‘Once that’s done, we should be in business. Know what I mean?’

‘No. Just give me all you have so far.’

‘No point. I don’t want to run the risk of… unintentionally misleading you.’ Marty’s smile, doubtless intended to be reassuring, looked patently disingenuous to Eusden. ‘By tonight, everything should be clearer. And I’ll be happy to share it with you. Now, what about that gravestone?’

Burgaard’s mouth tightened. ‘Do you think I’m a fool, Mr Hewitson?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You get nothing more till I get something.’

‘No need to be like that.’

‘Yes, there is. You’ve cheated me. You promised me information.’

‘And you’ll get it.’ Marty leant forward and looked Burgaard in the eye. ‘Tonight.’

The journey back to Århus was a wordless ordeal. Burgaard drove fast and tensely, like a man simmering with resentment, as Eusden had no doubt he was. Eusden was feeling pretty resentful himself. Marty was stringing him along as well as Burgaard. This had always been the way of it, of course. Marty had never been able to resist playing the role of smart arse. Several of the more infuriating passages of their friendship replayed themselves in Eusden’s memory as they sped through the Jutland countryside.

Eusden had assumed Burgaard would drop them at their hotel, but he noticed after they had entered the city that they were on a ring road, skirting the centre, and soon the university campus appeared to their right. Soon after that, they pulled into a car park behind a cluster of multi-storey red-brick accommodation blocks.

‘I’ll expect to see you tonight, then,’ said Burgaard as they climbed out, his voice flat and expressionless. ‘I’ll be waiting for your call.’ With that he plodded off towards the entrance of the nearest block.

‘How are we supposed to get back to the Royal?’ Marty called after him.

‘Take the bus. Or walk. I don’t care.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

Burgaard’s answer to that was a V-sign, delivered without a backward glance. Eusden could hardly blame him. And even Marty seemed to consider further protest pointless. He lit a cigarette as they watched Burgaard vanish indoors.

‘Why don’t we try to track down a restaurant over there?’ Marty nodded in the direction of the shopping street they had turned off a few minutes previously. ‘We’ll feel better after we’ve had something to eat and drink.’

Eusden looked at him unsmilingly. ‘Why not?’

A dismal pizza parlour was the best they could find so far from the city centre. Eusden contained himself while food was ordered and beer delivered to their table, then let Marty have it.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, giving Burgaard the runaround like that? The poor bloke’s offering to help you.’

‘It couldn’t be avoided,’ Marty replied, beaming at Eusden over his glass of Carlsberg.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Like I told him: I’m waiting for a phone call.’

‘That was true?’

‘Certainly.’

‘You never mentioned any call to me.’

‘You never mentioned your rendezvous with clever clogs Karsten until after the event.’

‘And that’s how I’d have got to hear about the call?’

‘Yeah. What’s the problem?’

‘Who’s the call from?’

‘You don’t need to know just yet. I’m hoping for… some good news. Let’s leave it like that.’

‘You’re not going to tell me?’

‘I’d rather not. It’d be tempting fate.’

‘Well, I’d rather you did. It’s bad enough keeping Burgaard in the dark. I’m supposed to be your friend.’

‘Calm down, Richard. You’re ranting.’

It was true, in the sense that Eusden’s voice had risen steadily during their exchanges. He noticed the waiter peering apprehensively round the kitchen blind. He tried to stifle some of the anger he felt.

‘You reckon I’m handling Burgaard badly, do you?’ Marty asked.

‘Yes. There was more he’d have told us if you’d offered him something in return.’

‘More of the same, in all likelihood. That stuff about Nydahl’s cache of Finnish currency? Old news, I’m afraid.’

‘You already knew?’

‘Sure. It was about the only interesting fact I dug up on the man.’

‘When were you planning to tell me about it?’

‘I thought I had. In fact, I meant to congratulate you on acting dumb so convincingly.’

‘You said you found out nothing about him.’

‘Did I? Sorry. It must have… slipped my mind.’

‘Slipped your mind?’

Marty shrugged. ‘I’m not firing on all synapses.’

The blatant bid for sympathy was the last straw for Eusden. He should have remembered: there always came a time when Marty drove him beyond endurance. He shook his head ruefully and stood up.

‘Going somewhere?’

‘For a walk. I’ll see you back at the hotel.’

‘What about your pizza?’

‘The way I feel at the moment, I think it might choke me.’

‘Hold on. There’s no-’

‘Save it, Marty, OK?’ Eusden held up a hand in solemn warning. ‘Whatever you’ve got to say, I don’t want to hear it.’

They had planned to potter round Bembridge Harbour and The Duver before tea with Aunt Lily at her cottage in St Helens. It was a hot, windless day towards the end of August, 1971. The tide was exceptionally low – low enough, according to Marty, who claimed to have studied the tables, for them to walk out through the shallows to St Helens Fort. It was one of Palmerston’s Follies, a ring of forts on sea and land around Portsmouth, built to defend the home of the Royal Navy from attack by the French. All had long since been abandoned. The expedition was too tempting an idea to resist. And they made it out there with some ease. But a futile attempt to penetrate the fort delayed their return journey and Marty tardily admitted that he did not actually know when the tide was due to turn. Beaten back by the inrushing sea and lucky not to be drowned, they were eventually rescued by a passing yachtsman as darkness was falling.

It was an important lesson in a subject Richard Eusden was to become an expert on: the inherent unreliability of Marty Hewitson. Marty was generous, but seldom repaid a debt unless reminded of it. He was game for anything, but often failed to turn up when the time came. He was confident in everything he asserted or proposed, but the confidence he inspired in others was frequently misplaced. In short, he possessed charm in abundance. But even abundance can be exhausted.

The exasperation Eusden felt as he trudged down past the campus of Århus University towards the city centre was thus all too familiar to him. Burgaard had asked Marty if he thought him a fool and Eusden could well have asked the same question of himself. Except that he knew the answer, as Burgaard did not. Marty treated everyone in the same way, whether he thought them a fool, or a friend, or both. He was never going to change. Believing everything he said – or believing he had told you everything: that was foolishness.

Eusden went into a bar down by the riverside, where he ate a club sandwich, drank several beers and considered what he should do. Suspicion is a progressive disorder and he had started to wonder just how deceitful Marty was being. He could not have invented the whole thing. Werner Straub was real enough, as was Karsten Burgaard. They were on to something. But was it really connected with Anastasia? And was Marty really dying? Doubt had begun to weevil into Eusden’s mind on every count.

By the time he returned to the Royal, he had half-decided to tell Marty he was bailing out and heading back to London by the first available flight. As it was, he never got the chance. A woman was waiting for him in the lobby. With her iron-grey hair, raw-boned, weathered face and faintly old-fashioned outfit of loden and tweed, she looked like a well-to-do countrywoman of sixty or so on a shopping expedition to the city. And that did not turn out to be a misleading impression, although shopping was not high on her agenda.