The paramedic nodded and threw him an oxygen mask, which he took gratefully with a thumbs-up, placing it over the man’s mouth. After several more minutes of working on him, and with both the ambulance crew down, one setting up a drip in situ, they sat back on their haunches as the man, very carefully, opened his eyes.

The three professionals regarded him.

“How you doing?” said Cormac finally.

“You’ve been taking something naughty, haven’t you?” said the paramedic. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The man, however, once he’d regained consciousness and looked around, realized suddenly where he was.

“Oh fuck,” he groaned, raising a shaky hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “Seriously? In front of these tosspots?”

Worse was to come as the man was loaded onto a wheeled stretcher and it became apparent to everyone he had peed himself in his very expensive suit, then had to be led out in front of everyone. He covered his eyes with his hands. “Christ on a bike,” he said mournfully. “No photos. If anyone tells the Mail I will have you, and don’t think I won’t.”

“Oh my God, was it a speedball?” came a very loud posh voice from the back. “Christ, how terribly nineties.”

The man on the stretcher groaned and lowered his eyes in shame.

Cormac blinked as the paramedic thanked him and took his name and address. The man on the stretcher’s nose had started to hemorrhage everywhere and a waitress was screaming.

“That’s our cue,” said the paramedic, wheeling him out. “Will take him forever to get to sleep, then he’ll wake up tomorrow and won’t remember a thing about it.”

“Aye,” said Cormac. “Well, his friends all will.”

The paramedic laughed. “Yup,” he said. “Oh well. Cheers—you performed a miracle.”

And as they left, the entire room turned around toward Cormac—who was suddenly extremely worried about the state he’d gotten Kim-Ange’s jumper into—and, to his complete surprise, gave him a round of applause, led by the man who played a doctor on TV.

AFTER THAT IT was mayhem. People vied to buy him drinks. Kalitha and Portia were suddenly all over the hero of the hour. Various men came over and announced that they had just been about to do the same thing, or would have done the same thing if he hadn’t gotten there first (this was not, to be fair, an attitude confined to London clubland and had happened at pretty much every single incident Cormac had ever encountered). Finally the manager, an incredibly smartly dressed woman with a brisk manner, took him aside and thanked him from the bottom of her heart for not letting someone die on the floor of their toilets. “I mean, it’s terrible for business,” she said. “Well, not at first, everyone comes to have a look—rubberneckers—but once that falls off. Well.”