But he might as well be talking to a stone. Worn out by his troubled sleep and the panic over the boy’s disappearance, Gessen folded his hands in his lap and listened to Ismail breathe. As the silence stretched into minutes, his mind wandered to a small item in the newspaper he’d seen at breakfast. An acclaimed Cambridge University neuroscientist, who was in Copenhagen to receive an international prize, had gone berserk and attacked a man in the audience.

As he pictured the scene, Gessen puzzled over the drama. Had the scientist known the man he attacked, or did a random stranger trigger a momentary psychosis? A memory kindled, a buried injury revealed. Gessen’s speciality, the rupture of the psychic wound, ossified through time, yet festering still. In a man like Professor Kiraly, an award-winning Cambridge don at the pinnacle of his career, it was intriguing to imagine what that wound might be.

Ismail sighed noisily and rose to his feet. ‘Are we done here?’

Gessen felt a surge of paternal empathy. How easily he recalled the passions of youth. The fierce desire to set fire to the world and fashion it anew. We don’t choose our families. A sentiment he’d shared with Ismail at the start of his therapy. Parents and siblings are thrust upon us. There’s no running away, so we must learn to deal with them as best we can. But convincing Ismail to make friends with his anger was no simple matter. Whether the boy liked it or not, they had a long road ahead of them.

A blood vessel beat in Ismail’s neck and his dark eyes flashed. A good thing his father was safely in Geneva, Gessen thought. Such anger, if not held in check, could escalate to catastrophic proportions.

‘In the time remaining today, I’d like to explore in more depth your relationship with your father.’ He gestured at Ismail to retake his seat. ‘Why don’t we start with your very first memory and go from there.’

3

Their hour together, like all the others, ground to a halt and ended in deadlock. As Gessen paged the house attendant to escort Ismail to his room, he studied the boy’s impassive face with a twinge of sympathy. Poor lad. Never truly alone, from the moment of his birth, nor free to choose his own path in life. Watched over with anticipation and dread, like the only son of an ailing king, waiting to fulfil a destiny long etched in stone. Speaking of which, Ismail’s private bodyguard must be somewhere close by, though the man had a knack for remaining in the shadows.