‘I’ve been running a lot,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m doing the New York marathon in November.’

He broke out into a smile. ‘You serious?’

‘I’ve done London, I did Paris with Derryn in 2006. I did the Two Oceans when we were in Cape Town. I’m enjoying all the training. It’s keeping me focused.’

He nodded but didn’t say anything.

We both knew why.

In November 2009, my wife, Derryn, had died – aged only thirty-four – after a long battle with cancer, and then, three months ago, I’d landed a case over Christmas that had been related to her death. The case had taken everything from me – in fact, it had almost destroyed me – and I’d spent the months since trying to recover from it and return to some sort of equilibrium. So, while I’d always been a runner, mostly I’d do short distances and had only ever used it to supplement gym work – but now I was doing fifteen-mile runs as standard, from my home in Ealing, south into Kew, and then out across the northern fringes of Richmond Park. I liked the singular, solitary nature of running, the time it gave me alone, the way it cleared my head and calmed my thinking; and because I liked it, I’d kept doing more of it.

‘We’d better go through the case again,’ I said.

‘Everything’s in the room.’

We headed for the lift. As soon as the doors slid shut, I said to him, ‘Your new ID will be ready in a couple of days.’

He only nodded this time.

By now, it was just routine: another new name for another pretend life.

His room was right at the end of a corridor on the second floor. He removed a DO NOT DISTURB sign from the handle, took out a keycard and swiped it through the reader. We both instinctively checked the corridor, and then I followed him inside.

‘So are you going to start calling me by whatever name I get next?’ he asked, popping the card into the power socket. The lights in the bathroom and bedroom flickered into life. Before this, we’d tried to get into a routine of only calling him by the name we’d arranged last, Bryan Kennedy – but it had never felt natural.

‘No,’ I said. ‘To me, you’ll just be Colm Healy.’

Colm Healy.

His real name weighed heavy on the air. There were so many miles attached to it, such anger and tragedy and sadness, and yet – as a smile formed at the edges of his mouth – it was clear that this was what he’d always wanted; he wanted to go back, even if it was only when the two of us were alone, to return to the part of his life that had made the most sense, when he’d had the structure of a family and a career.

‘Thanks, Raker,’ he said quietly.