He looked down at her bloodless face, and then, with a cold sense of recognition, he understood. No needle tracks, so it was unlikely to be heroin. What then—pills? Crack?

He straightened up, listening to the sudden clamor of voices from six years before: a gunshot wound to the neck; Esther dying on the sidewalk one bright summer’s afternoon.

So many different kinds of victims. The girl’s eyes were open, as Esther’s had been open; with sightless fixity she gazed up at the sky.

Rowland averted his face. His hands had begun shaking. From the valley below came shouts; he glimpsed the beams of flashlights. The boy who took Esther’s purse, then shot her, had been hooked on crack since the age of twelve; he was poor, black, semiliterate, and fatherless. A born victim.

This girl was wearing a gold bracelet. Her clothes, if odd, were expensive. There were no indications here of deprivation. She had a choice, Rowland thought angrily; then, regretting his anger, and pitying her, he bent again and covered her face with his coat. The wind was stronger now, and it had begun to rain.

Chapter 7

GINI SLEPT FOR THREE hours. She woke at six, and at once rose. She drew back the curtains; outside it was still dark. She washed and pulled on some clothes quickly, then padded down the stairs.

In the kitchen the dogs greeted her, whimpering, and thumping their tails. No one else was up, not even the children; the whole house was quiet. She boiled some water on the peculiar Aga stove that Charlotte swore by, and made herself some instant coffee. Her hands were unsteady, and her heart was beating very fast. It was now three days since she had last spoken to Pascal. It was six-thirty here, seven-thirty in Sarajevo.

She padded through to Max’s study, which he had said she should use, closed the door, and stared at the telephones. In this room Max had installed all the hi-tech paraphernalia of the modern world. There was a Macintosh, a plain-paper fax machine, a laptop which he used when traveling, and two separate phone lines. Both phones had answering machines, and Pascal had both numbers. Max must have switched them to answer mode before he went to bed; two unwinking red lights met her gaze. During the night no one had called for Max, or for her.

She sat down and began punching in the number. She got through to the hotel on the third try. It rang for a long time. She could see the hotel lobby as she waited, see the press of journalists and TV crews and cameramen who would already be assembling there at this hour. She could see the stairs, and the elevators that rarely worked; she could see the room she and Pascal had shared. It was ugly, brown and orange; it had a 1970s picture window with antiblast tape on the glass.

“Lie beside me. Let me hold you,” Pascal had said the day they returned from the hospital in Mostar. She had done as he bid. She lay in his arms, trembling. Tomorrow she would have to file her account of this particular incident. She could hear words in her head, and they all sounded hollow. She stared across the room at the window. Outside, the light was failing. She was beyond exhaustion, also afraid to close her eyes.