I killed the lights and closed my eyes in the darkness. I went to sleep immediately, and then woke abruptly as my head fell forward. I was exhausted, injured and overwhelmed by the blood-tide Frank’s mission had unleashed. I pinched my eyes and rubbed my face. I was losing time. Two hours until RV – assuming there was anyone to RV with. The last stretch could take an hour to drive – after which I’d have to make two klicks on foot in the dark, thigh deep in snow. And that was assuming I could even remember the way. I was pushing it. If I hit one more dead end, it would all be over, anyway.

I switched the lights on again and turned the Lada around, retracing the short drive towards the main road. It only took a couple of minutes to reach the junction where I’d turned off. I emerged cautiously on to a triangle of snow-buried asphalt. And then the air lit up.

On the other side of the road the flashing warning lights of a Russian police four-by-four blitzed me with a red and blue strobe. An officer was already out of the vehicle, walking towards me, left hand outstretched, waving a light baton. The headlights of both our cars lit up his electric-yellow hi-vis vest in the torrent of snowflakes between us. If I dropped the clutch and punched the gas, I’d hit him hard enough to put him down. But there would almost certainly be another officer in the vehicle. If I was going to drop him, it had to be clean. I left the motor running and opened the window. The blast of air sharpened my senses. The officer touched the brim of his fur hat and smiled.

‘Dobriy vecher!’ he greeted me through the open window.

I wished him a good evening, too, and looked at the logo on the arm of his blue overalls: DPS – Russian traffic police. Five-ten; hundred and forty pounds. Clean shaven. Nose like a hawk’s bill. A misdemeanour cop in a felony world.

‘You’re a long way from home,’ he said. ‘You must be lost.’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Not at all. Thanks for asking, though. Hell of a night, isn’t it?’

The headlights of the police vehicle opposite brightened to main beam, filling the junction with a powerful wash of white light. There were at least two of them, then.

‘Da,’ he said. ‘Takaya kholodina.’ Bloody cold. The cop peered into the Lada, checking out the empty passenger seats. ‘It’s just that I saw you take the turn to Molochkovo-Dubenets. And five minutes later, here you are again.’

He laughed.

I laughed.

He must have clocked the Lada’s out-of-area number plates. If he was crooked, he’d try for a bribe before calling me in. If he wasn’t, and he had already asked for backup, he was playing it cool.