The first phone booth was empty and working but took only credit cards, so Kit walked until he came to another, which was occupied. A quarter mile after that he found a third outside a café.

Everyone at a pavement table looked up, but this was probably because Kit had just entered a booth in a city where even tramps seemed to carry their own phones.

Feeding a 20-euro note into a slot, Kit fed in another and then a third, making sure he had sufficient credit. He wanted to avoid the slightest chance of losing his concentration while making this call.

“Amy.”

Stunned silence gave way to a gasp. “Shit,” she said. “I can’t believe you’d…” And then Amy said nothing, although her silence was thick with worry, anger, and unmade decisions.

“You could record this,” said Kit. “Or you could give me the Brigadier’s direct number.”

“I’m at Boxbridge,” Amy said. “We were just talking about you.”

A briefer silence became the voice of Brigadier Miles. “Mr. Newton,” she said, “I imagine you realise we’re tracing this call.”

“I’m in Amsterdam,” said Kit. “About ten minutes’ walk from Statholder Square, outside the Tolkien Café. Although I’ll be gone the moment I hear sirens or see anything resembling a police car. I want to do you a favour. Do you know someone called Alfie…Might have worked with Mr. de Valois?”

“Not as well as I’d like. He’s currently in South London, helping the Met with their enquiries. Apparently he was somewhere else when Mr. de Valois got murdered. Alfie just can’t quite decide where. You did hear about that unpleasantness, didn’t you?”

Kit ignored the comment.

“And for some reason,” said Brigadier Miles, “the Met are unhappy with us. They think we’ve been hiding things.”

“Which you have.”

It was Kit’s turn to get ignored.

“Talk to Alfie,” he said.

“And say what?” The Brigadier sounded interested.

“Ask him about Mr. de Valois’s relationship with Sergeant Samson. You’ll have to offer him immunity, but more to the point, tell Alfie it will make Kate O’Mally and Mike Smith very happy.”

“Will it?”

Kit shrugged, watching his money count down on a little digital window. “It probably won’t make them unhappy.”

“You know,” said the Brigadier, “I’m beginning to believe the rumours that you’re actually working for Mrs. O’Mally.”

“I’ve heard those rumours too,” Kit said. “All lies.”

“And if I did offer Alfie help, it would be immunity from what?”

“General wickedness, I imagine…Unless you know something I don’t.”

“So he didn’t knife de Valois?”

“No,” said Kit. “He didn’t.”

The Brigadier sighed. “I was afraid of that. You do realise, don’t you, that your prints are all over that blade?”

“Quite possibly,” said Kit.

“Anyway,” the old woman said, “let’s get back to Alfie. What can he give me?”

“Something to upset the Met…”

“Really?”

Kit grinned. It was a tired grin, one that barely made it onto his face but it was still a grin. He felt it catch the side of his mouth like a hook setting. “Thought that would interest you,” he said. “Armand de Valois was paying Sergeant Samson in women as well as cash for information…”

Brigadier Miles laughed.

“It gets better,” Kit added. “The Sergeant and Ben Flyte were a team. In fact, I’d bet it was Sergeant Samson who told Flyte that de Valois was dead, right after that shooting in Germany. I can see the attraction. All that heroin with no owner. What’s a crooked cop to do? Only, Armand wasn’t dead. A bit like Ben Flyte.”

“Flyte?”

“Last seen in South London, I believe…sometime yesterday.”

He had the Brigadier’s attention, the hook set as firmly into her mouth as it was set in his.

“What you’ve got,” said Kit, “is a murdered terrorist, and a society drug dealer as your chief suspect—and providing Alfie talks—a currently suspended officer from a South London drugs squad who’s the only known connection between the two. If I were you, I’d offer Alfie anything he wants.”

“I’m going to make some calls,” said the Brigadier. “Give me a number where I can call you back.”

“I need a favour in return.”

“A favour?”

“The name behind a construction company in Tokyo.”

Silence greeted this request. A handful of seconds of static and doubt. And then the Brigadier was back. “And how do I get that for you?”

“You must have friends,” said Kit.

“Not in Tokyo,” said Brigadier Miles.

“People like you,” Kit said, “have friends everywhere.”

All of the rooms at Herberg Statholder had double beds, their own glass-topped vanity tables, satellite television, discreet minibars, music systems, and wireless internet. Laptops were provided for guests who forgot to bring their own.

Meals could be served at any time of day or night and in any place, although the sky café apparently offered unrivalled views across the slate roofs of Amsterdam, and all guests got preferential booking at a Michelin-starred brasserie less than three minutes’ walk from the hotel.

The Herberg Statholder had money. It had money because its guests had money and matching expectations. Herberg Statholder pulled off that difficult trick of offering the expensively shabby and casually exclusive. Although a wooden panel in the lift was cracked, the brass fittings were hand-polished and the lift’s single picture was signed and numbered and came from one of Chagall’s shorter runs.

Kit took the lift alone because Sophie refused to accompany him, her anger so obvious that he began to wonder if it was with Mary rather than him.

Room 12.

Herberg Statholder avoided numbering its rooms according to floor. With only twelve bedrooms such fussiness was irrelevant. The narrow corridor onto which Kit’s lift opened led to the Sky Café in one direction, and to three bedrooms in the other: servants’ quarters, made fashionable by their rooftop view and the tectonic shifts of history.

“Come in…”

He would have known the voice anywhere. Kit was still wondering what to say when Mary pulled herself up and adjusted the pillows behind her head.

“Long time,” she said.

He nodded.

“I didn’t mean you to find me,” said Mary, then added, “Sophie called me, while you were on the way up. You read more into my card than was there.”

“No,” Kit said. “I didn’t.”

She looked at him.

“Why send it then?” demanded Kit. “At least, why that card and those words?”

“To hurt you,” Mary said. “So you knew what really happened. I was tying up my life’s loose ends and you were one of them.” Her window was open on the other side of the bed, a vase of orchids stood on the vanity table and an open copy of Vanity Fair lay discarded on the floor. It made no difference. The room reeked of illness.

“Sit down,” said Mary, and that was when Kit realised he was still standing in her doorway.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A mistake, we shared needles. Ben was in remission and I didn’t even know he was ill. I came apart in a matter of months.” She nodded towards a chair. “Sit,” she said.

A child could be heard outside, chattering excitedly about nothing very much. A bicycle went past in need of oiling. A woman talked to herself, or on the phone. “You hear all that?” said Mary, indicating her open window.

He nodded.

“It’s called life. That’s what I’m leaving behind.”

“I don’t suppose,” said Kit, when he’d listened some more to the noises outside and seen Mary smile, “there’s much point in my asking why you staged a fake suicide?”

“You don’t know?”

“How would I?”

“Because you always boasted you knew me better than I knew myself.”

Kit shrugged. “I must have been lying.”