Zorya sat in an armchair in the Vuksans’ safe house, eating Spanish strawberries from a china bowl. The berries were staining the tips of her fingers red, but Radovan could still see a deeper scarlet lodged beneath her fingernails. A sluggish dawn was forcing its way through the gaps in the shutters on the windows only to expire amid the shadows of the room. The house smelled of coffee and greasy food. Radovan was growing sick of it. He wanted to be done with all this skulking. On the other hand, he did not wish to die.

Beside Zorya, Zivco Ilić was drinking a glass of milk. He had declined anything stronger. Radovan thought that Ilić looked unsettled, as though he had recently received some bad news, although it might have been a consequence of what had been done to the Dutchman. Ilić and Zorya had not been confident of abducting him and so had been forced to interrogate him in his hotel room. Once Frend had informed them of Hendricksen’s presence in the city, Ilić had gone to the streets to obtain a master key card for the hotel, a variation on the type given to maids and concierge staff. Such key cards were in wide circulation, cloned from stolen or expired versions, if one knew the right people to ask – and Zivco Ilić did.

Unavoidably, he and Zorya would have been caught on camera while entering and leaving the hotel – they had circumvented the elevators, at least – but Zorya had changed her clothes for the visit, and Ilić’s buzzcut had been disguised by the simple addition of a hat, a cheap wig, and thick-framed glasses, as well as a stone in his left shoe to alter his gait. It was very possible that the Austrian police might connect the girl at the hotel with the one spotted at the Schönbrunn Palace on the day the Turk Nahid Hasanović was killed, but Vienna was not lacking in teenage girls. Anyway, Zorya was not one of them, not really. Wrap her in the right clothing and she might even have resembled some baba from the old country, smelling of cheap cigarettes and empty churches.

Now Radovan and his brother waited while Zorya ate and Ilić brooded. Inflicting pain, Radovan had decided, gave Zorya an appetite. She finished the final strawberry and licked her fingers before her tongue progressed to the human matter beneath her nails. It probably tasted salty after the fruit.

‘The man hunting us is definitely Louis,’ said Zorya, when she was done, ‘the same one who killed Andrej Buha in Amsterdam. It’s what he does, or used to do: killing for a living. He is a faggot –’ she used the Serbian slur peškir – ‘and has a furundžija, Angel, who travels with him.’

Spiridon shook his head sadly.

‘This is what we are reduced to,’ he said, ‘being hunted by a gejša.’