“No,” I replied.

“Did you fucking lie?!”

“No. I don’t believe I did.”

“Are you… laughing at me?”

“No.”

“I’ve been waiting years. Friends, embassy… they’re cunts. They’re all fucking cunts. They say there’s a hold-up, the courts have a backlog. You said you’d make it better. What do you want?”

“Everything,” I breathed. “Everything you remember about me and Alice. I want you to tell me what I said, what she said, what I wore, what she wore. What language did I speak, was it Slovakian? Was she tired, did she look happy, sad, young, old? Everything.”

“Why?”

I looked down at my feet, then untangled my fingertips and stood up. I tucked my chair under the desk, ran my hand through my hair and sat down beside him, close enough to, very carefully, lay my hand on the leg of his trouser, feel the warmth of his calf underneath. I took a slow, careful breath, then looked him straight in the eye.

Our gazes met and, for the first time since I had walked into that room, he saw me.

My fingers tightened around his leg, pressing warm into his skin.

“Why do you think?” I said.

Chapter 25

Evening in Bratislava.

A computer in a café, bad coffee in my mouth, Coyle’s bags stuffed beneath my chair.

An email to an account I’d set up a lifetime ago and never closed down, from an individual who identified themselves as Spunkmaster13.

Times changed, but not Johannes Schwarb.

A report on the passports carried by Nathan Coyle–clean, save for the Turkish identity, which the Istanbul police were seeking. A man suspected of shooting a woman dead on Taksim station had hired a car under that name, then driven his escape vehicle all the way to Edirne in the night.

I made a mental note to burn the Turkish passport, and began to reply.

Spunkmaster13 was already waiting in the chat rooms, and he appeared before I could type more than a few words on to the screen.

Banal pleasantries were exchanged along with the panoply of smiley faces and vanishing ninja emoticons that seemed to form the greatest part of Johannes’ vocabulary, until:

Christina 636–I need you to do another check-up for me.

Spunkmaster13–Sure, what?

Christina 636–Registration number. It’s for a car driven by two people–a man called Nathan Coyle and a woman called Alice White. They visited an asylum in Slovakia, signed in at reception, logged the registration details of the vehicle they visited in. An inmate describes the woman as aged approximately 29–35, short blonde hair, 5’5–5’8, slim build, fair skin, blue eyes. Can you check?

Spunkmaster13–In my sleep.

Christina 636–One more thing–the name Galileo mean anything to you?

Spunkmaster13–Dead white guy?

Christina 636–I was given names–Galileo and Santa Rosa.

Spunkmaster13–I got nothing.

Christina 636–Never mind. And thank you.

Chapter 26

Bratislava, as night fell.

The sky was turning the colour of a two-day bruise, a stripe of golden sunlight skimming the western horizon, trying to peep through beneath the promise of rain.

I hadn’t been to Bratislava for decades. Ten beautiful streets in the middle, a castle on a hill, trolley buses and a great deal of anonymous architecture beyond. It was a city that most tourists covered in two days. An hour from Vienna by boat, the same by train through flood plains, it was hard to shake the feeling towards this would-be national capital that there was somewhere a little more interesting nearby.

The internet café where I connected with Johannes served sweet pastries turning hard around the edges. The lights in the square outside were cold white over pale stones, and as it began to rain the gutters sparkled and shimmered with the rush of water to the riverside below.

I stepped out of the café into the downpour and regretted that I hadn’t stocked up on all-weather gear during those few breathless minutes in Istanbul when I had first met the body of Nathan Coyle. After all, I had no idea how long I was going to be in residence.

I scampered through the rain as it tap-danced on the sloping roofs and thundered down from the straining metal gullies. The solemn statues on the churches dripped from the ends of their chins and noses, angel wings shed waterfalls across the wooden doors of medieval monuments. The cables on the trolley buses snapped great white stars as they swung through the running streets, while the four-towered castle upon its hill vanished into a yellow rectangle of light hanging over the distorted darkness of the city.

I ran, my trousers soaking, my stomach empty, a bag of someone else’s secrets bumping on my back, past the half-shadowed faces of men with coats pulled across their heads, fighting for a cab; women with umbrellas turned inside-out, hair clinging to their pale, cold faces; teenage girls whose shoes were now too impractical for walking in, holding them by their heels as they waded through the riverine streets. And for a moment my fingers itched and my face was heavy with cold and I glanced at

a woman with beautiful black hair down to the nape of her spine, her shoulders bare, icy in the cold, the jacket that should have adorned it slung over one arm as she struggled unexpectedly into thicker clothes, a man at her back, the taste of chocolate on her lips, and she looked beautiful, and her life looked serene. Tonight, perhaps, she dines with the man she loves, and he loves her, and when the rain stops they will stand together on a balcony

–for certain she has a balcony–

and look down on the river in the cold night air and have no need for words.

She turned away, and I scuttled on, for everyone’s life is greener on the other side.

My hotel was a hotel for tourists, right on the river. A bar protruded out over the water’s edge, purple LEDs framing the balus trade, and the sound of glass chinked against its neighbour. The lobby was lined with pictures of old Bratislava, dead princes and noble kings; the receptionist spoke five languages, all fluently, all with a smile, and when I slid the key card into the lock to my room, the door slid open without a sound, into warmth that was a little too hot and an interior that smelt of fabric softener.

I had a bath.

As I sank deep into the tub I ran my fingers over the markings of a life lived. Round white scar on the left upper arm where, a long time ago, I’d had the BCG jab. I remembered a time when bodies carried smallpox scars; now they were marked by vaccinations. Another faded scar ran straight through the webbing between thumb and forefinger on my right hand, and there, below my ribcage, the prize-winner–a great pinkish slice, the zigzag of brisk stitching done by a busy hand still apparent around the grinning flesh. I traced the mark, felt the thickness beneath the skin, and guessed a knife, rammed in from the side and then slid across the stomach. The wound had long since healed, and I had to applaud Nathan Coyle for the density of functional muscle he’d built up in the intermediate time, but the scar remained, like a slag heap above an exhausted mine.

Horst Gubler had recognised Coyle, and that was good. My borrowed face had some utility after all.

More importantly, he’d given me a name, a partner, someone else to look for. I was in no great hurry to backtrack through the faces of my life, but if in doing so I could also trace the men who had ordered my death

ordered Josephine’s death