Seconds later, he was jumping down into the patio and pushing his way past the magnolia, under the washing line, his face slapping against damp socks and shirts, to the French window.

Inside, a light was on. Dyer tapped the glass.

Nothing stirred.

He tapped again.

Silence.

He tried the window. Unlocked.

‘Leandro!’ he yelled, even as he let himself in. ‘Leandro!’ His voice reverberated through the house.

There was no answer.

He ran across the room.

The kitchen seemed as it was when he bundled Katya out less than an hour before. Two mugs of coffee by the sink, undrunk. His shoulder bag on the hook in the hall, doubtless filleted by Katya when she came downstairs. She was unlikely to have had the chance to search Leandro’s games bag, though. Magda had tucked this out of sight into a gap beside the washing machine.

Dyer pulled out the blue bag, unzipped it. His laptop was inside, along with Bunting’s poems, and, right at the bottom, the transparent sandwich bag in which Marvar’s little green folder bobbed rather like a tropical fish. Dyer looked for a moment at the folder as if he had been watching it since a little boy and it was a float that he was waiting to see disappear under the water.

With tender care, he brought out the folder, opened it. The false yellow post-it note was still there.

Packing everything back into the games bag, he hared up the stairs and raced down the corridor, opening doors.

Spread out like a skinned carcass on the permafrost, Marvar’s overcoat was on his bed where Katya had discarded it.

Dyer stepped across the landing into Leandro’s bedroom. He stood by the window and, keeping out of sight, glanced down.

A dog barked as darkness fell on the street. Over the canal came the sound of a train. The brown Skoda was parked opposite, the lean face inside outlined by the glow from a mobile phone.

Dyer thought: That’s what they do in Brazil if they want to roll you – they watch you till they know the pattern on your wallpaper, the colour of your shirts. And then, when you least expect it, they strike.

Had someone kidnapped Leandro?

He sat on the bed, his hands fumbling as he redialled his son’s number. In his impatience, he left out a digit, and had to start again.

Nissa smiled down at him while he waited for the purr of the ringing tone. He pressed the phone to his ear and listened. One, two, three, four times.

Again, no one picked up.

Mad thoughts of ringing the police, Updark even, were interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming.

Downstairs, Leandro was surprised to be enfolded by his father in a very tight hug.

‘Hey, Dad! What are you doing?’

‘When did you get back?’

‘About twenty minutes ago.’

‘Where have you been?’