Two weeks later, the newspaper ran the story. Paul read it on the pebbly beach. Sure enough, there was the stuff about Nikolai getting out handsomely, the Scottish estate and stables. There was talk of him buying a racehorse from the Queen. As for Zolotneft, the report gave details of a deal with a foreign outfit. Having won the licence for a bluefield site offshore, they had launched a joint venture to go into the Arctic proper. This must be the deal that Darya had mentioned; the only mystery was how Nikolai came out of things so well. The paper said the deal had nearly foundered over concerns about Zolotneft’s environmental record, after the authorities gave notice of breaches in the Northwestern Federal District, but Nikolai had managed to broker a settlement.

It was cold on the shore and the breeze rattled the pages. The shingles were hard to sit on, and clung to his trousers when he stood up. Brushing himself off, he thought of how foolish he’d been, asking Darya to come here. She would have had a September baby, he thought, counting the months. She’d now be leaving Miami, if she hadn’t already. Strange to think of her in London, passing through on her way to Scotland, but then her London was not his London. They were completely different cities.

How had Nikolai turned the tables? he wondered, walking back. How had he scuppered the attempt to do him out of his shares, getting one up on whoever had tried to cheat him? He recalled his comment about foxes, that first day at the flat. His admiration for them as survivors, living and thriving in the most extreme conditions. That applied equally to Nikolai.

Up on the street Paul saw that his neighbours’ recycling bins were out. He remembered something more about that lunch in St Petersburg, with Darya’s parents. After they had eaten, in that slow dragging hour, Nikolai had cut into the older man’s speechifying and murmured something about going after the chief of his company. Paul understood the reply: ‘You don’t know what you’re asking. You don’t know where this will end.’

This didn’t stop Nikolai, who pressed some papers at his host.

‘What’s this?’

‘I want you to use it.’

A manila file fell open and photographs slid out, and Paul saw the images before Nikolai scooped them up. Shots of blackish oil clogging swampland and creeks. A report of some kind too, with the word ‘Nenets’ in the title, referring to the northern region where Zolotneft had operations. The older man looked appalled, sighed heavily and sat back so that his cardigan fell open at both sides of his belly.