There’s a tapping on the crown of my head. It is sharp, icy, as if needles are being driven in. My eyes flicker but I’m in the warmth of a dream that draws me back.

‘Okay, fella,’ a voice says now. My eyes open reluctantly and I am drawn from one place to another, colder one. A figure looms heavily in the doorway and for a moment I feel as if I am about to be attacked.

Static. A flash of fluorescence on the sleeve.

‘PC 375 X-ray Tango. Calling for assistance on Lordship Lane East, Dulwich. LAS.’

The police.

My heart begins to race. Somehow, they have found her dead body and have already connected me to her.

‘I didn’t do it,’ I say to him. He puts his hand out in the direction of my face and continues to speak into his shoulder.

‘And uniform. Roger that. Sir, we have paramedics on the way. Can you give me your name?’

‘What? Xander Shute.’ As soon as the words leave my mouth, I curse. If I’d been even a little more awake, I would have given a false name. But he’s caught me under the vapour of sleep.

‘Okay, Xander. Just have a seat where you were and keep your head up. They’ll be along any minute.’

I try to blink some sense into my brain.

‘Paramedics?’ I say at last. The sun has just begun to paint light into the sky and the gold gives everything a dreamlike tint.

‘Yes, sir. You’ve had a nasty injury there. Just keep your face turned up,’ he says and gently eases my head back.

The bottle. The idiot who threw the bottle. The cut must have started bleeding. I touch my head gently, fingers hovering in my hair. The tips come back red. I struggle to my feet but then the world begins to spin, forcing me back down.

‘Officer. Wait,’ I call out to his luminescent back.

He dips his face into the radio on his shoulder. ‘Just sit still. Try not to move, sir,’ he says, making a half-turn away.

‘Really,’ I say. ‘I don’t need paramedics. I’ll be on my way in a second.’

He continues to mutter into his shoulder, holding a palm out towards me to pause me. Then when he has finished his call, he crouches over me.

‘They’re on their way now. I’ll just take some details while we wait. Address?’ he asks and then, catching up to the dirt and the tatters, he adds, ‘Or is there somewhere you can stay?’

I shake my head and he ticks a box on a pocketbook form he is holding.

‘Date of birth?’

‘Thirty, seven, sixty-nine.’

‘Family? Next of kin?’

‘No. Mother’s dead. Father too,’ I say.

‘Okay, fella,’ he says and then takes a serious look at my head. ‘What happened there then?’