That evening Rob told Christine that he had to go to Lalesh, and explained to her why.

She looked at him without saying anything. He told her, again, that Lalesh was the obvious place to finish the story. The answers to most of their puzzles lay with the Yezidi. The sacred capital was the only place he could find truly learned Yezidi. Scholars who could unwrap the enigma. And obviously it made sense for Rob to go alone. He knew Iraq. He knew the risks. He had contacts in that country. His paper would cover his enormous insurance bill, but they wouldn’t pay for Christine. So he had to go to Lalesh-and he had to go alone.

Christine seemed to accede and accept. And then she turned and walked, wordless, into the garden.

Rob hesitated. Should he join her? Leave her alone?

His reverie of indecision was broken by Isobel, humming a song as she walked through the kitchen. The older woman glanced at Rob, and then at the silhouetted figure, sitting in the garden.

‘You told her?’

‘She seemed OK about it, but then…’

Isobel sighed. ‘She was like this at Cambridge. When she’s upset, she doesn’t chuck things at walls, just bottles it up.’

Rob was torn. He hated to upset Christine, but the journey was a necessity: he was a foreign correspondent. He couldn’t pick or choose where his stories led him.

‘You know, I’m slightly surprised,’ Isobel said.

‘By what?

‘That she fell for you anyway. She doesn’t normally go for men like you. With cheekbones and blue eyes. Dashing adventurers. It’s usually older men. You do know she lost her dad when she was young, don’t you? She’s like any girl with that in her background. Always been attracted to the missing father figure. Advisors. Tutors.’ Isobel looked Rob in the eye. ‘Protectors.’

Across the waters came the hooting of a ferry. Rob listened to the echo rebounding. Then he stepped through the kitchen doorway, into the garden.

Christine was alone on the garden seat, staring through the moonlit pines. Without turning, she said, ‘Isobel is very lucky. This house is so beautiful.’

He sat down beside her and took her hand. The moonlight made her fingers seem very pale. ‘Christine, I need a favour.’

She turned to look at him.

He explained. ‘While I am in Lalesh…’ He paused. ‘Lizzie. Watch over her a little. Can you?’

Christine’s face was shadowed. A passing cloud had obscured the moon. ‘But I don’t understand. Lizzie’s with her mother.’

Rob sighed. ‘Sally works very hard at her job. Her studies. She’s got legal exams. I just want someone I really trust to…keep another eye on her. You’ll be staying with your sister, right? In Camden?’

Christine nodded.

‘So that’s barely three miles from Sally’s house. Knowing you were there, or just nearby, would make it a lot easier for me. Then maybe you could email me. Or call. I’ll ring Sally to make sure she knows who you are. She might even welcome the help. Maybe…’

The pine trees murmured; Christine nodded. ’I’ll go and see her. OK. And I’ll email you, every day…while you are in Iraq.’

When Christine said the word ‘Iraq’ Rob felt a shudder of fear. This was the real reason he wanted Christine to see and know his daughter: because he was worried for himself. Would he come back from this? Would he return and be a proper father? The Baghdad suicide bomber plagued his memories. He’d been lucky that time; maybe he wouldn’t be so lucky again. And if he didn’t come back-well then he wanted his daughter to meet and to know the woman he’d loved.

Iraq. Rob shuddered again. The word seemed to sum up all the danger he was about to face. The cities of death. The place of beheadings. The province of chanting men, and ancient stones, and terrible discoveries. And suicide bombers in bright red lipstick.

Christine squeezed his hand.

The next morning Rob got up without waking Christine. He left a note on the bedside table. Then he dressed, said goodbye to Andrea, hugged Isobel, stroked the cat, and took the sun-slanted path to the pier.

Twenty-four hours later, after one ferry ride, one cab ride, two plane trips and a gruelling service-taxi ride from Mardin airport, he arrived at the noisy tumult of the Iraqi-Turkey frontier post at Habur. It was a smoggy chaos of parked trucks and army tanks and impatient businessmen and bewildered pedestrians carrying shopping bags.

It took him five sweaty hours to cross the border. He was questioned for two of those hours by Turkish troops. Who was he? Why did he want to go to Iraq? Did he have links with the Kurdish rebels? Was he going to interview the PKK? Was he just stupid? A daredevil tourist? But they couldn’t stop him for ever. He had the visa, the documents, the fax from his editor-and at last he made it through. A barrier went up and he stepped over the invisible line. The first thing he noticed was a striking red and green flag with a sunburst symbol, fluttering above: the flag of free Kurdistan. The flag was banned in Iran, and you could actually go to prison for flying it in Turkey. But here, in the autonomous province of Kurdish Iraq, it was fluttering proudly and freely, flying stark against the burning blue sky.

Rob gazed south. A man with no teeth was staring at him from a wooden bench. A dog was urinating on an old tyre. The road ahead slid through the yellow and sunburnt hills, snaking towards the Mesopotamian plains. Shouldering his bag, Rob walked over to a dinged and rusty blue taxi.

The unshaven driver looked up at him with a wall eye. The only available transport was a oneeyed cabdriver. Rob felt like laughing. Instead he leaned towards the driver’s window and said, ‘Salaam aleikum. I want to go to Lalesh.’

Hugo De Savary got a taxi from the little station. In a few minutes he was speeding through gorgeous Dorset countryside in the full splendour of May. Hawthorn blossom and blowsy apple trees. Big clouds in a warm and smiling sky.

The taxi drove down a driveway ranked with large beech trees and came to a stop outside a grand manor house with rambling wings and gracious stone chimneys. All around the house overalled policemen were combing the lawns for evidence; others were coming out of the front door peeling off rubber gloves. He paid the cabbie, got out of the car, and glanced at the sign in front of the building: Canford School. From his research, done hastily on the train, he knew that the building had not long been a school: at least by the standards of its own history.

The estate itself dated back to Saxon times, when it encompassed large parts of Canford Magna, the nearby village. But only the Norman church and the fourteenth century ‘John of Gaunt’s’ kitchen survived from those earliest years. The rest of the building was late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. But nonetheless beautiful for that. The manor, converted to a school in the 1920s, stood in fine parkland beside the River Stour. De Savary could smell the freshness of the air, despite the warmth of this gorgeous day: the river was evidently close at hand.

‘Professor De Savary!’ It was DCI Forrester. ’Great you could come at such short notice.’

De Savary shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I can be of that much use.’

Forrester smiled, though, as De Savary noted, the policeman looked very haggard.

How bad was this murder, De Savary wondered? On the phone this morning all Forrester had said was that it had ‘some sacrificial elements’, which was why the professor had agreed to come. De Savary’s professional interest was piqued: he was vaguely wondering if the theme-of contemporary human sacrifice-might make another book. Or maybe even a TV series. ‘When was the body discovered?’ he asked.

‘Yesterday. Sheer luck. It’s half term so the school’s closed. The only person here was the caretaker. The victim. But there was a delivery…some sports equipment. An inquisitive kid thought something was up and poked his nose around.’