Before then, we had both been asked, once more, to go through everything we could remember concerning the events of Wednesday afternoon and evening, and one of the detective constables had written it all down.

The statement had then been typed up and presented for our signatures.

‘Sorry,’ I’d said. ‘I can’t. I’m right-handed.’

The constable had looked at my right hand and arm, still strapped to my chest.

‘Then you’ll have to sign it with your left hand.’

I’d had a few practices on a spare sheet of paper until it had looked less like the squiggles of a three-year-old, and I could just about discern the words ‘Sid’ and ‘Halley’ among the scribble.

And signing wasn’t the only thing I had to do left-handed—in fact, I’d had to do everything left-handed—and it made me appreciate my new hand more than ever.

By the end of Thursday, I was really beginning to understand what Dr Grossi had been on about. Whereas it had taken the best part of three years for movement and sensation to creep slowly up through my hand and into my fingers, within the previous twenty-four hours I felt my soul had galloped up my forearm to encompass my very fingertips, and it had made me chuckle.

‘What are you bleedin’ laughin’ about?’ Chico said to me as I drove the Discovery, left-handed, out of Middleham, thankful for it being an automatic. ‘You’re all right, Jack. They let you off, but I’m technically still under arrest.’

‘I’m sure you won’t be for long,’ I said confidently. ‘After all, they did let you go. If they really thought you’d done something wrong, they’d have surely kept you in and put you up before a magistrate.’

‘It’s funny, really,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether I want Valance to die or not. After what you told me about him tellin’ Asquith to kill you, it don’t make any difference to me either way.’

‘But it might make things easier for you if he recovers. Inquests can be fraught with danger.’

As I’d driven southward, I had remembered back to the inquest into the fiery death of the Irish terrorist and the extremely hard time I’d been given in the witness box by a barrister acting for his widow, even though it had been he who had been trying to kill my family and me in the first place. Fortunately, the coroner had seen right through the smokescreen the lawyer had been trying to lay down, and had concluded that the death was due to the unintended outcome of the deceased’s own actions.

I ordered myself another cup of coffee from the airport café and checked again that the arrival board still said EXPECTED 17.52.