The door swings open and the man’s arm reaches out, hooks her around the shoulders and pulls her, gently, into the dim yellow light inside. The man leans against the door and locks it. ‘Look who’s here,’ he growls in a tobacco-stained voice to a man coming up the stairs behind him.

‘Zoë! Kopella mou! But what the hell are you doing here?’ It is Apostoli Vikos, and the music is rising behind him, wrapped in a blast of tobacco smoke and the earthy musk of hashish.

‘I didn’t want to be alone,’ Zoë tries to explain, but Apostoli puts a finger to his lips.

‘What a day,’ he murmurs, patting her hand. ‘What a day. What a blow. Pavlo should never have left you, and just to play bouzouki with a bunch of villains like us …’ He shakes his head. ‘Po po po, what a crime. But now you’re here, come down and get warm. Have a little to eat. A little coffee. Listen to your monster of a brother for a while. Then we’ll get you home.’

She follows Apostoli, descending into the middle of a small room whose low ceiling of unpainted beams and rafters is hung with a few old-fashioned kerosene lamps and criss-crossed with strings of bright triangular bunting, of the sort the big ocean liners are decorated with when they leave port. The brick walls are hung with Turkish rugs and kilims. Tables fill the room on either side, and in front of her is a low platform. There, sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair, knee to knee with Batis on one side and Stellakis on the other, is Pavlo, bouzouki on his lap, staring straight ahead with wide, unfocused eyes while his hands move up and down the neck loosely but with intense precision. The tune they are playing is a tight, hard-edged zeibekiko dance. Dimitrios Semsis’s violin skirls and Stellakis’s guitar thrums out the rhythm. Someone Zoë doesn’t recognise is playing another bouzouki.

Pavlo must have seen her. But he makes no sign that he has. The music seems to grow more tense. The cigarette hanging from Semsis’s lips has almost burnt down into his moustache. ‘Aman! ’ someone calls from the back. Zoë stares at her brother’s unseeing face. She thought her fury at him had died down but suddenly it rages again. She stamps down the last two steps and straight up between the tables to the stage, where she plants herself right in front of Pavlo. Still none of the men look at her. Zoë can’t bear it any longer. She takes her hand out of her pocket and slaps Pavlo as hard as she can across the face.

The band rattles to an undignified halt and there is complete silence in the basement. Pavlo’s eyes come into focus and his brow furrows. Semsis takes the cigarette very slowly from his lips and drops it to the floor.