When he thought he’d been, too, I’ve no doubt.

The two imposters who interviewed me must have been paid and prepped by Melia. The £10,000 loan that Kelvin unearthed, that feels like the right sort of fee for an acting job like this: one big interview, a house call or two, phone conversations as and when he gets in touch – their target and their dupe. Expenses would have been minimal, the costumes the actors’ own and their only props a pair of fake IDs. A cheap disposable phone to field my calls must by now have been hurled into the river or crushed to pieces in the back of a bin lorry.

This is as much as I can calculate of the ‘how’. The ‘why’ is clearer: she’s framed me for Kit’s murder. What did the officers say just now? His wife has just made the formal identification. There was no hint – and nor do I have any hope – that she is under suspicion, much less arrest.

Clare’s words haunt me: Your little fling with her might have been strategic . . .

How could you do this to me, Melia?

The boat leaves the central zone and picks up speed. Still, the riverside paths and roads are free of flashing blue lights. Still, there’s no message over the PA for a member of the crew to make contact with his captain. But even if the police don’t know where I am, the fact remains that I have nowhere to go. I can’t go home. I have nowhere to hide, no one to protect me. My past with the woman I used to love can never be resurrected, my future with the woman I love now only ever existed as fantasy, as bait.

Greenwich comes into view and my fellow passengers press towards the exit, eager to get sightseeing, even in the rain. Thanks to the screen their queue creates, we’ve docked before I see it: a police launch, skimming the water behind us, dispatched, presumably, from the river police station at Wapping.

They know where I am!

The sight reignites the flight instinct and I shoulder my way to the exit, ignoring the grumbles, mouthing apologies with the taste of bile in my mouth. The moment the rope is raised, I tear past the crew and hare up the jetty to the open concourse, where I scan the options in front of me, my left ankle deep in a rain puddle: the Cutty Sark, with no queue in evidence; the terracotta entrance to the foot tunnel; the Greenwich streets, with the park – and southeast London – beyond; the Thames path east-and westward, both directions obstructed in places, if I remember rightly. Behind me, heavy footsteps, urgent voices; ahead, a uniformed security guard attached to the Cutty Sark, not looking my way but with his radio to his ear.

For fuck’s sake, Jamie, choose!

Instinct leads me to the right and I slip into the doorway of the tunnel entrance, fed automatically to the left down a wide spiral stairwell. Round and round in a sickening corkscrew, my wet foot squelching loudly, my brain struggling to fathom what my body is doing. If I get to the other side of the river, I can run from there. Find somewhere to hide, think of a way to contact Clare.

No, not Clare, they’ll be expecting that. Not my father or sister, either. Who, then? Who do I have left in the world? In my fixation with Melia, I’ve isolated myself. I’ve put all my faith in a false god.

At the foot of the stairs, the narrow tiled pipe beckons, the squares of fluorescent light along the curved ceiling receding down the shallow slope. There’s a swarming sensation in my head before I’m even twenty feet in and I hear myself shriek as something whips past me, a man on a bike, riding one foot on the pedal, swooping into the dipped centre, before disappearing from view. Now there are voices behind me, disembodied, their echoes sinister, and before I dare look a knot of tourists overtakes me.

I try to accelerate, but all I feel is an unbearably heavy wading motion, as if my coat is made of plates of iron. The world is suddenly odourless but for my own sweat, my rank breath. I reach to touch the tiles, to check the world is physical and not locked inside my mind.

I call out to the group bunched in my path. ‘Please, can I get by? Please.’

Startled faces turn, there’s even a faint recoiling, confirming the otherness of me. Then someone makes way and I finally pick up speed, rushing and rushing, opening a gap between us. I’m almost at the mid-point of the tunnel, deep under the water right now. The concave walls enclose me, the dot at the end out of reach. I register the aching rumble of a train somewhere in the earth nearby. I think, Why the hell am I here? I’d have been better hiding in a building, the toilets of a bar. Now my destination is narrowed to the exit on the other side. Narrowing and narrowing into a cone . . .

‘Grab him, he’s falling!’

The last words before my hearing fails, my vision blurs. I feel the brakes in my body, the loss of power, and everything turns to black.

*

When I come to, the first thing I see is a man’s face bright with concern. He is taking my vital signs and his fingers are gentle. He is in a hi-vis jacket, but I do not think he is police.

‘Why did the train stop?’ I say, which surprises me as much as it does him.

‘You’re not on a train. You’re in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. You fainted and someone pressed the emergency button.’

‘The emergency lever. I pulled it. I needed the train to stop. I have to get out.’

‘Stay nice and still while we wait for the medics. They’ll have a stretcher with them, so you don’t need to move. It will only be a few minutes.’

I focus on details. The glaze on the tiles, cracked, each rectangle its own parched riverbed. A stalactite on the ceiling – calcium has formed in the gaps. I know these things. How far above is the water? I know this fact, too, I do.

‘Stay right where you are,’ the voice commands, and I see the stalactite drawing closer as I rise to my feet.

‘No, no. I can walk.’

‘You really need to stay still in case—’

I battle through the onlookers, staggering on. They don’t know if I am a threat or a form of entertainment. There are silhouettes in the circle ahead. I can hear the man in the neon vest coming up behind me and calling, ‘Sir, please come back!’

Uniformed police are coming towards me now. They are bowling pins, toy soldiers. A fearful, accented voice asks: ‘What has this man done?’

Another, local, bolder: ‘Keep out of his way, he might have a knife.’

Undeterred, someone walks right by my side, phone held brazenly in my face.

Three police officers surround me. One speaks into his radio, another addresses me directly:

‘Was that really necessary, Mr Buckby?’

I know the voice and my heart leaps: Merchison!

But no, not him, of course not. He is neither officer nor friend, but Melia’s puppet. Like Parry, he speaks only her words.

There are hands restraining me now, because I can no longer be trusted not to bolt, and as I emerge above ground, daylight snapping and crackling around my face, the police arrest me on suspicion of murder.

42

2 January 2020

This time we go to a police station. Of course we do. Why would detectives from the Metropolitan Police interview someone in the middle of winter at a terrace table outside the Royal Festival Hall? We drive west down roads rinsed clean by the rain, passing Londoners reborn with optimism as they raise their faces to the emerging sun – that used to be me! – until we reach a featureless mid-rise building in Woolwich that I’ve never had occasion to notice before.