Unfortunately, after my head stopped whirling, I came around on that disgusting carpet, with grit pressed into my face and the whiff of damp and rot deep in my lungs. I coughed – well, spluttered – into consciousness. Oddly, there was no one else in the room. The owner of the thin, reedy voice had gone. And so, too, I thought, had my wallet. Then I remembered I’d moved it to my trouser pocket. I tried sitting up and felt slightly sick. I touched the swelling on the back of my head. It hurt. But at least the skin wasn’t broken, and there was no blood. A sock full of sand will raise an impressive lump and give you as nasty a headache as a proper, lovingly hand-stitched, lead-weighted life-preserver, so I could have been hit by an amateur. I risked rising to my feet, but that didn’t make me feel any better, and I stumbled over to one of the rat-nibbled, lumpy sofas, fell back on to it and closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them, there were two other men in the room.
