‘Or killing them.’ Angel was reading about Ovčara, and the facility at Sremska Mitrovica, where Croat prisoners were tortured, raped, and murdered by Serb reservists. Both Spiridon Vuksan and Zivco Ilić had also been present on specified dates and had, according to witnesses, participated enthusiastically in the carnage.

‘It looks like Radovan just took care of the paperwork,’ said Louis, ‘and made sure that all of his brother’s victims were in one place when he and his men got around to butchering them.’

The figures were almost beyond belief: a hundred men here, two hundred there, gradually shading into the thousands; women and children, too. Louis had a vague memory of these wars, of news reports on TV and pictures in the better papers, but he had been a different man back then. Now he found it hard to believe that the civilized world had stood by and allowed this slaughter to continue for so long before finally being goaded into intervening. By that stage, less than half a century had gone by since the fall of Nazi Germany, yet no one appeared to have learned very much from it at all.

But who was he to point the finger? He, too, had blood on his hands.

And soon, he would have more.

Later that evening, Angel explained to Mrs Bondarchuk that he and Louis would be heading abroad for a period of time yet to be determined, and the usual routines would apply, which Mrs Bondarchcuk took to mean that she should maintain her vigil by the window, and sign for deliveries. In the event of a problem, or any matter of even the slightest vexation, she had a list of numbers to call, including those for Charlie Parker; his lawyer, Moxie Castin, to whom Louis and Angel had also begun to entrust some of their affairs; and, in the event that everyone else on Earth ceased answering their phones or vanished into another dimension, the Fulci brothers.

But the number that Angel and Louis always instructed her to call first, should she feel threatened, belonged to a woman named Amy, whom Mrs Bondarchuk had never met. Amy worked for Leroy Frank Properties, Inc., a company that might have been revealed – had anyone been inclined to dig deep enough – as the beneficial owner of the property in which Mrs Bondarchuk currently resided. When Angel and Louis were away, Amy took care of any problems that might arise: plumbing, heating, carpentry, and sometimes more specialized issues, too.

Earlier in the year, while Angel and Louis had been in Europe, Mrs Bondarchuk had become agitated. Three men – two young, one older, all of a disreputable mien – had followed her home from Zabar’s, and she became convinced, not without some justification, that they might be about to attempt a break-in, since they had passed the building either alone or in pairs four times in the next two hours, the city gradually growing darker around them.