45.

Marcel picked us up in the same battered pickup we’d used for our safari. I winced at the memory of Innocent’s cheerful face in the cracked wing mirror. Without him, there was room up front for both Amelia and me, a comfier ride than sitting on our packs in the dusty open tray, but I hesitated before climbing in. It didn’t seem right. Amelia had no such qualms; she jumped up next to Marcel without hesitating.

The guide seemed genuinely pleased to see us. The fact we were without Caleb might have had something to do with it, and he chatted away with Amelia as we churned through the traffic. They spoke in French but I got the gist of what they were saying. Marcel wanted to know how Xander was doing. Amelia told him. Then she asked whether anything bad had happened to the silverback in the wake of the tragedy. No, Marcel said. All the rangers knew Innocent would never have wanted that. Everyone understood the accident wasn’t the gorilla’s fault. As far as I could tell, the guide stopped short of saying whether everyone also knew who had actually been to blame.

I’d worked out how to ask Marcel whether his lead had any news of my parents, but Amelia got there ahead of me. My optimism stalled in the pause before he answered her, the light feeling in my stomach hardening into a fist. He was sorry, but no, he eventually said. He’d not been able to track down the guy he was sure Yannick would have used. However, he’d also done some research into Langdon’s mining interests. They were spread far and wide, but by far the biggest project was a flagship modern operation, called the Canonhead Complex, just to the west of the national park.

‘Modern?’ I asked Amelia as much as him. ‘Surely all mines are pretty modern these days.’

Marcel understood my question but his lengthy reply went over my head. Amelia could see I was lost. ‘He says not at all. The vast majority of mining in the DRC, whether it’s for tantalum, cobalt, or any precious metal, even gold, is done by hand with picks and shovels. It’s incredibly dangerous, brutally hard work, and the miners who do it are paid a pittance. At least half of their work feeds a government-backed black market. They sell what they mine for virtually nothing to traders who sell it on to bigger companies who export it to the West and China. So a modern, mechanised, well-regulated mine is an exception.’

‘And that’s what Langdon’s doing?’ I said. ‘If so, it’s pretty impressive.’

Marcel snorted, hearing that. ‘Toute en face,’ he said.

‘That means on the face of it,’ Amelia said, though I’d kind of guessed that.

The truck was rattling along a potholed road now: I realised I had no idea where we were going. It seemed sensible to ask. Marcel again replied at length. I tried to follow but he talked quite fast. I caught the words rivière and oblique, but couldn’t piece his meaning together.

Amelia translated: ‘Marcel here has done some digging,’ she said. ‘No pun intended. Apparently your mum and dad were headed to this Canonhead place a few days ago. So it makes sense to start the search there. It’s where Caleb is working too. Trouble is, to get anywhere in among the mines requires a whole load of paperwork, permits, vehicle checks and so on. Langdon cut through the red tape for Caleb, but we’re going to have to be a bit more cunning.’

‘Cunning how?’

‘Marcel’s thought it through. We need to take an oblique route. That means indirect.’

Sometimes Amelia takes me for an idiot. I dug my elbow into her side and said, ‘You don’t say!’

‘Sorry,’ she said, returning the prod with her own elbow just below my ribcage. ‘Just trying to be clear. Anyway, he’s lined up motorbikes.’

I looked across Amelia at Marcel. He was leaning forward in his seat, squinting as he wove the pickup through a chicane of potholes filled with water the colour of mustard. ‘It’s very kind of Marcel to help,’ I said. And more quietly, to Amelia, ‘What’s in it for him exactly?’

‘You’ve lost your parents. He wants to help find them. He’s one of the good guys,’ she said, adding, to Marcel, ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘Peut-être,’ he answered, smiling sideways at her.

‘Also money,’ Amelia said matter-of-factly. ‘I offered him double his normal day rate.’

We drove for a good couple of hours down that appalling dirt road without making it particularly far, and finally wound up in a village – just a few huts really – beyond which the truck couldn’t go. This was where Marcel had arranged to pick up the motorbikes, two old scramblers: all I saw at first glance was dented fuel tanks, a bent brake lever and half a front mudguard. The guy who owned the bikes was tinkering with the more beaten-up of the two, though the distinction was marginal. I didn’t know whether it was a good or a bad sign that he was working on the bike right before handing it over, but he gave the keys to Marcel confidently enough.

Marcel immediately tossed one of the sets of keys to me. ‘Amelia dit que tu montes,’ he said.

Amelia, deadpan: ‘You do, right, ride something like this?’

‘A mountain bike, yes, but not one of these,’ I said quietly.

‘You’ll get the hang of it, I’m sure,’ she said, climbing onto the back of Marcel’s bike.

‘Mine has pedals,’ I muttered under my breath.

Mercifully the motorbikes came with helmets. I took my time adjusting the straps and putting mine on. It looked like I was being safety conscious, but in reality I was simply trying to remember everything I’d learned the one time I’d ridden my friend Justin’s scrambler, on his parents’ farm in Wales. That was over a year ago. I knew how to work the clutch and gears at least. This meant I didn’t make a complete fool of myself as Marcel set off, expecting me to follow. But I wasn’t that smooth: I nearly came off, swerving to avoid a small, stark-naked child who wandered across the track as we headed out of the village, and I pulled an unintentional wheelie accelerating too hard when Marcel opened up the throttle in front of me. I got into the riding though. The smell of the exhaust fumes from Marcel and Amelia’s bike was instantly the same as the smell of the bike on the farm, and weirdly the scenery rushing past, all green and gold and full of flying mud, though thousands of miles distant, felt pretty similar, too. I had to concentrate. The bike squirreled and squirmed in the rutted muck. Marcel didn’t hold back: we had ground to cover. I kept an eye on the line he was taking, gritted my teeth, fought the handlebars and by doing my damnedest I just about managed to keep up.