Knox had dragged Laing away from the pool of petrol that had started to soak his jacket, checked his thigh, and seen that the bullet from the sniper’s rifle had passed straight through it. Then he’d pulled an old chequered wool scarf out of the boot of the Jaguar and fastened it tightly above the two holes in Laing’s leg.

By then the two attackers, and Bennett and Williams, had disappeared beyond the marshes. Even if Knox had left Laing where he was, jumped in his car and chased off after the MG, the chances of finding and catching it in the network of lanes and roads that led inland were maddeningly small. So, swallowing his shock and anger, he helped Laing up onto his good foot, then supported him as he hobbled to the Jaguar’s passenger seat. Knox then completed a delicate three-point turn so they didn’t end up with their wheels trapped in the shingle, and set off to find Laing some medical attention.

Knox wanted to get back to London as fast as he could, but he knew if he drove straight there he might arrive with a dead colleague in the seat next to him. However, he still didn’t want to lose too much time, so instead of driving further east to Folkestone or Dover he headed west, down through Jurys Gap, back to the coast, and through Camber to Rye, where he saw signs for the small hospital on its outskirts.

Neither of them said anything for the duration of the journey, Laing concentrating on the pain in his leg and Knox doing his best to maintain a decent speed while avoiding any bumps or potholes in the country roads. But, the closer they’d got to Rye, the heavier he’d become on the accelerator, because with each glance he stole at Laing the younger man looked more pallid and anaemic.

‘Not much we can do for him here,’ the middle-aged matron said to Knox after he’d deposited Laing in a wheelchair and two nurses in starched white uniforms had whisked him away to a bed on the hospital’s single, empty ward.

Knox could tell that she wasn’t going to be fobbed off with some made-up excuse about Laing’s injury—neither he nor Knox were dressed for game hunting or some other rural pursuit that might have explained the bullet holes and lost blood.

‘I just need you to patch him up a little,’ Knox said, after he’d described an edited version of what had happened. ‘So I can get him back to London and a proper hospital.’