Then a hand touched my hip, the fingers seeming to prod at first, then lifting and clutching at the material of my pyjamas as though trying to tug them up. What did they think they were doing? Did they think I was wearing a nightgown? I still did not open my eyes, thinking that whoever this incompetent was it would only embarrass them if I confronted them (one ought always to keep the medical staff on one’s side and so should avoid making them feel awkward). The hand gave up the vain attempt to pull my pyjama bottoms up and reached out over my crotch. And slipped into the open fly of the pyjama bottoms, fumbling for and closing on my manhood, squeezing it once and then reaching down to hold my testes!

I opened my eyes an instant after the light clicked out. It was not afternoon at all. It was dark now with the light out; late evening or night. I felt confused, disoriented. The hand withdrew immediately from my private parts and the shadowy, barely glimpsed figure at the side of my bed rose hurriedly with a grunting, distressed noise and was gone before I could glimpse who it might have been, leaving the door swinging still further open as they ran down the corridor. Slippers. They were wearing slippers, from the sound of it, and they could not run very fast. I thought of getting up and giving chase but it would have taken too long.

I shouted for help instead.

But the cheek, the nerve, the banal sordidness of it!

Is this what I’m reduced to – being the sexual plaything of some drooling, sub-sentient inmate of a benighted cretin depository like this? The shame of it. With my past, my achievements, my status and – I swear – my still unfulfilled promise.

There was only one occasion on which I intervened when technically I should not have. I used my seniority to take a subject from the operative they had been assigned to. He was, supposedly, just Subject 47767 to us, but I had seen his name and details on the system and had been intrigued. It was partly because of him that I had offered my services to the police and security service when I’d left the army. He was something of a hero to me and a lot of other people. What was he doing in our clutches?

His case file spoke of an assault on a prominent person and suspected membership of a terrorist group or a related organisation. The second part of the charge might mean almost nothing; some wit in our office had pointed out that the law regarding “related organisations” and having some sort of connection to terrorist groups was so vaguely and widely drawn that technically it included us. It was the sort of thing you charged people with when you didn’t know what else to charge them with but didn’t want to let them go, when you just suspected them generally.

This man, 47767, had been in the police ten years ago, when the terrorist threat was just starting to become serious. He’d been in a unit that had captured a couple of terrorists who had been planting bombs in various public places, in litter bins in railway and bus stations and in busy thoroughfares, killing a few people and injuring dozens. When they were picked up there had been some sort of breakdown in communication between different parts of their terrorist cell and detailed warnings had been sent for the latest batch of bombs before all of them had been planted. A quick-thinking officer had sent police to the sites relating to the warnings and both men had been caught, though not before they had already planted at least one other bomb not covered by the original warning.

The suspects were split up, and one was questioned conventionally. The other one, who had been in the charge of the police officer who was now our Subject 47767, had been questioned rather more forcefully by him and had revealed the location of the bomb that he and his accomplice had already planted. Police officers dispatched to the location were able to evacuate the area and prevent any deaths or injuries when the bomb detonated just a quarter-hour later. It was one of the few unqualified successes of those early years.

The identity of the officer who would become our Subject 47767 was discovered by the press and he was acclaimed as a hero both in the papers and by the mass of the public as a man who had done something distasteful but necessary. The means he had employed to produce the life-saving results were also discovered; he had been tearing out the terrorist’s fingernails with a pair of pliers (there was no detail on how many he’d had to remove like this before achieving cooperation). This is one of those amateurish but fairly effective techniques you hear about sometimes.

Despite the fact that lives had been saved and the terrorist himself was still very much alive, certain sections of the press and some politicians nevertheless wanted the man to be prosecuted and thrown out of the police force for what he had done. Eventually, as I recalled, he was hounded out of the force and was charged with criminal assault. He refused defence counsel, saying he would defend himself, then at the trial he said nothing. He was jailed for only a couple of years, but things went badly for him in prison and he spent nearly ten years inside. In that time his children grew up and his wife divorced him, moving away and remarrying.

He had slipped from public consciousness in the intervening decade, filled as it was with so much violence and treachery. He had been released earlier this year and now had ended up in the hands of the police again, scheduled to be questioned. I felt there was an untold story here, and there were puzzling details that I had never heard had been cleared up. I was unable to contain my curiosity and took over the case myself. This was not actually against regulations but it was highly irregular, the sort of thing you could get away with once or twice but which, done consistently, would be noted in your file.

He was an ordinary-looking man. Medium build, pale skin, short receding brown hair and a resigned, beaten look on his face. There might have been some defiance in his eyes, though perhaps that was just my own prejudice. He had been beaten up at some point in the last few days, judging from the bruising on his face. He was still dressed and his hands were handcuffed and chained to the floor behind him, though he was otherwise unrestrained and was seated normally.

I sat in front of him in another chair. I even put myself within kicking distance of his feet with nothing in between, which I would never normally do. A junior officer sat to one side monitoring the recording equipment but took no part in the subsequent proceedings.

I began by asking Subject 47767 if he was who I thought he was. He confirmed that he was. We used his real first name throughout. It was Jay. I asked him why he thought he was here.

He laughed bitterly. “I hit the wrong person.”

I asked who that might have been.

“The son of the Justice Minister.” He gave a sour smile.

I asked why he had hit him.

“Because I’m sick to the back teeth of vicious, ignorant dickheads telling me what a fucking hero I am.”

I asked him if he meant because of what had happened with the terrorist he had tortured to discover the location of the bomb.

Jay shook his head and looked away. “Oh, let me guess. I’m a hero figure to people like you, would that be right?”

I said that many people admired what he had done, amongst them, certainly, myself.

“Yeah, well, you would, wouldn’t you?” he replied.

I asked if he meant because of what he obviously – and correctly – took to be my role.

He nodded. “Because you’re a torturer,” he said. He looked straight into my eyes as he said this. I am well used to staring people down, but he would not look away.

I told him that even if I was not, I would still admire him because of what he had done.