Lancasters, and what was the other one with the split tailplane? Was it a Blenheim?

Except of course the railings weren’t there in 1940. They’d been put up in 1987 to stop mad Libyans from interrupting Parliamentary business with a quarter of a ton of high explosive wedged into the back of a family Peugeot.

These railings, my railings, were there to do a job. They were there to defend democracy. They were hand-built by craftsmen called Ted or Ned, or possibly Bill.

They were railings fit for heroes. I slept.

A face. A very big face. A very big face with only enough skin to cover a very small face, so that everything about it looked tight. Tight jaw, tight nose, tight eyes. Every muscle and tendon on the face bulged and rippled. It looked like a crowded lift. I blinked, and the face was gone.

Or maybe I slept for an hour and the face stayed for fifty-nine minutes. I’ll never know. Instead of the face there was only a ceiling. Which meant a room. Which meant I’d been moved. I started thinking about theMiddlesexHospital, but I knew straight away that this was a very different fish-kettle.

I tried flexing bits of my body. Gently, not daring to move my head in case my neck was broken. The feet seemed okay, if a little far away. As long as they weren’t further than six feet and three inches I wasn’t going to complain. The left knee answered my letter by return of post, which was nice, but the right felt wrong. Thick and hot. Come back to that. Thighs. Left okay, right not so good. Pelvic girdle seemed all right, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I put some weight on it. Testicles. Ah, there was another matter entirely. I didn’t have to put weight on those to know they were in a poor state. There were too many of them and they hurt too much. Abdomen and chest got a B-minus, and my right arm failed altogether. Just wouldn’t move. Neither would the left, although I could just about move the hand, which is how I knew I wasn’t in the William Hoyle Ward. Things can be rough and ready in NHS hospitals these days, but even so they tend not to tie your hands to the bed without a good reason. I left the neck and head for another day, and fell into as deep a sleep as I could manage with seven testicles.

The face was back, tighter than ever. This time he was chewing something, and the muscles in his cheeks and neck were standing out like a diagram from Gray’s Anatomy. There were crumbs around his lips and every now and then a very pink tongue shot out and carried one off to the cave of his mouth.

‘Lang?’ The tongue was working round the inside of his mouth now, running over his gums and puckering his lips so that for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. I let him wait.

‘Where am I?’ I was pleased to hear that there was a thoroughly ill-sounding croak to my voice.

‘Yeah,’ said the face. If it had enough skin, I think it might have smiled. Instead, it moved away from whatever I was lying on, and I heard a door open. But it didn’t shut.

‘He’s up,’ said the same voice, quite loud, and the door still didn’t shut. Which meant that whoever controlled the room controlled the corridor too. If it was a corridor. For all I knew, it could have been the gantry to a space shuttle. Or from it. Maybe I was in a shuttle, about to leave the world very far behind.

Footsteps. Two pairs. One rubber, one leather. Hard floor. Leather steps are slower. Leather’s in charge. Rubber’s a flunky, holding the door, making way for leather. Rubber’s the face. Rubber Face. Easy to remember.

‘Mr Lang?’ Leather had stopped by the bed. If it was a bed. I kept my eyes closed, a little frown of pain on my face. ‘How’re you feeling?’ American. A lot of Americans in my life at the moment. Must be the exchange rate.

He started to move round the bed, and I could hear the crunch of dust under his shoes. And the aftershave. Much too strong. If we became friends, I’d tell him. But not now.

‘I always wanted a bike when I was a kid,’ said the voice. ‘A Harley. My dad said they were dangerous. So when I learnt to drive I crashed the car four times in the first year just to get back at him. He was an asshole, my dad.’

Time passed. Which I couldn’t do anything about.

‘I think my neck is broken,’ I said. I kept my eyes closed and the croak was coming along nicely.

‘Yeah? Sorry to hear that. Now tell me about yourself, Lang. Who are you? What do you do? You like movies? Books? Ever had tea with the Queen? Talk to me.’

I waited until the shoes turned, and slowly opened my eyes. He was out of vision, so I fixed on the ceiling.

‘Are you a doctor?’

‘I’m not a doctor, Lang, no,’ he said. ‘I’m surely not a doctor. A son-of-a-bitch is what I am.’ There was a snigger somewhere in the room, and I guessed that Rubber Face was still by the door.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A son-of-a-bitch. That’s what I am. That’s my job, that’s my life. But hey, let’s talk about you.’

‘I need a doctor,’ I said. ‘My neck…’Tears started in my eyes, and I let them come. I sniffed a bit, choked a bit, put on a cracking good show, if I say so myself.

‘If you want to know the truth,’ said the voice, ‘I don’t give any kind of shit about your neck.’

I decided I was never going to tell him about his aftershave. Not ever.

‘I want to know other things,’ said the voice. ‘Lots and lots of other things.’

The tears kept coming.

‘Look, I don’t know who you are, or where I am…’ I faltered, straining to get my head off the pillow.

‘Fuck away, Richie,’ said the voice. ‘Get some air.’

There was a grunt from over by the door, and two shoes left the room. I had to assume that Richie was in them.

‘See, that’s kind of the idea, Lang. You don’t have to know who I am, and you don’t have to know where you are. The idea is that you tell me things, I don’t tell you.’

‘But what…’

‘Did you hear what I said?’ There was suddenly another face in front of mine. Smooth, scrubbed skin, and hair like Paulie’s. Fluffily clean, and combed to ridiculous perfection. He was about forty, and probably spent two hours a day on an exercise bike. There was only one word for him. Groomed. He examined me closely, and from the way his gaze hung over my chin I guessed that I hadareasonably spectacular injury there, which cheered me up a bit. Scars are always handy for breaking the ice.

Finally his eyes met mine, and the four of them didn’t get on at all. ‘Good,’ he said, and moved away.

It had to be early in the morning. The only excuse for that strength of perfume was that he’d only just shaved.

‘You met Woolf,’ said Groomed. ‘And his air-head daughter.’ _ ‘Yes.’