‘I’ll take him,’ I say.

They both look at each other and I see their surprise. Melissa comes and hugs me and I feel the silver shock of her hair brush the side of my face.

‘You’re a good man, Mikey. A good man,’ she says.

‘All you’re doing is giving a guy a ride,’ Donovan says. ‘That’s all you ever need to say. You don’t know who he is or anything about him. Soon others will take him off your hands, do what needs to be done.’

I don’t say anything, not because I am already thinking of changing my mind but because there is one last opportunity and if it looks like a pay-off I don’t care. Melissa goes to get my passenger ready and Donovan hurries into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later to hand me a wad of money and an address.

‘If you need to pay for anything use this, not cards, and don’t use your phone,’ he says. ‘Don’t stop unless you have to and then make it as short as possible.’

‘I’ll take him if you tell me what happened to Tuyen.’

He looks shocked but then forces a half-smile as he says, ‘You’ve learned important stuff – always negotiate from a position of strength. That’s right, Mikey.’

He nods slowly as if in some reluctant show of admiration. I say nothing, knowing that for better or worse I have played my strongest hand.

‘Why were you in La Porte Bleue that day?’ he asks.

‘Quyen came to me the night before and asked me to marry Tuyen, said it was the only way to get her out. That you weren’t going to help them because she was pregnant with your child.’

‘It’s not true that I wasn’t going to help her get out. I know why they’d think that, but it wasn’t true, and I’d come that same day as you to tell them that I’d finally got seats on a plane. Pulled every string I could, traded in every favour ever owed me. But we were both too late, Mikey. They’d gone, disappeared into the chaos, and there wasn’t any way of finding them. All the networks just vanished like snow off a ditch. People cut and ran if they couldn’t get a seat out. Every one of them had no other impulse in their head but to disappear, to make a home run to wherever in the world kept them safe. To do whatever they needed to survive. They’d heard what had happened in Hue and fear multiplied by the hour. By the minute. There was not much more left than the bunch of Marines in the Embassy, not a single line I could follow or call I could make. I tried, Mikey, I really tried.’

‘So what do you think happened to her?’

‘She might have got out. Vien knew a lot of people from way back. He knew the French. He had contacts.’

‘And if they didn’t?’