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Housekeeping.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘He had access to the room. He drew the key that day. Four o’clock. After the booking had come in.’
    ‘You talked to him?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘He’s gone.’
    ‘Gone where?’
    ‘We don’t know …’ Benitez paused. ‘He disappeared the same night. Didn’t show next morning …’ He paused again for a moment. ‘One theory says he may have gone home. We’re trying to check.’
    ‘Oh?’ Telemann looked across at him. ‘Where’s home?’
    There was a long silence. Telemann could see the white teeth in the dark mask of Benitez’s face. The man was smiling again.
    ‘Baghdad,’ he said.

3
    For the second time in a week, McVeigh picked up his son from school.
    He parked in the usual place, sitting in the battered old Escort a yard or so up the hill from the corner shop where Billy always stopped for crisps and a can of something fizzy. He’d already phoned his ex-wife, telling her not to bother with the school run, and they’d talked for a moment or two about what might be wrong with the boy. Billy had stopped talking. All the spirit, all the laughter had gone out of him. He was listless and disinterested. He was off his food. He’d even abandoned his nightly session in front of the television, feeding his library of football games into the video-machine, playing and replaying his favourite goals.
    His mother had tried to talk to him about it, hoping to fathom this sombre new mood of his, but she’d got nowhere. The boy had simply listened to her questions, shrugged his shoulders and gone upstairs. Three evenings alone had convinced her that something was terribly wrong. Now she wanted to know what.
    McVeigh, listening, had been tempted to tell her about Yakov, about what the Israeli had meant to the boy, but in the end he’d decided against it. One of the many reasons their marriage had finally disintegrated was McVeigh’s job, his involvement in a world she neither understood nor trusted. Any suggestion that this same world might somehow reach out for Billy, too, would simply compound the problem.
    Now, sitting in the car, McVeigh watched the first of the school-kids pouring out through the big brick gates. The school was private, a curious, off-beat little institution with a free-wheeling,progressive regime tailor-made for kids like Billy, with his father’s talent for failing exams. Private education conflicted with everything that McVeigh believed in, and the fees were costing him a fortune, but even he had finally accepted the obvious. For Billy, at least, the place was a godsend.
    The boy appeared at the school gates. He was alone. He glanced up and down the road, looking for his mother’s white Citroën. Not seeing it, he began to walk up the hill, towards the corner shop. McVeigh slipped off the hand-brake, coasting slowly down the road, hugging the kerb. On the seat beside him was a can of Lilt and a packet of Bovril crisps. Billy saw the car and a brief smile ghosted across his face. McVeigh stopped. The boy got in.
    They drove back along the usual route, Highgate Hill, Hornsey Lane. McVeigh asked him about school. The boy grunted, monosyllabic answers, the bare minimum. Outside the flat McVeigh stopped, killing the engine. Billy reached automatically for the door. The crisps lay untouched on the dashboard. McVeigh pulled him back. The boy looked startled for a moment, then resigned, already knowing what was to follow. McVeigh frowned, part-caution, part-irritation.
    ‘Your mother’s worried,’ he said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Your mum. She’s worried. She thinks you’re not well.’
    ‘I’m OK.’
    ‘I don’t think you’re right, either.’
    ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘You’re not. And I know why.’
    McVeigh looked at him for a moment, and the boy held his eyes for as long as it took to raise the colour in his cheeks. Then he shook his head, an expression of impatience or perhaps embarrassment. McVeigh leaned back against the car door,