On a clear day, it was possible to see the distant foothills of the Pyrenees across the flat expanse of the Ariège, but on the morning of Akim’s weekly trip to Castelnaudary, a storm had blown in from the Basque country and drenched the property in an inch of warm summer rain. Akim went first to the hypermarket at Villefranche-de-Lauragais to buy basic provisions, as well as Bandol rosé for Valerie and a bottle of Ricard for the boss. In a pharmacy in Castelnaudary, he fetched the asthma medication for HOLST and bought himself some deodorant and aspirin, both of which were running low in the house. Slimane had put in a request for several pornographic magazines, which Akim purchased in a tabac from an elderly woman who did nothing to disguise the fact that she considered the presence of an Arabe in her shop an affront to the dignity of the Republic.

‘Scum,’ she muttered under her breath as Akim left the shop and it was all that he could do to control his rage and to keep on walking. The last thing the boss wanted was any trouble.

He returned to the house to find HOLST watching Diva on DVD. Slimane was sitting in the kitchen smoking a cigarette in the company of two men whom Akim had never seen before.

‘Boss wants us for a job,’ he said. ‘These guys are going to watch our friend.’

The two men, both white and in their early twenties, introduced themselves as ‘Jacques’ and ‘Patric’, names that Akim took for pseudonyms. Slimane had his laptop open on the kitchen table and swivelled it round so that Akim could see what he was looking at. There was a blurred surveillance photograph on the screen, taken in what looked like a disco or late-night bar.

‘They’re worried about some guy on the ferry,’ he said. ‘Luc’s girl wants us to follow him. Get your stuff. We’re going to Marseille.’

36

Kell was woken at seven o’clock by the sound of children running in the corridor outside his cabin. He had a shower in the tiny bathroom, packed his suitcase and took the camera up on deck. It was a grey morning, the French coast not yet visible through banks of cloud, but when he switched on the London mobile he discovered that he could get a signal. Kell immediately rang Marquand at home and found him awake and good-humoured, eating a bowl of cereal in the kitchen.

‘Bran Flakes, Tom. Fibre,’ he said. ‘Have to look after myself. I’m not getting any younger.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Kell replied, and told him what needed to be done.

‘There might be some calls to Uniacke’s office in Reading. The consultancy firm. Possible that his finances might be checked as well. Can you make sure everything is kosher, bank balances, tax returns, that there’s somebody who knows the drill? Uniacke stayed in a hotel in Hammamet, so that will need to flash up, also ATM withdrawals and restaurant receipts. Can you fix it?’

Marquand was putting the details into a computer. Kell could hear the soft taps as his fingers hit the keyboard.

‘Who the hell’s doing the checking? Amelia?’

Kell was ready with the lie. ‘Nothing to do with her. Different situation altogether. I spotted an old contact in Tunis. Decided to follow him to Marseille. I’m on the overnight ferry.’

‘You’re what? What does this have to do with our agreement?’

‘Everything and nothing.’ A sleepy-eyed African emerged from the interior of the ship, clearing her head in the brisk wind. ‘It’s a long story. Came at me out of thin air. I’ll brief you when I get back. Just make sure the Uniacke backstops are in place. If somebody rings the Reading office and asks to speak to Stephen, I’m on holiday until Friday.’

Marquand repeated the word ‘Friday’ and then withdrew any suggestion of financial or technical support. ‘Look, if you’ve abandoned Amelia to her fate, Tom, the Office isn’t going to pay you by the hour to pursue an entirely new operation. They pushed you out, remember? To all intents and purposes, you were fired, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Who said anything about abandoning Amelia?’ Kell was looking out at the eternal greys of the sliding sea, water fizzing against the sides of the ship. How typical of Marquand to think only of the money, to cover his back. A bureaucrat through and through. ‘She kissed François goodbye at the airport yesterday morning. Squeezed his bum and bought a bottle of Hermès Calèche to cheer herself up. Should be back in Nice by now. Have the Knights do a drive-by of the Gillespie.’ There was a grumble on the line, which Kell took as a sign that Marquand was backing down. ‘I don’t need paying,’ he added. ‘My work is done. If something comes of this, maybe you can throw me a bone later on.’

‘Who are you following, Tom?’

‘Not until I get home,’ Kell replied. ‘Like I said. Just an old contact.’ And he hung up.

Four hours later, no sign of Madeleine at breakfast, no glimpse of Luc or Malot, Kell was standing with his camera on the sun deck beneath the unceasing roar of the ship’s funnel, the ferry pulling towards Marseille. The southern coast of France was now lit by crisp midday sunlight, boats easing east and west below the squat cream cliffs of the Calanques. Kell had deleted the pictures of Malot’s room at the Ramada as well as the surveillance photographs of Amelia lying beside the pool. He now replaced them with a sequence of shots appropriate to the interests and sensibility of a lone, middle-aged marketing consultant on a roll-on, roll-off ferry: pictures of orange lifeboats; studies of laundry bags piled high behind paint-chipped portholes; weathered coils of rope.

Once the ship had docked in Marseille he queued with the other foot passengers, perhaps forty of them crowded into a narrow, increasingly stuffy stairwell leading down to the car decks. There was a long delay as the ship was cleared; only when every vehicle had funnelled out on to the mainland were the foot passengers permitted to leave. Kell fell in behind an Irish couple arguing vociferously about being late for a flight to Dublin. They shuffled en masse down a carpeted corridor towards a prefabricated building at the southern edge of the dock, where customs officials were inspecting random bags on formica tables. If the DGSE remained suspicious of him, Kell knew that he would now most probably be stopped and his luggage searched. That was page one of the operational handbook. He was confident that they would find nothing to link him to Malot. The photos were gone and he had destroyed the Uniacke receipts from the Valencia Carthage. As long as Marquand had generated a paper trail for Uniacke in Hammamet, he would be fine.

In the event, Kell was allowed to pass through the customs area without incident and found himself in a slow-moving queue for Immigration. There were no split channels for EU citizens and several of the foot passengers ahead of him were carrying Tunisian and Algerian passports. Kell, aware that Luc or Madeleine could be watching from behind a screen of one-way glass at the side of the Immigration area, was surprised by the extent of his own anxiety. To occupy himself, and to convey an impression of calm, he read a couple of pages of The Scramble for Africa, then checked the messages on his London phone.

Claire had called. A voicemail had been left in the early hours of the English morning. Kell could hear, by the rushed and surly tone of her voice, that she had been drinking. Her anger at his failure to appear in Finchley had now crystallized into a typical rant.

Tom, it’s me. Look, I don’t see why we’re bothering any more. Do you? I think what we really need is to face this thing and to make a formal move towards divorce. It’s obviously what you want …

There was a brief pause in the message, then silence. Kell pressed ‘9’ to save what he had heard, then moved to a second message. It was Claire again, picking up where she had left off.