‘Thank you, sir,’ said William, before he put the phone down.

‘Are we still going to Brussels?’ asked Ross.

‘Yes,’ said William, ‘but only one of us may be coming back.’

Not long after William had fastened his seatbelt and the Boeing 727 had taken off, he fell asleep for the first time since he’d arrived back from New York.

Ross spent his time writing an update while considering the alternatives, which he accepted only threw up yet more questions for William to consider when he woke. That didn’t happen until the wheels touched down on the runway at Brussels National Airport forty minutes later.

(a) Did Faulkner fly straight on to another airport?

(b) Did he stay at the airport overnight? Check every hotel within a two-mile radius.

(c)Is there a direct flight to Nice (Monte Carlo) from Brussels?

(d) Have we come to a dead end?

A uniformed security officer met them at the bottom of the steps as they disembarked from the plane. Clearly the commander hadn’t been idle.

‘How can I help?’ he asked, after he’d shaken hands with them.

‘How many flights took off from Brussels,’ William asked as he checked his watch, ‘after seven thirty yesterday evening?’

‘Half a dozen, no more,’ said the security officer. ‘I’d need to check the log,’ he added as they walked in a different direction to all the other passengers.

Once they were in his office, it took Mr King only a few moments before he pronounced, ‘Paris, St Petersburg, Manchester, Helsinki, Luton and Barcelona.’

William studied the list for some time before concluding, ‘My bet would be Paris, because he could have taken a domestic flight from there to Nice.’

‘Barcelona could also be an outside possibility,’ suggested Ross.

‘Agreed. You check with Air France, while I talk to Iberia.’

‘Were you both on duty last night?’ was William’s first question as he reached the check-in counter. He once again produced a large photograph of Ralph Neville and asked if either of them had seen him, but all he got was a shake of the head.

‘Barcelona is Iberian Airways’ last flight out of Brussels on a Saturday night,’ said ‘Blanca’, ‘and as usual it was packed with holidaymakers.’

‘This man wouldn’t have looked as if he was going on holiday,’ said William.

They both took a closer look, but it elicited the same response.

‘Can I check the passenger list?’ he asked.

The security guard nodded, and one of the booking clerks swung the console around. William double-checked both classes, but there wasn’t a name on the list that he recognized.

‘Thank you,’ Blanca said, as Ross walked across to join him, to report the same negative result for passengers flying to De Gaulle.

‘Even if he was on one of those flights,’ said William, ‘it would still leave us with about three hundred suspects. We’ll have to accept he’s disappeared again.’

‘He’s beginning to make Houdini look like an amateur.’

‘He’s beginning to make me look like a raw recruit,’ said William with considerable feeling.