‘No. She wouldn’t be that stupid, would she? Not when you might be calling her on the phone,’ Krasic pointed out brutally. ‘She’s stringing you along, boss.’

‘So what has Hansi the hacker been doing?’

‘When the man went out this morning, I tossed his apartment. Got his name and details. I told Hansi to find out all he could about him. I guess that’s what he’s been doing.’

‘Who is he, this man?’

‘He’s called Dr Anthony Hill. He’s on the staff at St Andrews University, I think. That’s in England, right?’

‘Scotland, actually.’ Tadeusz’s voice was tight and clipped. ‘There’s an exit coming up. Let’s go and find out what Hansi the hacker can tell us about this Dr Anthony Hill. And then we’ll decide what we do about Ms Jackson.’

Krasic glanced at his boss. His profile was grim, the muscles in his jaw bunched tightly. He wouldn’t like to be in Caroline Jackson’s shoes the next time they met. Serves the bitch right, he thought self-righteously as he flicked the turn signal to change lanes. You could never trust a woman.

He’d spent all night tossing in a fever, his berth soaked with sour sweat. His head pounded, waves of blackness pulsing between his temples. All evening, the boat had felt like a trap closing in on him. The forced inactivity was driving him crazy. He had nothing to occupy him except mechanical tasks that did nothing to take his mind off the arguments that raged constantly inside his head. Even Gunther and Manfred had noticed that something was wrong. He’d ended up yelling at them to leave him alone when they’d expressed their concern for the umpteenth time. The look of shock on their faces had been a terrible warning to him about the possible consequences of losing control.

He couldn’t afford mistakes, or everything he had worked for so painstakingly would be lost. He had a long way to go before he could be sure that the world would understand what he was doing, and he needed to remember that every waking minute.

But it was hard to keep a grip on himself when his head was splitting with contradictory messages. Every time he thought he’d got things straight, another insidious notion crept into his mind, throwing things into confusion again. First he’d convinced himself that he’d broken faith with his mission by listening to his grandfather’s voice and fucking Calvet. Then he persuaded himself that he’d done the right thing by making her so completely his. Then the pendulum would swing again and he’d be as bewildered as before.