At first it was just a distant glow. But as he drew nearer, he saw that the glow was flickering, flames licking upward in the dark. He continued to close in, peering through the heat, focusing on the dark mass at its centre. Suddenly a hand reached out towards him, shrivelled by the heat, claw-like and blackened, and the face moved out of the flames, mouth open in a silent scream, melting eyes appealing for help. And he realised, in a moment of supreme horror, that he was looking at himself.

He sat up with a start, blinking in the darkness, sweat gathered across his forehead, glistening on his chest, a trickle of it turning cold as it ran down to his belly. He was breathing hard. A red digital display on his bedside table showed 2 a.m. He lay back on the pillow and tried to excise the image from his mind. Reaching out like he was asking for help, the baby-sitter had said. But what strange distortions of his subconscious had turned the burning figure of his dream into himself? He forced himself to breathe more slowly and gradually felt the pace of his heart slow, too. He closed his eyes and consciously wiped his mind clean.

Li barely slept the rest of the night, drifting through a dreamlike semiconsciousness until his alarm went off at five, and he rose almost with a sense of relief. The sky was light, but the sun had not yet penetrated the early morning mist, and so it was grey and deliciously fresh as he cycled east then north through the city into Dongcheng District. It was too early for Mei Yuan, who was not at her usual corner at Dongzhimennei, and so he had no breakfast.

The first interviewees of the day were already gathering in the street outside the headquarters of Section One as officers on night shift drifted off to get something to eat before going home to bed, just as their families were getting out of theirs.

“Hey, Li Yan, you’re looking very smart today,” an officer greeted him in the corridor. “Going for an interview?”

Li was wearing a dark blue cotton suit, trousers gathered in fashionable pleats at the waist, a fresh white shirt open at the neck, and a pair of polished black shoes. He grinned. “Just dressing up for the job.”

“Pity the Chief never thought of that,” the officer said, safe in the knowledge that Section Chief Chen had not yet arrived for work. Chen always wore a pair of baggy grey pants, shiny at the seat, a blue or light grey shirt, and a cream-coloured polyester jerkin that had seen better days. He had been described by one of his bosses early in his career as a sartorial disaster. But it had done him no harm whatsoever.