A few weeks later, Miles’s watch disappeared from his dressing table, and he reported the crime, as he had said he would. While they waited for Angelo to come back from the police, or to call, Christopher smoked on the terrace, a rare nervous habit. A gaudy desert sunset hung in the sky beyond the city, and Christopher was breathtaking in the pink light: clear-eyed, with a wave in his hair. Miles had come closer to putting his heart in Christopher’s hands, and being his completely, than he had with any other man. He could feel the reproach in Christopher’s smoking.

“I can’t believe you sent him in,” Christopher said.

“You have to do what you say you will,” Miles said.

“You know this country is barbaric. You sent him to those beastly police.”

“They won’t cut off his hand,” Miles said. “It’s a warning.”

“It’s a strike.”

Miles put his arms around Christopher’s shoulders and smelled the tobacco in his hair, the mint of his skin beneath.

“Why do I smoke these things?” Christopher said, putting out his cigarette. “I’ll be a wrinkled old man.”

The sky had grown dark, the pink light fading in blue. Christopher looked at him with sadness but without hatred, and Miles felt again that his heart might be safe.

For two days they went without Angelo, and without word from him. On the third morning, while Christopher was still asleep, Miles heard Angelo’s voice in the kitchen. He tried to respect the kitchen as a private place for the servants, but he went in. The cook was making a strong-smelling tea. Angelo sat at the kitchen table and didn’t look up.

“Third time for him,” the cook said.

The bandage was white and clean, and wrapped Angelo’s wrist tightly where the hand should have been.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Miles asked, and found he was genuinely angry. “I wouldn’t have sent you if I’d known.”

Angelo said nothing, but sat at the table and drank his tea. The cook looked at Miles with her hands on her hips until he left the kitchen.

At work that day, Miles was distracted and irritable. A case had fallen to him: an English girl had followed her lover home to Riyadh, discovered he was already engaged and murdered him in his sleep. The embassy had tried to get her extradited to England for months. The murder had been brutal, the young man from an important family, and no one was in a mood to let the English girl go home. Miles was tired of the whole affair, and it combined with Angelo’s hand to make him guiltily stomachy. He went home early to find Christopher, red-eyed, packing brightly colored shirts in suitcases.

“I’m going home to England,” Christopher said. “I’ve called already, I’m getting my job back.”