‘We’ll try through here,’ said Haight. ‘I’m sure it’s the way I came.’

Haight opened the door and led James down a wide corridor lined with statues towards another door.

‘But how did you find out about Amy?’ he said. ‘Who told you she was here?’

Before he could reply, James stumbled as his frayed shirt tail caught on a statue, and, as he pulled it free, a grubby flap tore off and fell to the floor.

Haight tutted and bent down.

‘Best not leave that there,’ he said, and grinned at James. ‘You know how Ugo hates mess.’

As Haight picked it up James saw a flash of silver at his wrist as something slipped down on to his hand. Haight quickly pushed it back up his sleeve but not before James had a chance to see that it was a silver bracelet. The same silver bracelet that he’d found on the floor after Haight and Cooper-ffrench collided in the Archaeological Society meeting.

James had a sudden eerie feeling of vertigo. As if the whole world had turned upside down and nothing was as he had thought it was.

He felt like he had done when he’d first looked underwater with Victor’s goggles and had been instantly snapped into a different place with a different way of seeing things.

He had been utterly wrong about everything, and now he clearly saw the truth.

What an idiot he’d been.

Ugo’s associate wasn’t Cooper-ffrench. Of course it wasn’t.

It was Haight.

20

20

The Penny Drops

‘James, you haven’t answered my question,’ said Haight, with a hint of irritation in his voice. ‘Who told you about Amy?’

James was trying to suppress a rising tide of panic.

It had been staring him right in the face from the start. So close and obvious that he hadn’t seen it.

It was Haight’s bracelet that had dropped to the floor that evening, not Cooper-ffrench’s.

‘James?’ Haight was looking at him with a questioning expression on his face. Like when a teacher asks you something and you haven’t been listening.

After all, Haight was a teacher.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ James said. ‘What did you say?’

‘I asked you how you knew about Amy.’

‘Oh…’ James didn’t want to betray Stefano, but he had no other story prepared and his mind was blank. ‘Er, well, I was trying to find my way out of the palazzo and I sort of stumbled across her.’

Haight gave him such a withering look that he knew that the game was up.

They both knew the truth, and they both knew that the other person knew. The question was – how much longer where they going to play this game?

‘I think we’ve come the wrong way, sir,’ said James, backing towards the door they had come through.

‘James –’