‘I need to see a photograph of François,’ Kell replied. ‘Do you have one?’

He suspected that he already knew the answer to his own question, and so it proved. Christophe, adjusting his position in the armchair, shook his head and said: ‘We lost everything in the fire. All the albums, all the photographs. There are no pictures of François.’

‘Of course.’ Kell went towards the window and glanced up Rue Darwin. A smell of diesel came in from the street. ‘What about online?’ he asked. ‘What about Twitter or Facebook? Anything on there I could look at?’

Maria tilted her head to one side and stared at Kell in puzzlement, as though he had stumbled on a coincidence.

‘Christophe cannot access his Facebook,’ she said, a note of surprise in her voice. ‘It hasn’t been working for a month.’

‘I’ve contacted them,’ Christophe added. They were both looking at Kell as if they blamed him for this. ‘I’ve tried to change my password. One time I managed to get in but all my Facebook friends had vanished, all my photographs, all of my biographical information.’

‘Just wiped out?’

‘Just wiped out. The same with emails, Dropbox, Flickr. Everything to do with my Internet since the fire has been no good. It’s all gone. I just have this one account that I can use, my regular email to talk to friends. Everything else, no.’

Outside on the street, a motorbike sped past the window, braked at the corner, then burned off down Rue des Saules.

‘Any idea why?’ Again, Kell felt that he already knew the answer to his own question: a DGSE computer attack on the Delestre residence, wiping out all evidence of their association with François Malot. The fire was probably the icing on the cake; perhaps it had even been intended to kill them.

‘We have no idea,’ Maria replied, and asked permission to go into the bedroom to check on Kitty. Kell made a gesture of goodwill, his arms spread apart, his hands upturned, as if to say: Of course you can. It’s your house. You can do what you want. She returned moments later carrying something behind her back. Kell thought for a split second that it was a knife, until she brought her hand forward and he saw that she was holding a bottle of baby milk.

‘Tell me about the fire,’ he said. ‘Were you at home?’

They had been. Their top-floor flat four blocks away in Montmartre had gone up in smoke at two o’clock in the morning. An electrical fault, according to the landlord. They had been lucky to escape alive. If the fire brigade had not come as quickly as they did, Maria explained, Kitty would almost certainly have suffocated.

‘And you don’t know anybody else who might have a photograph of François? An uncle? An aunt? An ex-girlfriend?’

Christophe shook his head. ‘François is a loner,’ he said.

‘He does not have any friends,’ Maria added, as though she had long been suspicious of this. ‘No girls, either. Why do you keep asking about photographs? What’s going on?’

By now, she had sat on the arm of her husband’s chair, her hand in his. Kell opened the window and sat in the chair that Maria had earlier occupied. The light outside had faded and there were children playing in the street.

‘When did you last hear from him? You said that you’d received a number of emails.’

‘It sounds as though you’ve already read them.’ Christophe’s quick response lacked malice. It was as if the fresh air blowing in from the street had cleared the last of the ill-feeling between them.

Kell nodded. ‘MI6 intercepted an email that François sent to your ‘dugarrylemec’ address three days ago. His situation is a concern to us. The email was sent from Tunis. That’s how I know about Kitty, about Uncle Frankie, about the books. What else has he told you?’

The question appeared to unlock something within Christophe, who frowned as though poring over a puzzle.

‘He has told me a lot of things,’ he said, his soft eyes almost sorrowful in their confusion. ‘I have to be honest with you. Some of it worries me. Some of what he has written does not make very much sense.’

45

It all poured out, and was later produced as a transcript thanks to a DGSE analyst who, five days later, conducted his weekly check on the microphones at the Delestres’ apartment and came across evidence of the conversation with Thomas Kell.

The take quality was considered extremely high.

CHRISTOPHE DELESTRE (CD): He has told me a lot of things. I have to be honest with you. Some of it worries me. Some of what he has written does not make very much sense.

THOMAS KELL (TK): Tell me more.

CD: I know Frankie very well, OK? It isn’t like him just to disappear and make a new life, even with everything that’s happened to him.

TK: How do you mean, ‘make a new life’?

MARIA DELESTRE (MD): In the other emails he’s talked about leaving Paris for good, how upset he is about what happened in Egypt, saying that he doesn’t know when he’ll be coming home …

CD: The thing is, Frankie was never that close to his mother and father. He was adopted, did you know that?

TK: I knew that.

CD: But now it’s like he can’t get out of bed in the morning. He won’t talk to me, he won’t go to work …

TK: What do you mean he won’t talk to you?

CD: I can’t get him on the phone …

MD: [Unclear]

TK: He doesn’t answer the phone?

CD: No. He won’t respond to my messages. We used to talk all the time, I’m like his brother. Now everything is SMS …

TK: Text messages.

CD: Exactly, which was never his style. He [expletive] hates SMS. But now I get maybe three or four every day.

TK: May I see them?

Pause. Sound of movement.

MD: [Unclear]

CD: Here. You can just click through them.

MD: It’s difficult for you to know, but they aren’t like him at all. What do they say? ‘Starting new life’? ‘Sick of France’? ‘Too many memories in Paris’? All [expletive]. Frankie is not sentimental like this. It’s as if he’s joined a cult or something, some kind of therapy that’s telling him to say these things, breaking him away from his old friends.

TK: Grief can do strange things to people.

CD: But [Traffic noise. Unclear.]

TK: [Traffic noise continuing. Unclear.] How did he behave at the funeral?

MD: It was like you would expect. Just awful. He was very brave but very upset, you know? We all were. It was Père-Lachaise, very formal, only close friends and family invited.

TK: Père-Lachaise?

CD: Yes. It’s a cemetery about half an hour—

TK: I know what it is.

CD: [Unclear]

TK: Which arrondissement is that?

MD: What?

CD: Père-Lachaise? The twentieth, I think.

TK: Not the fourteenth?

CD: What?

TK: You’re certain that the funeral was in the twentieth arrondissement? Not in Montparnasse?

CD [and MD partial]: Yes.

TK: Can you tell me the date?

CD: For sure. It was a Friday. The twenty-first or twenty-second, I think.

46

That two funerals had been arranged for Philippe and Jeannine Malot confirmed to Kell that Amelia had been the victim of an elaborate DGSE sting. The emails Christophe had received from François (‘Frankie is not sentimental like this. It’s as if he’s joined a cult or something’) had almost certainly been written by an impostor. Kell checked out of his hotel and prepared to return to London, where he would confront Amelia with the wretched truth of what had been done to her.