I looked left and right, casting about for any landmark, any sign of where I’d come ashore. But my eyes stung and my vision blurred, and I was shaking uncontrollably. I forced my hand behind my back and touched my jeans at the base of my spine. The Russian doctor’s cell phone was gone, the Grach too. Half-blind and desperate I ran my hands over the pebbles, searching for it.

‘It’s here,’ I chattered to myself. ‘Damn you, McLean. It’s here.’

But the pistol wasn’t there, and I collapsed back on to the stones. I stopped fighting then, and the light ebbed out of my eyes, colouring the world solid, silent black.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The patient lay still. No fluids. No plasma. She faced away from me, hidden, partly covered by a blanket.

‘Rachel?’

She didn’t move, but I knew she could hear me.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

‘You can hear me, can’t you? Rachel?’

I wanted to touch her, but she was so far away I couldn’t reach. The more I stretched out to her, the further away she seemed.

‘Rachel, it’s me. It’s Max.’ I pulled back my hand and then she turned towards me. But something wasn’t right. It wasn’t Rachel. The woman turned and looked at me. Wet blonde hair clung to her face, pale blue eyes stared at me, unblinking. She was gaunt. Drawn. Changed but unmistakable. ‘Mamka?’

I put my hands out towards her again, but she smiled and shook her head. My mouth opened to shout, scream her name, to beg her to come back to me, but she put her fingers to her lips and whispered.

‘Bayu-bayushki-bayu, nye lozhisya na krayu …’ Rock-a-bye baby, don’t lie on the edge …

I looked down and saw I was standing waist deep in water. My mother wasn’t lying down. She was floating, drifting away, murmuring the lullaby that soothed me as a child.

‘Pridyot serenkiy volchok I ukusit za bochok …’ Or the little grey wolf will bite your side …

She slipped beneath the surface. And then blackness again.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

‘So what have we got?’

Bare skin on dry sheets. I kept my eyes shut and my ears open.

‘Dover uniform brought him in this morning. Dog walker found him on the beach near Kingsdown. No ID, no nothing.’ Male junior doctor. Mid-twenties. Smoker. Biddable. ‘Superficial scratches on his forearms and knees. Bruising on the wrists and ankles.’

‘So there are.’ A woman’s voice. ‘Restraints of some kind? Unusual, anyway. Looks like his hands were bound. Penetrating trauma to his left shoulder and right thigh. Gunshot wounds, possibly.’ Consultant. Forty something. ‘That would explain why there’s a copper outside. Never a dull moment at the William Harvey.’ I squinted into the low light of the isolation room. Brunette. Five-ten. Hardcase. And handsome with it. I dozed off and came back mid-sentence.