The driver’s eyes in the mirror watch Dyer check his shoulder bag. It would be sensible to assume that they’ve downloaded his laptop. Fortunately, he didn’t write up Marvar’s conversation on it. But his shorthand notes – where are they?

The car drops him off outside his door. Dyer waits until it has driven away before entering.

At a quick glance, the house appears as he left it three hours earlier: the beds unmade, the washing-up not done. Magda hasn’t been in to clean; anyway, she knows what not to touch.

But when Dyer looks closer, his anxiety mounts.

Nissa was on the wall at a different angle in Leandro’s bedroom. That was not all. From the top of the downstairs bookcase, Astrud gazed at Dyer a fraction too squarely. Reflected in her mute expression, he saw masked figures searching the rooms. He could feel their fingers running through his clothes, his pockets.

His notes on Marvar were not on the kitchen table, nor on the shelf where he usually stacked away his papers. He ran upstairs again. The only note he could find, on his bedside table, was that line of nonsense he had dreamed.

Updark had been summoned away at one point during their interview. Were his men reporting back what they’d found?

In a state of absolute alertness, Dyer opened the cupboard under the stairs and checked his tackle bag. His superstitions began in fishing. He knew that he had arranged the lures in his fly book in a certain order.

It jarred him to see the fly book the other way up.

He felt suddenly weak. He couldn’t control his thoughts. They blundered around in his head, glimmering up ghostly images of Updark’s men poring over his interview with Marvar …

Next to his tackle bag, Marvar’s overcoat remained on its wooden hanger. Collar turned down. They would have searched it as a priority, checking that nothing was sewn into the green lining.

That was the reason, it came back to him: Dyer had been going to take the coat to the Phoenix to give to Samir.

But Marvar? What about him? Along with his dust-coloured coat, he had left behind a heap of questions. Where was he? Alive, dead, captive?

And his revolutionary, world-altering formula – where was that?

Marvar – at this selfsame table – had left Dyer in no doubt that it was possible to consign his breakthrough to a single sheet of paper, and he had. But put it where?

Unable to concentrate, in no mood to return to the Taylorian, and needing to halt this torrent of questions, Dyer knelt by his bookcase and hunted through the spines for a volume to distract him.