'We thought we'd got the artery but you just kept pumping it out. It took a couple of goes,' a cheerful doctor told him. 'Dr Bruce, call me Mike,' he said, sitting on the end ofJackson's bed and grinning at him as if they'd just met in a bar. Call-Me-Mike was too young to be a doctor. Jackson wondered ifthe nurses knew that a boy from the local primary school was loose on the wards.

'Just humour him,' the fuzzy -now less fuzzy -nurse murmured in Jackson's ear. 'He thinks he's a grown-up.'

'Thank you,' Jackson said to him.

'No worries, mate.'

An Australian schoolboy.

The junior registrar, 'Dr Samms -call-me-Charlie,' looked like Harry Potter. Jackson didn't really want to be treated by a doctor who looked like Harry Potter but he wasn't in a position to argue. 'You seem to have taken a bit of a dunt to the head,' wizard-boy said. 'Ever had one before?'

'Maybe,' Jackson said. 'Not a good idea,' wizard-boy said, as if being banged on the head was something you volunteered for.

'Fuzzy,' Jackson said. It was definitely his favourite word. When his daughter was first learning to talk her first word was 'cat'. She used it for everything -ducks, milk, buggy -anything of interest in her life, everything was 'cat'. A one-word world. It made life much simpler, he must phone her and tell her. As soon as he could remember her name. Or, come to that, his own name.

He slept and when he woke again there was another nurse by the side of the bed. 'Who am I?' he asked. He sounded like an amateur philosopher but it wasn't a metaphysical question. Really, who was he?

'Your name's Andrew Decker,' she said.

'Really?' Jackson said. The name rang a tiny, tiny bell somewhere in the dark pit of his abandoned memories, yet he didn't have any relationship with it at all. He didn't feel like an Andrew Decker, but then he didn't really feel like anyone. 'How do you know?'

'Your wallet was in your jacket pocket,' the nurse said. It had a driving licence with your name and address on it. The police are trying to contact someone at the address.'

His ulnar artery had been partially severed, leading to 'profuse and rapid bleeding', the Potter lookalike said. His blood pressure had dropped and he had gone into shock. His brain had been starved of blood, 'Fatigue, shortness of breath, chills?' Australian Mike, the flying doctor, said. He looked as ifhe took more drugs than his patients. 'Nausea, confusion, disorientation, hallucinations? Yeah?'

'I was in a white corridor.'

'Bit of a cliche,' wizard-boy said.

'Don't knock it till you've tried it,' Jackson said.

'You might never remember the accident,' the flying doctor said. 'It was probably never transferred into your long-term memory. But you'll remember just about everything else. After all, you already know you have a daughter.'

Someone had given him first aid, had saved his life at the scene. One more person he would never be able to thank.

A policewoman came and sat by the side of his bed and waited patiently for him to focus on her. Someone had visited the address on his driving licence and the people who lived there had never heard of an 'Andrew Decker'. It was an old driving licence, not a photocard, perhaps he had failed to renew it when he changed address?

Jackson looked at her blankly. 'No idea.' 'Well, early days,' she said cheerfully. 'Someone's bound to come forward and claim you.'

It was strange to be surrounded by the aftermath of a disaster that you had no memory of. He could remember nothing about the train crash, could remember nothing about anything. He was a blank sheet ofpaper, a clock without hands. Now he wished that he hadn't been so sparse with the information that he'd been branded with. Alongside his blood group he should have added his name, rank and number.

'I had my cat chipped,' a nurse said to him, 'it gives me peace of mind.'

'I died,' he said to a new doctor.

'Briefly,' she said dismissively as ifyou had to be dead a lot longer to impress her. Dr Foster, a woman, who didn't seem to want to be on first-name terms.

'But technically .. .' he said, too weak to pursue the argument.

She sighed as ifpatients were always bickering about their dead or alive status. 'Yes. Technically dead,' she conceded. 'Very briefly.'

He'd already been here in another lifetime. How many weeks? 'Eighteen hours actually,' the new doctor said. He'd been to hell and back (or possibly heaven and back) and it had taken less than a day. Quite impressive. When would they let him go home?

'How about when you know where you live?' Dr Foster offered.

'Fair enough,' Jackson said.

He slept. That's what he did. He was the sleeper. He slept for years. When he woke up they told him about the train crash again. A nurse showed him the front page of a newspaper. 'CARNAGE', it said. He couldn't remember what the word meant. Nothing to do with cars, he supposed. He liked cars. He was a man called Andrew Decker who liked cars but who had been travelling on a train, destination unknown. No ticket, no phone, no signs of a life. No one who had noticed that he'd gone and not come back.

Now how long had he been here?

'Twenty hours,' Dr Foster said.

Reggie Chase, Girl Detective '[ THOUGHT [ COULD TAKE THE DOG FOR A WALK.'

'The dog?'

'Sadie.'

Mr Hunter sounded hoarse. He hadn't shaved and looked tired. (He's like a bear in the morning.) He smelt of the cigarettes that he was supposed to have given up 'ages ago'. The kitchen was already a mess. It seemed he was going to keep her hovering on the doorstep rather than invite her in. Reggie caught sight of a half-empty bottle of whisky on the counter. 'Bachelor's rules apply,' he said. He gave a little laugh, 'When the eat's away the dog will play.' Two empty mugs sat on the big kitchen table, one of them had a smear of lipstick on the rim, pale coral, not Dr Hunter's colour. Did that come under Mr Hunter's bachelor rules too?

'Seeing as Dr Hunter usually takes Sadie for her walk,' Reggie said, 'I thought I could do it for you while she's visiting her aunt. Aunt Agnes.'

Mr Hunter rubbed the stubble on his face as if he was having trouble remembering who Reggie was. Sadie had no such problem, appearing at Mr Hunter's side, wagging her tail at the sight of Reggie, although in a more subdued way than usual.

'Have you spoken to Dr Hunter since she left on Wednesday night?'

'Yes, of course I have.'

'How did you speak to her?'

'How?' Mr Hunter frowned. 'On the phone of course.'

'Her phone?'

'Yes. Her phone.'

'Only I've been phoning Dr Hunter, on her phone, and get no answer.' 'I expect she's very busy.' 'With the aunt?' 'Yes, the aunt.' 'Aunt Agnes? In Hawes?' 'Yes and yes. I have spoken to her, Reggie. She's fine. She doesn't want to be bothered.'

'Bothered?'

'What did you do to your head?' Mr Hunter asked, changing the subject. 'You look worse than I feel.' Reggie gingerly felt the bruise on her forehead where she had hit it in the shower.

'Wasn't looking where I was going,' she said.

Sadie whined impatiently, she had heard the word 'walk' several sentences ago and still nothing had happened.

'You probably don't have time to take Sadie out,' Reggie said. 'You having a lot ofthings to do and everything.' Mr Hunter looked down at the dog as ifit was going to answer for him and then shrugged and said, 'Aye, right, fine, OK then.'Which seemed like a lot of words for 'yes', even for a Weegie.

'Can I have a phone number for Dr Hunter's aunt?'

'No.'

'Why not?' Reggie asked.

'Because her aunt needs peace and quiet.'

'Can I leave my bag?'

'Bag?' Mr Hunter echoed as if he couldn't see the enormous Topshop bag that Reggie had lugged all the way over here. She had taken the bus to the town centre and bled her Topshop account. She had fled the flat in Gorgie with what she stood up in (Ms MacDonald's clothes, unfortunately) and she wasn't going back for any of her stuff that was lying in a dodgy-smelling heap in her room.