WHEN ZELDA woke early the following morning, she had a splitting headache, and the bright sun shining through her hotel window didn’t help at all. She had forgotten to close the curtains. With an effort, she pushed herself out of bed and closed them. She found some paracetamol in her bag and swallowed three with a glass of water. Then she lay down again. She couldn’t go back to sleep, she knew that; she could only hope that the headache would fade and that she would stop feeling sorry for herself. If she was going to get any further in her endeavor, she was going to have to focus. Her reaction last night had been instinctive, she knew; the memories that rushed back on her seeing Goran Tadić had been a visceral tsunami. And so she had run. She hadn’t been able to help herself. Accept it. Failure. That was nothing new to her. But get over it. Get a grip.

What would Modesty Blaise have done? she asked herself. Modesty Blaise wouldn’t have let herself get into that situation to start with. And if she had, Willie would have come to the rescue. But Zelda didn’t have a Willie Garvin. She had a feeling there weren’t any Willie Garvins in the real world.

So she lay there as the paracetamol slowly took effect and did nothing for the rest of that day but lounge around in bed, watch television, drink a lot of water and order room service.

By seven o’clock she was feeling human again and ventured down to the hotel dining room for her evening meal. As she toyed with her stuffed chicken breast and sipped her mineral water, she began to think about a plan. She realized that she had wanted to find Keane because he could lead her to the Tadić brothers, whom she wanted to kill. One more than the other: Goran. Perhaps the loss of his brother would be suffering enough for Petar.

But she had no plan.

She took out her Moleskine and worked through the details. Writing it all down was a risk, but it was how she worked best; besides, she had no intention of letting anyone else read it, and she knew quite well that if she did go through with it, no body would ever be found, and there would be no investigation.