‘For the disease, no,’ she said. ‘For the symptoms, for the nerve damage, sometimes. But not remotely reliably. I thought I saw a way it might be done, but I needed money, for medical supplies and equipment.’ And to meet the huge need that pressed in around her every day.

So she returned to London to set up a fundraising arm for her charity, and ran straight back into the arms of Albert Woodville-Gentle who was just as charming as he’d ever been. After getting reacquainted they came to an arrangement – Albert would provide seed funding and run the London end of the charity, and in exchange Helena would share the techniques she’d developed in India.

I thought of the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau where Albert Woodville-Gentle had created real cat-girls and tiger-boys and other things that Nightingale wouldn’t let me see. And I thought of the smooth new skin of Lesley May’s face, and found it suddenly hard to keep an expression of polite interest on mine.

‘You never suspected how he might use it,’ said Nightingale.

‘I received a phone call in May 1979,’ said Lady Helena. ‘The caller asked me if I knew what my “good friend” was really up to. They gave me the address of a club in Soho. I believe you know the one I’m talking about.’

‘On Brewer Street,’ said Nightingale.

‘Do you know who made the call?’ I asked.

Lady Helena did not; she’d been busy when she’d taken it and hadn’t understood the implications.

‘A woman,’ she said. ‘English certainly, or at least she didn’t have an accent.’

A woman with a posh accent, I thought. Because people always think their own accent is universal.

‘Did you visit the club?’ asked Nightingale.

‘I’d been due to visit London that summer, so instead of calling Albert to let him know I’d arrived I popped in on my way to my hotel,’ said Lady Helena. ‘Do you know what was in the foyer?’

Nightingale nodded.

I certainly remembered, the disembodied head of Larry ‘The Lark’ Piercingham, petty criminal, grass and object lesson in why you didn’t cross the Faceless Man. He’d been done up like a fortune-telling machine and, as far as Dr Walid could establish later, kept in a semi-state of aliveness for over thirty years.

Lady Helena smacked her palm on the coffee table making the china rattle.

‘I developed that technique,’ she said and her face was suddenly flushed. ‘In an emergency you can use it to stave off brain death.’ She raised her hand again, but hesitated and then dropped it into her lap.

‘Have you taught it to anyone else?’ I asked.