You stare into her eyes, wondering if you can trust her. Did she really wipe the gun clean or has she kept it as is, knowing that she can use it as leverage against me down the line?

  ‘Fish, you need to relax.’

  ‘If that gun identifies me as the killer, the joint enterprise law means that even if I was the one who pulled the trigger, you and Maggie and Billy all get done for murder as well.’

  ‘So you’d grass us up, is that what you’re saying?’ says Peter.

  ‘Nobody’s going to grass anybody up,’ says Maggie. ‘And if we stay calm and don’t do anything stupid, nobody is going to get caught.’

  ‘The cops have his DNA and prints and his photograph,’ says Peter.

  ‘None of which is on the record,’ you say. ‘They’ve already run my prints through the system and there were no matches. If they had a match, they’d know who I was. And they don’t.’

  ‘Yes, but you are in the system now,’ says Peter. ‘That means if you ever get pulled in for anything in the future, they’ll match you to Johnston’s killing.’

  ‘If he gets us the cash, he can use his share to start a new life in another country,’ says Maggie. ‘There are plenty of countries where you can buy yourself citizenship.’

  ‘I’d just feel happier if I knew for sure the gun was gone,’ you say.

  Maggie nods. ‘It is. Trust me.’

  ‘And where do we stay while we’re waiting for my memory to come back?’ you ask.

  ‘This is my place, we should be okay here,’ says Peter. ‘You and Maggie are going to have to stay inside and out of sight, but I don’t see why we can’t sit it out here for a week or so. How long did the docs say it would be before your memory comes back?’

  ‘They said that if the cause was psychological stress then I should get all my memories back within 48 hours and that there would be a low probability of recurrence.’ You shrug. ‘But that's not happened, clearly. My memory is no clearer than when I woke up.’

  ‘Which means what?’ says Peter.

  ‘They said it’s not an exact science. They can’t say for sure how long it will take.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ll never get your memory back?’ says Peter.

  ‘They didn’t say that. They made it sound as if it was just a matter of time.’

  ‘What about drugs?’ says Peter. ‘Or an operation?’

  ‘Just time,’ you say.

  Peter sips his beer. ‘So all we can do is wait?’

  ‘That’s what Dr Mackenzie said.’

  Peter looks over at Maggie. ‘Are you happy about that? Just waiting.’

  ‘Not really, no. But what choice do we have?’

  ‘Oh Maggie, we always have choices,’ says Peter. He moves towards you. There’s something in his hand but it’s all a blur as he raises whatever it is and brings it crashing down on the side of your head and everything goes black.

  CHAPTER 16

  You open your eyes. Your head is throbbing. You look around. Maggie is sitting on the sofa, drinking something from a mug. You breathe in and pick up the scent of coffee. She looks over at the door. ‘He’s awake,’ she says.

  You try to speak but there's a gag in your mouth. A piece of cloth. You’re sitting on a wooden chair. Your wrists are wrenched behind the backrest, bound with something that is digging into your skin. Your ankles are bound to the legs of the chair. Every slight movement makes the chair creak on the carpet. The side of your head throbs from where Peter knocked you out earlier; every heartbeat is a dull pulse of pain.

  Maggie puts down her mug and walks slowly over to you. She slowly kneels down, close enough for you to smell the lemony washing-up liquid still on the yellow rubber gloves she is wearing. They’re Marigolds. It is so strange the things that you can recall when you have absolutely no memories of your life before the car crash. For the first time you see that on the coffee table beside her sits a tea towel, neatly folded, with a small selection of household tools laid out - pliers, scissors, a screwdriver, a claw hammer, a potato peeler.

  ‘Fish,’ says a voice to your left. You turn to look at Peter, who is standing by the door, his arms folded. ‘It’s time to stop fucking around.’

  You try to talk but the gag muffles your words.

  He starts to pace. Calm. Controlled. His footsteps are soft on the carpet. He stops. ‘Let’s make this very simple, Fish.’

  You hate that name. It doesn’t feel like yours, no matter what they say.

  Peter leans over your shoulder. ‘Where is the money?’

  He loosens the gag. ‘I don’t know,’ you say.

  He sneers at you and replaces the gag. ‘Then it’s time we jogged your memory,’ he says. He nods at Maggie and she picks up the pliers. They are the heavy, flat-jawed ones. The metal is slightly rusted at the hinge. She tests the grip with a soft clack clack.

  You look down and realise that your feet are bare. They have taken off your shoes and socks.

  ‘Last chance, Fish,’ says Peter.

  You tell him that you don’t know where the money is but all you hear is grunting. He loosens the gag again. ‘Peter, mate, I swear, I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. And there’s nothing you can do to me that will change that.’

  He puts the gag back in place. ‘Start with his little toe,’ says Peter.

  Maggie nods. She fits the pliers around the little toe on your left foot. She tries to pull it away but your ankles are tightly bound and your feet aren’t going anywhere.

  ‘Memories are funny things,’ Peter says. His voice is low, calm, deadly reasonable. ‘Sometimes they get buried. Sometimes they need a little... excavation.’

  Maggie tightens the pliers just enough for you to feel the pressure in the bone. A warning. Your breath catches. She looks at Peter. Peter nods, just once. Maggie squeezes. You scream as white-hot pain explodes through your foot. Your body jerks against the restraints, the chair rattling on the carpet, but you can’t pull away. The sound that comes out of you isn’t even a word—just raw, involuntary noise. Maggie holds the pressure, eyes fixed on you with unsettling calm. Studying your reaction.

  ‘Wait,’ says Peter and Maggie eases the pressure. Peter loosens the gag. ‘You can live without a little toe, Fish. But we won’t be stopping at one little toe. We’ll take off all ten of your toes and then we’ll start on your fingers. We’ll keep on removing bits of you until there’s nothing left. Or until you tell us where the money is.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ you sob, your eyes filled with tears.

  ‘And I don’t believe you,’ he says. He pulls the gag back in place and nods at Maggie. ‘Get to work,’ he says.

  Maggie nods and starts to apply pressure again. The pliers bite into your toe, slicing through the flesh and biting into the bone. You howl in agony, and thrash your head back and forth.

  ‘Tell us, Fish!’ shouts Peter. ‘Tell us and this stops.’

  Tears run down your face as you scream in pain. The pliers bite into the bone and you know that the toe is less than a second from separating from your foot. Then suddenly she stops. Peter is in front of you and removing the gag. ‘All right, mate, we believe you,’ he says.

  You slump in the chair, gasping for breath, your cheeks soaking wet from your tears.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘How do you feel, Fish?’ asks Maggie as she dabs TCP on your injured toe. The antiseptic burns and you have to grit your teeth so that you don’t yelp. She has undone the duct tape that had bound your ankles to the chair legs, and Peter has untied your wrists.

  ‘You were going to cut my toe off,’ you say, shaking your head in disbelief.

  ‘We had to know for sure, Fish,’ says Peter. He tossed a piece of rope onto the sofa. ‘No hard feelings, hey?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ you say. ‘Seriously, fuck off.’

  ‘I know you’re not happy about what we did, but look on the bright side. Now we believe you.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck if you believe me or not,’ you say.

  ‘There’s no serious damage,’ says Maggie. She applies a plaster over the wound and sits back on her heels. ‘Couple of days, you’ll be as right as rain.’ She takes off her Marigold gloves and tosses them onto the coffee table, then stands up. My socks are on the floor and she picks them up and hands them to me. ‘It could have been worse.’

  You take the socks from her and scowl. ‘How could it have been worse, exactly?’

  Maggie grins. ‘Peter wanted to start with your dick.’

  You can’t help but smile, though it’s not really funny. You put your socks back on. ‘I had a thought,’ you say. ‘Why not take me to Johnston’s house? And then we can drive from there to the M25 where it happened. I might see something that jogs my memory.’

  ‘The house will be a crime scene,’ says Maggie. ‘It’ll be crawling with cops. They’ll have ID’d the car and that will lead them to the house.’

  ‘Sure. And they’ll have sent in CSIs but after that they probably just locked it up and left. They don’t have the manpower to be guarding empty houses. We could just drive by, take a look.’

  ‘And what if they are there and they see you?’ says Peter.

  ‘I’ll sit in the back. Keep my head down. All we need to do is to drive by. We’ll know immediately if the cops are there and if they are we just keep on driving.’

  Peter and Maggie share a look. ‘I don’t know,’ says Peter.

  ‘It might trigger a memory,’ says Maggie. ‘Even if it’s just something small. Then the rest of his memory might follow.’

  CHAPTER 18

  Peter brings the Volvo to a halt in a wide, tree-lined road overlooking a large brick-built detached house. There’s a chest-high wall running around the house and a large wrought iron gate. There is blue and white police tape across the gate and more tape criss-crossing the front door but no sign of any police vehicles.

  ‘Do you recognise anything?’ asks Peter.

  You are in the rear of the car and Maggie is sitting in front of you. You look over at the house. It’s a good question but I’m not sure how to answer it. There is definitely something familiar about the house, but there is nothing out of the ordinary about it. The roof is tiled, there are squat chimney stacks at either end. The windows are leaded, the frames painted white, and the front door is also white with a large brass letter box. There is an alarm box above the front door, and a CCTV camera covering the steps leading to the door. ‘Maybe, I’m not sure,’ you say. You want to remember, you really do, but other than the vague feeling of familiarity there’s nothing. ‘It looks pretty secure, how did we get in?’ you ask.

  ‘Billy handled that,’ says Maggie. ‘Disabled the alarm and the CCTV.’

  ‘I meant did we go in through the front door?’

  ‘Kitchen door,’ says Peter. ‘Around the back.’

  ‘How did we get there?’

  ‘There’s a house backing on to this property. We went in through their garden.’

  ‘And after it all went wrong, we took Johnston’s car?’

  ‘We needed to get the body away. To get rid of the evidence. Billy took our car.’

  ‘And why hasn’t Billy been in touch?’ You twist around in your seat to look at Maggie. ‘You’ve tried calling him, right?’

  ‘Of course. But his phone is off.’

  ‘What was the plan?’

  ‘The plan was that we’d get rid of the body and that we’d meet up at the house. Something must have gone wrong.’

  ‘Could the cops have grabbed him?’ you ask.

  ‘If they had caught Billy they’d probably have mentioned it to you,’ says Maggie. ‘So none of this is bringing back any memories?’

  You shake your head. ‘The house sort of looks familiar. But I can’t remember ever being inside. Where did we go?’

  ‘Johnston’s study is at the back, overlooking the garden. It’s next to the kitchen. It’s a sort of conservatory with its own doors leading out onto a terrace but Billy said the easiest way in was through the kitchen.’

  ‘And did we know that Johnston was in there?’

  ‘That was the whole point,’ says Peter. ‘We needed him to access the funds online.’

  ‘The plan was to force him to hand over the funds?’

  ‘Obviously,’ says Peter.

  ‘But you’re still saying that we didn’t go in with guns?’

  ‘We weren’t armed,’ says Maggie. ‘Like you said, it’s the difference between housebreaking and armed robbery.’

  ‘Except now we’re facing a murder charge.’

  ‘Well, you keep saying that but it was his gun and he was a threat. So manslaughter is more likely.’

  You smile sarcastically. ‘Well that’s all right then.’

  ‘No one is going to find the gun,’ she says. ‘And without the gun, they’ve got nothing. All we have to do is to lie low until you get your memory back and we get our hands on the money.’

  You look over at the house, trying to force yourself to remember being there before. ‘Where did we leave our car, when we got here?’ you ask.

  Peter points down the road. ‘There’s a side road about a hundred yards down there that leads to the house at the rear of this one. That’s where we parked.’

  ‘Can you show me?’ you say. ‘I’m not getting anything here.’

  ‘Is there someone in that Range Rover over there?’ asks Peter.

  He’s looking at the other side of the road where a black Range Rover is parked with its lights off. Maggie and you look over. The car’s parked under a spreading oak tree and the interior is in darkness, but then you see a small red dot moving jerkily. A lit cigarette. ‘Yes. Someone’s smoking.’

  ‘We should move,’ says Maggie.

  Peter nods and puts the car in gear. As he moves away from the kerb, the Range Rover’s headlights come on, full beam. The bright light blinds us all and Peter swears.

  There are more lights behind us. It’s a second car, its headlights also on full beam.

  ‘Drive!’ shouts Maggie.

  ‘I can’t see!’ shouts Peter.

  The car behind us cuts in front of us and stops with a screech of brakes. It’s another Range Rover, this one grey. The doors are thrown open and three men climb out. They are big men in leather jackets and dark trousers. They stride confidently towards the car.

  ‘Reverse!’ shouts Maggie. ‘Come on!’

  Peter puts the car in reverse but before he can press the accelerator the Range Rover on the other side of the road leaps forward. Its engine roars as it speeds across the road before screeching to a halt behind us, blocking us in.

  Maggie is screaming now and Peter’s face is ashen. You grab for the door handle and throw the door open. As you step out of the car two big men get out of the Range Rover, blocking your escape to the rear.

  Maggie is still screaming but there is no one to hear her cries for help.

  The men from the first Range Rover reach the Volvo. One of them pulls open the driver’s door and drags Peter out. He’s in shock and puts up no resistance. The heavy drags him over to the Range Rover.

  Maggie locks her door but one of the heavies pulls a gun from inside his jacket, turns it around and uses the butt to smash the window.

  You turn to face the two men walking purposefully towards you. They are both well over six feet tall with wide shoulders and blank faces. There’s no anger, no aggression, they’re just doing a job. The only way to run is across the road, towards the house, but they read your body language and one of them moves to block your way.

  You put up your hands and ball them into fists but you realise you have no idea how to throw a punch.

  Behind you, you hear Maggie scream again as she is dragged out of the Volvo. You turn to look and as you do something smacks against the side of your head and everything goes black.

  CHAPTER 19

  Your eyes flicker open and for a few seconds you think that you are back in hospital, but then you realise that there are no beeping sounds from monitoring equipment and you are looking up at a ceiling that is criss-crossed with metal detectors. You try to remember what happened. There were cars - Range Rovers - and somebody grabbed you and somebody else punched you. There’s something across your mouth and you reach up to remove it but your arms won’t move. You look down and your chest is covered with grey duct tape, binding your arms to your side. The movement sends a bolt of agony through your head and you wince. You lie back and stare at the ceiling. Your name is Tom Fisher and you’re a career criminal. You were in a car with Maggie and Peter, parked opposite the house you had robbed. Then you were boxed in by the two Range Rovers and heavies piled out. Then everything went black.

  You don’t remember ever being in the house. You flick through the memories you have, You remember being in the hospital. You remember the nurse called Adeya and her cute smile. You remember Maggie getting you out of the hospital. You remember waking up in the hospital the first time but you still can’t remember anything before that.

  You hear a harsh laugh over to your right and you turn your head. Pain lances through your brain again. There are three big men in leather jackets sitting around a metal table. There’s a bottle of something on the table and five glasses and it looks as if they are playing cards. You’re in a warehouse. At the far end of the building is a stack of wooden crates and to the left is a metal roller shutter door. There’s another a man standing by the door, smoking a cigarette. He’s bald, wearing a brown leather bomber jacket. A fifth man walks over to the table. He’s also bald with a thick neck and bulging forearms. There’s a tattoo of a red and black snake coiled around his neck.

  He picks up a glass and says something and the other men laugh.

  You hear a hissing sound to your left. You turn your head and look at Peter. He’s also tied with duct tape and there’s a strip of tape across his mouth. He stares at you, his eyes wide with panic. You stare back. You probably look as scared as he does. Maggie is on the floor behind him. She’s also tied and gagged but her eyes are closed.