It took a moment for him to focus, taking in first the general, fuzzy details of the private hospital room he was in and then, more clearly, the two people sitting in wheelchairs at the end of his bed.

‘Hello, sir,’ Knox said to Holland.

‘Ah, the sleeper awakes,’ Holland replied.

‘It’s about time,’ Bennett added.

‘I told you it wasn’t the end,’ Knox said, trying, and failing, to shift his weight. He didn’t know how long he’d been in this bed, propped up on pillows and pinned in place, but he guessed it had been a while.

‘That was before you got yourself shot,’ Bennett replied.

‘True. How long have I been out?’

‘Two days,’ Holland answered. ‘You spent most of Monday in surgery. The doctors decided to keep you sedated for twenty-four hours to make sure you didn’t undo any of their hard work straight away. They thought you might come round yesterday, but they had to make do with me instead.’

‘Sounds like a reasonable trade. What did I miss?’ Knox asked.

‘Rather a lot, as it happens.’

Holland recounted the events of the last two days, starting with the chaos that MI5 had been quietly plunged into when the police informed them what and who a team of paramedics had been called to the Richmond for on Monday morning.

Peterson was pronounced dead at the scene, but Knox and Bennett, who were still clinging onto life, were rushed to Guy’s for emergency surgery. Bennett was out of the operating theatre relatively quickly once her surgeon established that the bullet that had pierced her side had missed her vital organs. She was stitched up, given a blood transfusion, and sent to recovery.

Knox, however, took considerably longer to stabilise. The bullet Valera had shot into his chest had ricocheted off one of his ribs and come to a stop with its tip lodged in the wall of his left ventricle. It took his surgeon several hours to safely remove the bullet, repair the lining of his heart, assess the damage to his rib, and then take a look at his thigh. Luckily, the rib was cracked but not shattered, and the onyx shard had created a clean wound in his leg without slicing any important tendons. After enough rest and some light physiotherapy, the surgeons predicted Knox should make a full recovery.

Knox looked at his wrists, realising there were no handcuffs or straps on them. ‘How are the police treating Peterson’s death?’ he asked.

‘As an internal MI5 matter,’ Holland replied. ‘Thanks, in large part, to Miss Bennett.’

‘I wasn’t totally out of it,’ Bennett said. ‘I heard everything Peterson confessed, and told everyone I could as soon as I came round.’ She smiled at both men. ‘By Tuesday morning people were lining up to listen to me.’