‘Next was when stuff got really fucked up. The first guy started complaining of being too hot, but I heard the nurses talking to each other, saying that his body temperature was really low, dangerously low. So one of them left whilst the other one tried to stop the guy from undressing. But he was acting weird, ignored the nurse and stripped down naked. You could see he was freezing – he was shaking hard, and his skin was turning a strange blue colour. The second person who’d got a headache was now starting to complain of being too hot as well, which is when the door bursts open and several men come in. By now there are just six of us who haven’t come down with whatever it is, but we’re all hyper-paranoid; every second you wonder if that little twinge in your head is the start of it, the little pain in your arm a symptom. I tell you, it was fucking terrifying. The men are bringing trolleys into the room and putting all those affected onto them and strapping them in. I saw the blood first. I was watching the first guy whilst he was waiting to be hoisted up, and this little bubble of blood appears in his nostril. It grows quickly, then bursts. Then the other nostril does the same and soon blood’s streaming out of his nose and starting to dribble out of his mouth too, and all the time I’m scared that this is going to happen to me as well.’

I’m pretty good at telling if people are faking it or not, and Polman is not. His delivery isn’t melodramatic; it’s held in, like if he was to let it go something deep and horrible might be unleashed. He was traumatized by the experience. I can see it in him, his own private version of the black wolf.

‘Then what?’

Polman shudders. His hands are in a jumble on the table, and he’s picking at a bit of skin with a fingernail.

‘Then nothing.’

‘There’s more, I can tell.’

Polman glares at me. I hold his gaze. Finally he lowers his eyes.