Maybe I shouldn't have moved my head out of the way of Marco's fist. If he'd caught me full on, the blow to the skull might somehow have unlocked my memory. As it is, I've just got a crashing headache and a continuing blank where yesterday was.
There's only one other time in my life when I've blanked out completely and that was years ago in a bar in Germany when a bunch of us were doing tequila slammer races. Apparently, I drank twelve in the space of half an hour – which was something of a stupid move, but one I put down to youth and peer pressure. Everyone was doing it, although maybe they weren't doing it quite as quickly as I was. I only remember downing the first two, then nothing until ten o'clock the next morning when I woke up in a pool of my own vomit with a head that made even the one I had this morning seem mild by comparison. According to my fellow drinkers, we'd visited three separate bars during what was, by all accounts, a hugely entertaining evening. I'd slow-danced with a waitress on a table in one; burned my top lip on a flaming sambuca in another; and then, some time later, just as I was putting a fresh stein of lager to my lips, I'd keeled over backwards and hit the deck like a dead man. I was picked up by four of the boys, one limb each, and carried the two hundred yards back to the barracks. On the way back, one of the four had suggested that I might be putting it on, so they decided to check whether I was genuinely unconscious by repeatedly slamming me bodily into a lamp-post on the way. When I didn't flinch, even on the fourth or fifth go, they carried me the rest of the way, chucked me on my bunk, and returned to the bar to carry on where they'd left off.
The point is, I've never got that time back. That whole evening is a void, and it will be for the rest of my days. I'm thinking it's going to be the same this time round.
'Are you all right?' asks the blonde. She's looking at me with an expression that may actually be concern. That's what I'm hoping anyway.
I look at her properly for the first time. She's changed since the brothel and is now wearing a plain white T-shirt and a pair of navy blue jeans that look like they were painted on. The T-shirt's crumpled, and there's a three-inch tear running up the side stitching. There are thick red welts forming on her neck where Marco went to work, and her cheeks are flushed the colour of wine. She looks as tense as a coiled spring, and her hands are tight on the steering wheel.
I tell her I'm fine, and ask how she is.
'I'm OK,' she replies without looking at me, and gives me a thanks – a genuine one this time. 'You saved me back there.'
'Just returning the favour for earlier,' I say modestly.
'I couldn't let them kill you.'
'Why not? You must have known before what they were going to do.'
'I was made to use that stun baton on you,' she answers. 'Marco told me that if I didn't, he'd kill me.'
This time she does look at me, and I have to say that her ordeal has done nothing to obscure her looks. Straight away I'm drawn to her eyes. They're perfect ovals, the colour of polished bronze. There's something pure in them that makes me desperately want to trust what she says.
We've pulled onto the Edgware Road now, heading north in the direction of Kilburn.
'OK,' I say, nodding slowly as we stop at some red lights, 'so you were forced into attacking me?'
'Yes,' she answers, 'I was.'
'What's your name again?' I ask her.
'Alannah.'
And then I remember: that was how she introduced herself when she knocked on the door at the brothel to warn us about the fire.
'That's a nice name,' I say, 'but, you know, Alannah, I'm a little confused. You've got a key to an apartment belonging to this man Marco, and you were talking happily enough with him earlier after you'd dragged me up to that room in the brothel, which means that you work for the same outfit he does. But when my interrogator pulled a gun on me, you jumped on his back. Then a few hours later I come by and Marco's trying to kill you, and when I try to stop him and get knocked semi-conscious for my troubles, you suddenly leap into action again and do a very creditable version of the karate kid.' I sigh. 'Now you're looking at me all doe-eyed and innocent, and I've got to say it's a look that suits you very much, but it also makes me think, to use an English phrase you may not be familiar with, that there's a lot more to you than meets the eye. So, tell me, why should I trust you?'
'Well,' she answers, 'I'm a little confused as well, because you too are something of a mystery. I've never seen you before, yet you come into the club today and shoot Pero dead.'
'That was an accident. He was struggling and the gun went off by mistake.'
She raises her eyebrows sceptically. They're darker than her hair, and they stand out against the gold of her skin. 'That's not what I heard,' she says, pulling away as the traffic ahead moves. 'What I heard is that you might have information that would help them. Marco said very little about you, except that you were very dangerous, and that you had to die. That's why I helped you, because I knew what those animals were planning. But then, suddenly, you turn up out of nowhere at his place saying you've been set up and that Marco knows by who, and then insist on leaving with me. So my question is, who the hell are you? And since this is my car that you're in, you can tell me first.'
Her tone's firm and final. I already knew this girl had backbone, now I realize it may well be made of steel. But I've got to be careful about what I say. So I give her a basic story, tweaked just a little so that I don't incriminate myself, and leaving out the details she doesn't need to know, particularly those involving Leah. Mentioning her will only complicate matters. I tell Alannah that I'm an ex-soldier who was paid to deliver a briefcase to Marco but that he ripped me off and tried to have me killed. A friend of mine put a tracker on the case, and that's how I found the location of the brothel, but when I arrived there, I found that my friend had been murdered, and the tracker left with his body.
'Do you know anything about that?' I ask her.
She looks genuinely shocked. 'No, of course not. You're saying that someone murdered your friend out on the street?'
'They cut his throat while he was sitting in his car, no more than fifty yards from the front door of your brothel, and no more than fifteen minutes before I went inside. So, whoever did it must have been hanging around.'
Again she denies any knowledge of the killing.
'I had a gun on me,' I continue, 'just for protection, and I went inside the brothel to track down Marco. I got your man Pero to take me upstairs, we surprised Marco, and then Pero started struggling with me. The gun went off, and the rest you know.'
'What's in the briefcase?'
I think about the finger from Ferrie's apartment. 'I don't know.'
'You're just a delivery boy, right? You don't know what you're delivering and you don't care, so long as the money's right. Is that a good description?'
Her tone's surprisingly accusatory. Here I am sitting next to someone I thought was a female gangster, yet she's not acting like one. I experience a sudden, very powerful urge to tell her the truth. That I'm actually a normal hardworking guy who's got caught up in something that has nothing to do with him. But it's an urge I resist.
'Yeah,' I agree with a sigh, 'it's as good a description as any.'
'And have you got a name, Delivery Man?'
'It's Tyler.'
'Well, Mr Tyler, I might be able to help you. And you might be able to help me.'
'Really? How does that work, then?'
We've turned off the main road and are heading into an estate of cheap 1970s terraced housing built by a developer who clearly had a surplus of breeze blocks and a dearth of taste. Alannah parks outside one of them and cuts the engine.
'Come inside,' she says, 'and I'll tell you.'
I have no idea what she's going to say, nor am I much inclined to take a guess. It's been a bad day. Trusting anyone's a risk. But when you're tired and thirsty, and a beautiful blonde asks you into her house, you're really going to have to fight hard to say no. And I'm just not in the mood.
I get out of the car and follow her to the front door.