Tommy nods equably. ‘Yep, sir does. Fully loaded with another few clips in his bag.’

The nurse waves a pink nail towards the waiting room. ‘We’re all armed here, sir. I got a Colt pointed at your privates right now. So take a seat, cos if this thing goes off, even the doc can’t do much about it.’

It’s strange, all this melodrama in one afternoon. But it doesn’t seem real or wrong in the heat. My brain sizzles inside the gourd of its skull and the walls sizzle and crack.

Bloody flies are huge.

Two women in floral head wraps argue over a Madonna article.

‘Sorry, miss,’ says Tommy. ‘We’re on a schedule.’

Things happen quickly then, and when I try to piece it together, images jump and flicker like an old VHS that’s been taped over one too many times.

The nurse comes out of her seat and she does indeed have a large handgun in her tiny fingers. Suddenly the gun is in my hands. I must have twisted it away from her. Don’t recall really. Training took over. Tommy’s gone down the corridor and I remember thinking: Okay, enough is enough. I don’t know what this is, but I need to extricate myself. Hell, I could bash my way out into the street through one of these walls.

But I don’t go anywhere except after my sergeant.

The corridor is lined with posters, faded in the sun. I remember seeing ET and one of the Connery Bonds, then we’re at a door. Someone has written DOCTOR in thick marker.

‘Oh Jaysus,’ says Tommy. ‘Isn’t that handy now?’

And in he goes, with me at his elbow and the nurse close behind cursing us both for sons of bitches. Inside the door we see a rudimentary surgery with plastic on the floor and a man in a white coat sticking a large needle of reddish gunk into another man’s dick.

I’m suddenly no longer curious, and Tommy throws up on the covered floor, sending rivulets running along the polythene.

‘Bloody bastards,’ says the doctor guy. ‘This is a sterile environment.’

And that was how I met Zebulon Kronski.

More later.

Once upon a time, I could have driven the Lexus to Newark airport and abandoned it in the long-term. Now with Homeland Security they’d be shoving mirrors under it in a New York minute, so I pick the local bus station instead and park the SUV by the dumpsters. I should get ten days’ grace before the blues are called. With any luck some kid will jack the vehicle, dump the body and screw up the chain of events for anyone trying to follow it.

I walk half a dozen blocks from the station, then pay for a cab with one of Barrett’s fifties. Guilt free.

Screw him, he tried to stick me.