‘I’m not sure I understand,’ I said, at the same time doubting my implied presumption that there was something to understand.

‘Do you know your Don Hector history?’ he asked with what passes for enthusiasm amongst his calling. ‘What the good doctor was doing for twenty years before he introduced Morphenox to the grateful masses?’

Come to think of it, I didn’t. The story was that he spent two decades perfecting the drug; I’d not heard how he actually did it.

‘Morphenox was a fluke,’ said Shamanic Bob when I didn’t answer, ‘discovered wholly by chance.’

I was going to ask him to expand upon that when Moody turned up. Unfortunately, not in a manner I’d hoped or expected. We were interrupted by a shout and I looked out of the café window, where I could see a naked Moody running towards where we sat, his coarse wintercoat standing hard up against the cold. He was wielding an axe and yelling ‘Blue Buick!’ at the top of his voice, and without pausing for a second swung the axe with all his might against the plate-glass window of Mrs Nesbit’s – a pointless gesture given that it would be certified to withstand torrential rain, gale-borne debris and an enraged mammoth. He scratched the toughened glass, but that was about it.

‘This isn’t a great advert for dreaming,’ said Shamanic Bob. ‘Moody has been riding the arse end of the reality slope for quite a few days now.’

‘I hope the Gronk lays eggs in your brain, Mrs Nesbit!’ he yelled, raising the axe to swing it again. ‘And they bury you alive!’

Just then a man strode unhurriedly around the corner. It was Agent Hooke, all tall and gangly and with a face like leather. He was cradling a Thumper, but not the old-fashioned one of Lopez’s back at the John Edward Jones, it was the Mk VII – twice as powerful and available in matt black or nickel.

‘HiberTech Security,’ announced Hooke, standing thirty or so feet from the clearly confused RailTec. ‘Drop or you get dropped.’

Moody turned to face him with a look of shock. It didn’t appear that he was fully awake, let alone able to follow simple instructions.

‘Blue Buick!’ he yelled, then turned to face me, and there was a flash of recognition.

‘You’ll visit the blue Buick and Mrs Nesbit will harangue you, too,’ he shouted, ‘tell her nothing and whatever you do, don’t leave the rocks or the hands will get you!’

And he raised the axe, turned, and charged at Hooke.

Whump