‘Perhaps we could find him before he finds us?’ said Ilić.

‘We no longer have those resources,’ said Radovan.

‘What, then?’ said Spiridon.

But it was Zorya who answered. She had learned information from Hendricksen to which even Zivco Ilić was not privy, knowledge whispered to her as she explored the concavities of the Dutchman’s body with her sharp nails. She knew of Parker, the private detective in Maine, friend and confidant of Louis – and, more to the point, father to a dead girl named Jennifer. There might be a way to strike at Jennifer through Parker, hurting one by hurting the other, just as long as Zorya could keep her distance from the specter of the girl.

‘You could divert the hunter’s attention,’ she said.

‘How?’ said Radovan.

‘By killing one of his friends.’

Chapter LIX

When there was still no word from Hendricksen after 9 a.m., Angel decided to check his room. A DO NOT DISTURB sign hung from the doorknob, but Angel placed no store by it. Whenever he stayed in a hotel. Angel left a similar sign on his door for the duration of his stay. If he needed extra towels, he asked for them, and he was capable of making his own bed. Only a sucker gave strangers more access to his life than was necessary.

He knocked on the door, but received no reply. He took a look at the key card lock, but it was a new model. This particular company’s old locks had been vulnerable to hacking through the insertion of a microcontroller into the DC socket at the lock’s base, which enabled the 32-bit key to be read and played back, opening the door. The company had been forced to tackle the flaw, at considerable expense. So far the fix was working, but Angel knew from experience that the ingenuity of lockmakers was exceeded only by that of lockbreakers.

He found a maid, told her his name was Hendricksen, and said that his key card wasn’t working. He demonstrated this for her with the key card to his own room. She seemed reluctant to oblige him by opening the door, but the sight of a twenty-euro note assuaged her concerns.

The room was dark and the bed unmade. Angel called Hendricksen’s name once the door had closed behind him, but again was met only with silence. A suitcase stood on a metal stand, but most of its contents were strewn across the floor. The bathroom door was closed, and as Angel drew nearer to it he heard a tap dripping. He sniffed the air. It smelled bad, like an unflushed toilet, but with a meatiness underpinning it. Angel was familiar with that odor from personal experience: it was the smell of suffering.