‘We’ve booked you on the first Icelandair flight to London tomorrow morning. Be on it. Go home. Enjoy Easter. Relax. Forget all this … unpleasantness. Let a little time pass. Then … Peter will contact you. He’s asked me to give you his word on that. He will be in touch. You will meet your father.’

‘When?’

‘When it’s safe. For you. And for him.’

‘Which could be … months from now?’

‘Nothing like so long, I’m sure. But haste, at this stage, could be fatal.’

‘How do I know he’s not just fobbing me off?’

Hardekar frowned. ‘I understand how difficult this is for you. You’ve never met him, so you’ve no way of judging whether you can trust him. And some of the things you’ve learnt recently must make you doubt it. But I know him. You can trust him.’

‘Like Alison Parker trusted him?’

‘Staying here, at this time, in this situation, puts your life in danger. You must leave. But you will hear from him. And when you meet him … he’ll answer all your questions.’ Hardekar leant back in his chair and spread his hands. ‘There’s nothing else I can tell you.’

TWENTY-ONE

‘I WILL NOT tell you … how ohara died.’

Wada’s refusal to answer was the only way she could defy Zayala. And she was grimly content for those to be the last words she spoke.

Then a shadow moved behind Zayala. His right arm was wrenched upwards just as he fired. The shot went through the hole in the ceiling. And the blade of a knife gleamed in reflected flame. In the next instant, his throat was opened in a tide of blood.

His assailant was a bulky, darkly clad figure. He lowered Zayala gently to the floor, where the blood went on flowing and the man who’d been about to kill Wada died beside her in a spasm of twitches.

His killer strode past her and on along the passage. She rolled clear of the blood and began struggling to her feet. She was still half stunned by her fall through the ceiling and her brain couldn’t for the moment compute what had happened.

Before she was fully upright, Zayala’s killer was back, scooping her up as if she weighed no more than a child and carrying her out of the burning house into the yard. He propped her against the wing of George’s car and held her by the shoulders. He had bright blue eyes and a lined, serious, faintly Asiatic face with a few days’ growth of grey-brown beard. He was wearing a woolly hat, windcheater and jeans. The knife he’d used on Zayala was back in a holster at his waist.

‘Who … are you?’ she managed to ask.

‘Espersen.’ The name – and his accent – suggested he was Icelandic. ‘Can you stand?’

‘Y – yes.’