There’s still the voice to contend with – something like a moulding cask full of mulched-up ice-ridden tractors – and it occurs to me that I might have swallowed the much-fabled last straw and had my liver fuse permanently with my brain. But no… the voice is unfamiliar and sounds much like it might have two legs and two arms and be standing outside the door.

Between knocks I yank it open and find a square jaw in a black suit – no tie, the casual look – giving me the eye. Whether I disappoint him or otherwise I don’t know, but I like to think I’m radiating a suitable level of baleful at this juncture. He scans the room behind me, mutters something and turns on his heel down the corridor.

The window’s open and it seems like a good idea to test the nausea readings, so I stick my head out and get a lungful. There’s a rickety-looking trellis to my right covered in ivy, which I was expecting, and a poet, which I was not.

“Morning,” I say.

He unscrews his eyes and clears his throat in my direction. He wobbles one leg up and down the trellis, thinks better of it and lets it settle back onto the ledge.

“Just getting some air, you know,” he croaks.

“Sure. Listen. I’m going to see what’s edible here. You want something?”

He starts to shake his head, then says, “Orange juice. With ice. And a croissant if they have any.”

I nod and, reasoning that there’s probably not many places the conversation could go, excuse myself. If my dive instinct is correct, there are in any case some finely burnt rashers nearby that warrant much more of my attention.

I’m back in Russia and it’s cold. Freezing. I understand that I’m dreaming but I don’t recognize the forest. It’s every forest, all pine trees and snow. I’m cowering from the cold between two trees. I can see Sophia in a clearing and she is crying. Her shoulders lurch back and forward as she sobs and screams.

I can hear her but it sounds like laughter. I shout out in confusion and run toward the clearing but I can’t get any closer.

Sophia looks at me, smiling. She is not crying. I blink my eyes shut.

When I open them again Sophia has changed. She is not Sophia anymore. She is old. A hag, doubled over from arthritis and wrapped in furs to keep out the cold. And she is not alone. Two men straddling guns on broad shoulders are talking to her. I recognize them from the airstrip. Sophia’s brothers.

The old hag looks at me from the clearing and laughs, the noise reverberating up through the trees. Hack. Hack. Hack. She raises her finger and I see the brothers follow it until they are looking at me. Confusion crosses their faces before they raise their guns and start to run.

I take a breath and start to yell. My feet kick out to run but I’m awake now.

There’s a thump on the door of the hotel room.

I relax, realising where I am and see Mordino sprawled out on the floor. The sight of him seems safe. There is a second thump on the door and the voice on the other side shouts something familiar. It’s in Russian.

Russian.

‘Shit,’ is all I can say as I head for the window.

The feller and the missus aren’t too keen on us leaving and there’s a bit of windmilling going on before himself lands on his back and I get a sashay on. Fournier’s up the hall accosting another guest, some kind of burbling noise coming out of him and he pinning the poor man to the floor, for what reasons escape me. The chap seems overwhelmed and lets himself be dragged into the room next door while myself is down the hallway sharpish… Fournier-less, and after a corner or two it occurs to me that said room might be our berth and not just a scene of whatever crime he’s cooking. About face.

Around half of Fournier is on the bed, arms flung up around his face. As I make my entrance the bathroom door opens and his new friend creeps out, dribbling on the carpet and looking something like a molested rabbit… I retire the shark in his direction and give him the door, an opportunity he does not squander.

The window’s open and the cold air helps… picks me up far enough that I’m willing to see what liquids Fournier has brought with him. The man himself opens his eyes long enough to glance at me, makes a noise like a turkey doing a cryptic crossword, and firmly shuts them again.

I crawl around a bit but I can’t find what he’s done with his suitcase… which strikes me as very rude of him, but those are the shakes, those and the ones looming somewhat and making me think maybe he has the right idea, so I shut things down a bit and stretch myself out. Tomorrow is another day.

***

The ringing in my ears won’t let up. I’m in the corridor, stumbling, pushing and dragging Mordino toward the sanctuary of our room. Behind us, Jack’s friend is screaming blue murder. Jack isn’t screaming anything. Jack is lying still back in his room.

Murder? Mordino didn’t hit him that hard. He can barely even stand up for chrissakes.

We trundle into my room. I run the shower until it’s icy cold and sit Mordino’s contemptible bulk under the stream. I close the door to mask his yelps and head for the comfort of my stale mattress.

I’m sure my eyes are only closed for a second. Perhaps two. The bathroom door is open and Mordino is standing by the window. His clothes are dry.

How did he do that?

The lobby wishes to dance with me. I stand straight; excuse my manners. It would of course be rude to turn a lady down. Arms up, da da daa, da da daa… the floor flirts, a coquettish little wink and a touch of the hand. Not tonight my dear, not tonight. I may be that brand of gentleman in certain other lives and times but not tonight, I shall lay with you perhaps anon, but, I…

… up the stairs. Shifty little beggars too, roiling and tossing, like… the sea, made of… jellyfish… all in good fun though, it seems, or at least they have the benefit of the doubt for now, but well they know there will be no nonsense or words will be exchanged. In point of fact I am prepared to say there will be ructions.

A commotion… shocking rudeness at such an hour but I hear a commotion down the hall, and so caress my way down one wall, pardon me… a door presents itself, an aperture. My, and quite a tableau indeed…

“Ma’am,” I say, shark once more in vogue, to the be-towelled vision before me. She shrieks most musically, if a touch confrontational. I regret the lack of a hat to tip. “If you will excuse me,” I murmur.

The fellow is easy enough to pull off, although I believe he clips my ear once or twice. I give him the old Queensbury routine while Fournier tucks the tackle into leg number two – grey pinstripe, a fetching look, and so I tell him although he seems distracted. With himself suitably trousered, the time seems ripe for a hasty skedaddle.

The jacket he finally gave me did little for the situation, bar injecting the necessary confidence for my return to the lobby. The Lovely Lorna (79) was still nowhere near her station so I helped myself to a key – brightly labelled ‘MASTER’ – and headed for the hall.

The first room I opened was empty, the bed was made and the wardrobe was open and waiting for it’s guests to arrive. The second room was also empty, though there was a short leather skirt and a tank top folded into a neat pile by the window. (I won’t lie to you. Times were hard and it did cross my mind.) The bed in the next room was too hard so I fecked off to my own floor to try my luck in the rooms upstairs and avoid turning into Goldilocks.

It was harder to find an empty room on this floor – I listened to the mumblings, whispers, moans, groans and sweet nothings of the other guests. The room next to my own seemed empty and without any further invitation I headed for the wardrobe. I nearly cried when I saw the trousers and shirt inside the flimsy cabinet. It wasn’t until I had one leg already into the pair of grey pinstripe slacks that a woman’s voice called out from the bathroom.

‘Jack? Is that you?’

So this is how these situations manifest themselves. I had a sudden rush of empathy to my dwarf invader. There was also the curiosity to investigate whom the voice belonged. I never did get the chance to have a peep though as Jack walked in from the hallway and his companion, toweled to spare her dignity, walked out from the bathroom and screamed.

‘I can explain,’ I said and Jack punched me.

* It would be unfair not to point out, that on average, my turning up naked in a bar would have been the result of some debauched act of my own creation. For once, this was not the case.

Spats is holding his apértif badly and is in any case suitably distracted by some piece of resident totty, so it’s no great trouble to disengage. I groove On Down to where Fournier’s… how to describe it? skulking in a fierce kind of huddle, and I ask him what’s afoot.

We’re speaking sideways – hard to look a man in the eye when he’s smuggling the crown jewels – and he’s gritting his teeth, and I’m mostly occupied with how I might turn this to my advantage, so I don’t entirely follow what he’s on about. Something to do with beards and arithmetic. How a man in his position can summon the dignity to use a word like “arithmetic,” I don’t fathom.

“Aren’t you going to offer me your jacket?” he adds, glaring. Never mind that this is, by at least three independent accounts, the jacket Olé Godiva was wearing when the left side of his body stopped working. Spats is still occupied however, so I rather magnaminiously liberate his coat instead. Fournier shoves it aboard in bad humour and retreats to the stairs.

I drop my bag in a corner and head for the tub. At times like this there is little more a man can do than soak for an hour or three. The one bed means that in the course of tonight Mordino will have to sort himself out with some accommodation. For now it is time to become reacquainted with the smell of ylang ylang.

The noise of the bedroom door woke me from my decent, semi-submerged nap. The bubbles tickle under the nose, very soothing. I see a squat shadow dart past the bathroom door and into the bedroom and gingerly step out of the bath in pursuit.

‘Hello,’ I announce, standing in the doorway. There is a short bearded bloke pulling my bag onto his back.

‘Bliddy hell. They said nowt about anyone in here,’ he garbled, eyeing me from the far corner before screwing up his face. ‘Put some clothes on.’

Before I could argue that there was in fact ‘someone in here’, and justifiably naked in my own room, the git ran past me. Not being one to let my bags run away from me, I gave chase, calculating that as the taller of the two I would catch up with him in a jiffy.

My mathematics under duress not being what it should be he got away, but not before I followed him down the stairwell and back out through the foyer. It was the sudden cold air that did it, froze things up.

Livid, I walked back into the hotel. The reception was unattended so I was forced to brazenly walk toward the bar, cupping the jewels for some dignity.

I called to Mordino from the door but he was preoccupied by a man in spats.

Spatsman is in situ and I’m in a good enough mood to consider talking to him. It will have to be mulled over however… the appearance of a good mood is not something to be trifled with, especially coming out of such previously inhospitable territory. With this in mind I lollygag at the opposite corner with one shoulder to the back of him and take an inventory; goodness of mood is augmented when it turns out that, in furtherance of hammy angling, the place stocks the dozen paddiest beers the country has to offer.

It’s not long before Spats has sidled over to intrude on my rumination. He comes on like an old friend and starts in the middle of a conversation about absurdist theatre. It seems I look the type.

“Will we sit down,” he says, “and have an old cupán tae?”

I gesture at the bar.

“Oh,” he says with a wink, “never too early to get the few pints in you.” He nods, pleased with his drinker’s wisdom.

The good mood holds up as a buffer and I find I don’t mind letting him drone. I tell him I’m here with “the bould George Fournier,” continental gadabout and giant of letters, and this is far enough from his area of expertise that he spends the guts of two hours changing the subject. At no point does he notice how many rounds he’s paying for. Gentlemen, I have still got it.

The Lovely Lorna (73) shoots a worried glance at Eli while she checks me in. He is stepping back and forth through a doorway – one foot on the wooden floor, the other on the crimson carpet. When she looks back my way I smile and lean over her desk.

‘Here’s your key Mr Fournier,’ she says in an unnecessarily official tone.

I think she likes me. ‘Please, call me George,’ I say and give her one of my winning smiles.

The Lovely Lorna (73) ignores my personal touch and hands me a key. ‘Through that door and up the stairs,’ she says pointing to a door on the far wall. ‘Yours is number 306.’

‘Thanks Darlin.’

Eli Mordino cuts a gaunt shadow in the corner of the foyer as I head for the stairs. He had attached himself outside and was suggesting he stay with me.

‘Get you reacquainted with the city and what not.’

A free ride for a few days is what he means. For now, I head upstairs and leave him to his game of hopscotch.