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inside the front door. I picked one up and smashed it into my forehead, making sure the edge of the brick made the initial contact. I touched my forehead with the palm of my hand. There was blood.
    And then from outside came the sound of a muffled explosion: my calling card.
    I’d planted the device in the morning. It was at the bottom of a dustbin in an alley behind some restaurants. The alley was about five hundred yards from the Craigmead Hotel. It was a small bomb, just big enough to make a noise. The alley was a dead end, so I doubted anyone would be hurt. Its purpose was to deflect attention while I walked away from the scene. I knew it would still deflect attention, but I doubted I’d be able to walk away without being spotted by the police.
    Now there was another siren, not a police car but an ambulance. God bless them, the emergency services know that when a haemophiliac phones them up, it has to be priority. I unlocked the main door and looked out. Sure enough, the ambulance had drawn up outside. One of the ambulancemen was opening the back door, the other was climbing out from the driver’s side.
    Together they pulled a stretcher from the back of the ambulance, manoeuvred it on to the pavement, and wheeled it towards the front door. Someone, a policeman probably, called out to them and asked what they were doing.
    ‘Emergency!’ one of them called back.
    I held the door open for them. I had a hand to my bloody forehead, and an embarrassed smile on my face.
    ‘Tripped and fell,’ I said.
    ‘Not surprised with all this rubbish lying around.’
    ‘I was working upstairs.’
    I let them put me on to the stretcher. I thought it would look better for the audience.
    ‘Do you have your card?’ one of them asked.
    ‘It’s in my wallet at home.’
    ‘You’re supposed always to carry it. What’s your factor level?’
    ‘One per cent.’
    They were putting me in the ambulance now. The armed police were still in the apartment block. People were looking towards the source of the explosion from a few moments before.
    ‘What the hell’s happened here?’ one ambulanceman asked the other.
    ‘Christ knows.’ The second ambulanceman tore open a packet and brought out a compress, which he pressed to my forehead. He placed my hand on it. ‘Here, you know the drill. Plenty of pressure.’
    The driver closed the ambulance doors from the outside, leaving me with his colleague. Nobody stopped us as we left the scene. I was sitting up, thinking I wasn’t safe yet.
    ‘Is this your card?’ The ambulanceman had picked something off the floor. He started reading it. ‘Gerald Flitch, Marketing Strategist.’
    ‘My business card. It must have fallen out of my pocket.’ I held out my hand and he gave me back the card. ‘The company I’m working for, they’re supposed to be moving into the new office next week.’
    ‘It’s an old card then, the Liverpool address?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘our old offices.’
    ‘Are you factor eight or nine, Mr Flitch?’
    ‘Factor eight,’ I told him.
    ‘We’ve got a good Haematology Department, you’ll be all right.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘To tell you the truth, you’d have been as quick walking there.’
    Yes, we were already bumping through the hospital gates and up to the Emergency entrance. This was about as far as I could take the charade. I knew that behind the compress the bleeding was already stopping. They took me into Emergency and gave a nurse my details. She went off to call someone from Haematology, and the ambulancemen went back to their vehicle. I sat for a few moments in the empty reception area, then got up and headed for the door. The ambulance was still there, but there was no sign of the ambulancemen. They’d probably gone for a cup of tea and a cigarette. I walked down the slope to the hospital’s main entrance, and deposited the compress in a waste-bin. There were two public telephones on the wall, and I called my hotel.
    ‘Can I speak to Mr Wesley,