I still had no idea why Akuji had been impersonating Ojukwu, but with an armed guard and a swish car, it seemed he had some pretty powerful backing. I had told both him and David that the PM’s death would lead to Britain switching allegiance in this war, but that was because I thought it would persuade them to help me. I wasn’t sure what the game was. Pritchard was still nagging at me: what was the message he had wanted to pass to Akuji?

I turned my head and was startled to see a man staring back at me from the road: sunken eyes, a few days’ beard and a bloodstained white coat. It took me a fraction of a moment to recognize myself in the wing mirror, which was hanging at an odd angle. I felt light-headed and exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep, not now. I caught David glancing at me, and I lifted my gun fractionally and met his gaze. He looked away and pushed his foot down.

Within twenty minutes of leaving the clinic we reached our first checkpoint. It was a distinctly unofficial-looking one, consisting of a gang of youths in unidentifiable uniforms and a few cleverly positioned oil drums. I had hoped that the large red cross painted across the side of our vehicle might speed us through such situations, but they signalled us to stop nevertheless, and I quickly slipped the gun into my waistband and covered it with my shirt. David pretended to brush some mosquitoes from the windscreen and in the same gesture brushed the garri container to the floor. ‘They’re looking for food,’ he said. Sure enough, as we came to a standstill the group immediately headed towards the back of the Land Rover to investigate our cargo. Without turning my head, I tried to calculate the odds of survival if I had to make a run for it, but presumably there were no edible supplies under the tarpaulin because they quickly sauntered back and waved us through with their sticks and machetes. We passed two more similar checkpoints before reaching our first back in Federal-occupied territory, but apart from flicking through David’s identity papers, which the boy held upside down, they were no more interested in us.

I was nevertheless getting anxious. I had to be there by half past two at the latest; it was now twenty to, so I asked David for an estimate of how far away we were. He pointed ahead, and as the haze lifted, I saw the concrete barriers, machine guns and ring of barbed wire reinforcing a solid perimeter fence.

‘We’re there,’ he said.

Udi.

‘Can I help you?’ said the man in the uniform of the British military police, but his tone of voice suggested he couldn’t.

‘We’re from the clinic over in Awo Omamma,’ I said cheerfully. ‘We were asked to bring over some supplies.’