But, to his dismay, there was no sign of Jack.

He strode in and was about to call out that he was a police officer when he was aware, too late, of a shape hurtling down at him from his left. He felt a crashing blow. His head exploded into a shower of sparks. He stumbled forward, dizzily, a few steps, his legs cut off from his brain. Then the floor came rushing up, smashing his goggles against his face. The sparks inside his head flickered out.

23

Roy tried to open his eyes, and immediately closed them again against painfully dazzling light. He was totally confused. His brain felt like it was on a helter-skelter, swirling round and round, down and down.

Somewhere distant, he heard a man’s voice, speaking quietly in French. ‘Il se réveille!’

He opened his eyes again, just a tiny slit, blinking hard. A blurry face that he thought, for a moment, was an angel peered down at him, part anxious, part smiling.

‘Darling, thank God!’ Cleo’s voice, as if in a dream, sounding echoey. Another blurry figure next to hers, a woman dressed all in white, was now stooping over him as if she was studying an object in a museum.

His vision remained blurred. For some moments he wondered if he was dead.

He blinked, painfully. It felt as if a knife was digging into the base of his skull. Slowly, Cleo came into focus. Then the kindly face of the young woman beside her. A nurse, he realized.

As he looked around, he saw he was surrounded by medical gear. A drip line was taped to the back of his left hand and there was a plastic bracelet on his wrist instead of his watch. He tried to speak but no sound would come out.

The nurse said something in French. It sounded approving. He recognized one of the words, bien.

Cleo leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Darling, welcome back.’ She was crying. ‘God, thank God. You’re OK!’

A tear fell on his face. He reached up with his right hand to his forehead and touched what felt like a sticking plaster.

A thin man in white scrubs, with a stethoscope around his neck, suddenly appeared. For some moments he studied a bank of screens on shelves above him, displaying changing graphs and readouts, and nodded approvingly. Roy heard the words, in broken English, ‘It is good, the brainwaves are normal now, his heart rate is up, his pulse is good. Fort – strong!’

Roy tried to sit up, but the nurse immediately held him back. ‘S’il vous plaît – please – just rest.’

Again he tried to speak, but his voice came out slurred, as if he was drunk. ‘Was – was happened?’

He felt a tiny prick in his arm, then everything went dark again.

24