“You can make that?”

“Of course. I’m not a total savage. What would you like?”

“Cappuccino, please. No sugar.”

There was a painting above the fireplace, a seaside scene, dated 1887 and painted in a bright, not quite impressionist style. A group of friends were standing at the water’s edge. The men had their trousers rolled up; the women were lifting their skirts just enough to be able to dip a toe into the sea.

“It’s Lulworth Cove,” said Carver, walking back into the living room with two cups of coffee in his hands. “It’s on the Dorset coast, just a few miles west of my old base.”

“It’s very beautiful.” She smiled. “What was this base?”

Carver laughed. “I can’t tell you that. You might be a dangerous Russian spy.”

“Oh no,” said Alexandra Petrova. “I’m not a spy. Not anymore.”

Carver looked at her pensively. “So, are you going to tell me that story? The long one you were talking about?”

She sipped her coffee and licked a splash of white foam from her top lip.

“Okay. But there are things I must do first.”

“What kind of things?”

“Well, all I want to do now is wash.”

“Fair enough. The bathroom’s just down the corridor, on the right. You go and do whatever you’ve got to do. I’ll make us something to eat. And then you can tell me your story.”

Papin was making slow progress. There weren’t too many photo-composite artists prepared to answer the telephone on the last Sunday morning in August. At last, he tracked someone down, but the picture was not ready until past ten a.m. Then he had to find someone willing to put it on the air.

On any other day, the threat of an English killer and his sexy blond accomplice would have led the news bulletins and been splashed on the front page. But this was not an ordinary day. The networks in France, like everywhere else in the world, had only one subject under discussion: the death of the princess. And so, ironically, they relegated the man who had killed her to a brief few seconds and a hastily displayed facial composite photo.

Marceline Ducroix, who had served Carver his pastries and coffee in the twenty-four-hour joint in Châtelet-les-Halles, saw the picture on the TV in the back office, where her father and uncle were sitting watching the news. The two men were engaged in a loud argument over whether the car crash was an accident or the result of a typically evil Anglo-Saxon plot. Their conversation distracted her.

The English killer wanted by the authorities sounded like the polite, well-dressed man who had spoken perfect French to her that morning. Even so, she wasn’t sure it was him. “Then don’t go to the cops,” said her father, when Marceline asked his advice. “They are all sons of whores. The less you have to do with them, the better.”

Jerome Domenici got home at eight thirty after his night shift at the pharmacy. By then he had already heard about the tragedy in the Alma Tunnel. Everyone who had come into the shop had been talking about it. He caught about ten minutes of the TV news before he fell asleep on his couch.

It was lunchtime when Jerome woke up again. He was fixing himself some bread and cheese, with one eye on his plate and the other on the TV, when he saw the composite photo. The man looked familiar. He called the number on the TV screen.

Papin was already at the Gare de Lyon when he heard that a man in a gray jacket, fitting Carver’s description, had been spotted in a pharmacy on the Boulevard de Sebastopol, buying hair color and scissors. But he’d been alone. And he’d bought three colors: brunette, red, and black. Papin was fairly certain that the woman had used the dye, but which color?

Meanwhile, there had been multiple sightings of an Englishman answering Carver’s description at the Gare de Lyon. Papin had established that the man had bought two tickets to Milan, shortly after seven a.m. That meant he must have caught the seven fifteen, but it had already arrived in Milan, the ticket collector had been interviewed by local police and did not recall seeing anyone resembling either composite photo. On a journey between France and Italy there was no passport control, so there were no border records. There was no way of telling whether Carver had ever got on the train, or with whom. And if he had got on, there was no way of establishing where he’d got on without canvassing every single station along the route.

Before he did that, Papin decided to check the CCTV footage from the cameras dotted around the station. The coverage was patchy, but Papin did spot a bespectacled man in a gray jacket leaving the ticket office at 7:05. He was carrying a black bag over one shoulder: the computer.

“Is that him?” Papin had asked the operations director.

“It could be. Without the glasses that could easily be Carver.”

“Okay. But now look. We have him here at 7:05. The next time we find him he is approaching the gate for the Milan train at 7:09.”

“Yes… He bought a ticket, he got on the train. So?”

“So, where has he been? It only takes a few seconds to walk across the concourse. He did something in the meantime. What?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he went to the bathroom. Maybe he bought a newspaper.”

“Or maybe he bought another ticket, to a different destination. Carver is good. He must have known he would be spotted at the ticket office, so he used that to create a diversion. Then he got the other tickets at the automatic machines. Merde! There is no video footage covering them. Someone will have to check the machines for all the purchases made between 7:05 and 7:09. And meanwhile, I will do something else.”

“What’s that?”

“Find the girl.”

Freshly showered, Alix came into the kitchen, where Carver was fixing them both some food. She had one towel wrapped around her body, another around her hair.

“Do you have an old shirt or something I can wear?” she said, with a self-conscious smile. “None of my…”

“Shhh.” Carver held up a hand.

Alix was about to argue. Then she saw that there was a small television on a bracket on the kitchen wall. Carver was watching a satellite news program.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “There are thousands of people outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. There are more of them laying wreaths outside Kensington Palace, where she lived. There’s a book of condolence and people are queuing for, I don’t know, hundreds of yards to sign it. The prime minister’s calling her the People’s Princess. They’ve had politicians giving messages from all over the world. There are experts talking about everything from whether paparazzi photographers should be allowed to chase people on powerful motorcycles, to how the royal princes are going to cope with bereavement… The actual time of death was four a.m., by the way. Like that makes any difference.”

“We didn’t know what we were doing.”

“Like that really makes any difference either. Look, do you want some cheese omelette? It’s pretty good. This is the place for Swiss cheese, after all. It’s just that I’ve rather lost my appetite.”

“Sure, thanks,” Alix said. “But I think I should be wearing some clothes when I eat.”

“Of course. Stay right there.”

He was back a few seconds later, holding a gray T-shirt. It said “Sand-hurst Special Forces Challenge 1987” across the front. “Is that okay? Afraid I’ve not done much laundry lately, I’ve been away. It’s crazy… I was in New Zealand when they contacted me. On my bloody holiday.”

She touched his arm gently, sensing the barely suppressed tension in his voice. “It’s okay. This shirt will do fine.”

“Good. On second thought, maybe I will have some of that omelette after all.”