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stomach, listening out for sounds of footfalls on the breeze. I was a good fifty yards from the house and well hidden enough that I wasn’t going to be seen unless they actually walked into me.
    I waited there for twenty minutes, the pain from where the big guy had hit me gradually subsiding to little more than a thick, dull ache, like a hangover. During that time I heard and saw nothing suspicious. So it was clear they weren’t trying to catch me in a pincer movement. Which meant they were waiting for me to make my move.
    Time might have been on their side, but it was on mine too. I waited another twenty minutes. There was a shallow glass cut on my hand but that was the only obvious injury from my dive through the window. Then again, there was still so much adrenalin pumping through me that I could have been cut in a dozen places and not have felt a thing. I was still shocked. Not only at what had happened to Jane and Tom but also at the way I’d reacted when I’d seen my chance of escape. I hadn’t frozen with fear. I’d fought back.
    Something else too. More important. I’d known what I was doing. Some deep-seated instincts had taken over and I’d fought like a pro. I felt like I’d had fights like that before, with my life in imminent danger, and yet nothing in my supposed background would have suggested it.
    My need to find out who I was became desperate, and I knew where my best bet for information lay. Back in that house. I’d explored it whenever I’d had a chance in the past two months, wanting to discover all I could about my situation, but Jane and Tom had both kept their rooms locked at all times, and I got the feeling that I never found out any more than they wanted me to find out. Now, though, I was free to hunt down anything I could.
    Darkness had settled completely now, and the first stars were appearing in the sky, bathing the woods in an unwelcome blue light. Somewhere off in the trees an owl hooted plaintively. Otherwise the night was perfectly silent. I sniffed the cool air, my eyes scanning the undergrowth in both directions, knowing this could be a trap. An inner voice told me to keep waiting. I was a patient man, but there was an urgency about my situation now. It was clear I’d been involved in something major prior to my accident.
    Where are the bodies?
    Who am I?
    I gave it another twenty minutes, figuring that, even with time on their side, Pen and her accomplice had still committed two murders and so couldn’t remain here for ever. Then, moving inch by inch, I raised myself up to my full height and stepped out from behind the tree.
    Nothing moved. I waited a couple of beats before starting back towards the house, moving slowly and carefully, looking round all the time, knowing that I was taking a huge risk but concluding that in the end what the hell did I have to lose. I had no life. No memory. Two of the three people who knew me were dead, and I’d probably never see Dr Bronson again. It was as if I didn’t exist, which should have been a terrible feeling, but it wasn’t. With nothing to lose, I suddenly had everything to gain.
    I stopped at the edge of the treeline looking towards the kitchen and the rear of the house. It seemed amazing that it was only about an hour earlier that I’d entered the house that way, and in that time my whole world had changed.
    If Pen or her accomplice were still in the house, he or she would almost certainly assume I’d come through the kitchen door, as I had last time. It was the only unlocked entrance and the closest to the woods. Deciding not to risk it, I moved slowly through the trees round towards the side of the house, passing the double garage where the cars were kept. Seeing nothing untoward, I ran across the lawn, over to the far lounge window. The curtains were drawn so, keeping to the shadows, I crept round to the window I’d leapt through earlier. My momentum had caused the whole frame to come out and broken glass littered the