A group of teenage lads was coming towards me, a loose gang walking up the middle of the street, all in T-shirts despite the cold and eating chips out of white polystyrene trays. Heckling one another in voices loud with beer and bravado. One of them saw the fresh bruises on my face and gave me a knowing grin. I looked away and moved on past, hands jammed in my pockets, through the dark streets of this unfamiliar city. A siren, the noise piercing like a stiletto. Blue flashing lights reflected off the glass front of an office building made me duck into an alleyway, between two shops closed and shuttered for the night. I stumbled forward into the shadows and crouched behind a wheelie bin, listening to the rise and fall of the siren getting nearer. It seemed to stop, then started again, then flashed past on the street and was gone. I waited for a minute in case more police were coming. Then another minute.

I felt more alone than ever. Adrift in a strange city, I knew no one and belonged nowhere. I certainly didn’t belong here. My aim had been to find Ben, but I’d found a beating instead.

I checked into the hotel, ignoring the stares of the night receptionist when he saw the state of my face, and locked the door of my room behind me. In the tiny bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face over and over again, the cuts and grazes stinging, the water running pink with blood from a gash above my eye. The man in the mirror looked like a victim. Cut, bruised and bloodied, eyes shadowed dark with exhaustion. A long way from home.

I stared at my reflection for a moment.

Then straightened up, took a deep breath that filled my chest. Chin up. Shoulders back.

Beaten up, maybe. But not beaten. Not yet.

I still had a couple of cards left to play.

Friday

FRIDAY

Chapter 71

71

I slept badly and woke early with a pounding headache, my face sore and my ribs stiff. I’d left the mobile on overnight in case any important calls came in, and its chirrups and bleeps had kept me in the shallow waters of sleep for most of the night, unable to fall all the way into a deep, uninterrupted slumber. My limbs felt heavy. After a bleary check of the phone for texts or emails – nothing significant in the precious few hours I had been asleep – I stood under a scalding hot shower for ten minutes, head down, eyes closed, feeling the water beating hard against the back of my neck. I tried to remember what I’d been dreaming about. It felt like something important, something relevant, hovering just out of my reach. Some fact or connection that had eluded me for too long. But it was a blur, and the more I willed it to snap into focus, the further it drifted away.