I took a seat in the corner of the room and considered the naked woman sprawled carelessly across the bed. I’d deliberately brought her back here, blowing my base, because if she was working against me that was the quickest way to force her hand. It had been my strategy from the start, and in some ways it seemed to be working. Since my arrival in Lagos less than twelve hours previously, Slavin had been killed, his assassin had taken his own life, and I’d been shot at by the local police. Someone was working against me, and pretty effectively. Was it Isabelle, though? I was starting to have second thoughts. She hadn’t been out of my sight since leaving the Yacht Club, except for those two minutes in the Afrospot when I’d left her to return to the green room. But even if she had found a telephone in that time, the police couldn’t have reached the club so fast. There had been close to a dozen cars. Perhaps she had given a signal earlier - to one of the bouncers, or even someone at the Yacht Club.

But none of this seemed to fit the woman sleeping so easily a few feet away from me. After we had made love, I’d feigned sleep with one hand gripping the Tokarev, waiting for any sudden movement. But she had drifted off faster than most husbands. If she had wanted me dead, would she have slept naked and unarmed in the same room as me, knowing I had a pistol and rifle within easy reach?

It wasn’t just Isabelle that didn’t add up. In the turmoil of the previous evening’s events, I’d made several assumptions on the hoof - as light began to seep into the room, I went through them again.

I started with the killer on the golf course. My first reaction had been fury at Sasha: I had presumed that, despite my threats, he’d sent someone out to kill Slavin. But that couldn’t be right. The rifle had been left at the club for the Russian, but it had not been involved in the killing of Slavin - that had been accomplished easily enough with a pistol. A cold thought swept through me: Slavin’s killer had to have already been out here.

But why?

I thought back to the Afrospot: had I missed anything? Quite possibly - I’d had very little time to investigate. I tried to picture the green room again, but nothing new came to mind. What else had been there - and why had that woman stared at me like that when she’d first seen me? Perhaps she was the contact, and had thought I was the Russian. When I hadn’t quoted poetry at her, she’d realized her mistake and retreated.