Foster thanked her and then turned to see that Keller had not waited for him. She was only a few yards away, but the crowd had surged to meet her. They pushed forward around her and she began to stumble back towards Rosario’s car, which was still parked in the driveway. She hadn’t eaten or slept, and Foster could see that her world was spinning. He had almost reached her when she slumped blindly onto the car bonnet and rolled. Foster dived at full length and got his hands between her head and the pavement, cushioning the blow. The crowd surged forward, as he scooped her up in his arms and bundled them both through the mass of bodies pressing in on them.

She regained consciousness as they reached the car, her eyes confused and searching.

‘It’s okay,’ Foster told her. ‘I’ve got you.’

He lifted her gently into the passenger seat, clicked her seatbelt and then turned towards the press, slowly shepherding them backwards until there was room to close the car door. He turned back to Kirsten and saw that she was holding out her hand, her face bewildered.

‘My pocket,’ she whispered, horror jarring at the edges of her voice. ‘I just found …’

In her hand was a memory stick, identical to the one she’d shown him in the British Embassy in Paris.

‘Shit!’ Foster said, and he closed the door and headed round to the driver’s side, scanning the crowd as he went. Nobody running. Nobody wearing a baseball cap.

‘Kirsten, who gave it to you?’

It was no use. She couldn’t focus on the palm of her hand, let alone the crowd outside. Foster slammed the Range Rover into first, taking her away from the scene.

‘Can you remember what happened?’ he asked after a while. She couldn’t, so he leaned over and took the memory stick from her. He turned it over in his fingers. Someone had used something sharp to scratch two angry words into the soft plastic casing: You’re next.

CHAPTER 12

IT TOOK AN hour to get back across London, the rush-hour traffic bunching up at every junction. Foster stopped once along the way, at a petrol station on the A3 to pick up Haribo and Evian, which he gave to Keller. At the hotel, he settled her on the sofa and made her hot, sweet tea. Keller sat listening to the hum of the kettle rippling through the otherwise silent air and said nothing. He sat next to her and asked her nothing until she was halfway down the cup and a reasonable amount of colour had come back to her cheeks.

‘You okay?’

‘Better for the tea,’ she shrugged. ‘Thank you.’

She nestled into the nook of his arm, which he didn’t think was a good idea, but he could hardly push her away right at that moment.

‘I fell onto the car, right?’

‘Yeah.’