‘Fill me in,’ I said, ‘and I’ll tell you all my knock-knock jokes.’

She sat up and ground out my sixth-to-last cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table. ‘We’re in the Shell-BP camp at Port Harcourt. I thought you knew - Alebayo is using it as his headquarters. ’

Of course. While I’d been feverishly fantasizing about throwing myself into the road, we must have been waved through some gates. The windows were unlocked because it didn’t matter if we left the house: we wouldn’t be able to get past the perimeter. I turned back to the window: the moon was dim in the rain, but I could make out a few more bungalows and, beyond them, the outline of a high concrete wall. I couldn’t see any machine guns in turrets, but it amounted to the same thing.

I had another look at the room. The Tilby-Wellses appeared to have left the place rather quickly. Magazines and paper-backs were still scattered across the coffee table: a two-year-old issue of Life featuring the lost notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci shared space with The Collected Short Stories of Somerset Maugham, My Family and Other Animals and a booklet about West African birds. Apart from the standard pieces of furniture, the only unusual items were a drinks cabinet and an antique radio set. The kitchen was home to a disconnected fridge and a rusty stove. The cupboards were empty, except for a couple of cockroaches and several tins of Bartlett pears. No tin-openers, though.

It was like a safe house, I decided. The thought comforted me somewhat, and I made my way back to the drinks cabinet, where I found the dregs of a bottle of Drambuie, a sliver of Tio Pepe, and about a quarter of a litre of lime cordial. A not-too-dirty shot glass was resting on the board, and I poured the lot into it and downed the result. It tasted vile: my teeth felt as though they were rotting away as they came into contact with the liquid. But for one exquisite moment it relieved the dryness in my throat. I also hoped it might contain enough sugar to send some much-needed aid to the pain surging through my lower back and thigh muscles.

Behind me, Isabelle announced she was going to find the bathroom to powder her nose. I investigated the radio set. It was in working order, so I tuned it to the BBC’s African Service. They were reaching the end of a bulletin - I wanted the headlines, to see if Pritchard had cancelled the PM’s trip. I turned the volume up as loud as it would go, and the weather report blared across the room. Cairo was hot. Oslo was cold.

‘What are you doing?’ Isabelle called from offstage.

I walked towards her voice. ‘The room may be bugged,’ I said, taking a left at the kitchen. ‘You might want to watch what you say.’