“All right, accept that I’m awake enough. How about a little light on the big mystery, and the rush to the north? It’s not like you to miss the chance at a good Chinese meal.”

He nodded, looking straight ahead, and sighed, “Too true. But this is really a tough business, Lionel.”

It was, too. I knew it as soon as he spoke. We never called each other “Leo” and “Lionel” in private unless some really serious matter was involved. I didn’t speak, but just sat and waited.

“You know,” he said after a few moments. “I’ve kidded you a lot about your job over the years, and told you you have to work your fingers off just to stay in the same place — you have the real Red Queen’s Race. But sometimes I envy you. It’ll pass in a few minutes, but I’m envying you right now.”

“That’s a first. You mean you’re disenchanted with your job? I thought you loved those AID jaunts, hopping all over the globe and dishing out the dollars. What’s up, have they stopped treating you like royalty all of a sudden?”

“Not quite.” His tone had changed. I realized that he had not listened to me, and was only able to reply from an instinct as to what I must have said to him.

“What’s wrong?” I looked at the instrument panel.

“She’s not handling right.” He was frowning at the gauges also. “Everything shows as though it’s fine, but it’s not. She’s yawing, and I can’t trim her to correct it. The hell with this, I’m going to take her back to Heathrow. Call in and request an emergency landing for us.”

I reached for the radio, but before I could make connection it became irrelevant. The helicopter lurched sickeningly to the right, levelled for a moment as Leo struggled with the controls, then swooped sideways again, vibrating madly.

“I can’t hold her at all,” Leo grunted. His face was tense and flushed with exertion. “We’ll never make it to Heathrow. What’s down there on your side? I’ll have to try and slip her that way and straighten us when we’re really low.”

Off to my right I could see a dizzying pattern of fields and roads, leading a mile or two ahead to the more heavily built-up area of East Reading .

“As soon as you can,” I shouted, still concentrating on the ground. “It gets worse the further we go. We’re better off here than nearer the town.”

Leo did not speak, but I heard his grunt of effort. The air was rushing past us and the helicopter was rolling and yawing crazily as we lost altitude. At three hundred feet we straightened for a moment. I could see a hedge, a muddy pool, and a plowed field, and beyond that the line of a major road with houses on the other side of it.

“Right here, Leo. Turn her now.” My voice was high-pitched and panicky. “Watch out, you’ll have us on the road.”

He did his best, pulling us close to level at the last moment. It just wasn’t good enough. I saw the ground coming towards me — much too fast — and in the moment before impact I could see so clearly that I could have counted the individual weeds that grew in the plowed furrows. When we hit there was a noise like the end of the world.

In a way, that’s exactly what it was.

Nobody would believe me when I told them that I had not — repeat not — lost consciousness when we hit. They pointed to my injuries as proof that I must have been knocked out. I couldn’t offer my proof for many months. But I was right. The idea that I had hallucinated in post-accident trauma was plausible nonsense.

To make this strictly and absolutely accurate, I actually did black out for maybe a second or two at the moment of impact, but I feel sure it was brief. I came to when the noise of settling metal and bending struts was still going on around me. Although I was in no pain, I couldn’t move a finger — or a toe either. The helicopter had struck almost flat, thanks to Leo’s last-ditch efforts, but fast. I had been thrown forward and to the right, to smash against the side panel and window as the machine jerked to a violent halt on the uneven ground.

It’s hard to say how long I lay there, listening to the creak of twisted metal and wondering what I would do if the wreck caught fire. (Answer: nothing, which was all I could do.) The right side of my head was flat on the metal, and I was looking out of the window at the dark brown earth. From where I lay the perspective was distorted. It seemed that my nose was flat against the steel surface, just as though my head had been sheared in two to the right of my nose, and the left half laid on the cold metal panel.

All the fear and emotion that I felt before the crash had gone. I remember thinking, About time, too, when I finally heard footsteps moving on the broken frame of the helicopter. Surely it couldn’t be Leo? He would have dragged me clear of possible fire before going to look for help. As the footsteps came closer I realized there were at least two people, stepping cautiously over the angled floor. There was a sound of labored breathing, and a grunt as some heavy object behind me was lifted and moved to one side.

“It’s not on him, Scouse,” said a voice a few feet from my head, “There’s no sign of it.”

“Bloody hell, it’s got to be,” said a second voice, this one with a strong Liverpool accent. ” ’Ere, you let me have a look at him, an’ you try the other one. Mebbe he already gave it to ’im. Are yer quite sure yer got the right one ’ere?”

“Of course I’m bleedin’ sure. He’s unconscious, but that’s Foss all right. See that tie pin, same as ’e ’ad on ’im last time? I’ll take a look-see at this one, but that’s Leo Foss.”

A pair of black shoes, leather-soled and black-buckled, appeared a few inches in front of my face. Hands were moving lightly over my body, patting and probing.

“It’s not on ’im, either,” said the first voice. ” ’Less it’s underneath ’im. I’d ’ave to lift ’im up to see that.”

“Well, get on an’ do it, yer great git.” Scouse sounded uneasy. “Lift him an’ do it sharpish. We don’t have all bleedin’ night ’ere.”

Up to that point there had been no pain for me, not even a twinge. But now hands began to raise and turn me, and that was murder. My long-suffering body began to protest, all the way from my toes to my neck. Streaks of agony were like darts shooting into my spine and my right side. It was too much. When I slid dizzily into unconsciousness I was very glad to go. My final thought was of Leo. I hadn’t seen him since the crash, but the words of the two men told me that he was at least still alive. That was some comfort during my descent into darkness.

The first waking didn’t count for much. It was a blurry, mush-minded few minutes of staring at an unfocused white ceiling, wondering who I was, where I was, and why I was aching all over. I didn’t even try to move, which I later found out was just as well.

The second time up from the pit was better and worse. I found myself in a firm bed that was raised at the head end ten or fifteen degrees. I was in no danger of falling out, though — not with the tubes and wires that hung all over me like spaghetti. I was the central meatball. And I hurt even more than the first time.

I lay there, blinking. My right eye was providing me with a set of strange and uncoordinated images, and I spent the first few minutes trying to get things into focus. It was hard work until I learned the trick, which was to concentrate only on the object and not on the way my eye did the focusing. When the image in front of me finally became sharp it was debatable if the result was worth the effort. I was looking at a fat, bald-headed man with bulging eyes. He was sitting on a chair at the end of the bed, holding an apple in one thick-fingered paw and stolidly munching on it.

He nodded at me cheerfully when he saw that I was awake and finally focusing on him.