He had managed to negotiate a meeting with the Head of Neurosurgery for Bloom and Karene that morning. And Bloom in turn had spoken to Detective Superintendent Drummond and persuaded him to allow Jameson to visit Loughborough police station and view the physical evidence gathered from the shooting. They would compare notes later.

Greg Taylor escorted them through to a room filled with computer screens and introduced them to Mr Avery, the Head of Neurosurgery and an Idris Elba lookalike.

‘You wanted to discuss Captain Peterson’s MRI.’ He had a soft, Midlands accent. He tapped the computer keyboard and the screens on the wall filled with black and white images of cross-sections of Harry’s brain. ‘How can I help?’

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Taylor. ‘Give me a shout when you want me to escort them back, Mike.’

Avery nodded to Taylor.

‘Dr Bloom and I are psychologists,’ said Karene. ‘So we have some insight into memory loss, but we have a theory we’d like to check out that requires an MRI.’

‘Fire away.’

‘Are you aware that Captain Peterson may have sustained his injuries following the explosion? In the seventy-two-hour period afterwards?’ asked Bloom.

This was clearly news to Avery.

‘I thought that might be the case,’ said Bloom.

‘What did the Navy say when he arrived?’ asked Karene.

‘That as we specialize in rehabilitation he was here to recover from his injuries. And apart from the memory loss he’s doing remarkably well.’

‘Did you notice anything unusual about the MRI?’ Bloom was studying the screens. It had been a while since she’d seen a brain scan.

‘He has a fracture. There was a little swelling but no bleeding. He’s healing well. What is it you’re looking for?’

‘Is it possible to cause the type of memory loss Captain Peterson has sustained surgically?’ she asked.

Avery frowned. ‘You’d really have to know what you’re doing.’

‘How would you do it? Damage the CA1 area of the hippocampus?’

The surgeon smiled. ‘Someone’s been doing a little research.’

‘Just testing a hypothesis,’ she said. ‘His memory loss feels too convenient.’

‘You could certainly trigger amnesia with lesions to the hippocampus but I’m not sure how precise you could be about the type of memory lost.’ He walked to the screen on the far left and pointed at one of the images. ‘These are the temporal lobes. They sit just behind your ears and are mirrored on either side of the brain. Within those sits the hippocampus. It’s fairly central so getting to it would require something pretty invasive.’

‘But it can be done?’ said Bloom. ‘Can you cause a lesion on the brain intentionally? Does that technology exist?’