Captain Gromkyan obeyed the parking instructions at Heathrow Tower, and brought the Illushyn to a standstill at Delta 32. He closed the fuel cocks in front of him and slightly to the right, and the whine of the four engines slowly faded away. The electric gangway transporter was already heading out across the concrete towards them, and four men raced out of the gloom to place chocks under the wheels of the aircraft. A fuelling tender started its engine, and the sewage removal tender and the baggage trucks started forward.

I left my hiding place and, clutching my tool box, joined in the general throng of activity. A bunch of men and women in boiler suits identical to mine clutching boxes, brushes, pails, cloths and black bags, stood waiting quietly, heads bowed against the driving rain. Two passenger coaches pulled up at the foot of the gangway.

First down the gangway came Ztachinov, which gave me a shock; I had no idea he was on the plane. I recognized him from photographs. He had one of those faces one never forgets, and can never mistake – an ugly face, a face that bore a thousand grudges: a long thin nose; high cheekbones; short hair with a hint of a quiff at the front; cold eyes, one of them was glass – a legacy from a car accident – and it was a common joke that it was easy to tell which was the glass eye – it was the warmer-looking of the two.

After the last of the passengers had disembarked, the group of cleaners raced to get up to the top of the gangway and out of the cold and wet, and I placed myself in their midst. Nobody even stood at the entrance to look at the identity card each man and woman held out.

The interior of the plane was a drab green colour, and the atmosphere was more that of a troop transporter than a passenger liner. I marched straight down to the back and stopped at the last row of seats before the lavatories. From the top of my tool box, I took a screwdriver and pliers, and began to dismantle a reading light above one seat.

A cleaning lady walked past me, without paying me any attention at all and went into the first lavatory on the left. In the space of about thirty seconds, she had wiped the basin, checked the towels and tissues and the soap, mopped some urine off the floor, and moved on to the next lavatory. I continued to fiddle with the light. Less than a minute and a half later, her job with the three lavatories was done, and she walked off back down the aisle.