So. The wandering. That’s what you want to know about, right? What tips can that sieve of a brain of yours hold? Well, there are a couple of things. If you’re going to wander, take a wallet with you. It’s good if you can identify yourself, and even better if you can pay for a taxi or a bus. Money is good—so keep it on you. Just as good is a phone. Try to take your phone with you. A bottle of water would be good too—helps with the dehydration, and who knows how far you can walk?

Today you snuck out the window to avoid the house alarms, and the thing is, you have no memory of doing it. You have no idea if the intent was there to go for a walk on your own, or to go and buy flowers, or to do any number of possible things a man will do once he leaves his home with barely enough cash to buy a hamburger combo. You don’t know which version of Jerry made that decision, or which version of Jerry showed up at the florist where Belinda works. The florist is in town, right between the two main drags of Manchester and Colombo. And how did you get there? A true magician never reveals his tricks, Jerry, and Captain A is nothing but the master of slight of hand. Look over here while he wipes Jerry’s mind!

Belinda asked if you were okay, and you told her you were, because you really were okay, Future Jerry, you were on a mission, one so top secret even you didn’t know the agenda. She knew about the Big A (it seems everybody does), and she sat you down in the office and made you a cup of tea and rang Sandra and told her she would drive you home. By this time Captain A was releasing the reins a little, and you were becoming equally aware and embarrassed of the situation. Belinda kept smiling at you, and told you not to worry, that her grandmother has Alzheimer’s and she’s used to it, which actually upset you because it made you feel so old.

She swung past her house on the way to pick up something for Eva that she would have been dropping off later in the day anyway, which is why she was happy to drop you home. She asked if you would be okay waiting in the car, and you said yes, and that bit you remember, but then Captain A tightened the reins a little and Belinda found you sitting on the back doorstep talking to her cat a few minutes later.

Sandra was worried sick by the time you got back to the house. She’d been getting ready to call the police just before Belinda phoned her. The net result is alarms are being put on all the windows. If that doesn’t work, then perhaps the next step is to have a GPS chip sewn into your back where you can’t reach it.

Good news—the wedding is close now. There’s the rehearsal in a few hours, and remember—practice, practice, practice. Bad news—Sandra said earlier, I can’t wait for all of this to be over.

When you asked what she meant by that, she sighed, and said, What do you think, Jerry? before storming off.

Honestly? You don’t think she’s just referring to the wedding. She probably has some pamphlets somewhere, the way people do when they’re thinking of shipping their folks off to a home, the final step before they visit the big home in the sky.

Jerry’s cell phone is still ringing. It echoes around the bathroom. He stares at the stall where a few minutes ago he was sitting, as if by looking longer and harder the bag with the towel and knife will reappear. He heads into the corridor and answers the phone.

“Where are you?” Hans asks.

“The bathroom.”

“I told you to wait outside.”

“I’m heading there now.”

He hangs up. He almost drops the phone when he puts it into his pocket because his hands are shaking so much. He takes the same route back outside. Hans isn’t there, not right away, but then ten seconds later he is, pulling up in a dark blue SUV. Hans leans over and opens the door and Jerry climbs in. He drops the supermarket bag on the floor between his feet. He wipes his sweaty hands on his jacket.

“Jesus, Jerry, you look terrible.”

“Drive,” Jerry tells him, and that little gem has come right from the Henry Cutter playbook, along with Follow that car and It’s quiet. Too quiet.

Hans doesn’t need to be told twice. They move smoothly through the parking lot past other cars, turning into and out of parking spaces.

“You got a destination in mind? The nursing home?” Hans asks.

Jerry stares at his friend while thinking of an answer. He has put on more weight than the Hans he remembers. Some of that is muscle and some of that is the accumulation of pounds you see on out-of-shape bouncers, the slab weight that enables them to pop a punching bag off its chain but would have them puffing to pick it back up. It looks like he has a few more tattoos poking out from beneath his collar too. This Hans has evolved so much from the one he first met in university.

“Not the nursing home,” Jerry says. “Just away from here.”

“Tell me what happened,” Hans says.

Jerry leans back. His legs are jittering, his knees popping up and down. They exit the parking lot. “I’m not . . . I’m not entirely sure,” he says, which sums up his life these days pretty well, he thinks. “I escaped the nursing home.”

“You’ve done that a few times now.”

“They keep you updated?”

“Eva keeps me updated on your progress,” Hans says.

“It’s not progress,” Jerry says. “It’s the exact opposite of progress. It’s . . . is there a word for that?”

“Unprogress,” Hans says. “You want to tell me what happened, or do you just want me to drive around aimlessly?”

“Let’s put the air-conditioning on,” Jerry says, and he starts fiddling with the controls but to no avail. His hands are still sweaty. “It’s a hundred and fifty degrees in here.”

“It’s seventy,” Hans says, then flicks a switch. Cool air comes through the vents and Jerry holds his hands in front of them. “Maybe if you took your jacket off you’d feel better. Jerry?”

Jerry reaches into the bag for his water.

“Jerry?”

He gets the lid off. He gulps down a mouthful, then another, so quickly his throat hurts.

“Jerry?”

He wipes his hand across his mouth. He looks at his friend. “It’s possible I killed somebody,” he says.

Hans looks over at him. “What? Jesus, Jerry, what?”

Jerry turns the air-conditioning off. He suddenly feels cold. “I woke up in a house I’ve never been in before, and there was a woman there.” His words start to speed up. “She was naked and lying on the lounge floor. She’d been stabbed.”

“Oh thank God,” Hans says, and he smiles, and looks genuinely relieved, and that reaction is completely opposite to what Jerry was expecting. Is this all some kind of joke to him? “Trust me, everything is going to be okay.”

“I found her that way, but I didn’t do it. Somebody is trying to set me up, but I don’t know why.”

“Calm down,” Hans says, and he checks his mirror, he indicates, and then he turns the corner and parks on the side of a quieter street in the shade. He takes his seat belt off and twists in his seat so he can face Jerry. “You didn’t kill anybody. You know what you used to do for a living, right?”

“Of course I know, but that isn’t about this.”

“You wrote crime novels,” Hans says.

Jerry is shaking his head. “I know. But like I said, this—”

“Very good ones too,” Hans says, interrupting him. “People were always saying how real they felt. So if they felt real to other people, Jerry, how do you think they felt to you?”

“This isn’t like those other times.”

“You’ve been confessing to crimes that were in your books. These are all—”

“You’re not listening to me,” Jerry says, fighting the frustration.