He had parked in St Barnabas Street next to the church tower. Before he climbed into his Beetle and started the ignition, he looked up and down the line of cars. No one followed him into Great Clarendon Street, or left along Walton Street, or right into St Margaret’s Road.

It took Dyer five minutes to drive to the school. He drew up beside the pillar box and jumped out. Not waiting to lock the car, he walked fast along the pavement to the zebra crossing, and over the road. On the last occasion when he made this journey so late at night, after Rougetel had revealed the location to him in the bathroom mirror, bonding them for ever, Dyer had been wearing blue-and-white striped pyjamas and a paisley dressing gown.

He punched in the numbers and came through the gate. He ran as if towards a phone ringing. The street light shed the same dim orange glow. He knelt in the sandpit directly opposite where Rustum had sat, and started sifting with his fingers. He felt a drench of pure terror, but he was also distant, as though looking down on himself from the top of a bedside locker.

Almost immediately, his fingertips brushed against the outline of a solid object. This time, not the Airfix wing of an Australian fighter plane, but a Ziploc sandwich bag with a small hard-edged green folder inside, wrapped in wax-paper.

The shipping forecast was coming to an end, driving home. St Barnabas Street was as peaceful when Dyer got back as when he left. But something had shifted. He did not recognise the city, he could have been crossing Rio.

PART TWO

Chapter Twenty-one

OXFORD WAKING IN THE DAWN, the cold sunlight numbing and clear as morphine, the corn-coloured stone, the blazers in the windows, the cyclists. Tom Tower is visible above the roof tiles, like a Kaiser helmet. On a tented stall in the Broad, a man with Andean features lays out columns of panama hats to the sound of pipe music. He glances at Dyer, wondering if he ought to recognise him, drawn to how fearful he seems of being noticed, and decides that he doesn’t.

Dyer sees the slimmer figure of his youth slip down the Turl. He follows him up Market Street, into the Covered Market. The Portuguese café more or less as he remembered. Same oatmeal lino floor, pale blue formica tabletops. He could be pushing open the glass-panelled door and walking in here fifty years before.

The Café Lisboa is where Dyer heads first thing, after dropping Leandro off at the Phoenix. More than anywhere else in Oxford, it reminds him of his childhood, but also of Brazil. For one thing, it’s a place where you can speak Portuguese.

‘Puxa! É você, João?’ says Miguel, his habitual mask of melancholy creasing into a smile. ‘Disculpe, não lhe reconheci com esse sobretudo.’