By the time Leo arrived at his apartment the sun had set and his clothes had dried, dripping a trail in the dust behind him as he’d cycled back from the lake. With the opium’s concentration in decline, running down like the sands of an hourglass, the feelings of failure and melancholy began to circulate in his system, a virus of the mind that had only temporarily been suppressed. He was isolated from his daughters, alone in the city; his only companion was the memories of his wife, thoughts that did not exist without the knowledge that her murderer had gone unpunished. The muscles across his back tightened at the recollection of his humiliating attempt to reach New York, the bullet scar in his shoulder stung as though the wound was raw, his brow furrowed as the details of the case surfaced in his mind. Why had Jesse Austin been shot and how was it connected to his wife? What was the truth behind that night? A dangerous restlessness began to bubble within him – he could not let the matter stand and yet he was further from the truth than ever before. Opium had become not an answer but merely a way of pushing these thoughts back for twelve or so hours.

Not bothering to change his clothes, he collapsed onto his bed, a thin mattress in the middle of the room. This apartment was unwelcoming and functional. He’d refused accommodation in government residences where officials lived safe behind guarded gates and barbed-wire fences, in newly built residential blocks where every apartment was fitted with air conditioning with back-up diesel generators should the electricity fail, which it often did. He never ate with the officers in canteens that served imported, vacuum-packed Russian food, nor did he socialize in the bars established for homesick Soviet soldiers. He existed like a distant moon, in orbit of the occupation but rarely seen, occasionally passing close enough to remind everyone of his existence before spinning into the depths of space on a lonely, elliptical trajectory.