Even though it's my unspoken duty as a writer to make it so, my life is still governed by the rule of coincidence. Take my masseur. Dimitri. He's from Tver, an industrial ghost town on the Volga, a two hour drive north of Moscow. Not only is Tver the same town to which my favourite fictional detective Arkady Renko is posted in the novel Stalin's Ghost, but Renko's main antagonist is ex-OMON. Dimitri is also former Spetsnaz — though from the tantalising morsels he feeds me during treatment, I assume he served his time in one of the more covert units associated with the Federal Security Service (FSB).

I don't ask too many questions. Deep tissue massage can be painful and Dimitri's skill is in making it unforgettably so. It's not just about breaking down adhesions and metabolic waste, he tells me, it's about eradicating trigger points. And he uses the same hardened fingertips on my trigger points as he employed in his shadowy exploits with the Special Forces. In the Balashikha-2 training camp just outside Moscow he conditioned his fingers in sandpits. A finger-strike through six inches of wet sand to clutch a buried rock requires the same amount of force as plucking a human heart from its locked cage of ribs. The things you learn.

Take Lockheart. A name that conjures up mediaeval images of romance and chivalry. Of course it wasn't always Lockheart. It has Franco-Flemish roots — Locard — and arrived in Scotland in the 11th Century, perhaps even in the same retinue of the de Bruys as my ancestors, the Kers. It was only after the Battle of Teba, in which Robert the Bruce's heart played such a prominent role, that Locard became Lockheart became Lockhart.

So is it a coincidence that Lockhart is also the name of my protagonist in The Phantom Code? Ian Fleming once wrote that "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action." Lockhart isn't so generous. He believes once is coincidence and twice is once upon a time too many. He doesn't believe in fairy tales or fair fights, which is why he favours the knife. He prefers the personal touch. He believes you have to enjoy killing or you'll never get good at it. I'm not sure about Dimitri. I once asked him what his surname was and he said it had died on the lips of those whose hearts he'd untimely ripped and whose scabrous ghosts now haunt the petrified forest of his dreams. I'm glad I asked. Today I have bruises like quicksand where my trigger points have been eradicated and not for the first time I wonder for whom this deep tissue massage is most therapeutic.