‘And why keep him alive originally and then try to kill him?’ Bloom noted the questions on her iPad. ‘And it isn’t just hindering, is it? To help or to hinder. Maybe he helped someone?’

Jameson tapped his pen against the side of his head and pursed his lips.

‘What if he helped a trafficker but then stopped for some reason?’ she said.

‘They’d just move on and find someone else to use, or kill him and find someone else to use. They wouldn’t perform brain surgery.’

‘Have you any ideas then?’

He continued to tap for a few moments then stopped. ‘If they need him alive, they still need him to do something. And if they’ve wiped his memory it’s because they want him to forget something. Something he’s seen or done.’

‘But they’ve also tried to kill him.’ Bloom’s brain made the connections at hyper-speed. ‘That’s why they came for him again. Not to kill him. Vivant. Vivant. They performed the surgery as quickly as they could, then returned him to the NHS, hoping that in all the confusion no one would notice his absence. They needed him to recover.’

‘OK …’

‘And if Karene hadn’t seen him beforehand, just after the bomb detonated, then we wouldn’t know that something additional had happened. We’d still be assuming an administrative error, that he was just the unfortunate victim of a terrorist attack. And then when he’s well again—’

‘They can use him again. And that’s why Freddie was inserted as a porter at Stanford Hall.’ Jameson shook his head, his expression serious. ‘These people are a step ahead all the time.’

42

Nine Months Earlier

Karene woke to the sound of shouting. Her left arm was pinned to the bed. Harry had wrapped his fingers around her forearm and was squeezing tighter and tighter.

‘Harry!’

She tried to push his hand away and prise his fingers apart but his grip was vice-like and immovable. ‘Harry!’ She grabbed his shoulder with her free hand and shook him hard. He continued to call out, words she couldn’t understand, as his body rocked from side to side. She pinched the skin on his bare upper arm as hard as she could, digging her nails in, and cried out in pain as he increased the pressure on her arm.

She looked around in panic. Her phone was across the room charging and Harry’s was nowhere to be seen. The walls to his flat were thick and the windows closed. She could shout as loud as she liked, but no one was likely to hear; no one was coming to help.