlobdan. I speak English. Everyone else is”—he shot them a look—“very lazy men. Idiots.”

“Aye,” said Cormac. They didn’t look lazy to him. They looked knackered, dusty from building sites, presumably, on-and-off shift work, sharing beds if the amount of trainers was anything to go by. “So what happened?”

“He have accident. With drill on-site.”

“Okay,” said Cormac, taking a closer look at the wound. There were stitches all over the place, gaping holes that had puckered then healed like that. It was fortunate he was young. In an old person, the skin wouldn’t have been strong enough, would have stayed like that. “He get stitched up here by . . . ?”

Zlobdan indicated one of the men, who blushed red.

“Is he a doctor?”

“No! He idiot!”

“Why didn’t he go to the hospital?”

“Because they are lazy idiots and didn’t realize health is free here.”

“You’re European, though, right?”

“Yes! Albanian!”