She stops and turns and you hold your arms to the side so that she can see that you’re not carrying anything. She smiles when she sees you but almost immediately the smile turns into a frown. ‘I've got no one else to turn to, I’m sorry,’ you say before she can react.

  ‘They said you broke out of hospital,’ she says. She’s looking around as if she’s wondering which way to run.

  You force a smile. ‘To be fair, I walked out.’

  ‘Somebody drugged the policeman outside your door,’ she says.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ you say. ‘Cross my heart.’ You actually do cross your heart, as if that would somehow convince her that you are telling the truth.

  She’s still looking around. You realise that you are standing between her and the stairs, so you move slowly to the side so that she has plenty of room if she wants to go.

  ‘I’m in trouble, Adeya, and I don’t know where else to go.’

  ‘Has your memory come back?’ she says.

  You shake your head. ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing at all. So I’ve got nowhere to go, there’s literally no one I can ask for help.’

  ‘So you’re asking me?’

  You force a smile. ‘You’re the only person who really talked to me.’

  ‘The cops talked to you.’

  ‘And they think I killed the guy who was in the boot of the car I was driving.’

  ‘Did you?’

  You sigh. Maggie says you did but deep down you don’t believe her. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t feel like a killer, Adeya.’

  ‘You don’t look like one.’

  That makes you smile. ‘I’m in a real bind,’ you say. ‘I can’t check into a hotel. There’s literally no one I can ask for help. I don’t have a phone, I don’t have anything. And you’re the only person I trust.’ She continues to stare at you but doesn’t say anything. ‘Please, Adeya,’ you say.

  She narrows her eyes and for a moment you think that she’s going to turn you down but then she nods. ‘Okay,’ she says.

  She takes a key fob from her pocket and clicks it. There's a clicking from the blue Ford Fiesta as its doors unlock. ‘Come on,’ she says, and pulls open the driver's door.

  You hurry across to the car, worried that she’s going to change her mind. You pull the door open and slide into the front passenger seat. ‘Thank you,’ you say.

  ‘I just hope I don’t regret it,’ she says. She starts the car. ‘Where do you want to go, Phil?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ you say.

  ‘My place is tiny,’ she says.

  ‘A sofa is fine. I just need time to get my head straight.’

  She looks into your eyes. ‘Can you promise me that you didn’t hurt anyone, Phil?’

  You meet her gaze. ‘I’ll be one hundred per cent honest with you, Adeya. I don’t know. I’ve been told that I did shoot the man they found in the car, but if I did I really have no memory of it. I’ve looked deep into myself and I don’t think I killed him. I don’t think I’ve ever killed anyone. It’s not in me.’

  ‘I don’t think you did,’ she says quietly.

  ‘What? What makes you say that?’

  ‘The place was full of police after you escaped. The two detectives who came to see you the first time were there, and there were half a dozen uniformed officers searching through all the wards. Then a more senior detective turned up and he was shouting at the first two. He was really unhappy. The woman inspector was defending herself and she told the senior guy that there was no gunshot residue on your hands. None at all. So the police don’t think you pulled the trigger.’

  You frown. It’s the last thing you expected to hear. ‘They said that? You’re sure?’

  ‘The inspector said that to one of the uniforms. They couldn’t understand why you did a runner when they were sure you hadn’t shot the man in the boot.’ She flashes a smile. ‘So why did you run?’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ you say.

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ she says, and she’s right, it doesn’t. None of it makes any sense. Maggie had said that she saw you fire the gun. And you weren’t wearing gloves. So if Maggie was telling the truth, there would have been gunshot residue on your hands. The fact that there wasn’t could only mean that she was lying to you. But why?

  CHAPTER 21

  The traffic is heavy and Adeya has to concentrate on her driving so you sit in silence until she pulls up in front of her house. It’s a terraced house in Kilburn, with three green rubbish bins lined up like soldiers on parade. There are cars parked along both sides of the road but she was lucky to find a space directly opposite her house.

  ‘Nice,’ you say.

  She switches off the engine. ‘The thing is, Phil, it’s a house share. There are three of us living here. A junior doctor and a banker. We’re allowed guests, my housemates are pretty cool, but best you stay in my room.’

  ‘Sure, yes, no problem.’

  ‘My worry is that the cops release your picture and say that they’re looking for you. My housemates aren’t great TV watchers but these days stuff spreads like wildfire on social media.’

  ‘I could put a bag over my head,’ you say, and she smiles.

  ‘It’s good to see that you haven’t lost your sense of humour,’ she says.

  ‘I just need some time to get my act together,’ you say. ‘Dr Mackenzie said that my memory should come back sooner rather than later. I won’t make a nuisance of myself.’

  She smiles again. ‘I think that ship has sailed.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ you say.

  ‘You don’t have to apologise,’ she says. ‘I just worry that...’ She can’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

  ‘What? What do you worry about?’

  ‘They found you with a dead body in the boot of your car. And you can’t explain that, can you?’

  ‘I can’t explain anything, Adeya. And until you told me about the GSR test, I was worried that maybe I’d shot him. But if the test was negative... that means I’m in the clear.’

  ‘Or that you wore gloves,’ she says.

  ‘I wasn’t wearing gloves.’

  She frowns. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘The woman who took me out of the hospital. She was in the car when it crashed but she wasn’t hurt. She said I wasn’t wearing gloves.’

  ‘How would she know?’

  ‘She was there when the guy was killed. It’s all very messy, Adeya. I’m sorry. Can we talk about this inside?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No, I want to clear this up first. Is there anything you’re not telling me?’

  Your stomach lurches because the answer to that is yes, there’s a lot you’re not telling her. But you’re worried that if you tell her everything, she’ll run for the hills.

  ‘There is something,’ you say.

  ‘Yes?’ she says, raising her eyebrows expectantly.

  ‘I really need to use the bathroom.’

  She smiles. ‘Seriously?’

  You nod. ‘Seriously.’

  You can see the uncertainty in her eyes so you talk quickly, trying to assuage her fears. ‘I’m not a killer, I know I’m not. But I am in big trouble. Not with the police, but with some men who are trying to hurt me. I don’t understand what’s going on, I really don’t, but the one thing I do know is that you’re the only person who can help me.’ You try to flash her a reassuring smile. ‘Look, I’m pretty sure I’m going to hand myself over to the police, tonight or tomorrow, I just want to get my head straight first. I need to know what I’m going to say to them because at the moment I’m so confused that I don’t know what to tell them.’

  She stares back at you and you say a silent prayer to yourself that she doesn’t ask about the Russians again. Eventually she nods. ‘Okay. Yes. One night. And no funny business.’

  You can’t help but smile at that. ‘Funny business is the last thing on my mind at the moment.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ she says.

  ‘So am I.’

  She looks at you for a few seconds and then nods. She climbs out of the car. You follow her to the front door. She unlocks and opens it. ‘It’s me!’ she calls as she steps inside, but there’s no reply. ‘They both work crazy hours,’ she says as she ushers you into the hall. ‘Sasha is a junior doctor and she often sleeps on a cot bed in the hospital. Eleanor works in the City and is nailed to her desk for twelve hours a day. She earns good money but never has the time to spend it.’

  The stairs are to the left. ‘Mine’s the first room on the right,’ she says. You go up the stairs and she follows you. You push open the door. It’s a surprisingly large room with a double bed and a sofa under a window that looks over the street. ‘We have to share a bathroom but everyone is pretty good about keeping it clean,’ she says. ‘From the look of you, you need a shower.’ She opens a cupboard and takes out a towel. She gives it to you and then pulls open a drawer and roots through the contents, eventually pulling out a British Airways amenity kit wrapped in cellophane. ‘I got upgraded to business class on a flight last year and they gave me this,’ she says. ‘I’m assuming it has a toothbrush and a razor.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ you say.

  ‘Quick as you can,’ she says. ‘I don’t know when they’ll be back. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Starving,’ you say.

  ‘I’ll make you a sandwich,’ she says. She points you to the bathroom and then hurries downstairs.

  The amenity kit does indeed include a razor and a toothbrush, along with a small comb, a tiny tube of toothpaste, another tube of shaving gel, and lip salve. You shave, brush your teeth and then shower. You dry yourself off with the towel, get dressed, and return to the bedroom just as Adeya is coming upstairs with the tray.

  You follow her back into the bedroom. She puts a tray on a coffee table next to the sofa. There are two plates, each with a sandwich on it, and two mugs of coffee. ‘Cheese and tomato with pickle,’ she says.

  You give her the damp towel and the amenity kit and thank her. ‘I’ll definitely be giving you five stars on Tripadvisor,’ you say.

  She frowns. ‘I don’t understand how you can remember things like Tripadvisor but can’t remember your own name. That doesn’t make sense to me.’

  ‘Dr Mackenzie said I had what they call episodic retrograde amnesia - loss of memory for events that I had personally experienced. I don’t have semantic retrograde amnesia which is loss of memory for factual knowledge. It’s as if I know everything about the world but nothing about myself.’

  ‘So you still don’t know who you are?’

  You pick up one of the sandwiches and bite into it. You chew slowly as you try to get your thoughts in order because now you actually do know who you are. At least you know who Maggie says you are. But can you believe her when you know that she must have been lying about pulling the trigger. Adeya picks up a sandwich and sits on the bed. You smile at her. She smiles back. ‘Thanks for the sandwich.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘So this girl who said you weren’t wearing gloves, who is she?’

  ‘Her name’s Maggie. She got me out of the hospital.’

  ‘And this Maggie knows who you are?’

  You nod. ‘She said my name was Tom Fisher.’

  ‘Really?’ She wrinkles her nose. ‘You don’t look like a Tom.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel right to me either. But then I’ve thought about pretty much every name there is and none of them feel as though they fit.’

  ‘I still think your name is Phil.’

  ‘I’m happy with that.’

  She frowns. ‘Wait a minute. You said her name was Maggie. Is that the same Maggie that came to your room saying she was a psychiatrist?’

  You nod. ‘Yeah. That was her.’

  ‘But she’s not a psychiatrist, is she?’

  ‘She just wanted to check on my condition. When she realised that my memory loss was a real thing, she decided to break me out.’

  ‘By drugging a police officer?’

  ‘I don’t know what happened. I just know that she got me out and into a car and we drove to a house in Greenwich. There was Maggie and a guy called Peter. He’d spoken to me in the hospital, too, pretending to be a solicitor.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I think they just wanted to get the lie of the land so they could plan my escape.’

  ‘Who are these people?’ She takes another bite of her sandwich. You can see that she’s watching you carefully. Weighing you up.

  You sip your coffee. Your mind is racing. The truth doesn’t make you look good but at least you’re in her room now so it’d be a big thing for her to throw you out. But if she does throw you out, at least you’ve had a shower and a damn good cheese sandwich. The thing is that you really don’t want to lie to her. She deserves more than that. And to be fair, even when there was a police guard outside your room and you were handcuffed to the bed, she still treated you with respect. But that could so easily change if you told her that you had shot and killed four Russian heavies.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Adeya, but I’ve no idea how much of what they told me is the truth. For instance, Maggie told me that she saw me shoot the guy they found in the boot of the car. But you told me that the police didn’t find any gunshot residue on my hands.’

  ‘You could have been wearing gloves.’

  ‘That’s what I said to Maggie and she said no, I was using a computer keyboard and had taken my gloves off. So she’s either lying about that, or she’s lying about me firing the gun. Either way she’s lying, and that means I can’t believe anything else that she told me.’

  ‘What did she tell you, exactly?’

  You sigh. ‘You won’t like it.’

  ‘Is it bad?’

  You nod. ‘I’m afraid so.’ You force a smile. ‘She says that I’m a member of a gang of thieves and that we’d broken into a house in Beckenham. Somehow that guy was shot and she wanted to take the body away. Then we crashed and I was unconscious so she and two other guys ran off. Or drove off, I should say.’

  ‘So you’re a thief?’

  ‘She says I’m a thief but I’m starting to think that she’s lying.’

  ‘Why would she lie about something like that?’

  You shake your head. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. But when she took me to the house to see if it would jolt my memory, a group of Russians grabbed us.’

  ‘Russians?’

  ‘Russian heavies. They think that Maggie and I know where some money is. A lot of money. We don’t, obviously. At least I don’t because even if I did know, the memory loss means I can’t remember.’

  ‘You’re making my head spin,’ she says.

  You force a smile. ‘You and me both.’

  ‘Where are these Russians now?’ Adeya asks.

  You hold her look as your mind whirls. You don’t want to lie to her but the truth - that you killed four of them - will have her running for the hills. It’s true that you don’t believe that you killed the man in the boot of the car, but there’s no denying the fact that you shot and killed four Russians in the warehouse. ‘We got away,’ you say. ‘We split up, Maggie went her way and I came to see you.’

  ‘So you’re what, cat burglars?’

  ‘We were there to steal money from his bank accounts. It was all online. Millions of pounds, Maggie said. I’m some sort of hacker, I was there to make sure that the money was transferred. But the guy Johnston pulled a gun and all bets were off. She says we put the body in the car and were planning to dispose of it, but then we crashed.’

  ‘So she was in the car with you when it crashed?’

  You nod. ‘She was in the front passenger seat and the guy, Peter, was in the back. They weren’t as badly hurt as I was and they fled the scene.’

  ‘Fled the scene? How?’

  ‘One of the gang was driving another car. He drove them away.’

  ‘And they left you there?’

  You shrug. ‘I was unconscious. They were worried the police were on the way.’

  ‘They cared more about themselves than they did about you.’

  You nod. ‘That’s the way it looks.’

  ‘And she said you had shot the guy in the car?’

  ‘She did. And she was sure that the gunshot residue test would show that. You’re quite sure that the results were negative?’

  ‘That’s what the police said, yes. Which means she was mistaken, or she lied.’

  ‘That sounds about right.’

  ‘But why would she lie? If you were part of her team, what does she gain by saying you shot the man if you didn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know, Adeya. I don’t understand any of this.’

  ‘And the Russians? Who are they in all this?’

  ‘They were looking for the money. From the sound of it, I managed to transfer the money out of Johnston’s accounts but I don’t know where it is.’

  ‘So the money belongs to the Russians?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ You force a smile. ‘There’s so much about this that I don’t know, Adeya.’

  ‘Outside, in the car, you said you were going to contact the police.’

  You nod. ‘I don’t see that there’s anything else I can. I don’t know who I am. Well, Maggie says I’m Tom Fisher, a hacker, but I can’t trust her. If she’s lying about the shooting she could be lying about everything else. If you’re sure that the gunshot residue test came back negative then the police aren’t going to want to arrest me, are they?’

  ‘Not for the shooting, no. But you’re saying that you were in the house to steal from this man Johnston. They could arrest you for that.’

  You nod. She’s right. ‘I guess so. The question is, was I really there to steal from him? The police have a picture of Maggie pointing a gun at me as I drove the car.’

  ‘How did they get that?’

  ‘We were speeding. A speed camera took the photograph. You can clearly see her holding a gun.’

  ‘Then maybe she shot him? Maybe she’s the killer.’

  ‘That’s what I’m starting to think.’

  ‘She could be trying to blame you for something that she did.’