Recall, page 1
RECALL
The Man Who Forgot Who He Was
BY STEPHEN LEATHER
Copyright © 2025 by Stephen Leather
The right of Stephen Leather to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Also by Stephen Leather
Pay Off, The Fireman, Hungry Ghost, The Chinaman, The Vets, The Long Shot, The Birthday Girl, The Double Tap, The Solitary Man, The Tunnel Rats, The Bombmaker, The Stretch, Tango One, The Eyewitness, Penalties, Once Bitten, The Basement, The Bestseller, Take Two, Takedown, The Shout, The Bag Carrier, Plausible Deniability, Last Man Standing, Rogue Warrior, The Runner, Breakout, The Hunting, Desperate Measures, Standing Alone, The Chase, Still Standing, Triggers, Standing Strong
Spider Shepherd thrillers:
Hard Landing, Soft Target, Cold Kill, Hot Blood, Dead Men, Live Fire, Rough Justice, Fair Game, False Friends, True Colours, White Lies, Black Ops, Dark Forces, Light Touch, Tall Order, Short Range, Slow Burn, Fast Track, Dirty War, Clean Kill. First Strike, Last Chance, Broken Promises
Spider Shepherd: SAS thrillers:
The Sandpit, Moving Targets, Drop Zone, Russian Roulette, Baltic Black Ops
Jack Nightingale supernatural thrillers:
Nightfall, Midnight, Nightmare, Nightshade, Lastnight, San Francisco Night, New York Night, Tennessee Night, New Orleans Night, Las Vegas Night, Rio Grande Night, Houston Night
About the author
Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers, an ebook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Born in Manchester, he began writing full time in 1992. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country’s most successful ebook authors and his ebooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. In 2011 alone he sold more than 500,000 ebooks and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series and two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV. In 2017 The Chinaman was filmed as The Foreigner starring Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan.
You can learn about Stephen Leather from his website, www.stephenleather.com, or find him on Facebook.
RECALL
The Man Who Forgot Who He Was
You’ve woken up in a hospital bed with no memory of who you are or how you came to be hurt.
But the police are at hand to fill you in on what happened.
You were in a car accident. And they have found a dead body in the boot.
You want to tell them that you’re an innocent man, that you’re not a murderer, but you don’t know why you were in the car or where you were going. You can’t even remember your own name.
Then a mysterious woman arrives, offering you a way out of your predicament. All you have to do is trust her.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 1
So you open your eyes and that’s great but everything is blurry so you blink a few times and gradually everything comes into focus but there isn’t much to see because you’re lying on your back and looking at a ceiling. It’s mainly white and featureless but there’s a fluorescent light fitting so you can focus on that but it doesn’t tell you where you are so you turn your head to the left and that’s when you see the bank of monitors that are obviously responsible for the beeping noises you keep hearing. You blink again. There’s something attached to your left forearm and it gets tighter and tighter and then relaxes. You know what it is. It’s a blood pressure cuff. It’s measuring your blood pressure and one of the monitors is showing 120/80 which is good. Very good, in fact.
You’re in a hospital. Well, that’s a start.
You turn your head to the right. It hurts. Actually it’s an ache. A dull ache. Your whole body aches. On a scale of one to ten, where one is no pain at all and ten is absolute agony, you’re probably feeling three going on four, which isn’t bad. It’s discomfort rather than pain that you’re feeling. So that’s good.
There’s a plastic tube disappearing into a bandage on your right wrist and there’s a plastic bag full of a clear liquid on a chrome stand next to the bed. A drip, they call it. You’re on a drip.
So definitely a hospital.
You wriggle your left toes, then your right toes. You can feel them all so no spinal damage. Just to be sure you waggle the fingers of your right hand, and then the left. All present and accounted for. So your neck is good, you can move your fingers and toes, and your eyes and ears are working just as they’re supposed to. So why are you lying in a hospital bed?
There’s a door to your left, but it’s closed. There’s probably a bell or something nearby so that you can summon a nurse, but you can’t see it. You try to sit up but it’s too much of an effort. You don’t have the strength to sit, which is not good news.
You take a deep breath and that doesn’t hurt so your chest is probably all right. And there are no tubes to help you breathe, which has to be a good sign.
So the big question is, what happened? You have no idea. Absolutely no idea at all. Was it a car accident? A stroke? A heart attack? Did Professor Plum hit you over the head with a lead pipe in the library?
You don’t feel as if you were hit over the head with a lead pipe, and surely your chest would hurt more if you’d had a heart attack. So a stroke, maybe? But if you’d had a stroke, wouldn't you have problems moving your fingers?
The beeping sound that marks your pulse starts to accelerate, and that’s not good, so you concentrate on breathing slowly and try to relax and gradually it slows. You look over at the machine that is monitoring your pulse and it’s showing 70 bpm which is obviously beats per minute, and that’s good. In fact, all your vital signs are good, so why are you lying in a hospital bed?
Something must have happened, but what? Where were you? What were you doing? When did it happen? The questions race through your mind and you don’t have any answers. Not one. And what’s worse, much much worse, is that no matter how hard you try to remember, you don’t even know who you are. The more you try to focus on who you are, the tireder you become and after a few minutes you can barely keep your eyes open. You fight to stay awake but it’s a losing battle. You sleep.
CHAPTER 2
You open your eyes and wonder how long you slept for. The lights are on and the blinds are down so you have no idea if it’s day or night. You look over at the machine that is measuring your pulse and squint at the screen. There’s a time. 14.30. So half past two in the afternoon, assuming that the time has been set correctly. You lift your left arm. You’re wearing a watch. A Rolex. The hands are pointing to two thirty. You know it’s an expensive watch - a Daytona - but you can’t remember how you got it, whether it was a gift or you bought it yourself.
You lie back and stare at the ceiling again and try to remember your name. How hard can that be? Andrew? Jack? Martin? John? Paul? George? Ringo? How can you remember the names of The Beatles but can’t remember your own name? It doesn’t make sense.
The door opens and you turn your head to see that a nurse has walked in. She’s West Indian or African with skin as dark as polished ebony and oval-shaped eyes either side of a snub nose. Her hair is short and tightly curled and she has white varnish on her nails. Around her neck is a blue stethoscope, a darker blue than her tunic and trousers. She smiles when she sees you looking at her. ‘You’re awake?’
‘I guess I am.’
She walks over to the bed and looks at your monitors. ‘How long have you been awake?’ she asks.
‘Not long. Where am I?’
‘In hospital,’ she says. ‘Are you okay? How do you feel? The doctors were worried about you.’
‘What country?’ you say.
She frowns. ‘England, of course.’
& nbsp; ‘Where are you from?’ you ask.
‘Me? Nigeria.’
‘And where is the hospital?’ you ask.
‘London.’ She frowns at you. ‘Is your memory giving you problems?’
You nod. ‘I think so. Do you know my name?’
‘It says on your chart that your name is James Connolly.’
The name means nothing to you. ‘Does the chart say anything about me?’
She peers at the chart at the end of your bed. ‘James Connolly. Multiple contusions and cracked ribs. Mild trauma to spleen. RTA. That means Road Traffic Accident. B positive. That’s your blood group.’
‘Nothing else? No address?’
‘Sorry.’
‘What about my belongings?’ you say. ‘Did I have a wallet with me?’
She opens a drawer, looks inside, and shakes her head. ‘No, there’s nothing here. Do you know what happened?’
‘I don’t,’ you say. ‘I can’t remember anything before I opened my eyes. How long have I been here?’
‘In the hospital? Two days, I think. Two days and one night.’
‘So I was in a coma?’
She nods. ‘You were. But you were breathing on your own.’ She smiles brightly. ‘And now you’re awake. Which is an improvement.’
You force a smile. ‘Do you have a mirror?’
‘A mirror?’
‘I want to see what I look like.’
She frowns as if what you just said didn’t make any sense. ‘You’ve forgotten what you look like?’
‘Sounds crazy, doesn't it?’
She smiles. ‘It does.’ She looks around the room. ‘There’s a mirror over the sink but I can’t move it,’ she says. ‘Oh, wait. What about my phone?’ She takes her phone out of her uniform pocket and taps on it. ‘There you are,’ she says.
She holds out the phone and shows you the screen. It’s your face, clearly, but it’s not a face you’ve ever seen before. Or if you have seen it, you’ve forgotten it. You’re about thirty years old, your eyes are blue, your hair is brown, chestnut brown, your nose looks like it might have been broken in the past. There’s a bruise on your right cheek and grazed skin on your left cheek. You bare your teeth. They are all there and they’re very white so you probably don’t smoke or drink too much coffee. That makes you stop and think. Do you drink coffee? Or tea? Do you take milk? Or sugar? You don’t know and that doesn’t make sense, you know what coffee is but you can’t remember ever drinking it.
‘Are you okay?’ she says.
You force a smile. ‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Does it help you remember?’ she asks .
You shake your head. ‘Not really.’
‘Do you have a girlfriend? Or a wife?’
You lift up your left hand. There’s no wedding ring. ‘I don’t know.’ You realise that there’s a paper tag around your wrist. You blink your eyes and focus on it. There’s a name, JAMES CONNOLLY. And a date of birth. JANUARY 1 1990. ‘Is that my date of birth?’ you ask.
‘If we’re not provided with a date of birth, the computer generates one,’ she says. ‘It’ll generate a name, too, if one isn’t provided. It used to say UNKNOWN MALE but that led to problems if we had more than one unidentified patient. Sometimes they would get the wrong medicine and that usually doesn’t end well.’
‘So who gave you the name?’ you ask. ‘James Connolly. Who told you that was my name.’
‘Probably the paramedic when you were taken into Accident and Emergency.’
‘But where would he have got the name from? I was unconscious, wasn’t I?”
‘I can check for you, if you want,’ she says.
‘Please, yes, if you would.’
She takes the phone away and puts it back in her pocket. ‘You’re a good-looking guy, you must have somebody who cares about you. They’ll be looking for you and when someone is missing the first thing you do is check the hospitals. If you’ve got a wife or a girlfriend she’ll be frantic by now.’ She frowns. ‘Or maybe you’re gay,’ she says.
You frown. ‘I don’t think I am,’ you say.
‘But you don’t know for sure?’ she says.
You smile. When you look at the nurse, you have no problem picturing her naked and imagining what it would be like to make love to her. So you’re pretty sure you’re not gay. But if you have had previous relationships, if you have made love to a girl, to anyone, you have absolutely no memory of it. ‘I’m pretty sure I’m straight,’ you say.
She smiles, with her mouth and eyes. ‘Yeah, I’m not getting a gay vibe off you,’ she says. She looks at the chart again. ‘It says here you haven’t had anything to eat since you were admitted,’ she says. ‘Are you hungry?’
You realise that you are. ‘I am,’ you say.
‘What would you like to eat?’
You frown as you consider her question. You have absolutely no idea what your favourite food is. ‘Anything,’ you say.
‘I’ll get one of the doctors,’ she says. ‘They’ll be thrilled that you’re finally awake.’
CHAPTER 3
After the nurse leaves, you stare up at the ceiling. You realise you don’t know her name. Did she tell you? You don’t remember asking. You try to picture her in your mind and you realise that she had been wearing a name badge. It was bright yellow and her name was in black - ADEYA. You smile. You can clearly create new memories. You remember her name tag. And you remember everything she said to you while she was in the room. That’s definitely good news. What isn’t so good is that you can’t remember a single thing before you woke up.
You wrinkle your nose. Actually that’s not true. You can remember lots of things. Your brain is packed with information, with facts and figures. When the nurse said she was from Nigeria, you knew where that was. You knew that Nigeria is in Africa. And you know lots of countries. Argentina. Brazil. Canada. Denmark. Egypt. France. Germany. Hungary. India. Japan. Kenya. Laos. Mexico. Nigeria. Oman. Portugal. Qatar. Romania. Spain. Thailand. Uruguay. Vietnam. Wales. Yemen. Zambia. You are fairly sure that no country begins with X. It’s theoretically possible that there might be a country that begins with X and that you’ve forgotten it, but that’s unlikely.
Animals. You know loads of animals. And you know what they look like. Antelope. Bear. Cheetah. Dolphin. Elephant. Flamingo. Giraffe. Hippopotamus. Iguana. Jaguar. Kangaroo. Lion. Meerkat. Newt. Octopus. Penguin. Quail. Rabbit. Shark. Turtle. Urchin. Vulture. Walrus. Xerus. Yak. Zebra You are especially proud of Xerus, a type of African ground squirrel. But how could you possibly know that and not know where you live? Or where you were born? Or where you went to school?
You think back to when Adeya entered your room. You can remember what she said. In fact you can remember everything she said. You can remember the sly smile she gave you when she said she didn’t get a gay vibe from you. So you can definitely create new memories, that’s not a problem. And you can access memories about thing and places. You know the names of everything you can see around you. IV pole. IV bags. Heart monitor. Oxygen tank. Pulse oximeter. Overbed table. Curtain divider. Pillow. Disposable gloves. Scissors. Forceps. Tongue depressor. Sterile gauze. Bandages. Alcohol wipes. Cotton swabs. Medical tape. Tissues. Trash can. Biohazard bin. Hand sanitiser dispenser. You know the names of all these things but you don’t know the names of your mother and father. You know that you must have had a mother and a father, but you can’t picture their faces or remember a single thing about them.
You don’t remember going to school. Or playing sport. You remember lots of sports. Football. Rugby Union. Cricket. Tennis. Golf. Badminton. Hockey. Netball. Squash. Cycling. Athletics. Swimming. Boxing. Darts. Is darts a sport or a game? Ditto Snooker. And table tennis. You can remember so many sports but you can’t ever remember playing one. You must have done football and athletics at school, every kid does, but you can’t remember a single sports day.
The door opens and a man in a white coat comes into the room. He’s young, probably not even thirty yet, with acne scars on both cheeks and hair that looks as if he hasn’t washed it for a few days. He has a grey stethoscope around his neck and under his white coat he’s wearing a denim shirt and dark brown cargo pants with lots of pockets. ‘So you’re awake,’ he says.
‘Apparently so.’
‘That’s great news, we were starting to worry about you there. I’m Doctor Mackenzie.’
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