‘Oui?’

‘Is your husband at home?’

The woman glanced quickly to her right, then back at the stranger on the street. Christophe Delestre was in the room with her. He stood up and came to the window, standing in front of his wife and child in what may have been an unconscious instinct to protect them.

‘Can I help you?’

‘It’s about François Malot,’ Kell replied. He was speaking in French and extended a hand through the window. ‘It’s about the fire. I wondered if I could come inside?’

44

Facebook was misleading. Christophe Delestre had shaved off his moustache and goatee beard, put on a couple of stone in weight and was no longer wearing an outsized pair of black sunglasses. His brown eyes were large and candid, his puffy face bruised by a succession of sleepless nights. He was dressed in pale linen trousers, tennis shoes and a blue, button-down cotton shirt. Kell was ushered into the sitting room and invited to sit on a sofa covered by a moth-eaten blanket. Christophe closed the window on to the street and formally introduced his wife, who squinted at Kell as he shook her hand, holding the baby more tightly, as though she did not entirely trust this stranger in her home.

‘Is it about the insurance?’ she asked. Her name was Maria and she spoke French with a Spanish accent.

‘It’s not,’ he replied, and nodded affectionately at the child to put Maria more at ease.

‘You said your name was Tom? You are English?’ Perhaps to alleviate the tedium of permanent childcare, Christophe had been all too willing to allow Kell into his home. His manner was now more reserved. ‘How do you know about the fire?’

‘I’m going to be frank,’ Kell told them, and noticed that the child had stopped crying. Kitty. Malot’s god-daughter. ‘I work for MI6. Do you know what that is?’

There was a stunned pause as the Delestres looked at one another. Officers did not often choose to break cover, but in certain circumstances, and within certain psychological parameters, name-dropping MI6 was like flashing a badge at a crime scene.

It was Maria who spoke first. ‘You are a spy?’

‘I am an officer with the British Secret Intelligence Service. Yes. To all intents and purposes, I am a spy.’

‘And what do you want with us?’ Christophe looked frightened, as though Kell was now a direct threat to his wife and daughter.

‘You have nothing to worry about. I just need to ask you some questions about François Malot.’

‘What about him?’ Maria’s answer was quick, accessing some basic Latin impulse to disdain authority. ‘Who has sent you here? What do you want?’

The small sitting room had become stuffy and Kitty began to moan. Perhaps she had sensed the gathering atmosphere of distrust, the hostility in her mother’s usually gentle and consoling voice. ‘I apologize for visiting your home without an appointment. It was important that the French authorities did not know that I was coming here today.’

Christophe elected to move his daughter next door, taking the baby from Maria’s arms and walking through a kitchen area into what Kell assumed was a nursery or bedroom. Maria continued to stare at him, dark eyes cold with suspicion.

‘Can you please tell me your name again,’ she said. ‘I wish to write it down.’ Kell obliged her, spelling out K-E-L-L with slow precision. When Christophe came back into the room he seemed surprised to find his wife stooped over a table, scribbling.

‘I’m not feeling comfortable about this,’ he said, as though he had been coached by a third party and injected with greater self-confidence. ‘You say that you are with MI6, this seems a lie. What do you want? I think it was a mistake for me to allow you to come here.’

‘I mean you no harm,’ Kell replied, the quality of his French momentarily deserting him. The nuance he had tried to build into his response was lost and Maria found her voice.

‘I think you should leave us,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to have anything to do with you …’

‘No,’ added Christophe, buoyed by his wife’s courage. ‘I think it was a mistake. Please, if you want to interview us, you must go through the police …’

‘Sit down.’ Kell’s lingering, ceaseless irritation with Claire, allied to a general impatience with the Delestres, had caused him to lose his temper. He felt it flare inside him, the sudden snap of goodwill, and thought of Yassin naked in the chair in Kabul, his eyes wet with fear. The young French couple reacted to the sudden intensity in Kell’s voice as though he had drawn a gun. Christophe stepped sideways and dropped into an armchair. Maria took longer, but was eventually persuaded by Kell’s fixed stare to settle at the table.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘Why are you so defensive? Is there something I should know?’ Christophe began to reply, but Kell interrupted him. ‘It’s strange that you have no interest in François’ whereabouts. Can you explain that? I was under the impression that he was your closest friend.’

Christophe looked dazed, like a commuter woken from a nap on a train. His tired, indoor face was motionless as he tried to unpick the meaning of what Kell had told him.

‘I know where François is,’ he replied, finding a certain courage. His right hand gripped the arm of his chair, knuckles white. A film of sweat had gathered around his widow’s peak.

‘Then where is he?’

‘Why should we tell you?’ Maria flashed a look of dismay at her husband, who shook his head, as though to warn her against further resistance. ‘You say that you are a spy, but you could be working for the journalist who called us after the murder. We have already told him, repeatedly. We do not want to talk about what happened.’

Kell stood up, moving towards her. ‘Why would a journalist pretend to be a spy? Why would anybody do anything that stupid?’ The question became rhetorical, because the Delestres found no answer. ‘Let me get something straight. There’s a possibility that François is in a lot of trouble. I need to know if he’s been in touch with you. I need to see your correspondence.’

Maria produced a contemptuous snort. Kell could not help but admire her guts. ‘This is our private email!’ she said. ‘Why should we show you this? You have no right to …’

Kell stopped her mid-sentence. ‘Is Kitty asleep?’ he asked, moving towards the nursery as though he intended to take the child. It took only a fraction of a second for Maria to realize what Kell had said.

‘How do you know my daughter’s name?’

He turned towards Christophe, who looked to be weighing up the good sense of throwing a punch. ‘What about the books François promised you in his email from Tunis? Did they ever show up? Did “Uncle Frankie” come through for his god-daughter?’

Delestre tried to stand but Kell went a pace towards him and said: ‘Stay where you are.’ He was back with Yassin again, the power of containment, the greed for revenge and information, and had to check himself from going too far. ‘I don’t want this conversation to become difficult, for either of us. What I’m trying to tell you is that I can get access to anything I want. I need your cooperation so that I don’t have to go to the trouble of breaking the law. I would rather not spend days listening to your private phone calls. I would rather not tell MI6 Station in Paris to follow you around town, to hack into your computers, to watch your friends. But I will do that if I have to, because what I need to know is worth breaking the law for. Do you understand?’ Christophe looked confused, like a child being bullied. ‘I am trying to pay you the compliment of being honest. There is a hard way to do what I have to do and there is an easy way that leaves you free and unmolested.’

‘Tell us the easy way,’ Maria replied quietly, and it was as though her own private capitulation marked an end to the Delestres’ resistance.