“I’m sorry,” she said, turning to him with a gesture of apology. “Really. I do understand the priorities here. I give you my word, Rowland. I won’t do anything to prejudice your source.”

“It could be dangerous if you did,” he said, and something in his tone confused Gini.

“Dangerous? You mean to me?”

“No. Of course not. At least I hope not. To my source, obviously.”

“You mean—if his cover was blown? Rowland, I’d never do that.”

“I did explain. The DEA didn’t put an operative into Amsterdam just to report on the activities of a small-time Dutch chemist, however lethal or successful his product. Amsterdam is a major conduit for heroin and cocaine. At a conservative estimate, five billion dollars’ worth of those drugs passed through that city in the last twelve months. With those sums of money involved, the stakes are extremely high. So are the risks for any operative on the ground. I imagine I don’t need to explain that.”

Gini flushed. “No. Of course not. You’re right to rein me in. I’m sorry I spoke as I did. I realize—I’m rushing it, going too fast. I do that. I get obsessional. It’s been remarked on before. I’m nearly cured…”

He had looked at her then with slightly more warmth. He began to walk away toward Lindsay’s car, then turned back.

“Just as a matter of interest—who remarked on your impetuosity? Was it Max?”

“No. My father—for years. And Pascal’s certainly touched on it more than once.”

She knew he picked up the wryness of her tone, but he made no further comment. He gave her one last odd, assessing look, then climbed into Lindsay’s car for the drive back to London.

An unusual man, Gini thought now; an interesting man—and a man who was every bit as capable of impetuosity as she was. Lindsay had described him, on the trip down, as arrogant. Gini wondered if she had since revised that view—with which she herself would not have agreed. In the short time she had known Rowland McGuire, she had already clashed with him twice. She did not like to recall that moment when he had rounded on her in Max’s kitchen and accused her of lack of charity. He was the only person present on that occasion who had had the courage to say what they all thought, and she admired that. Not arrogant, she thought, but uncompromising—and though she might not admit it to him, she owed Rowland a debt for that angry remark. It had shocked and shamed her out of the slough of despair and aimlessness and misery in which she had been drowning for months; but she was grateful for it. Rowland McGuire had put her back on course. Thanks to him, she had rediscovered how it felt to be herself.

She must call him, she thought, as well as Pascal, when she returned to her hotel. Meanwhile—she looked at her watch—it was nearly four, and Fricke was late.

She opened her bag and took out the picture of Anneke. It was a studio portrait, her mother had said, taken to celebrate her fourteenth birthday. Her last birthday; within a year of this picture’s being taken, Anneke was dead.