‘I doubt it. Or he wouldn’t have needed to write it down. As I said, it took up the whole post-it note. No one but a nuclear physicist would be able to make head or tail of it.’

Gilles said with a bitter laugh: ‘Some things can’t be understood no matter how much one studies them.’

Dyer paused before making his next cast. ‘A lot of poetry is like that.’

‘Not only poetry! I started reading your book …’

It hadn’t been meant unkindly, and Dyer’s tone in response was light. ‘I bet you didn’t get any further into it than Marvar. Incidentally, I gave him my last copy.’

‘So I understand. With a most touching dedication.’

‘He may have been reading it when you saw him,’ said Dyer, wondering how Gilles knew this – from Updark? Crotty? Or was it Gilles himself who had handed in Dyer’s book to the headmaster?

But Gilles’s mind seemed to be on what Marvar – not on what Dyer – had written. He was reassuring himself. Marvar was like every scientist who claimed to have discovered the St Graal of nuclear fusion. He would end his days, if they hadn’t been terminated already, like that German in Bariloche, a forgotten laughing stock with a changed name.

He was playing with the ceramic container again. The sound of a man rapping the table to loosen the salt.

‘Jean, I know wealth means nothing to you, but if you do have information …’

Dyer held his gaze. He made sure that what he said was so close to the truth that Gilles and whoever else had their skin in this wretched game would be certain to believe him – and then leave Dyer and Leandro alone. They had the room to themselves, but he spoke to Gilles as though addressing a boardroom crammed with every interested party that he could think of to summon: every hedge-fund manager, banker, spy, kidnapper, assassin, telecoms magnate, revolutionary, nuclear physicist, news reporter, father.

‘I swear I do not have anything of Marvar’s in my possession. Marvar left his overcoat – and I haven’t even got that. Someone broke into our house and stole it along with the sandwich bag.’

Gilles smiles like a man who is shocked and sad to get what he asked for. ‘Another shandy? The ginger beer is very good here.’

Chapter Thirty-three