It took him ten minutes to walk down to the bank, by which time it was almost nine o’clock. All around him, the shops were opening. People were hurrying out of the coffee shops, clutching their oversized cups, then disappearing into their offices . . . another busy London day. Propping his briefcase under his arm, Bulman selected a debit card and fed it into the machine. He needed money for breakfast, to pick up a few groceries—and later on, he might treat himself to a taxi over to Chelsea. He punched in his PIN, touched the box for $50, and waited.
The screen went black. Then a message came up.
Bulman stared at the screen, then punched the Cancel button to get his card back. Nothing happened. Not only was the machine refusing to give him any money, it had decided to keep his card! There was nothing wrong with the account, he was sure of it. The last time he’d looked, he’d had over four hundred dollars in it. Someone must have vandalized the ATM, some lout who’d had too much to drink.
He’d have to find another cash machine and use his credit card for a cash advance. He walked only a block before finding one. Very cautiously, he typed in his PIN, taking care not to make any mistakes.
The same thing happened. A blank screen. A stark white message. His card was swallowed up.
He swore. A couple of people had lined up to use the same machine and they were looking at him with a sort of pity, as if they imagined that he was broke, that there was nothing in his account. What was he to do now? He was angry, humiliated, and hungry—he needed breakfast. He had no money and no way to travel.
Unless, of course, he used his car. Bulman had a secondhand Volkswagen parked around the corner from his apartment. He didn’t often use it during the day—there was far too much traffic in London for his taste—but he sometimes drove it at night, and he kept a spare twenty-dollar bill in the glove compartment for emergencies. That wouldn’t buy him much, but it was better than nothing and he could use it for breakfast while he waited for the bank to open. He’d feel better with a bit of food inside him. Then he’d go in to the bank and shout at the silly fat girl behind the teller’s desk. (In his experience, bank tellers were always silly and fat.) And once it was sorted, he would get on with his day.
He found the side street and strolled down to the spot where he’d parked.
The car wasn’t there.
Bulman stood on the sidewalk, blinking. He had the beginnings of a headache. He had definitely parked in this spot. He might have had a few too many drinks that evening—and, yes, he was probably well over the limit—but he was certain this was where he had left it. Now there was a blue Volvo in his space. He looked up and down the road. There was no sign of his Volkswagen. He forced himself to think. Dinner, pub, slot machine, one last drink, then home around midnight. The car had to be here.
And yet it wasn’t.
It had been stolen! Cars were always being taken in this part of town! A lot of the residents had those clumsy-looking locks that fit over the steering wheel . . . but he had never bought one.
He shook his head. What a day this was turning into! He’d be in a bad mood when he caught up with Alex Rider later this afternoon. It would be their first session together—but even so, he was going to give the boy a hard time.
First things first. Bulman took out his mobile phone to call the police. He wondered what number to use. This wasn’t really an emergency, but he decided to call 911 anyway. He thumbed the buttons and held the phone to his ear.
Nothing.
It wasn’t ringing. There wasn’t even a dial tone. Bulman brought the phone down—it was a brand-new BlackBerry—and examined it.
This was ridiculous. He was in the middle of the city. There was always a signal here. He walked a few paces up the sidewalk, held the phone up, tried it at a different angle. The message remained the same. He squeezed the phone so tightly that he was almost crushing it.
He forced himself to calm down. There was an old-fashioned telephone booth at the end of the road. He wouldn’t need coins to make a 911 call. He would contact the police from there.
He retraced his steps and entered the phone booth. It was plastered with advertisements for models and smelled of cigarette smoke and urine. At least the phone itself seemed to be working. He balanced his briefcase against the glass and made the call.
“Which service do you require?” the operator asked him.
“My car has been stolen,” Bulman said. He was almost relieved to hear another human voice. “I need to speak to the police.”
There was a pause and he was put through.
“I’d like to report a stolen car,” he said. “I parked it on Chilton Street last night and now it’s gone.”
“Can I have the license plate number?” It was a woman’s voice. She didn’t sound very concerned. She also spoke with a foreign accent, making him wonder if he’d been rerouted to a call center abroad.
Forcing himself not to lose his temper, he gave the license number. “KL06NZG.”
“KL06NZG?”
“Yes.”
“Is that a green Mercedes SLR Coupe?”
“No!” Bulman shut his eyes. His headache was getting worse. “It’s a silver Volkswagen Golf.”
“Can you give me the license number again?”
Bulman repeated it, pausing between each digit. Whoever was at the other end of the line obviously didn’t have much skill with computers.
“I’m sorry, sir.” The woman was adamant. “That number is registered to a Mercedes. Can I take your name?”
“It’s Bulman. Harold Edward Bulman.”
“And your address?”
He told her.
“Could you hold a moment?” There was another silence, longer this time. Bulman was about to hang up when the woman came back on the line. “Mr. Bulman, how long have you had this car?”
“I bought it two years ago.”
“I’m afraid we have no record of that name or that address on our files.”
This was the end. Bulman lost his temper. “Are you telling me that I don’t know where I live and that I’ve forgotten the make and the color of my own car? I’m telling you, my car has been stolen. I left it here last night, and now it’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, sir. The license number you’ve given us doesn’t match up with the information I have here.”
“Well, your information is wrong.” Bulman slammed the phone down. His head was throbbing.
He needed money. He felt naked without cash and he wanted to eat. He looked at his watch. At least that was still working. Half past nine. The banks would have opened by now. Bulman had plenty of ID on him, and he’d feel better once he had a full wallet. He could deal with the car later.
He turned and walked back the way he had come. Ten minutes later, he found himself in the local branch of his bank, talking to one of the managers who had a desk in the main hall. The manager was a young man, Asian, dressed in a suit, with a neat beard. He was clearly alarmed as this new customer came striding up to him, and Bulman realized that, what with all the tramping back and forth, trying to deal with all the events that seemed to have ganged up on him in the past hour, he must look half crazed. He no longer cared.
“I need to withdraw some money,” he said. “And your machine doesn’t seem to be working.”
The manager frowned. “We haven’t had any complaints.”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to use the machine. I want to withdraw some money from you.”
“Do you have a card, sir?” Bulman handed over his last remaining credit card and watched as the manager brought up his details on the computer. He gazed at the screen, perplexed. “I’m very sorry, sir . . .”
“Are you saying I don’t have an account with you?” Bulman’s voice was quavering.
“No, sir. You used to have an account. But you closed it down a year ago. You can see for yourself.” He swiveled the computer around and there it was, a row of zeroes at the bottom of his account. Every last penny had been removed exactly twelv
e months before.
“I never closed my account,” Bulman said.
“Would you like me to talk to the head office? . . .”
Yet Bulman was already gone, spinning out of the chair and making his way through the main door, out into the fresh air. What the hell was going on? His travel pass, then the bank cards, his mobile phone, his car, now his accounts . . . it was as if his identity was being taken from him one piece at a time. He leaned against the corner of the building, steadying himself, and as he stood there, a commuter hurried past, throwing a copy of his newspaper into a bin right in front of him, almost as if he wanted Bulman to see what was on the front page.
It was a photograph of himself.
Bulman gazed at it in horror, remembering the headline that he had seen as he came out of his apartment. “Journalist Killed.” He was looking at the same headline now. He felt the sidewalk lurching underneath him as he stepped forward and plucked the newspaper out. The story was very short.
Harold Bulman, a freelance journalist who specialized in stories relating to the army and intelligence services, was yesterday morning found dead in his north London apartment. Mr. Bulman, 37, had been stabbed. Police today appealed for any witnesses who might have seen or heard anything between ten o’clock and midnight to come forward. Detective Chief Superintendent Stephen Leather, who is heading the investigation, said: “Mr. Bulman may well have made himself enemies in his line of work, and at this stage we are not ruling anything out.” Harold Bulman was unmarried and had no close family or friends.
It was him. They were saying he was dead! How could they have made a mistake like that? Was this the reason why his phone wasn’t working, why there was no money in his account? Suddenly it all made sense. Somehow he’d been confused with somebody else. And as a result, a whole series of switches had been pulled as, automatically, his life was turned off.
He had to get to a telephone. He had to talk to his editors, to the people who employed him. He had no money. But there was a telephone in his apartment. That was the answer. Bulman didn’t want to be on the street anymore, anyway. He had become a non-person, an invisible man. For some reason, he felt exposed. How could he be sure that there wasn’t someone out there who really did want to stab him? He had to get back inside.
He was sweating by the time he got back to his apartment, and his hand shook as he tried to force the key into the lock. It didn’t seem to want to go in. In the end, after three attempts, he realized that the key didn’t fit. And that was impossible too. Wasn’t it? He had used it only last night! But someone in the last twelve hours had gone out and changed the lock.
“Let me in!” he shouted. There was nobody to listen to him. He was shouting at the glass door and the brickwork. “Let me in!” He kicked the door, using the sole of his foot. But the glass was reinforced, shatterproof, and the door was held in place by powerful magnetic plates. He kicked out a third time. He was screaming now. Anyone passing would think he was insane.
“Are you all right, sir? Can I help you?”
He hadn’t heard the police car draw in behind him, but when he turned around, there were two policemen standing on the sidewalk. Bulman was glad to see them. After all, he’d been trying to call them just a few minutes ago.
“I’m locked out,” he said.
“Do you live here, sir?”
“Well, obviously I live here. If I didn’t live here, I wouldn’t be trying to get in.” Bulman realized he was being rude. He tried to force a smile to his face. “I have a home on the top floor,” he explained. “This has never happened before . . .”
“Can I try for you?”
Bulman noticed that the policeman had dropped the “sir.” He handed the keys over and watched as the policeman tried them in the lock—also without success. The policeman examined the keys, then the lock. He straightened up. “You’re not going to open this door with these keys,” he said. “The lock is Banham. These keys are Yale.”
“But that’s not possible . . .”
“What’s your name?” the second policeman asked.
“It’s Harry Bulman. I’m a journalist.”
“And you say you live here?”
“I don’t just say I live here. I do live here. But I’m locked out.”
“Just one moment, sir.”
The first policeman was talking on his radio. Bulman passed his briefcase from one hand to the other. It was suddenly feeling very heavy. Considering it was only January, the weather was far too hot. The second policeman was looking at him suspiciously. He was only about nineteen years old, with light brown hair and stick-out ears. He still had a schoolboy face.
“Are you sure this is where you live?” the first policeman asked. He had finished his radio conversation.
“Yes. Apartment thirty-seven. On the top floor.”
“There was a Harold Bulman, a journalist, registered to this address, but he was killed two nights ago.”
“No. That was in the newspapers. I just read it. But it’s a mistake. I’m Harry Bulman.”
“Would you have any identification on you?”
“Of course I have.” Bulman took out his wallet. But two of his credit cards had been taken by the cash machines, and he had left the third in the bank. His driver’s license was in the apartment. His fingers were shaking as he fumbled through his wallet. “I can give you ID once I get into my home,” he said.
The two policemen looked at each other. The younger one seemed to notice Bulman’s briefcase for the first time. “What are you carrying?” he asked.
The question took Bulman by surprise. “Why do you want to know?” he snapped.
Before he could stop him, the first policeman had picked up the briefcase. “Do you mind if we look i nside?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”
It was already too late. The policeman opened the briefcase and was looking at the contents, his face full of horror. With a sense that his whole life was draining away from him, Bulman leaned forward. He knew what was inside: a notepad, a couple of magazines, pens and pencils.
He was wrong. The policeman was holding the case open, and Bulman could clearly see a kitchen knife, about fifteen inches long, the blade covered in dried blood.
“Wait . . . ,” he began.
The two policemen acted incredibly quickly. Without even knowing quite what had happened, Bulman found himself facedown on the sidewalk with his arms gripped behind his back. He felt the metal edges of the handcuffs bite into his flesh as they clicked shut. The first policeman was back on his radio, talking rapidly. Seconds later, there was a screech of tires and another police car drew up. More uniformed officers surrounded him.
“You have the right to remain silent . . .”
Bulman realized that he was being told his rights, but the words didn’t quite register. They were booming in his ears. He felt himself being picked up and propelled toward the car. A hand was placed on his head to stop him from banging against the door frame. And then he was inside, being driven away at speed. They had even turned the sirens on.
An hour later, Bulman found himself alone in a bare brick interrogation room with a window set so high up, it showed only a small square of sky. They had taken his fingerprints and a swab from the inside of his mouth, which he knew would be used to check his DNA. There were two new officers sitting opposite him. They were older and more experienced than the men who had made the arrest, heavyset and serious. They had introduced themselves as Bennett and Ainsworth. Ainsworth seemed to be the senior of the two, bald, with small, hard eyes and a mouth that could have been drawn with a single pencil line. Bennett was slightly younger and looked as if he had recently been in a fistfight. He was holding a file.
Bulman had been given a little time to collect his thoughts. He had worked out what he was going to say. “Listen to me,” he began. “This is all a stupid mistake. The way you’ve treated me is outrageous. I am a well-known journalist, and I’m warning you—”
“It??
?s good to see you, Jeremy,” Bennett interrupted.
“That’s not my name.”
“Jeremy Harwood. Did you really think we wouldn’t find you?” Ainsworth laid the file on the table and opened it. Bulman saw a black-and-white police photograph. Once again he recognized himself. But it had this other name underneath it.
He drew a breath. “My name is not Jeremy Harwood. My name is Harold Bulman.”
“Harold Bulman is dead.”
“No.”
“We’ve already analyzed the blood we found on the knife in your briefcase. It’s Bulman’s. You killed him.”
“No. You’re making a mistake. This is all wrong.” Bulman fought for control. How could this nightmare be happening?
Ainsworth flicked a page in a file. There were fingerprints—ten of them in a row—and what looked like a chemical formula. “We’ve checked your DNA and your fingerprints, Jeremy. They all match up. There’s no need to pretend anymore.”
“You escaped from Broadmoor two months ago,” Bennett said.
Broadmoor? Bulman blinked heavily. That was where they sent the most dangerous prisoners in the country, the ones who were considered criminally insane.
“Why did you kill Harold Bulman?” Bennett asked.
“I . . . I . . .” Bulman tried to find the answer, but the words wouldn’t come. Something had happened to his thinking process. He was aware that there were tears trickling down his cheeks.
“Don’t worry, Jeremy,” Ainsworth said. He sounded almost kind. “We’re going to take you back. You’ll be safe, locked up in your cell. You won’t hurt anyone ever again.”
“You’ll be taken back to Broadmoor this afternoon,” Bennett added.
“No . . .” The room was spinning in ever-increasing circles. Bulman gripped the table, trying to slow it down. “You can’t—”
“We can. The arrangements have already been made.”
The door suddenly opened and a third man came in. From the very start he didn’t look anything like a policeman. He was more like a retired colonel, about fifty, with thinning hair and a face that was hurrying toward old age. He was wearing a suit that didn’t match his brown suede shoes. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll take over now.”