The room was not large, had an arched ceiling rendered in plaster and was panelled in pine linenfold, some of which had been repaired poorly, and in haste. There was a single sash window which opened on to a fire escape and, upon the wall, a clock set inside a multi-spiked star with its hands frozen at 10.55. There were no books, no personal ornaments, no pictures, no photographs. Webster seemed to me either a man without a past, or a man eager not to have one.

Without thinking, I reached into the leather satchel slung from my shoulder, and removed a round cardboard tube of the sort used to carry music or Dictaphone cylinders. It was the recording cylinder that I’d been told to get to Kiki. But I didn’t know who Kiki was, nor how to get it there, nor where I’d got it. I was part Charles Webster, not all of him; I was only witnessing a small window into his life. I crossed to the fireplace and pushed the cylinder onto a handy ledge high up inside the chimney. This done, I took a match to the note the porter had given me and watched it burn to ash.

I was just beginning to wonder when Birgitta would turn up when – predictably enough, given this was my dream – there was a tap on the window, and I saw her wave at me from the fire escape outside. But she wasn’t the Birgitta from the beach, it was a serious Birgitta, a late-season Birgitta, a bulked-up-make-baby-in-the-Spring Birgitta, a worried Birgitta – and not, I think, for herself.

‘For God’s sake, Charlie,’ she said when I opened the window and helped her climb in, ‘didn’t the porter show you my note?’

But at least she was there, even if pissed off. Her dark hair was loosely bunched up in a ponytail, and beneath her parka she was dressed in paint-spattered dungarees.

‘I did get your note,’ I said, going along with the narrative, enjoying the frisson of danger. I’d seen the Cambrensis in the distance, knew where Webster had lived; I’d seen his address on file. I was filling in the gaps. This was a dream to be savoured, an experience to enjoy. The adventure was wholly in my head, and I was going to enjoy every moment.

‘Then why didn’t you go to the safe house?’ she continued, her anger rooted more in concern than annoyance. ‘Kiki would have arranged your evacuation.’

The dream was becoming more like a spy thriller by the second: Birgitta and I were not in the Douzey as economic migrants. We were engaged in infiltration work for the Campaign for Real Sleep. I was in deep cover at HiberTech, working my way up the unskilled labour chain to gain access to sensitive information.

‘I’m just an orderly. I’ll act dumb. They’ve got nothing.’