After a minute or two he reasons that he is running out of time. He might pass out again at any moment. He switches to his nails, the image of Gerald Cartwright’s tattered hand clear in his mind. The cement is still setting; he can pick out whole chunks of the mortar this way. Then a shard of hardened cement stabs up and under the nail of his index finger, cutting deep into the flesh. He cries out and pulls at the shard with gritty, bloodied fingers. Then he switches to the next nail and carries on. It doesn’t matter. He has to do this. Whatever the cost.

Or does he? As he gets deeper into the mortar he finds it’s much wetter. Perhaps he hasn’t been there all that long. Perhaps there is another way. He lines up his shoulder with the wall and pushes at it gently, leaning in with the weight of his body and pressing himself against the unforgiving bricks. The wall refuses to budge.

He leans backward, trying to gather all of his weight onto his back foot. It takes everything he has to not think about the pain he knows is coming. He will not flinch. He may not get another chance.

He throws himself forward.

After that there is only a world of darkness and confusion. He’s not sure if he loses consciousness but when he opens his eyes, light has returned. And with it the smoke. His attack on the wall has worked, and several of the bricks have fallen away to create a jagged hole in the wall, perhaps the size of a ship’s porthole. Through it he can see the flames, and the heat reaches him in full force, burning his face and drying the sweat on his brow. He starts to cough, but he is committed now. It’s all or nothing. Out there with the fire he has a chance. A slim one, but a chance. In here he has none. He braces himself for the pain and throws himself hard against the wall for a second time.

He tumbles out with the bricks and falls to the floor in a heap of rubble, his head screaming at him. A voice reaches him through the haze of his own agony. “Adam.” A voice that cuts across the crackling of the flames. Paul Enfield.

The smoke is so thick and every mouthful of air burns his throat and leaves him gasping for the next, but somehow he gets to his feet. He hears someone coughing. How is Doggett here? Never mind. Follow the voices. The men calling his name.

He finds the bottom of the cellar steps and begins to climb. The voices above are fading as they search for him somewhere deeper in the house, but the cooler air ahead of him drives him on. He won’t stop now. And then he is out, into the corridor where Doggett and Enfield are coming around the corner. They stop, all three of them, and stare at one another.