He parked outside, and looked up at the sign, which claimed, optimistically Mahsoud thought, that the hotel was the ‘Perle de Desert’.

It took him a while to rouse anyone, but eventually a young man with a bushy moustache and an attitude came through from the back.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘I would like a room, please,’ said Zeff Mahsoud. ‘I’ve been driving all night and I’m very tired. Do you have any available?’

‘We have one,’ said the young man, curtly. ‘Forty dinars a night. How many nights?’

Mahsoud put his fake Pakistani passport and some notes on the counter.

‘Just tonight,’ he said, with a smile.

The young man plucked up the money with a sigh, scribbled down the passport number and showed Mahsoud to a room on the third floor.

Zeff Mahsoud shut the door behind him, switched on the air conditioning – it did not respond – and collapsed face down on the bed.

He was asleep within a matter of moments, but before he drifted off the image of a woman filled his mind’s eye.

Charlotte Morgan, in her black gown and wig, at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Chapter 67.

67.

MAHSOUD WOKE in the early evening, still tired, his head thick, his mouth tasting foul.

He left the shabby hotel bedroom and drove out of Medenine, east, to the small town of Zarzis.

He kept his eye on his mirrors, and two or three times he pulled onto the side of the long, straight P1 highway, and then the smaller C118, and watched to make sure the cars behind him zoomed by.

In his line of work, there was no such thing as being too paranoid, but he was confident he had not been followed.

In sixty kilometres he made just one turn, a right onto the Avenue 20 Mars in Zarzis itself, and a few seconds after that he rolled to a stop outside the Publinet Fayez internet café.

He strolled inside, paid for an hour’s access, and a coffee, and got down to surfing the net.

Mostly, he visited newspaper sports pages and dating sites, but at one minute past nine o’clock he logged onto his WhatsApp account.

There was one message, which he read quickly and deleted.

When his hour was up, he drove back to Medenine, and went to his hotel room.

He prayed for a while, and then climbed back into bed.

This time, sleep took a little longer to come, but come it did, and the next thing he knew he was being awakened by the dawn call to prayer from a mosque down the road.

He dozed for a little while, and eventually he pulled a book from his bag and read.

At eleven in the morning, the room hot and musty with the sun, he left the hotel and climbed into his Mercedes again.