‘I’m sure you can piece together the rest of the story without my help. But first, let me assure you, in my defence, that I haven’t been lying to you all this time. Until the other day, when I woke just before dawn with a terrible headache and noticed something odd about the paintings in my room. Nine sandpipers, instead of ten, and in the other painting, the camel caravan glittering on the horizon, clear as day. That’s when I felt something shatter in my skull. Like a bolt of lightning from the sky, and it all came back to me. Who I was, and how I came to be the man known as Vidor Kiraly.’

His throat felt parched, and he drank down another glass of water. ‘I suppose you have gleaned some hints from your hypnosis sessions, or truth serums, or whatever else you used on me. What you’ve been missing was the why and the how. Who and what were Malik and Vidor to each other? I can only surmise what you must have been thinking: split personality or delusional misidentification disorder. Excellent possibilities.’ He shook his head. ‘Neither of them correct.’

So tired. When would they allow him to sleep? ‘I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,’ he said, ‘the unseemly baring of the soul.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘A simple matter, or so I thought, to endure a course of treatment at your clinic, no worse for having done so, and return to my life as if nothing had happened. But that’s not how it worked out. And here we are.’

‘As if nothing had happened?’ Gessen clasped his hands and leaned forward. ‘Is that how you describe the events of the events of the past two and a half months? The man you attacked in Copenhagen is dead. You are a “person of interest” in the death of Ismail Mahmoud. And it is not yet clear to me what your involvement was in the drowning death of Vidor Sovàny.’

At the sound of that odious name, a chill coursed through his veins, and Malik stiffened. Was Gessen implying he was a murderer? ‘I’m not responsible for anyone’s death,’ he said. ‘I have no memory of my actions in Copenhagen. As for Vidor Sovàny, when he went into the Seine, he nearly took me with him. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the pavement, soaking wet, with a man asking something about a name. I thought he wanted to know the other boy’s name. “Vidor,” I said. “Well, Vidor,” he replied, whacking me on the back as I coughed up a mouthful of water. “You had a pretty close call. Most people that fall into the river never come out again.”