Number Nineteen

On a grey afternoon in a quiet London park, a shabby vagrant known only as Ben makes a fateful decision to sit on a particular bench. Moments later, a stranger with a camera strolls by, and before Ben can comprehend what is happening, the man at the other end of the seat is dead-a knife in his back. But when Ben awakens in an unfamiliar room, wearing clothes that are not his own, the real nightmare begins.The murderer, a cool and calculating figure who calls himself Mr Smith, presents Ben with an impossible choice: face the gallows for a crime he did not commit, or accept a sinister job as caretaker of a decaying house at Number Nineteen, Billiter Road. Trapped in a web of false evidence and psychological manipulation, Ben must navigate a house filled with secrets, spiders, and unseen dangers, all while pretending to be the dull-witted drifter his captor believes him to be.But Ben has survived worse scrapes before, and behind his glazed eyes a desperate plan is forming. The question is whether he can outwit a man who seems always one step ahead-and what truly happened to the previous caretaker.