I have tipped the mattresses off all the beds. Stripped them of sheets and blankets. I have emptied every cupboard. Pots and pans are strewn across the floor, the kitchen table piled with crockery.
I have already been through the car, checking under seats, searching for hidden pockets. I have torn up the carpet and removed the spare wheel from its well in the boot. And I am alarmed to realise that I have no logbook for this vehicle, nor apparently a licence to drive it.
The cushions from the settee are piled in the middle of the sitting-room floor. I have unzipped their leather covers in search of anything I might have hidden inside them.
And I am slumped now at the kitchen table, almost in tears. To describe my mood as despairing would be the antithesis of hyperbole. I feel hopeless and helpless and scared, frustration welling up inside me, ready to explode in anger or violence, or both. I find myself wishing now that I had drowned in the aftermath of whatever happened out on Eilean Mòr the night I lost my boat. I grip my hair in both hands, tipping my head back and shouting at the ceiling.
Bran, who has been following me around, excited and bewildered, barks now. He must wonder why this lunatic who has been rampaging about the house has the same scent as his master. And the tears of vexation that have been gathering in my eyes finally spill over to burn my cheeks as they run down my face.
I wipe them away with my palms and force myself to stop hyperventilating, and try to think clearly. It is not easy. There is simply nothing in the house to tell me who I am, beyond a name. When the money in my wallet runs out, I have no idea how I will buy food, or petrol for the car. If I am stopped by the police while driving, I will be unable to show them a licence or papers of ownership, and will then have only five days in which to confess my loss of memory, or run.
I daren’t even contemplate the man in the ruined chapel on Eilean Mòr. Because, the more I think about him, the more convinced I become that it was me who killed him. The urge simply to run is almost irresistible. But where would I run to, and how would I finance it?
I don’t know how long it is I have been sitting at the table before I get up and wander through to the hall, thinking vaguely that perhaps I should start to clear up. The day has passed in a blur, and the light is fading outside. Bad weather has set in again, and rain is battering against the windows, running like tears down the glass.
Bran pushes my hand with his head and I realise I have just been standing here in the hall, inert, my brain and all my thinking processes on hold, unable to recall exactly why it was I had come through. Which is when I notice for the first time the hatch in the ceiling outside the spare room. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, because it now feels as if I always knew it was there.
I wonder how I will reach it, for I can’t recall seeing stepladders anywhere in the house. Then I remember the garden shed, which would be an obvious place to keep them. I hurry out into horizontal rain that catches the last light of the day and streaks the coming darkness. I am soaked within seconds. But the shed is securely padlocked, and I know that there was no key for it among the ones I recovered from the car.
Back in the house, I check the kitchen cupboard again, in case somehow I had missed a pair of stepladders. But, of course, there are none. Only brooms and shovels, and cleaning fluids on a shelf above them. I have almost shut the door when I see it. A pole about two metres long, with a shallow S-shaped hook on the end of it, hanging on the back of the door, and I realise immediately what it is for.
Outside the spare room, I look up and see the cream-painted metal loop set into the hatch. I raise the pole, slot the hook into it and pull it down. Initially it resists the pull of the spring that holds it, until finally it locks in place and reveals the bottom rungs of a folding ladder. I hook the pole now into the ladder and extend it down to the floor.
Bran leaps out of the way of the pole as I let it fall, and I climb rapidly up into the roof space. It is dark, and I reach into it, fumbling about until I find a switch that fills the attic with light from a solitary naked bulb. Apart from the layers of insulation between the rafters, it is quite empty. With the exception of a single black briefcase that stands up, just within reach.
My fingers are trembling as they close around the handle, and I pull it towards me before climbing quickly back down to the hall. I want to throw the briefcase on the floor and open it right there and then. But I force myself to stay calm and carry it through to the kitchen, where I sit down and set it on the table in front of me. And now I am almost afraid to open it. Perhaps it is better to live in ignorance than be confronted with an unpalatable truth.
Finally I lay it flat, release the clasps and lift the lid. I am not sure what I might have been expecting, but I could hardly have been more startled. The briefcase is filled with bundles of £50 notes. Twelve bundles altogether, with space left by others that have clearly been taken. Spent, no doubt. With the silence of the house ringing in my ears, and a sensation of blood pulsing in my head, I lift one of the bundles and count twenty notes. £1,000 per bundle. £12,000 in total, and there might easily have been another eight bundles in the case to begin with.
At least I know now how I financed my life here. With cash. But whose cash, and why? Is it stolen money, or payment of some kind? One answer simply raises more questions. I sit staring at the notes in disbelief for a very long time, at the end of which I hear my own voice. ‘Jesus!’ It is a whispered oath, as if I am almost scared to speak out loud.
Then I notice the fold-out compartment in the lid. If it were empty, it would be sitting flush. But it isn’t. I pull it open and draw out a blue folder. I push the briefcase aside and lay the folder in front of me to open it. My mouth is very dry, my tongue almost sticking to the roof of my mouth, but it doesn’t even occur to me to get a drink.
Inside the folder, held together by a paperclip, is a bundle of badly photocopied sheets of A4 paper. I say badly photocopied because these are duplicates of newspaper cuttings that are almost unreadable. Too much ink has made the letters and words of the text thick and furry, and the accompanying photographs so dark as to be very nearly black.
I remove the paperclip and start to sift through them, aware that my breathing is so rapid and shallow that I am starting to become light-headed. I stop and take a deep breath and examine the sheets that I hold in my hands. They are all clippings of articles taken from newspapers and magazines dating back to 2009. And they are all about me.
‘Thirty-five-year-old champion yachtsman, Neal Maclean.’ ‘Thirty-six-year-old team trainer, Neal Maclean.’ ‘Neal Maclean (37), successful Scottish youth coach...’
A champion in my own right as a young man, it seems I am now training youth groups and individuals participating in single-handed racing events organised by the Royal Yachting Association of Scotland. One on the Clyde coast. Another in the Firth of Forth. A weekend of racing on Loch Lomond. Coach of the winning team at the 2012 West Highland Yachting Week. Head coach of the Scotland team sent to Weymouth to compete in the Youth Nationals in 2013. Heading up the RYA Scotland Junior Class Academy summer programme that same year.
The photographs are mostly of young men and women who have won competitions, but there is one taken of the entire Scotland youth team. Black-smudged smiling faces with me at their centre. My features, along with everyone else’s, are virtually indistinguishable, but my curly black hair, longer then, is unmistakable.
I scan each article, hungry for personal details. But there are none. Just my age. And I read about myself getting older with almost every piece. By my reckoning, I must now be either thirty-eight or thirty-nine. No mention of family, or occupation, or home city. None of these posts is professional. Sailing is my hobby. While I know more, now, about how I spend my spare time, I know nothing further about myself.