Shahla had fallen to the ground and Tiago couldn’t see her any more. He could only hear her. She sounded worse than a minute ago, when she’d been punched.

‘What are we going to do now?’ the taller man said anxiously. The officer ran a hand through his ruffled hair. ‘I’ll be fucked if I know,’ he said. ‘Let’s chuck her out.’

The worker looked at the balcony. ‘At this time of day? Are you out of your mind? What if someone sees us?’

The officer shrugged. He didn’t seem particularly bothered by the fact that a woman at his feet was either suffocating or bleeding to death internally.

Or both, by the sound of it.

Finished. All over.

Tiago didn’t know what he could do to put an end to the nightmare he’d become embroiled in, but nor could he hide on the floor like a coward any longer. He stood up, which Shahla, battling suffocation, didn’t notice. Unlike the two thugs.

The one with the pout screamed like a girl watching a horror film, which might have looked funny from a safe distance, likewise the reaction of the officer. He couldn’t close his mouth and stared at Tiago as if he were a ghost who’d just escaped from his bottle. ‘Fuck… What…?’

Tiago went over to Shahla, who was huddled on the floor between the bed and the television set. Grabbing her under her armpits he lifted her up, to which she offered no resistance. Her vitality was starting to ebb away, but she hadn’t yet been able to spit anything out of her mouth, save for foam.

‘Take it easy,’ Tiago ordered her in English, with an eye on the door and the two men who continued to stand there immobile with astonishment.

Tiago stepped behind Shahla, just as the thug had done a minute earlier, but he was trying to move the chambermaid into a position that could save her life.

If only you’d just bend forwards.

It took a while for Shahla to lower her torso, and this probably wasn’t a voluntary movement, because her knees gave way too. Tiago had to muster all his strength to hold her up by wrapping his arms around her stomach like a belt and pulling his clasped hands into her diaphragm with a powerful jolt.

One.

From the corner of his eye he could see the two men watching him, but they weren’t coming any closer.

Two.

Shahla’s throat had stopped rattling and she seemed to be getting heavier.

Three.

He tried the Heimlich manoeuvre a fourth time, unsure whether he was doing it right. He pulled again, this time even more powerfully, and…

It worked!

Accompanied by a shower of vomit, the glass shot out of Shahla’s mouth, flew half a metre through the room and landed right beside the worker’s feet.