‘I was in Bernard’s dream,’ I croak. ‘I was trying to find out if he was involved in Mel’s death. See the fencing mask?’

Roman takes it down carefully and turns it over.

‘It’s the one from Mel’s dream. I don’t know what the chemical is.’

Roman says, ‘It’s morphine.’

Shandy’s eyes flash. ‘You recognise it?’

‘Google is your friend. Just scan it in, see for yourself.’

‘I feel like an idiot,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t recall the image. I should have looked it up in my Secret Diary.’

Shandy shrugs. ‘OK, so it’s morphine. What good does that do?’

‘Morpheus was the god of dreams,’ Roman says. ‘Maybe that’s a connection. Or maybe some mechanism involved in dreamhacking is related to morphine receptors. When we interview Bernard’s friends, we can find out how long he’s had the mask and what it meant to him. For now, we need to get to the bottom of what happened last night. I’ll need you to tell me the dream. Did you record it?’

‘I record everything on my BigSky account. But you won’t be able to read it. It only plays back in dream form, and the reference system is unique to me.’

‘Send it to me anyway.’

I sip some more, trying to buy time. It’s not that I’ve got anything to feel guilty about or any reason to withhold information from the police. It’s just . . . a feeling of everything moving too fast.

‘Give me a minute to wake up. I need to check in with O, she’ll be worried.’

Roman’s sitting across from me, straddling an occasional table, while I recline on poor dead Bernard’s sofa. I feel cornered. He’s looking so intensely at me.

‘I called O,’ he says. ‘She knows you’re safe and we’ve made arrangements for someone to go and check on her, see if she needs anything. She said she would cancel your appointments. She’s also dealing with the person whose Peugeot you wrecked?’

‘Oh. OK.’ I feel helpless and silly and I wish I could just go back to sleep. I wish there really were a dog here and Shandy hadn’t lied to make me wake up.

‘Did anything happen while you were sleeping just now?’

‘Dream-wise, you mean? Not that I can recall. I haven’t been recording. I didn’t mean to go to sleep. But no, I don’t think there was anything to worry about. Are the police coming? I mean, the proper police.’

He smiles grimly. ‘The body isn’t here, obviously. Forensics have been and gone. You’ve been asleep for fifteen hours.’

My stomach makes some incredible curdling noise as though it’s only just been informed of the passage of time and needs to run updates.

‘Have I been here all this time?’

‘You were in Donato’s car for a while.’