‘It never matters how long this dress lies in a crumpled heap.’

A quick shake and the sequined black dress was ready. Casey had done her make-up as her flight descended towards Nice.

‘Now, how may I assist you, Miss Benedict?’

Casey had met Maurice Delacroix a few years earlier. She had been in the Vandals club, on the opposite side of the port from Teddy’s, circling one of the richest Russians in the world. All week long, the Russian had been watching her, dark eyes flickering in a still face.

Casey had been in a different Hervé Léger dress then. Imperial purple, her mouth a curve of scarlet. Simpering on a bar stool, and kicking her heels carelessly.

In the end, Kuznetsov had sent one of his bodyguards across to her. ‘You join us, yes?’ and it wasn’t a question.

Casey had sat across the table from the Russian, while his eyes flicked from her to the dancefloor and back, unspeaking. She had tried all her wiles: the half-questions, the flirtation, even the clowning. Nothing worked.

All around them, eighteen-year-old girls flirted relentlessly with men three times their age. They were professional, the Monaco girls.

Later, much later, the Russian stood. ‘You. Come with me.’

Casey knew Kuznetsov’s enormous yacht waited out in the Mediterranean. Too large to dock in the Monaco harbour, so the tenders raced back and forwards to the coast, like bees to honey.

Every instinct screamed no, but Casey hesitated. The story, the story, the story.

She stood up, smile glimmering. And just then, a man stopped in front of the table. Brazilian, from his accent.

‘One moment,’ Kuznetsov told Casey, over the Brazilian’s shoulder.

As she was standing by the table, another man – so casual, just passing – stopped and turned to her, and spoke so quietly that she almost missed the words in the roar of the club: ‘Who are you with?’

Casey turned with a jolt. He was tall, this man, with a tanned face that would have been unremarkable but for the intensity of the black-eyed stare. Beautifully dressed, in a dark suit, the jacket thrown over his shoulder. His voice was English public school, with the faintest of French inflections. Casey guessed he was in his early fifties.

‘I don’t’ – Casey had almost stumbled over the words – ‘know what you mean.’

‘You don’t have time to mess about,’ said the man. ‘Are you with an agency, or are you working alone?’

Casey tossed her head, and was moving away when he grabbed her elbow with a surprising strength.

‘It’s dangerous enough if you are an agent,’ he said, sitting down on a bar stool, so offhand. ‘But if you get on that ship without proper backup, that man will kill you.’

‘I know how to look after myself.’

She jerked at her arm, but his fingers only tightened. The Brazilian was wandering off, Kuznetsov looking around for her.