“Good for you I was passing.”

They’d been through this. It was good Philippe had been passing and even better that he stopped when Kit stuck out his thumb. So now Philippe wanted paying in English conversation and Kit was doing his best to oblige.

“It’s a clear morning.”

The driver peered intently through his windshield and then nodded agreement. “Very clear,” he said.

“And the sea is blue.”

“Very blue. Also grey.”

Kit sighed. It was 370 kilometres from Calais to Amsterdam and so far they’d managed 50 of them. If Philippe was to be believed, his cargo was going the whole way. Although Kit had a feeling his original question might have been misunderstood, he’d find out in a while.

“Your hand it is hurt?”

This was a fair guess, given Kit was wearing a finger shield and had tape holding what remained of his smallest finger to the ring finger next door. “An accident,” said Kit, folding his hand out of sight.

“Nasty,” Philippe said. “You walking?”

“No,” said Kit. “I’m in a truck with you.”

Philippe laughed. “I mean, are you holiday walking? Lots of the English visit Pas de Calais to walk. Also Amsterdam, where they hire bicycles.”

“Not walking, or planning to hire a bike in Amsterdam.”

“But you’re visiting the city on holiday?”

“Yes,” said Kit. “And I’m late.”

Philippe frowned. “How late?” he asked.

At least fifteen years, thought Kit, but he kept the words to himself.

There were cities where Kit barely knew one place from another outside the area in which he’d lived. The squalor of a ghetto in Istanbul, an arid little suq in a town Sudanese rebels called their capital. Even Tokyo—where Kit could have told Roppongi from Shinjuku blindfolded by street noise alone—largely remained a mystery to him.

And yet the city about which Kit knew most was the one he’d never visited. Empires had squabbled over it and Protestants besieged Catholics to claim its muddy, flood-threatened streets. Home to Rembrandt van Rijn, the place where Descartes linked identity indelibly to thought, the city had fought against the British, French, and Spanish, given England a king and been ruled by one of Napoleon’s brothers.

Its canals were famous, it had two of the most famous churches in Europe, and yet all most tourists knew it for was brothels, endless bicycles, and cafés where it was still legal to smoke dope.

Amsterdam had been Mary’s idea. Although it was Kit who bought the map and found the first guide book. Mary was the one who bought the postcards, five in total from a charity shop in Newbury. All black and white, and showing views of a city that probably didn’t exist even then. The Prinsengracht canal, Anne Frank’s house, and a solemn-looking Rijksmuseum, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, and last of all a typical Dutch square overlooking a narrow canal.

Tulips grew in wooden tubs, an old man in clogs sat smoking a pipe…a girl in a dark coat and a young man with a beret pushed a pram beneath a row of poplars.

That was going to be them.

It took Mary and Kit a whole weekend to identify Statholder Square from a map. The bridge helped and the church opposite. They were going to become famous, sell millions of Switchblade Lies CDs, and buy one of the narrow houses that stared from the square to the canal beyond. The dream lasted about seven weeks. Long enough to learn a handful of Dutch words, cut a demo, and decide they’d have a white cat and never see either of their families again.

All of this in the year before Kit stopped beside a hut above Middle Morton to crash a party to which he definitely hadn’t been invited, and everything in his life suggested he’d have done better to avoid.

Seven narrow houses lined one edge of Statholder Square, a museum dedicated to the Goldsmith’s Guild and a row of smaller houses stood opposite. The tulip tubs were gone and the poplars on the canal edge had sprouted wrought-iron cages to protect them from the world. And looking from the square’s open edge, Kit saw five more houses and a wide-windowed art gallery where the original postcard had shown a print shop.

A steel grille protected the gallery window and a sign on the door read, Gesloten.

Closed.

Taped to the window was a large poster of a semi-nude with wild blonde hair, a sour smile, and dark nipples. The words beneath read 33/33 @Thirty-three. A series of self portraits by Sophie Van Allen at Gallery 3+30. Whatever Kit expected, it wasn’t this.

It took five knocks to earn a shout and another five before footsteps could be heard on the stairs behind the door. When the last of the bolts shot back, a cropped-haired woman blocked his way.

“Gesloten,” she announced, pointing to the sign and reading it aloud in case he was a complete idiot.

“I’m a friend,” said Kit, nodding to the poster.

“Of Sophie?”

“Yes,” said Kit.

The woman looked doubtful.

“Call Sophie,” he suggested. “Say I’m here to see Mary.” When that failed to work, Kit added please, and somehow that was enough.

The conversation happened just out of earshot, with Kit on the doorstep. When the woman returned her eyes were hard. “This Mary of yours is dead. Sophie says you know that already.”

“Except she isn’t. Is she?”

It took another ten minutes and two more calls. The last call to Sophie sounded very much like an argument. “She’ll see you,” said the woman, not bothering to disguise her anger.

“Sophie?”

“The other one.”

I always thought this is where we’d both end up. So obvious, but only in retrospect. It made Kit want to punch himself.

“Which house?” he demanded.

The gallery owner looked puzzled.

“Where’s Mary staying?”

“At the hotel, obviously…”

Herberg Statholder was so hip it avoided signs and any clues that it might actually be a hotel. A simple black-painted door, with a dolphin door knocker, opened onto stairs leading up to reception. The air smelled of scented candles and expensive leather. The Warhols on the wall looked as if they might be original.

A brass lift carried Kit down to an almost-empty sitting room, which looked over Statholder Square or the canal, depending on which sofa one chose. It was here he found Sophie, who clipped a bell on the table in front of her and ordered two espressos from the man who materialised, without bothering to check if Kit wanted coffee.

She looked older than he remembered, her hair unwashed and her nails bitten. Worry, anger, or a migraine had closed down her face. “So…” Sophie said, when their cups arrived. “You’ve come to see Mary.”

“Yeah,” said Kit.

“How did you find out?”

“Mary told me where she was,” he said. “Only, I was just too fucking stupid to realise.”

“She told you.”

“I got a postcard before Christmas,” said Kit. “An old card I thought she’d long since thrown away. It said…” He hesitated. “It said things that should have been said long ago. And it said here was where Mary thought we’d both end up.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Nor did I,” said Kit. “Not at first.”

“I think this is a bad idea,” Sophie said. “Mary knows that. If Ben or the Russian follow you here…”

“They’re dead.”

Sophie put her cup down with a click.

“Ben Flyte died six months ago,” said Kit. “The other one died yesterday.”

“What happened?” asked Sophie.

“I killed him.”

Sophie blinked. “You killed Armand de Valois?” Her hands were shaking, Kit realised. Shaking so badly she halted on the edge of reaching for her cup. “What about the Sergeant?”

“What about him?”

“He was employed by de Valois. And Ben relied on the Sergeant for protection. They’d been working together for years.”

For years? Kit put down his own cup and looked round the elegant drawing room, rejecting a house phone that sat on a marble table near the door. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “I need to make a call.”