In the calm oasis he slowly unravelled Keller’s story. He described his frustration at not being able to keep her safe, and his sense of foreboding. Elaina listened as she always did, never in any rush as she lay quietly between the humming dragonflies and the gentle rustling leaves. And she told him what he already knew: that he was good at his job, but he cared too much. And she told him that no matter how much he risked to keep Keller safe, none of it would convince her to rise from the dead and come back to him.

‘You’re on your own, kiddo,’ she said, and Foster smiled.

He returned to the Shard in the early evening and took Keller to dinner in Oblix, a New York grill on the thirty-second floor. Choosing from the menu proved a challenge. Keller ordered carefully, according to her diet, but she still pushed most of what the kitchen had prepared around her plate, just as she had at The Ivy.

Foster ate well, feeling unburdened after his conversation with Elaina. Time moved on, just as Keller had told him, in the bedroom in the Shangri-La. He couldn’t bring Elaina back, and he couldn’t be all things to all people. But finally he felt ready to move forward. He savoured the feeling of good food in his belly and, once Kirsten was safely in bed, took up his position on the sofa in the outer room and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER 23

THE WOODBRIDGE HOTEL was a four-storey red-brick building less than a mile from the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Each of the rounded burgundy blinds hovering above the metal-framed windows was covered in pigeon-shit and greyed by the fumes of the traffic below. Behind the palm-smeared glass of the aluminium doors, a shabby reception area greeted guests with the smell of wet dog and cheap air freshener.

The Woodbridge was not the kind of place that employed especially attentive lobby staff, which was good, as far as the man crossing the worn blue carpet was concerned. He walked briskly with a faint limp. A livid purple bruise was still maturing on the side of his neck. He had considered turning up his collar to conceal the injury, but he decided against it, figuring he would only draw more attention to himself. Anyway, the receptionist had little interest in passing guests. He had barely looked up from his Racing Post when the bruised man left the hotel, and he had not looked up at all when the man returned, crossed the lobby and disappeared into the rickety lift that ascended swiftly to the floor where he was staying.