It was just after six thirty when a female officer opened the door to the holding cell and told Macdonald he was to go back to the reception desk. Macdonald stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, his back ramrod straight. The officer looked at him coldly. 'Bad news,' he said. 'By the time we've finished processing you, they won't be serving food.'
Macdonald shrugged.
'And we seem to have run out of breakfast packs. For the morning.' He pointed at Macdonald's forensic suit. 'Normally we'd be able to get you out of that and into some clothes, but we've left it a bit late. We might be able to get something sorted tomorrow. No promises.' He scratched his sideburns.
'I get the drift,' said Macdonald.
'Good. So let's run through the questions again, shall we? Name?'
Macdonald said nothing.
'Prisoner refuses to give his name,' said the officer, writing slowly on the form. 'Date of birth?'
Macdonald said nothing.
'Prisoner refuses to give his date of birth,' said the officer.
'Address?'
Macdonald sniffed, but said nothing.
The officer smiled to himself. 'Care of HM Prison Shelton,' he said. 'Remand wing.' He finished writing, then looked up at Macdonald. 'Next of kin?'
Macdonald stared back at him.
'Prisoner refuses to identify his next of kin.' In all there were more than two dozen questions on the induction form, and the officer insisted on putting each one to Macdonald before noting that he had refused to answer.
Eventually he turned the form round and pushed it across the desk. 'Sign at the bottom,' he said, slapping down a cheap Biro.
Macdonald picked it up. 'Can I put a cross?'
'Put what you like,' said the officer.
Macdonald made a mark at the bottom of the last page of the form.
The officer pointed at a curtained-off area. 'Go in there and strip,' he said.
'We hardly know each other,' said Macdonald drily.
The man stared at him without speaking. Macdonald stared back, then walked over to the curtain. He pulled it back. There were two metal chairs. He slipped off the training shoes, unzipped the forensic suit and draped it over one of the chairs.
'Pull the curtain back. We don't want to see your spotty arse!' the officer shouted.
Macdonald did as he was told, then removed his underwear and sat down. There was another clock on the wall. It was just before seven. It had been less than thirty hours since he'd run into the warehouse with a sawn-off shotgun. Thirty hours and his life had been turned upside-down. Macdonald put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. He was dog-tired. And hungry.
The curtain swished back and a beanpole-thin man in a white coat walked into the cubicle holding a clipboard. He looked like a nervous supply teacher about to get to grips with a problem class in an inner-city school. He had black-framed spectacles with rectangular lenses, and a mop of brown hair that kept falling over his eyes. He sat down on the chair opposite Macdonald and put the clipboard on his lap, then patted the pockets of his white coat, looking for a pen. 'Any health problems I should know about?' he asked.
Macdonald shook his head.
'Are you on any medication?' Before Macdonald could answer, the doctor leaned forward. 'How did that happen?' he asked.
'It's nothing,' said Macdonald.
The doctor stood up and bent over him, examining the old bullet wound just below his right shoulder. 'Stand up, please.'
'It's nothing,' repeated Macdonald. He stood up and stared at the clock on the wall as the doctor prodded the scar tissue.
'What did this?'
'A bullet.' Macdonald was being sarcastic but the doctor was so intent on examining the wound that he didn't appear to notice.
'What calibre?'
'I don't know.' That was a lie. Macdonald knew exactly what it was. He still had it somewhere, a souvenir of the night he'd nearly died. It was a 5.45mm round from a Kalashnikov AK-74. Macdonald didn't usually go into details because when he said it was an AK-74 most people assumed he meant AK-47, the Russian weapon beloved of terrorists and freedom-fighters around the world. Macdonald had got tired of explaining that the AK-74 was a small-calibre version of the AK-47, initially developed for parachute troops but eventually the standard Soviet infantry rifle. But the weapon that had shot Macdonald hadn't been in the hands of a Russian soldier.
The doctor walked round him and studied his back. 'There's no exit wound,' he mused.
'They dug it out from the front,' said Macdonald.
'Unusual.'
'It hit the bone and went downwards. Missed the artery by half an inch.'
'You were lucky.'
'Yeah, well, if I'd really been lucky I wouldn't have stopped a bullet in the first place.'
The doctor studied Macdonald's chest again. 'Who did the operation?'
'I forget the guy's name.' Another lie. He would never forget the man who'd saved his life, digging out the bullet and patching up the wound before he could be helicoptered to hospital.
'It's . . . messy,' said the doctor, running his finger along the ridges of scar tissue.
'Yeah, well, that's what you get on the NHS,' said Macdonald.
'It's not a hospital scar,' the doctor said. 'This wasn't done in an operating theatre.'
When the doctor saw that Macdonald wasn't going to explain the origin of the wound, he pulled out a stethoscope and listened to his breathing. He examined his throat, then had him sit down while he checked his reflexes with a small metal hammer. The brief physical examination over, he asked Macdonald a dozen or so medical questions, ticking off boxes on a chart on the clipboard. Macdonald answered all in the negative: he was in perfect health.
'Drugs?' asked the doctor.
'No, thanks.'
The doctor smiled thinly. It was obviously a joke he'd heard a thousand times. 'Do you have a drugs problem?' he said.
'No,' said Macdonald.
'Alcohol?'
'The odd pint.'
'Ever been treated for depression? Anxiety?'
'I find a five-mile run usually gets me sorted.'
The doctor stood up. 'That's the lot,' he said. 'You can get dressed now.' He pulled back the curtain and walked away. A prison officer Macdonald hadn't seen before was standing by the cubicle holding an armful of bedding.
As soon as Macdonald had pulled on his forensic overall, the officer thrust the bundle at him. 'These are yours, then,' he said, in a lilting Welsh accent. 'I'll take you to the remand block.' He was a small, balding man with a kindly face.
Macdonald looked down at his bedding. There was a thin pillow, a pale green pillowcase, a green sheet and a brown blanket.
'Don't hang about,' said the officer. He already had his key in his hand and unlocked a barred door with the minimum of effort. He stood to the side to let Macdonald through, then followed him and relocked the door. Macdonald glimpsed the key. It was like no other he'd seen before, no rough edges, just small discs set into the metal strip, which he guessed were magnets, impossible to copy.
The officer walked him through another barred door that led on to a corridor covered by CCTV cameras. It stretched for several hundred yards and was deserted. Their footsteps echoed off the cream-painted walls as they
