K= They Ate the Truth 11

We pay cash for the hotel room, no identification required. Once we
get inside, I put my gun on the pillow. I'm pretty sure we haven't been
followed, but we're not ordering room service just in case. Anyone who
knocks at that door is not getting an answer, and anyone who tries to
come in is getting whatever me and that gun feel able to give
them.

As cheap anonymous hotel rooms go, this one isn't bad. The bathtub is
large and clean and the pillows plump.

I give Lorrie the instructions. Tomorrow morning we take the tubes, we
jump in as late as we dare, then jump out again. We wait for the tube
to leave and watch carefully for anyone who does the same thing, then
we cross to the tube going the other direction and do the same thing.
Anyone who is still doing that with us after that, they're following
us. If there isn't anyone, then it is safe to get on a tube, get
somewhere that we can do some clothes shopping. Lorrie is to take out
all of the money from her bank account, from a bank far away from the
hotel.

It's only safe to do this once, so she needs to get the whole lot out.
I consider traveller's cheques, but someone could trace her movements
by where she cashes them. Getting the whole lot, in cash is the safest
thing. Besides, she is going to have a gun with her, so she's not
running a huge risk of getting mugged.

I say to her, "All those films you watch where people are on the run
and do something stupid - think about that before you do anything.
Everything you do leaves a trace. "

This is a principle of forensic science - any time a human being goes
somewhere, does something, a tiny part of them gets left behind.
Usually this is by way of hard DNA evidence, sweat, saliva, dust from
shoes, whatever, but it can be electronic too.

"And whatever you do, " I say to her kindly, "Don't use your mobile.
"

This is usually kept quiet, but when you make a call from a mobile
telephone, there's a signal sent between it and the satellite. If
you're hot and the people looking for you have enough pull, the exact
location is easy to get out of those bouncing signals. Chesterton's
agency certainly had enough pull and I suspect that the people who sent
that boy with the snipers rifle did too.

"The gun, " I say, "Use it if you have to. Because if you feel you have
to, it'll mean that they're thinking of doing something to you. Nobody
who says I sent them is telling the truth. Anyone you don't trust,
shoot them. Even me. Maybe especially me. Try to get me in the thigh
though, or the shoulder. "

"You're giving me a lot of advice, " she says sharply, "Are you not
planning on sticking around ?"

I need to wash my face and my shirt is sticking to me. Every time I see
Lorrie I end up needing to buy new clothes the day after. I can't look
her in the eye when I tell her what I'm going to do. My profession is
finding people, often people who don't want to be found. I can do it,
most of the time, with very little fuss. It takes huge money and real
connections to hide and stay hidden, and even then, it only works if
nobody important is looking for you.

If you're hiding and don't know what from, sooner or later you'll go
nuts and slip up. A telephone call, a withdrawal from an ATM - heck,
one guy I was looking for I found because he'd made a call to Richard
and Judy , he was so whacked out hiding and having secrets from
everyone, he just wanted to talk to someone, even about hormone
replacement therapy.

The alternative is to find out what you're hiding from and try to end
it.

Me, I'd rather try to be up in that plane with James Garner, even if I
am blind, than end up like Ives running at the wire.

"Precautions, " I say to her, "I'll be trying to make contact with
Chesterton the day after tomorrow, so this place isn't safe after that.
"

She tries to grab my wrist, "I trust you, " she says.

This time I have to look her in the eyes, "Listen, " I tell her, "I am
not a strong man. I'm really not. If it comes down to it, you don't
want to depend on me. "

She tells me that I'm scaring her. I hold her close, but keep talking,
"You have to know this. Chesterton breaks people for a living, and I'm
not tough to break. After tomorrow, I don't want to know where you are.
If I don't know, they can't get it out of me. "

"Are you saying this is over ? "

I hope not. I tell her that. I begin running a bath and rip open
complementary sachets. I feel like I smell of blood and dust, but she
gets to go first. I have to think of a way she can contact me without
putting herself at risk. I also have to think of a way to come in out
of the cold with Chesterton without getting myself killed. I can't do
it myself, any contact I make with him will be traced.

In the past, I've found that I think best while I soap up a lady's
shoulders. It's as good a reason as any.

She says, while I pull my fingers through her damp hair and smooth
thick pink conditioner along the strands, "My memory is getting worse,
or better. I'm not sure. "

"How do you mean ? " I ask her.

She tells me that she's starting to come across areas that are sealed
off, memories that are vivid and then stop short, nothing but blanks. A
lifetime of blackouts, her mind is a speedboat wrongly placed in a
swimming pool. She hits the side as soon as she gets going.

Mine is more like a rowboat on the Atlantic, I have all these memories
and no real ability to control which of them pop up to push me around.
Who knows about the mind ? Is there a little Alex that controls me, or
am I just the product of random electrical firings, that happen over
time to more often fire in some ways than others ?

"Do you remember anything about the job ?" I ask her.

It is still very little. She seems to remember being happy in the job,
although the detail is gone, then this party where people from work
were gathered to celebrate something, then nothing.

"What about Johann ? " I ask her, and I'm scared as hell to do this.
I'm not sure if I'm more worried that he's dead or that he's alive and
she still loves him.

She remembers very little. Snapshots that seem happy. A walk along the
marbled streets of Verona, the way he would pull her out of bed by her
ankles, listening to records with her head on his shoulder. She
remembers the way he would eat an apple with a knife with an
oyster-coloured handle. I'm immediately jealous because that is
something I always admire, watching people cut small slices out of the
fruit and transfer the slice to their mouth with the blade. It seems so
cool, so precise. It would be easy for me to do this, but I don't have
the guts. Suppose I did it and it wasn't cool, it looked dumb and
affected ? Then I'd feel a fool and something I admire would be
lost.

I am exactly like the cat of the adage, who let I dare not wait upon I
would.

"I hardly remember a thing about him, " she says, "Maybe I was screwing
around. I wouldn't know if I was. "

Her frustration is evident, the muscles in her back bunch up. She tells
me it is like running hands over cool plaster only to find holes that
haven't been patched up, haven't been polyfilla-ed over. The more she
thinks of the blocked up memories, the more time her mind spends at
these edges, teasing at them, hoping to find a little gray in the black
spaces.

I begin to towel her hair, gently.

"Would you have the memories back? " I ask her.

She doesn't answer that. It's such a huge question, how can she? If
identity and experience are linked together, she could be an entirely
different person to the one that asked for the Gentle Bug to take away
the bad stuff.

I make her step out of the bath and I pat her dry with the largest of
the bathtowels. It is no chore.

My clothes come off, the thought of wearing them the next day disgusts
me, but what choice do I have? I need to get out and get new clothes.
Before I can have the bath I badly need, I fetch the gun from the other
room. A criminal I once knew told me that his worst fear was of being
killed in the bath, of being shot dead and that he always bathed with a
gun in his hand. I'm not going that far, but I want it nearby.

We run fresh water, hot so that it feels it is going to burn the hair
off my lower legs as I get in. I have ideas, which is something, but
the thought of facing Chesterton scares me more than I can really tell.
I'm going to put myself in the hands of a master torturer, with no "I
give up, I'll tell you" route out of stopping the pain. And for what, a
girl I barely know, who doesn't know herself, who may or may not be
still married to someone she may or may not be deeply in love with, if
only she knew.

But who else has she got? If not me, then who?

Sometimes I wish my father had never made me read any Raymond
Chandler.