‘I’m not really a boxer, David,’ he said flatly. ‘A sport in which you’re confined to twenty-four square feet of space – I mean, where’s the fun in that? No, the reason I lose weight and gain it again isn’t because I’m training for fights. It’s because weight – or the lack of it – has proved to be an effective disguise on the rare occasions when I’ve allowed myself to be photographed in public. People can’t get the measure of you when you never look quite the same. A beard, or not. A new hairstyle, or a shaved head. Those things help. But you know what the greatest disguise of all is, David? You know what convinces people more quickly than almost anything else?’ He dug his nails so hard into my scalp I could feel them draw blood. ‘It’s the way a person talks.’

He released his grip and came around to the side of me, and as I looked at Robert Zaid, as I processed what he’d just said to me, it hit me like a sledgehammer.

I finally understood why the photos on the wall of the living room felt wrong.

I understood why there was only a single picture of his parents.

I knew the nanny who Zaid had been photographed with as a boy wasn’t a nanny at all, and I knew why – the moment I’d entered the house – I’d felt so strongly that I’d met him before, even though I hadn’t: because I’d seen his picture in a police file.

‘It’s the way a person talks,’ he repeated, slower, smiling this time.

But now his accent wasn’t English.

It was American.

Because this wasn’t Robert Zaid.

It was Adrian Vale.

Part Eight

THE FOREST

I can hear a noise again.

But it’s different.

It’s not coming from down here.

It’s coming from above me.

I tilt my head slightly, trying to give myself the best chance I can of hearing whatever it is, but the moment I do, the noise stops.

When it does, all that’s left is a ringing in my ears, a faint background noise that I’ve slowly got used to after weeks in the silence of this place. But now it acts as interference, an intrusive element that makes me less confident about what I’m hearing from above. Is something finally happening? Is he coming for me?

Or is it a fault in my ears?

In my head?

Is everything I’m hearing – as I’d always feared – entirely built in my mind? The thought scares me, because my mind used to be everything to me. It was what defined me, what I used to survive and stay ahead.

It was how I found missing people.