Kale sat in the farthest corner from the door. Here he sought refuge, alone in a dark place where his face was unknown. He would be neither noticed nor remembered. The only light came through grimy windows that faced on to the street. The floor was unswept, tables and chairs rocked on uneven legs. Half a dozen people sat alone, staring gloomily into drinks that they made last for hours. Or gazing sightlessly at the flickering screen of a TV set on the far wall. The sound was set to mute, but the second-hand images of other people’s lives held a mindless fascination. Company for lonely souls.

An old woman with short grey hair sat behind a scarred zinc bar, staring into space, puffing periodically on an evil-smelling cheroot. Kale stared despairingly at the newspapers in front of him. He had bought them all. This day and the day before. Scrutinizing every column inch of words he did not understand. Searching but never finding. There was nothing that even remotely suggested a story about a missing child. Not even anything on the shootings at the Rue de Pavie. It was as though none of it had ever happened. He was discovering a quiet, alien desperation in himself, a need to know that his existence made a difference, that the things he did had consequences. Here in this strange foreign city, where he knew no one and no one knew him, it was as though he did not even exist.

The nightmare quality of the last days haunted him. He had discovered things in himself that he never knew were there. Things that confused him, frightened him. His values, if he’d ever had any, his relationship with the life that ebbed around him, had altered beyond his understanding. It was as if he had thrown a pebble into a pool and seen the stone vanish without breaking the surface of the water. There were no concentric rings radiating out to infinity, no evidence that the pebble had ever existed. Would such a man, perhaps, begin to doubt his own existence? Would he then dare to look into the pool for fear that there might be no reflection?

He pulled on the last inch of his cigarette and blew grey smoke through nicotine-stained teeth. Why had he not killed her? The opportunity had been his for the taking. And why, after only two days, had the killings in the Rue de Pavie vanished from the front pages? The papers, surely, should still be full of it. As they should be full, today, of the disappearing child.

He had bought English newspapers, too, at a newsagent’s in the centre of town. Front pages had been given over again to the election; the Prime Minister speaking in Edinburgh; the Leader of the Opposition making an important policy statement on immigration.

Why had he not killed the child?