‘Do you even know where you’re going?’ he called back tersely over his shoulder.

‘Does it even matter as long as you get paid?’ she snapped as she warily scanned the street. This time there was no sign of Gallo or any of his men. ‘Here, this will do.’

Paying him, she got out and walked back up the street towards Aurelio’s apartment.

‘Ego sum principium mundi et finis sæculorum attamen non sum deus,’ came the voice from the speaker.

‘Not now, Aurelio,’ Allegra snapped. ‘Just let me in.’

There was the briefest of pauses. Then the door buzzed open. She made her way to the lift. Aurelio was waiting for her on the landing, a worried look on his face.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked as she stepped out.

‘I’m in trouble.’

‘I can see that. Come in.’

He led her silently into his office and perched anxiously on one arm of his leather chair rather than settling back into his seat as usual. Pacing from one side of the room to the other and speaking in as dispassionate a tone as she could, she described what she’d seen and heard: the Cavalli murder; the engraved discs; Gambetta’s shooting; the flickering shadow of Gallo’s pale face. Aurelio listened to all this while turning over a small piece of broken tile in his hands, studying it intently as if looking for something. When she eventually finished, there was a long silence.

‘It’s my fault.’ He spoke with a cold whisper. ‘If I’d known…I should never have got you involved with any of this.’

‘If you want to blame someone blame Gallo,’ she insisted with a hollow laugh.

‘I know someone. A detective in the police,’ Aurelio volunteered. ‘I could call him and-’

‘No,’ she cut him off with a firm shake of her head. ‘No police. Not until I understand what’s going on. Not until I know who I can trust.’

‘Then what do you need?’

‘A place to stay. A coffee. Some answers.’

‘The first two I can help with. The third…well, the third we might have to work on together.’

‘Two out of three’s a good start.’ She bent down and planted a grateful kiss on his forehead.

‘I should offer to make the coffee more often.’ He grinned. ‘Here, sit.’ Aurelio stood up and pulled her towards his chair. ‘Rest.’

She shut her eyes and tried to clear her mind, finding the familiar smell of Aurelio’s aftershave and the merry clatter of pans and clink of crockery as he busied himself in the kitchen strangely comforting. For a few seconds she imagined herself back at home, perched on the worktop, eagerly telling her mother about what had happened that day at school while she prepared dinner. But almost immediately her eyes snapped open.

Rest? How could she rest, after what she’d just seen? How could she rest, that Gallo was out there somewhere, looking for her.

She jumped up and padded cautiously to the window, standing to one side so she could check the street below without being seen. It was empty. Good. As far as she knew, she’d never spoken to Gallo or anyone else on the team about her friendship with Aurelio, so there was no reason to think they would come looking for her here. Not that she was in a position to put up much of a fight if they did, given that she was unarmed.

The realisation made her feel strangely vulnerable, and she patted her hip regretfully, missing her weapon’s reassuring solidity and steadying ballast. If only…she had a sudden thought and glanced across at Aurelio’s desk. Somewhere inside it, she seemed to remember, he had a gun. It was completely illegal, of course-a Soviet Makarov PM that he’d picked up in a souk to protect himself from the local bandits while working on a dig in Anatalya. But right now, she wasn’t sure that mattered.

She crossed over to the desk, noticing the closely typed notes for a lecture that according to the cover page Aurelio was giving at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj the following day. Crouching down next to it, she tried each of the overflowing drawers in turn, her fingers eventually closing around the weapon at the back of the third drawer, behind some cassette tapes and a fistful of receipts.

She slid out the eight-round magazine. It was full and she tapped it sharply against the desk in case the spring was stiff and the bullets had slipped away from the front of the casing. The gun itself was well maintained and looked like it had recently been oiled, the slide pulling back easily, the hammer firing with a satisfyingly solid click. It wasn’t much, she knew, but it was certainly better than nothing. Satisfied, she slapped the magazine home.

Deriving a renewed confidence from her find, she sat down again in Aurelio’s chair and tried to clear her head. But she soon found her thoughts wandering again. To Gambetta and what he’d told her; to Gallo and her escape; to Salvatore and how close she’d come to falling into his grasp; to Aurelio and the sanctuary he was providing. And annoyingly, to the riddle that she had ignored earlier, but which had now popped back into her head.

‘I am the beginning of the world and the end of ages, but I am not God.’ She repeated the line to herself with a frown.

The beginning of the world-Genesis, dawn, a baby? But then how were any of these the end, she asked herself. And who else but God could claim to be at the beginning and end of time? Maybe she needed to be more literal, she mused-the Latin for world was mundi and for ages was sæculorum, so the beginning of mundi was…her eyes snapped open.

‘It’s the letter M,’ she called out triumphantly. ‘The beginning of mundi and the end of sæculorum is the letter M.’

Grinning, she walked into the kitchen. To her surprise it was empty, the kettle boiling unattended on the stove. Frowning, she turned the hob off and then stepped back into the hall.

‘Aurelio?’ she called, reaching warily for the gun.

There was no answer, although she thought she heard the faint echo of his voice coming from his bedroom. She stepped over to it, a narrow slit of light bisecting the worn floorboards where the door hadn’t quite been pulled to. Not wanting to interrupt, she pressed her ear against the crack and then froze. He was talking about her.

‘Yes, she’s here now,’ she heard him say in an urgent voice. ‘Of course I can keep her here. Why, what do you need her for?’

She backed away, the gun raised towards the door, her face pale, heart pounding, the blood screaming in her ears. First Gallo. Now Aurelio too?

Her eyes stinging, she turned and stumbled out of the apartment, down the stairs and on to the street, not knowing if she was crying from sadness or anger. Not sure if she even cared.

Not sure if she cared about anything any more.

Villa de Rome apartment building, Boulevard de Suisse, Monte Carlo, Monaco 18th March-5.23 p.m.

It was earlier than usual, but then Ronan D’Arcy figured he’d earned it. After a bloodbath in the first few months of the year, some of his shorts were finally beginning to pay off and the latest round of Middle Eastern sabre rattling had pushed his oil futures back to historic highs. If that didn’t warrant a drink, what did?

A helicopter droned overhead, circling low over the palace up on the hill, and then swooping back around to perch gracefully on the deck of one of the larger yachts lying at anchor in the harbour, the sea glittering like gold in the sinking sunlight. D’Arcy gave a rueful smile. It didn’t matter how good the market was or how well you thought you were doing, someone else, somewhere, was always doing better. It was a lesson that this place seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in beating into him at every opportunity. Still, he wasn’t going to let it spoil his little celebration.

He stepped off the balcony back into his office and quickly scanned the six trading screens that formed a low, incandescent wall on his desk to check that some random market sneeze hadn’t wiped out a good month’s work. Reassured, he picked up the phone and dialled the internal extension to the kitchen. If it had been a beer he could have fixed it himself, of course-he wasn’t that lazy. But celebrations called for cocktails, and cocktails called for mojitos, and Determination was the mojito-master.