The antechamber was quite beautiful. A few pieces of modern art hung on the white walls, offsetting a couple of artefacts that had obviously travelled all the way from their home village in Nepal. Julianne had to admire the restrained taste. She would never have thought it of someone like Shah, a rough-handed soldier, and a former non-com, not even an officer.

But with that unworthy thought came immediate embarrassment. Who was she to be judging others on their aesthetics? She had spent the last five or six years mostly unwashed and dressed in stinking rags. First as a smuggler with Pete and Fifi, then as a pirate, a glorified looter in New York, and of late as a fugitive, scurrying from one bolthole to the next. Shah was a fine man. Someone who had taken whatever talents he had been gifted and done his best with them to secure a good life for his family and, from what Jules could see at the compound, for anyone who worked for him.

‘This is a lovely home, Pasang,’ she said quietly. ‘Shah . . . um, Narayan tells me you built it yourself.’

Pasang took Jules by the arm and patted her like a child.

‘No, no. We did not build this. We paid the men to build it. You are hungry? I have made food.’

‘That would be lovely,’ Jules answered.

A brief, whispered conversation followed between the former Gurkha and his wife as the three of them passed out of the greeting hall and into what looked like an open lounge or family room. They proceeded up a brushed-glass staircase, which took them through another entrance guarded by heavy mahogany doors and into the small crowd that had gathered out on the . . . gallery? The balcony? It was hard to say. White cotton drapery hung from the ceiling, swaying in a warm breeze and seeming to define a point at which the room flowed outside.

‘I must see to the guests,’ said Pasang. ‘And to something to eat for you.’

With that, she disappeared into the crowd, halting briefly to say hello to some of the people she passed.

Jules saw Birendra, and thought she recognised one of the men he was talking to. It looked like Thapa, who had also been with them on the massive super-yacht. Birendra waved when he saw her and the other man turned around. It was indeed Thapa. Shah had brought another of her old crew-mates with him to Darwin. It gave Jules pause. She had lost so many friends over the last few years. Fifi had had quite a crush on Thapa.

‘Over here is the man I wish you to meet, Miss Julianne,’ said Shah.

He guided her towards the buffet table. There, she spotted Piers Downing, picking at a pile of sticky blackened chicken wings and talking to a thickset, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and the build of a rugby prop whose championship days were behind him, but not too far behind.