33.

‘I can’t believe you accused him of that!’ I said to Amelia when we’d rounded the first corner.

‘I didn’t accuse him of anything,’ she said, taken aback.

‘As good as. All that “How long have you actually known Langdon?” stuff. You might as well have called him a liar to his face!’

‘I don’t recall using the word actually.’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ I said. ‘You don’t have to say a thing explicitly to give the impression that’s what you mean.’

‘You might not, but I do,’ said Amelia quietly. She’d turned her face from me. For a horrible moment I thought her shoulders had begun to quiver. Had I hurt her feelings? Was she actually crying? I immediately felt bad: Amelia’s straight-talking cleverness is what I like most about her, after all. The stress of not knowing where my parents were was obviously getting to me.

I reached out to pat her upper arm and said, ‘Sorry.’

She turned back to me and I was relieved to see anger in her eyes, not tears. ‘Does that actually mean “sorry”, or something else, like: “Amelia, you’re an idiot.”’

‘It means I’m sorry.’

‘You should feel better now that I asked him those questions anyway, not worse.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because he’s obviously telling the truth.’ As if talking to a moron she said, ‘That’s what I meant when I told him I believed him.’

I resisted the temptation to say, ‘Told you so,’ though that’s what I wanted to do as we cut back through the market. One of the stallholders recognised us, or Amelia at least, and offered her a mango. When she accepted, he sliced it in half and filleted it, his knife a blur, before offering her the result turned inside out, a sort of spiky mango hedgehog. Amelia tried to pay him but he waved her money away.

‘Weird business model,’ she said with her mouth full.

The guy heard and understood her. ‘Tu seras de retour,’ he said with a smile.

‘Possibly,’ Amelia agreed, and we walked on.

This exchange, and what had felt like a mini-breakthrough at the police station, meant that I returned to the hotel with a spring in my step. It was a surprise to find Xander in the lobby, doing the man-on-crutches equivalent of pacing about. Careful not to fall into the told-you-so trap with him either, I quickly filled him in on our conversation with the detective. He read between the lines though – as he always does – and said, ‘So you were right all along. I’m glad to hear it.’

‘Right, wrong, it doesn’t matter,’ said Amelia. ‘The point is the police appear actually to be on the case.’

‘What are you doing hobbling about anyway?’ I asked him. ‘The whole point of leaving you here was to give you a chance to rest your leg.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I got bored. And there was something going on out here so I came to see what was happening.’

‘What was it?’

‘I’m not exactly sure. Some delivery guy in a motorcycle helmet causing a fuss. The receptionists called security on him.’

‘Not many people here bother to wear them. They were probably just curious,’ I said.

‘Well, this bloke was so proud of his he refused to take it off. They escorted him out at gunpoint with his hands above his head. I don’t know what they were so bothered about. He didn’t hassle anyone or try to take anything, and he rode off peacefully enough.’

‘Weird,’ I said.

‘Seriously?’ said Amelia. ‘Now who’s being slow? It’s obvious!’ She turned to Xander. ‘You said it yourself: he was a delivery guy. Did you get a look at the front of his helmet?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And was the visor down, and possibly tinted.’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘With me now?’ she said, looking from Xander to me and back again.

‘He didn’t want to be seen,’ I said, dread blooming in my chest. ‘Meaning he didn’t want to be linked to whatever he was delivering.’

‘I wonder what it was. Did you see?’ asked Amelia.

I don’t know how Xander responded as I was already on my way to the reception desk. That horrible instinct I have for knowing something bad is about to happen just before it does had kicked in. The concierge was filling out a form as I approached. His handwriting was extraordinary, regular as type, and very slow to execute. When he finally looked up I said, ‘My name’s Jack Courtney. Has anything been delivered for me?’

He checked the pigeonholes in the little room behind his desk, and sure enough came back to me with a brown envelope. My name and room number were printed on the front.

‘The guy in the motorcycle helmet delivered this, didn’t he?’

The concierge raised an eyebrow. ‘You know him?’

‘No, but I’m sorry to have caused a problem.’

‘There’s no problem,’ the concierge insisted kindly.

But I knew he was wrong. The problem was pulsing in my hands.

Xander had hobbled over with Amelia beside him. The three of us looked down at the envelope.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ asked Amelia.

‘Yes, Amelia,’ I said, sliding a finger beneath the flap, ‘I am.’