But always hovering in the shadow was the big question, the one I turned my gaze away from. The one that drove hot pokers through me at night.

Are you dead?

CHAPTER FIVE

I went back to work in May when my arm had finally healed. I had rent to pay. The city slid eagerly into summer, embracing the delights of longer lazy days, each breath warm and fragrant, while a colourful riot of scarlets and golds burst into bloom in the parks. So full of life it made me ache inside.

Still no word.

Even when, on the 1 August, the city emptied as Parisians trekked south for their summer exodus, I didn’t leave. I stayed. Each evening I trailed through bars he’d taken me to and along the quayside promenades because I was convinced, absolutely convinced that I would find him.

I didn’t know then how easy it is to fool oneself.

One of the things that André had taught me was how to pick a lock, a brotherly gift to me. How to use a set of fine points, to feel for the pressure, fingers as precise and delicate as a surgeon’s. He’d shown me the way to do it and I admit I enjoyed it. I relished each challenge to be conquered, whether it was a curtained lever lock or a simple cylinder one. So I was disappointed on the evening that I worked on a brass lock and found it too easy.

I pushed open the door. The office lay in darkness, the kind of darkness you can stick a needle in. That suited me. Without a sound I entered, closed the door behind me and drew breath. The air smelled bad. Over-hot. Something festering. But I’d smelled worse. I flicked on the pinpoint beam of my torch and whipped it around the room across the bare floorboards, leaping into corners, checking that the fat bastard who owned this office wasn’t sleeping one off under his desk.

No, no one here. I breathed out.

Shadows were swarming up and down the walls, as though they’d been waiting for me in the darkness. I shot the torch beam at them and they vanished, the way dreams evaporate when you try to grab them by the throat.