‘Pull the curtain back. We don’t want to see your spotty arse!’ the officer shouted.

Macdonald did as he was told, then removed his underwear and sat down. There was another clock on the wall. It was just before seven. It had been less than thirty hours since he’d run into the warehouse with a sawn-off shotgun. Thirty hours and his life had been turned upside-down. Macdonald put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. He was dog-tired. And hungry.

The curtain swished back and a beanpole-thin man in a white coat walked into the cubicle holding a clipboard. He looked like a nervous supply teacher about to get to grips with a problem class in an inner-city school. He had black-framed spectacles with rectangular lenses, and a mop of brown hair that kept falling over his eyes. He sat down on the chair opposite Macdonald and put the clipboard on his lap, then patted the pockets of his white coat, looking for a pen. ‘Any health problems I should know about?’ he asked.

Macdonald shook his head.

‘Are you on any medication?’ Before Macdonald could answer, the doctor leaned forward. ‘How did that happen?’ he asked.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Macdonald.

The doctor stood up and bent over him, examining the old bullet wound just below his right shoulder. ‘Stand up, please.’

‘It’s nothing,’ repeated Macdonald. He stood up and stared at the clock on the wall as the doctor prodded the scar tissue.

‘What did this?’

‘A bullet.’ Macdonald was being sarcastic but the doctor was so intent on examining the wound that he didn’t appear to notice.

‘I don’t know.’ That was a lie. Macdonald knew exactly what it was. He still had it somewhere, a souvenir of the night he’d nearly died. It was a 5.45mm round from a Kalashnikov AK-74. Macdonald didn’t usually go into details because when he said it was an AK-74 most people assumed he meant AK-47, the Russian weapon beloved of terrorists and freedom-fighters around the world. Macdonald had got tired of explaining that the AK-74 was a small-calibre version of the AK-47, initially developed for parachute troops but eventually the standard Soviet infantry rifle. But the weapon that had shot Macdonald hadn’t been in the hands of a Russian soldier.

The doctor walked round him and studied his back. ‘There’s no exit wound,’ he mused.

‘They dug it out from the front,’ said Macdonald.

‘Unusual.’

‘It hit the bone and went downwards. Missed the artery by half an inch.’

‘You were lucky.’

‘Yeah, well, if I’d really been lucky I wouldn’t have stopped a bullet in the first place.’

The doctor studied Macdonald’s chest again. ‘Who did the operation?’

‘I forget the guy’s name.’ Another lie. He would never forget the man who’d saved his life, digging out the bullet and patching up the wound before he could be helicoptered to hospital.

‘It’s . . . messy,’ said the doctor, running his finger along the ridges of scar tissue.