With chalk-white lips and his head now bald, Alexander Litvinenko slumped against a pillow, a hospital gown around his chest, and told the world he thought he’d been poisoned.
As the former Russian spy’s story broke and that iconic image appeared on front pages, Dr Jim Down, a young consultant at London’s University College Hospitals ’ ICU, tried to figure out if this mysterious patient in side room nine could possibly be right.
Back in November 2006, when Litvinenko, 43 – an ex-employee of KGB successor the Federal Security Service and now a Kremlin critic in the pay of MI6 – arrived on the ward vomiting and rapidly losing weight and hair, Jim was part of the team treating him.
