She glances at George. Not even a day has passed since she came to Brussels. Since she had a panic attack, was followed, had sex with George and drugged a man. Now she’s waiting to meet a mysterious person Gabriella was supposed to meet.

‘What are you thinking about?’ George asks, catching her eyes.

She shrugs. ‘It’s been an eventful twenty-four hours.’

She points to George’s phone sitting in front of him on the table next to their coffee cups. ‘No news?’

It’s been half an hour since he sent the licence-plate number of the Russian’s car to Jean-Luc, a man George calls a fixer, who seems to be some kind of combination of private detective and administrative genius. The PR firm George is leaving apparently uses him to investigate various things within the jungles of Belgian bureaucracy.

‘I’m still technically employed there,’ George told her. ‘I’ll just have him bill it to the Philip Morris account. No one ever checks the details on that one anyway.’

Now George shakes his head. ‘Not yet.’

He glances at Klara, but she averts her gaze, looking back only when he’s no longer looking at her. She shouldn’t have room for such strong feelings. But something flutters inside her, knots up, when she allows her eyes to follow the clean lines of George’s small, straight nose, clean-cut jaw and high cheekbones. Or the hair that’s curly and messy now. She remembers how he touched her, in the night, and at Café Belga yesterday, and she can hardly sit still. Is this all in her head? Or does he feel the same?

She doesn’t have time to explore her feelings any further before George’s phone starts to buzz on the table in front of them. With a quick movement, he unlocks it. ‘Now we’ll see,’ he murmurs.

Klara tries to wait a moment to let him read the message, but she can’t stand it. ‘What does it say?’ she asks.

George clears his throat. ‘Rental car.’

Klara sighs. ‘Should have known. So we don’t know anything.’

George looks at her with amusement. ‘I don’t think you really understand Jean-Luc,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t call him a genius if that were as far as he got.’

‘Okay…’ Klara says. ‘This Jean-Luc can access the records of the car rental agency?’

George just smiles. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Apparently, the car was rented by some guy named Phillippe Brouchard. That doesn’t tell us much.’

‘The guy you drugged definitely was not named Phillippe Brouchard,’ Klara says dejectedly. ‘Of that I can be sure.’

George nods. ‘Well, the interesting thing about Brouchard is that apparently he’s a Belgian citizen employed by… wait for it…’

‘For what?’

‘The Russian embassy.’