VICTOR SKEET THOUGHT he might be losing his mind. Next to no sleep at all, a thumping headache, sweat pouring off him all night in this overheated Russian-style hotel room. A Coronavirus? Was this SARS-Covid-22? Surely not possible all the way up here in the Arctic. So should he turn himself in? Get himself to a hospital for treatment? That would certainly seem to be the sensible thing to do. But then they’d slap him in isolation for God knows how long and now he had already committed himself. He had gone and texted Agnetha in Oslo and she’d sent him an immediate and enthusiastic response. The coast was clear, she’d told him. Her husband wasn’t due back from the North Sea rigs for another nine days, Skeet could come and stay until at least the weekend. And her bed was warm and ready for him … Fine. He’d recuperate at her place.

When dawn broke over the snowbound Russian mining colony of Barentsburg, Skeet made up his mind. He would hole up here in the Hostel Pogol for another day until he felt well enough to travel. He reached up and touched his temples with his fingertips. They felt warm, but, no, he definitely wasn’t burning up. So this was probably nothing more than a brief bout of winter flu. He’d keep up his fluid intake and sleep it off. Just one more day, then he’d be as right as rain.

Skeet sat in the hostel’s near-deserted canteen and toyed distractedly with his breakfast. An undercooked sausage, a plate of cold blinis, a dish of lumpen syrniki cottage-cheese pancakes. When the Russian waitress came over to pour him his tea she looked him up and down and tut-tutted. ‘You not good,’ she pronounced.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Not well,’ she corrected herself. ‘You are not well.’

‘You’re right about that,’ Skeet conceded. ‘I feel like shit. Do you have any painkillers?’

She looked at him blankly.

‘Painkillers,’ he repeated impatiently, pointing at his head. ‘You know, paracetamol? Nurofen?’

‘Ah!’ Her face brightened as she understood the question. ‘No. We don’t have.’ Then she held up her finger. ‘But I give you poroshok.’ She came back a few minutes later with a glass of warm brown liquid. ‘Drink,’ she commanded, and Skeet gulped it down. It tasted foul. But when a human being is under duress the mind will often clutch at straws. Skeet’s mind now did exactly that. He was starting to get better, he told himself, no doubt about it. You can’t beat a local remedy. He thanked the waitress, put some krones on the table as a tip and pulled himself to his feet. Maybe if he got a few minutes of fresh air it would do him good, just as long as he stayed inconspicuous.