‘I’m sure you don’t. That’s why I am going to remain rich and alive, and you are about to become poor and dead.’ He smiled, pleased at having turned my phrase. He nodded at Stubble, who reached up and brought down a small leather suitcase, also genuine Gucci, from the luggage rack, opened it up, and removed a syringe and a bottle. He eyed me the way a hungry man in a lousy restaurant would eye a shrivelled lamb chop that had turned up on his plate when he’d ordered a sixteen-ounce T-Bone; he thrust the needle of the syringe through the top of the bottle, pressed the plunger all the way in, pulled it out again slowly, as it pulled the pale yellow fluid up with it.

Sleder looked at me with more than a trace of satisfaction on his face. ‘Judging from the pin-pricks on Ogomo’s arm, you know quite a lot about the use of this drug, Mr Flynn.’

I didn’t reply. I was busy thinking, and I didn’t want to lose my concentration and, as a result, my timing. The intellectual on my right was holding his gun over my arm. His eye was on the syringe. The gorilla by the door was also looking more at the syringe than at me. Sleder did not have a gun out and Dr Kildare alias Stubble, had his hands full.

I brought my right arm up sharply, smashing my knuckles into Intellectual’s elbow, and the Luger flew across the compartment; I grabbed his arm with my left hand, pulled it down so hard over the arm of the seat that it snapped in two with a crack that sounded like a shot; he howled and half-stood up in his seat, which gave me enough leverage in my right arm to insert it under his shoulder and hurl him across into Stubble. I dived headlong for the gorilla in the corner, clamped my hand around his gun wrist, and rammed my left hand as hard as I could into his crutch, grabbing for his balls. For one glorious moment I had the Luger all to myself, then I felt an arm clamp on mine, there was a jarring thump and then everything went black.

When I came to, I couldn’t move. I was lying lengthways across the seat, my hands and feet bound so tightly they were hurting, and I was conscious that the shirt sleeve of my left arm was rolled up. I opened my eyes and saw Sleder’s face staring at me. His lips parted slightly, and at the same time I felt a tiny prick in my arm; I began, right away, to feel very good.