Freefall

by Adam Hamdy

Genres: High-tech & Sci-fi Thrillers; Thrillers

Synopsis

Adam Hamdy's debut novel, Pendulum, was touted as "one of the best thrillers of the year" by James Patterson. John Wallace returns in Freefall and must figure out who he can trust in this high-octane sequel.

Eight months after confronting the Pendulum killer, John Wallace is losing himself in a dangerous warzone in a misguided attempt at penance for the deaths that he believes he caused. But an assassination attempt leads Wallace to realize that he has once again been targeted for death. This time, Wallace is prepared and, tracking down his would-be assassin, he discovers a link to his nemesis, Pendulum.

That link is the missing piece of a puzzle that has tormented FBI agent Christine Ash ever since they confronted Pendulum, but with no Bureau support, she has been unable to pursue her case. Wallace's proof puts her back on the trail, but it also exposes them both to terrible danger.

Confronted by a powerful, hidden enemy, Ash and Wallace must overcome impossible odds if they are to avert a dangerous challenge to the networked world that threatens to destroy our entire way of life.

Release date: November 2, 2017

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

1

Sylvia Greene longed to accept her fate. Knowing what was coming, she had tried to prepare herself, but all rational thought was lost to instinct as she faced death. There were no words, no conscious thought, nothing she could articulate, just an overwhelming urge to fight the noose that crushed her neck. It didn’t matter that she wanted to be there, hanging at the end of the rope, that she knew it was the only way to protect her family. The darkest, most primitive regions of her mind rebelled and sent her fingers flying up, setting them to work on the thick rope. Her nails clawed at the rough fibres, and her bare legs kicked the air, desperately searching for something solid.

She could see her chair, lying on its side, beneath her flailing feet. The pain of the noose biting into her neck was unbearable, and her struggle was only adding to the misery. Her manicured nails were being shredded by the ferocity of her efforts, sending shards of agony shooting along her fingers. She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that it would all be over soon.

Research had been her business and she’d gone into this situation armed with as much knowledge as possible. She knew she had to endure less than five minutes of suffering before her brain died. Once that happened the pain would stop. Her heart would keep beating for another fifteen minutes, but like an orchestra robbed of its conductor, would eventually lose its rhythm and cease. Then she’d grow still and cold, and the ugly business of death would begin, the rigor mortis, the decomposition. Sylvia hoped that Connor found her. Not the boys, she prayed. Not the boys. She hated to think of them seeing her dangling at the end of a rope, naked but for her underwear. Blue. Lace. She’d chosen a matching set in her favourite colour, knowing what was coming.

Sylvia wished she hadn’t thought of the boys. Pictures of their faces filled her mind, and the urge to survive became unbearably strong. She saw them staring up at her as unsteady toddlers, holding her hand, their moon cheeks pushed back by broad smiles, basking in her unstinting love for them. Bigger, older, the puppy fat lost, laughing manically as the rollercoaster hurled them around Thorpe Park. Crying over a grazed knee. Arms cradling a boy lost in awe of a Star Wars film. A startled face suddenly exposed from beneath a duvet, discovered reading Harry Potter way beyond bedtime. Then, her husband Connor, watching her undress, his desire palpable, his love enduring. Sadness, smiles, fear, anger, hope and joy, rich moments, all shared together. She and Connor steering the boys through the storm of life, trying to help them chart the most favourable course. Her heart ached and tears streamed as she thought of the three of them making the rest of the journey alone, but this was the only way.

She’d known she’d cry. The scale of loss made it inevitable. She was healthy, smart, just the wrong side of forty, and she had a family she adored and a job she cherished. Everything was being cut short and it was the theft of her unlived life that saddened her most.

In the days leading to this moment, Sylvia had often found herself wondering whether it truly was inevitable. Perhaps if she’d handled things another way? If she had been a different person? If she’d sought help sooner? But there was no more to be gained from lamenting what had happened than there was from mourning her unlived future.

She wondered if this was how schizophrenics felt. Her rational mind was calm and reflective, but there was part of her that was determined to fight the inevitable. It felt feral in its angry efforts to try to breathe, to tear the rope, to lash out. Her whole body shuddered with the sheer force of this beast, while her brain registered what was happening as it might note the behaviour of a stranger, as though her death was happening to someone else.

Bright lights suddenly flared in her vision. Colours so vivid she could taste them. They exploded wherever she looked, filling her eyes with beauty. Sylvia had read about this, the last furious firing of the brain before it began to shut down. Her body writhed violently as though the primitive regions of her mind sensed they had very little time left. It was hard to see through her tears and the crackling colours, and now Sylvia had a sense of the world growing distant. Then there was a sudden pinprick of white which burned brighter than anything she’d ever seen. It grew bigger, consuming everything until her eyes saw nothing but the blazing heart of a sun.

Freefall. The reason she was dying. The unwelcome word violated her mind, burning through it, leaving nothing in its wake. Her very last thought: Freefall.

Sylvia’s body fell still, and the primal resistance died, the instinctive and the rational uniting in emptiness as the last embers of her life were extinguished. Her heart kept beating after her body fell still. After a while it stopped and the blood began to cool in her veins.

2

The stars didn’t judge him. Seated beneath the sweeping canopy of distant suns, for a moment John Wallace shed his burden in contemplation of the eternal fires that blazed in countless distant galaxies. They were unmoved by the guilt he’d carried ever since the woman he loved had died in his arms, and they, like the jagged mountains that surrounded him, would stand undiminished when Wallace and everyone who might remember him were long dead. Considering the eternal gave Wallace momentary respite, but he did not live in the endless heavens and was bound to the earth, caught in the tangle of emotions life had woven for him. Guilt dragged him back, and the majesty of his surroundings faded as he remembered that he did not deserve to be free. He pictured her distraught face looking up at him, and the looming peaks of the Hindu Kush Mountains were lost to maudlin grief.

‘I miss you,’ he said softly. ‘I miss you so much.’

The heavy ache that had filled his chest ever since her death intensified, spreading from his heart until it pulled at his entire body, as though trying to force it to collapse from within. It was a familiar sensation, one that Wallace knew he needed. This painful burden was the only remaining connection he had to the woman he loved. He couldn’t let it go.

‘I thought I knew what I was doing,’ he continued. ‘I don’t . . .’

The peace of the forest was broken by the crunch of approaching footsteps, and Wallace fell silent immediately.

‘Tr’ok Si’ol.’ The boy’s voice came from behind Wallace, and he turned to see Kurik, his host’s youngest son, approaching, his olive complexion lit by starlight.

For all his months in Kamdesh, Wallace had been unable to learn the meaning of Tr’ok Si’ol, the name his host, Vosuruk, had given him. Whenever he asked, people smiled sympathetically, but would simply repeat Vosuruk’s pronouncement that it was his Kom name.

‘Oasa mes I’a,’ Kurik continued as he stepped closer. ‘T’ot gij’a ku t’u z’otr.’

‘English, please,’ Wallace replied, having only recognised a single word; z’otr, which meant kinsman. He could speak passable Pashtun, and a little Arabic, but was still struggling with Kamviri, a dialect that was spoken by fewer than ten thousand people.

‘Father say come.’ Kurik was mildly embarrassed and hesitated over each poorly formed word.

‘I don’t want to intrude.’ Wallace raised his hands and took a step back, but it was clear that his words and gesture were lost on the teenager. He wasn’t ready to leave; his memorial had just begun.

‘Come,’ Kurik responded emphatically, before turning away.

Wallace took a last look at the stars and tried to imagine his love up there with them, free. But he knew that the only place she existed was in the hearts of those who’d known her. It was with some resentment that he turned to follow the boy. Wallace’s nightly conversations were a way of bringing her back to life and tonight she would remain buried.

Kurik looked back and smiled when he saw Wallace had started to follow.

Wallace had spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan and still didn’t fully understand the country’s complex culture. Forced together as a single nation by the British, Afghanistan was in fact a patchwork of provinces whose people often had more in common with their tribal cousins in Pakistan or Tajikistan than they did with those who shared their nationality. Wallace had travelled to Nuristan because all the reports he’d heard suggested it was still riven by conflict. The Nuristani tribes that had spent hundreds of years fighting each other had banded together to resist the resurgent Taliban. Western media presented the conflict as a simplistic struggle between government forces and Islamic militants, but the fight was far more nuanced. For decades, Nuristan had been known as Kafiristan, which, roughly translated, meant Land of the Infidels, so called because the locals had long resisted conversion to Islam. Pockets of the ancient Kalash faith still flourished in Nuristan, and even Muslim converts still observed the rites and practices of their ancestors’ religion. The Nuristani tribes were doing what they’d done for decades, resisting the imposition of an alien authority, be it British, Islamic, Soviet, Taliban, American or Pashtun. Right now, the Kom were engaged in a battle to prevent Taliban forces taking control of their homeland, and Wallace had chosen them because he knew they were an open people with a social hierarchy based on wealth, which meant he could buy his way in.

After some delicate negotiations in the capital which almost ran aground in misunderstanding, Wallace was smuggled out of Kabul, up the Bashgal Valley to Kamdesh, the ancestral home of the Kom. The town consisted of simple, two-roomed homes, arranged in terraces on the steep slopes. The room on the ground floor was usually a livestock stable, and goats were the most common residents due to their ability to thrive on the mountains and survive the bitterly cold winters.

Wallace offered Vosuruk, the town’s magistrate, two hundred dollars a week for lodging. Vosuruk was a middle-aged landowner, who looked young for his fifty-something years. He had a warm, approachable face, but his eyes could not conceal a sharpness that helped keep the remote mountain town in order. Three wives and nine children stood testament to Vosuruk’s wealth, but even a high-ranking magistrate could not turn down two hundred dollars a week in a country where the average annual salary was only double that figure.

Vosuruk partitioned the stable that took up the lower floor of his house to create a room for Wallace, where he could sleep next to the goats and horses. Vosuruk’s family were fascinated by the wealthy stranger who lodged with their livestock, but Wallace wasn’t interested in fostering a reputation as a curiosity. He asked Vosuruk to introduce him to local warriors fighting the Taliban. Normally Vosuruk spoke passable English, but whenever Wallace raised the subject of war he would feign sudden incomprehension. All he could ever manage was, ‘O’c n’a san’oa san’i’, which Wallace came to understand translated roughly as, ‘I don’t know any soldiers.’

Wallace understood enough Kom social custom to know that militia could not operate in the region without the blessing, and probably the assistance, of the magistrate. A bed and safety could be purchased, but he knew that Vosuruk’s trust would only be gained by time. So he had spent his days getting to know Vosuruk’s family and photographing them and the other townsfolk. Vosuruk had five sons and four daughters. The eldest son, Guktec, was a rugged man in his late thirties, who had two wives and five children of his own. At fourteen, Kurik was Vosuruk’s youngest son, and was the child of his most recent wife, Zana, a slight, introverted woman who did not look more than thirty. Kurik had inherited his mother’s wide eyes and gentle demeanour.

On his third day in the town, trailed by Kurik and some of his younger friends, Wallace had gone exploring and found a rocky outcrop deep in the cedar forest that covered the surrounding mountains. The first visit had been marred by the sniggers and giggles of his young coterie, but the following week, after the children had lost interest in him, Wallace had returned in an attempt to find a private place where he could be alone with his grief. Vosuruk had jokingly referred to the outcrop as V’ot Tr’ok Si’ol. Wallace had been able to discover that V’ot meant rock, but, since his efforts to translate his Kom name had floundered, all he knew was that the townspeople now identified the place as his and seemed to take some amusement from the fact that he would go to such lengths to find solitude.

Wallace’s Rock was located fifteen minutes’ walk from the edge of town, and was accessible by a difficult trail which had been cut through the thick forest for some long-forgotten reason. Now, as they pushed through the brush, Wallace began to see flickering lights dotting the mountainside, and then the sharp-edged silhouette of the town started to come into view. As he and Kurik emerged from the shelter of the trees and crested the lip of the dirt track, Wallace felt a blast of the April wind and pulled his Deerhunter jacket tight around his neck. There had been no snowfall since the week he’d arrived and the bitter weather had started to ease into summer, but the nights still offered a chill reminder of some of the desperate cold he’d felt when he first came to the town in February.

The arduous conditions didn’t just demand hardy livestock, they fashioned rugged people. Living at altitude, coping with the rigors of the terrain, the Kom were slightly built, but strong and fit. It had taken three days to get Vosuruk’s permission for him to use his camera, for which there had been a hundred-dollar surcharge, but in chronicling the people of the town, Wallace had not seen a single case of obesity. The mountains simply wouldn’t allow it, and would sweep aside any who became unable to deal with life on their unforgiving slopes.

It had taken a month of quiet persuasion for Vosuruk to finally understand that the strange westerner did not pose a threat to his people. Wallace had shown Vosuruk photographs and accompanying articles from his previous stints in Afghanistan, and his work in Iraq, Somalia and other troubled regions around the world. He’d explained that he wanted to document the life of a people for whom war never seemed to end. Like the other tribes of Nuristan, the Kom had been fighting almost ceaselessly for more than forty years, ever since leading an uprising against the Afghan Communist Government in the seventies. Children had been born and died knowing nothing but conflict, and Wallace wanted to show the world what life was like for a people who lived with ceaseless war, where the insignia on the enemy’s uniform was the only thing that ever changed.

Wallace’s impassioned rationale had affected Vosuruk and finally, in early March, he and his eldest son, Guktec, had taken Wallace into ‘c’er to’ – the high country. Wallace hadn’t ridden for years, but his confidence soon returned and he was able to avoid disgracing himself as he’d followed the expert horsemen into the mountains. With ancestors who’d resisted Islamification in the late nineteenth century, decades of tribal warfare, and almost half a century of foreign interventionist conflict, the Kom had learned how to conduct military operations in a way that minimised their impact on daily life. Wallace was not surprised when, during their ride up to the snow-capped peaks, Vosuruk had revealed that he played a key role in organising the militia and that Guktec was one of its leading lieutenants.

Wallace had been led to a gurk’ata vo – a large cavern – two days’ ride from Kamdesh, where twenty-five warriors lived when they weren’t engaged in operations against the Taliban. Vosuruk explained that his people had been instrumental in the Northern Alliance and had led the struggle against the Taliban government. They had no desire to see a return to those dark days, so now they worked within a loosely organised Nuristani force to fight the largely foreign insurgents who operated from bases in Northern Pakistan. Some of the men spoke rudimentary English and Vosuruk translated for the rest. After overcoming their initial suspicion and reticence, Wallace had spent three days getting to know the men, who were all from Kamdesh and ranged in age from sixteen to forty-five. Winter closed many of the passes to Pakistan, limiting the opportunity for action, but with the advent of spring, all of them had been expecting to see combat very soon.

The older warriors had fought many enemies. The eldest, Malik, remembered running ammunition up to his father during the war against the Soviets. The men had spoken of friends who’d died, the enemies they’d killed, and the dishonourable ‘dillik’, which Wallace gathered meant ‘rats’, who sold them weapons. Most of all, they had talked about their families, and the toll taken by their absence in the mountains. Living in a perpetual state of war for four decades necessitated sacrifice, and every able Kom man spent six months of the year in the high country, fighting. Service was carried out in two-month rotations so that the men could have time with their families and attend to their land and livestock. Like the British and American soldiers Wallace had known, these men missed their wives and children and longed for an end to conflict. When they finally trusted Wallace enough to let him photograph them, he’d seen that their eyes were haunted by a painful longing for something none of them could remember: peace.

Wallace had watched Vosuruk and the men consulting old maps and knew that they were preparing for an operation, but his host had refused to discuss it and said that it would be inhospitable to place his guest in danger. Wallace knew this was simply a polite way for Vosuruk to say that he still didn’t trust the strange Englishman and his camera. The Kom did not have many positive experiences of westerners. The British had handed Nuristan to the Afghans, the Soviets had tried to overrun their country, and the Americans had come in anger, to avenge the deaths of thousands of innocents.

After three days and over fifty saleable photographs, Wallace and Vosuruk had returned to Kamdesh. Guktec had stayed with the fighters to begin his rotation, and, as they’d ridden back through the mountains, Vosuruk had spoken of his hopes for his children and his people. He longed for the comforts of a Western life, for education and for a time when Nuristan was no longer touched by war. Wallace listened sympathetically. He knew the pain of longing for something that was beyond reach, but had said nothing of his own dark experiences.

On their first night back in Kamdesh, Wallace had shown Vosuruk his laptop and the satellite uplink that enabled him to transmit the photographs to Getty, where they would be sold to any interested buyers. When Vosuruk saw them uploaded, and finally understood that Wallace was genuine in his desire to portray the truth of their struggle, he’d quietly assured his guest that he would soon have the opportunity to document one of their operations. Vosuruk had said no more about the subject, and, after almost four weeks of diligent patience, Wallace wondered whether his host had changed his mind.

‘Pam’o gu Soa,’ Kurik said, pointing at his father’s brightly lit house.

Wallace smiled, guessing that Kurik’s remark had something to do with the celebration that he’d purposefully tried to avoid. Vosuruk’s second son, Druni, a quiet, thoughtful man in his late twenties, was taking his third wife, Arani.

The forest thinned as Wallace and Kurik reached the edge of town and the fragrant smell of cedar was replaced by the ripe scent of livestock and the aroma of food. Kurik led Wallace along the narrow track that ran up to his father’s house, and, when Wallace hesitated by the door to the ground-floor stable, he insisted, ‘No. Come.’

Reluctantly, Wallace followed him up the ladder that rested against the stable wall, climbing on to a balcony that was built on the roof of the adjacent house. Kurik ushered him through the open doors into the main room, which was packed with happy friends and family, dressed in their most colourful clothes, all talking excitedly about Druni and Arani and their life together. Wallace could not help but notice that Somol and Bozor, Druni’s first and second wives, sat slightly apart from the rest of the group and he wondered how they felt about the union.

The wedding party stood on a huge, intricately woven coloured rug that covered most of the floor. In prime position in the centre of the room, a roasted goat was proudly displayed, surrounded by a rich banquet.

‘Welcome, Tr’ok Si’ol,’ Vosuruk boomed from across the room.

Most of his guests hadn’t noticed Wallace enter and now they turned to look at the reluctant westerner. Hearty cheers rang out, echoing their host’s sentiments, and Wallace shrank back slightly.

‘I didn’t want to intrude,’ he explained.

‘T’chah!’ Vosuruk waved dismissively, as if to indicate that Wallace had been guilty of great foolishness. ‘Now we can eat.’ He signalled to his guests, who needed no further encouragement and set about the feast with enthusiasm. ‘Camera,’ Vosuruk shouted above the hubbub, and it suddenly occurred to Wallace that his attendance wasn’t purely social.

‘Of course.’ Wallace nodded, and he hurried from the room, clambered down the ladder and opened the stable door carefully, so as not to allow any of Vosuruk’s goats to escape.

Three bridled horses pulled at their tethers in an effort to nuzzle Wallace as he crossed the room, making for the small partitioned space that had been his home for over two months. He drew back a hanging drape and placed his large camera bag on the low but surprisingly comfortable straw cot, then selected the 750, which would give him better performance in low light than the D4, and opted for the 50mm f/1.4 lens. Just as he was replacing the Peli lens case in his camera bag, he heard an unfamiliar sound outside. Hurrying from the stable, he climbed the ladder to find Vosuruk and Druni standing on the balcony peering up at the sky, their faces suddenly solemn.

‘What is it?’ Wallace asked as his ears tried to identify the low throbbing that was growing louder with each passing moment.

Vosuruk looked at Wallace, his eyes uncharacteristically fearful, his voice alive with apprehension. ‘Helicopters.’

3

They’d started burrowing the moment he’d come out of the coma, and the depressions they dug deepened every day. Physically, the bullets were long gone and scars covered the places where they’d torn into his body, but their psychological damage haunted him. Patrick Bailey wore a convincing mask of professionalism, and he doubted whether Superintendent Cross had noticed any change. His colleagues might have caught him drifting during a conversation, but it was only his family and old friends, like Salamander, who recognised the lingering effects of his shooting. His life was smaller, darker, and Bailey felt vulnerable, fearful – mortal. He’d noticed it in hospital, where he’d found himself jumping at unexpected noises and treating passing strangers with suspicion. Even after his doctor had given him the all-clear and he’d started his physical therapy, Bailey worried that they’d missed one or more of the bullet fragments – that deadly metal was lodged somewhere in his veins and would one day be dislodged to flow to his brain or heart, killing him instantly.

Once this fear had taken root, Bailey found it impossible to shake. And the ghostly bullets, like burrowing insects, kept digging into his insecure mind and throwing up new filth. A residual blood clot lingered near his lungs; the stress and strain on his heart had weakened it; the coma had changed his sinus rhythm, making him prone to stroke. As their burrows grew bigger, the parasites became stronger, adding new fears, which compounded Bailey’s stress. The Met’s resident psychotherapist, Jean Davis, a thoughtful woman with a dark little office off Edgware Road, tried to talk Bailey through the aftermath of trauma, and explained that anxiety would manifest itself in physical symptoms. She tried to teach him techniques to cope with his fears and Bailey smiled and pretended to learn, so that by the end of his mandated six weekly sessions, Jean would declare him fit for duty and the force would have no hint of the damage being done by the terrors conjured by his paranoid mind.

During calmer moments, Bailey told himself he was being irrational and knew that Jean was right: he was just as fit, healthy and capable as he’d been before Pendulum shot him, and his fears were unfounded. But whenever rationality threatened to take hold, the evil parasites burrowed deeper and revealed some new horror to unbalance him and push him into the grip of panic. Bailey had sacrificed so much of himself, saving John Wallace from Pendulum, and it had taken months of intense physical therapy for him to recover from the shooting. He’d been commended for his bravery, but he didn’t think there was anything brave about his actions. He’d simply done what was necessary, and had paid a heavy price. His body was better, but he feared that his mind might never recover.

So Bailey spent his days pretending to be the detective he once was, wearing a smile like an ill-fitting mask, feigning competence like an actor in a TV cop show. At night he became reclusive and withdrew from those who knew him best, so that they would not question him about the changes they’d seen, and, through voicing their concerns, give his anxiety even more power. He set his intellect against his fear and tried to solve the problem, spending lonely evenings in his flat researching ways to combat anxiety. But every new fact only seemed to give the parasites greater power and each new revelation only seemed to stimulate a new fear. Finally, he realised that logic was no match for primal irrationality. He’d come close to seeing his doctor, but didn’t want anxiety or mental health issues flagged on his record, so he’d resigned himself to the hope that time would heal him, and forced his way through each day trying to ignore the growing feeling that death waited for him at the end of every step.

A uniformed officer walked in front of his car and Bailey slammed on the brake. The seatbelt snapped tight as he jerked forward, and he felt his heart start to race as he realised that he’d almost run the man over. The young officer moved to the driver’s window and knocked on the glass.

‘Sorry, sir, the street’s closed,’ the officer said.

‘DI Bailey,’ Bailey replied, fumbling for his warrant card.

‘Park anywhere on the left,’ the PC instructed, stepping away to move the barricade that blocked the road.

Bailey waved his thanks as he drove on, shaken by the manner of his arrival. His efforts to combat his anxiety so consumed him that he often found himself retreating into his mind, becoming oblivious to the outside world. He relied on autopilot to keep him functioning, but now and again it was starting to fail. He would miss entire sections of the daily briefing, or set out for a location and end up somewhere else. This time his autopilot had succeeded in bringing him to the right place; Ufton Grove, a short residential street that was either in South Dalston or North Islington, depending on whether you were buying or selling one of the four-storey Georgian terrace properties. But he was unnerved that he’d nearly collided with the uniform and concerned at his inability to recall most of his journey through London’s busy streets.

Bailey pulled into a space marked by police cones, behind one of the two liveried police cars that were on the scene. The forensics truck was parked directly outside number 112, an end-of-terrace located on the south-eastern corner of the street.

He turned away from the low afternoon sun slanting through the branches of the budding blossom trees, and hurried across the street, into a tiny garden. As he walked up a stone path set between patches of brushed gravel that swept like a frozen sea around a handful of pot plants, Bailey willed himself to focus. He challenged himself to rise above his anxiety and to allow his keen eye and incisive mind to truly connect with the world. A detective cut off by fear was no use to anyone.

A shabby-looking man waited for Bailey on the threshold. Greasy black curly hair fell around a lard-white, puffy face.

‘DI Bailey?’ the man asked as he offered his hand. ‘DS Murrall. Call me Jack. Thanks for coming.’

Bailey shook Murrall’s clammy hand, and wondered whether the sheen of perspiration that covered his face was a sign of nerves or ill health. Murrall’s poorly fitting, cheap suit was speckled with patchy stains – he looked more like a deadbeat travelling salesman than a cop.

‘Happy to help,’ Bailey replied with a smile. ‘What you got?’

‘Upstairs,’ Murrall said as he headed inside.

Bailey felt an arrhythmical thump in his chest, and fear instantly shrank the world to nothing. He paused by the front door, aware that he was incapable of doing his job until the wave of panic had subsided. His mind turned inward, studying his body for further signs of imminent death. He longed to take his pulse, but knew he was being watched.

‘You OK?