Half-way through their lunch, Anna was still sneaking glances at her biological father, for the sheer pleasure of discovering him all over again, still sitting opposite her at their table for two in this busy Turkish café in Bloomsbury.
When Chris Freemantle had walked up to her table, she’d caught her breath. How could she not have suspected? How could everybody not have suspected? Her father’s navy blue eyes were exactly like her own. Everyone had always said how much Anna looked like her mother. Tim had said it the first time he visited her flat. Perhaps everyone had hoped that if they repeated something over and over, with sufficient conviction, it would become true.
Once or twice she surprised a wondering glance from Chris, as if, like Anna, he needed to make frequent reality checks. A sixteen-year old secret had finally been outed. On the phone, Tim could hardly contain his pleasure at setting up this meeting for his father and long-lost half-sister.
It was an undeniably awkward situation, until it dawned on Anna that Chris was leaving her to dictate the pace. He wasn’t trying to rush her into an intimacy he hadn’t earned, playing her long-lost daddy. He seemed astonished and grateful to be here with her at all and, for the first time, with no need to pretend.
They’d been given a window table and the sun glinted on their cutlery and two glasses of pale, yellow wine that they’d hardly touched. Their waiter had brought a procession of blue-painted, pottery dishes filled with middle-eastern snacks: stuffed aubergines, tiny, spicy, lamb meatballs on skewers and a delicate salad of baby broad beans with stuffed vine leaves.
For the first few minutes, they’d tentatively filled in some of the gaps. Anna explained about coming back to Oxford to help nurse her dying grandmother and that she was now the owner of her grandparents’ house. Proudly, Chris had told her that he and Jane were now grandparents, then interrupted himself to say apologetically, ‘But you’re back in touch with Tim. You know all this already!’
‘Yes. You’re a grandparent and it seems that I’m an aunt.’ Anna sounded waspish, but she couldn’t help it. She saw Chris register her oblique reference to her newly discovered half-brother. He speared a small meatball with his fork, went to eat it, then laid the fork and meatball aside.
‘Tim said you wanted to ask me about your dad and Hempels?’
‘Yes. I’ve—’ She swallowed and started over again. ‘Something’s come up that’s made me realize how pathetically little I knew about him and about his work, and now—’
‘He’s not around for you to ask,’ he said gently.
She nodded, relieved. Now no-one had to tiptoe around that grim, smoking crater in her life, where her family had once been.
‘Tim also mentioned that you were asking about the Scott-Nevilles.’ Chris wiped his hands on his napkin. ‘I’m guessing that they’re somehow connected to whatever this is that’s made you want to talk to me after all these years?’
‘I just couldn’t.’ For those first years after her family’s murders, Anna would have found it too excruciating to even be in the same room with any of the Freemantles. She took a breath. ‘It would have been too painful, like being bereaved all over again.’ She searched for any trace of bitterness in his face, but if there was any Chris kept it well-hidden. ‘I wanted to talk to you, because you knew my dad the best of anybody. I think you knew him from his university days, didn’t you?’
Chris sat back in his chair.
‘Anna, I’ll gladly tell you everything I know, but you’re going to need a bit of background first. I’m afraid this is a terrible cliché, but your dad, and your mum and I met the first week we were up at Cambridge and instantly bonded like the Three Musketeers.’
‘You were friends with my mum back then?’ Anna couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. She’d known that both men had been close friends since Cambridge and that her mother had read English and French at Girton College, but she’d never pictured her as their “third musketeer”.
Chris shot her a humorous look that held more than a tinge of regret.
‘Did you ever see a film by Francois Truffaut, called Jules et Jim?’
Anna frowned. ‘The one where two best friends fall in love with the same girl and they all ride around on bikes together. The bikes might have been in a different film …’ She added uncertainly.
He smilingly shook his head. ‘The bikes were in the same film.’
It was slowly coming back to her. ‘There was a song, catchy, bitter-sweet.’
‘Jeanne Moreau sang it. So, there you have it.’ Chris gave a slightly embarrassed shrug. ‘Julian et Julia. Et Chris. Not such a catchy title obviously.’
Anna stared at him. ‘You both loved my mum? I mean, from the start, you and my dad both loved her.’
‘I believe it’s what’s known in teen fiction as a “love triangle”.’ He pulled a rueful face.
Anna took a much-needed gulp of wine. She imagined telling Tansy, ‘OK, so your dad might have been a notorious gangland boss, but my parents were in a “love triangle”.’
‘I’ve since come to realize that we were also in love with being young,’ Chris continued, ‘in love with being up at Cambridge and with having all our lives still in front of us. My loving your mum, loving Julia, was a part of that. And, in a completely different way, I loved your dad. Loved, admired and desperately envied him.’
‘You envied my dad?’ she asked, astonished.
He smiled. ‘I’d never met anyone like him. Oh, Julia and I talked the talk, Save the Whale, CND marches all that, but Julian …’ Chris shook his head. ‘Julian just wanted to do the right thing because it was the right thing. Unlike the rest of us, he preferred to do it behind the scenes. He never wanted recognition. If he’d been in America in the Sixties, he’d have joined the Freedom Riders. Once, he got his arm broken by some British Fascists at a demo in Grosvenor Square.’
‘My dad?’ she said again, as if there might be some confusion about whose father they were discussing.
‘Yes, your dad,’ he said amused.
‘But how come you all still stayed friends all those years, if you both, you know, had such a big thing for my mum?’ Not to mention she had me … your secret love child.
‘Well, for one thing, we were not three, angst-ridden characters in a French film,’ Chris said. ‘Sometimes your mum would be going out with me and other times she’d be going out with Julian, then there’d be times when she was going out with someone totally different. One term, she was studying in Paris and came back after Christmas with a rather stunning new haircut! But it became apparent, over time, that she and your dad were going to go the distance. Then, of course, I met Jane …’
Anna hated to admit it, but she was shocked. Possibly Chris read her expression because he said, ‘I’d hate you to think it was anything sordid, because I promise you it wasn’t. Ever.’
‘Except that you and Julia apparently carried on, you know, carrying on,’ she said, ‘after you were both married.’
Chris nodded, not attempting to deny it.
‘I know, and I’m not proud of how we behaved and nor was Julia.’
Their waiter came by, observed their intense expressions and diplomatically departed.
‘The first years of marriage can be tricky for anyone, but your parents had the additional pressure of Hempels. Julian had never intended to go into the auction house. He’d had ideas of going overseas and working for an aid agency, but when it seemed that Hempels might be lost, due to your grandfather’s uncertain health – and I suspect there were other factors, which your dad felt unable to share – he, well, I think he felt morally obligated to step into his father’s shoes.’
He must have felt utterly trapped, Anna thought.
‘Not surprisingly, this decision took its toll,’ Chris said. ‘Julian became very distant from your mother and was almost like a different person. Naturally, she assumed he regretted marrying her and turned to me for comfort.’
‘Hold on,’ Anna said angrily. ‘I’m sorry, but I think that was a really crappy thing to do! Ok, these things happen. I know that. But you were both married to other people and this obviously went on for years!’
‘I’m not justifying what we did. It was inexcusable. I’d say it was the single worst thing I’ve ever done, except that I could never completely regret it because—’ Chris tried to smile but seemed suddenly close to tears. ‘Because of you.’
‘Did my dad know?’ Anna had agonised over this question ever since she’d found out.
‘Oh yes. As soon as Julia found out she was having you, she offered to leave, but Julian begged her to give him one more chance. He felt he’d driven her into my arms, you see. He asked her to let him take you on as his daughter.’
Anna felt a guilty pang that was no less painful for being so familiar. Right from the start her existence had caused so much pain and confusion.
‘What about Jane? Was she in on this arrangement?’ She heard that same waspish note to her voice, as if part of her was stuck in a state of permanent teenage resentment.
He gave her a tired smile. ‘Yes. We had a terrible few months, but she forgave me. She forgave us both.’
‘But you never told the boys?’
‘God, no! I have no idea how Tim found out. Jane swears she didn’t tell him. Although during the investigation into—’ his voice faltered ‘—into your family’s murders, we obviously had to tell the police.’
Anna thought about all those shared family holidays, Christmases and Halloweens. She remembered growing up feeling that she’d had not one but two families and she’d been right. Inevitably, there had to have been times when the cracks must have shown. Like that holiday in Pembrokeshire, when Tim and Anna surprised Chris and a tearful Julia in the kitchen of their rented farmhouse but, in the main, they had all managed to make it work.
She thought of her father effectively immolating himself to make a success of Hempels, never once alluding to the sacrifice he’d made. She thought of him begging her mother not to leave him, to let him bring up her child as his own and she wanted to weep for this lonely, fiercely principled man.
The waiter reappeared to remove the dirty dishes and offer them dessert menus.
‘Just coffee thanks,’ Chris said, after a questioning glance at Anna.
When they were alone again, Anna said, ‘Did my father ever confide in you about problems at work?’
‘He never quite spelled it out, but it was obvious he had issues with how his father was running the business,’ Chris said.
‘You don’t know what these issues were?’
He shook his head. ‘But I had the impression that Charles had, how shall I put it, rather more flexible morals than your dad.’
Their coffee came with four, exquisite, hand-made chocolates.
‘Julian was profoundly loyal to his father,’ Chris said. ‘He half-worshipped, half-hated him, in that screwed-up way that people so often love the parents who have hurt them most, but he couldn’t bear the thought that he might ever become like him.’
Anna had no real memories of her grandfather, Charles Hopkins, except that she’d hated his voice. If anything, it was more of an absence of memory. A black hole. A chill.
Chris took a breath. ‘One night, Julian turned up at our house absolutely distraught. He’d come straight from some grand dinner at the Scott-Nevilles.’
Every nerve in Anna’s body was suddenly on high alert. ‘Did he tell you what had happened?’
‘I’m hazy on the details,’ he said apologetically. ‘But I remember that some visiting Russian dignitary was present. As the night went on, and they’d all sunk a fair amount of Ralph’s thirty-year-old Macallan whiskey, the Russian started making disparaging comments about blacks and Jews. Your father protested, as he would do.’
Anna could easily imagine what had followed. She’d only had a passing acquaintance with Ralph Scott-Neville, but she’d regularly witnessed Dominic turn on anyone who thwarted, bored or merely irritated him. There had also been times – times she’d rather not remember – when she had been that boring, irritating person.
‘I bet the Scott-Nevilles and their cronies totally ridiculed him,’ she said, swallowing.
Chris nodded. ‘In that killingly polite way of old Etonians.’
Anna’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, saw that her caller was Isadora, and decided that she wouldn’t mind waiting.
‘Poor Dad, he must have felt like he was being savaged by frightfully civilised and well-dressed lions.’ She mimicked an upper-class drawl.
‘It wasn’t just the Scott-Nevilles,’ Chris said soberly. ‘Julian’s father joined in the savaging.’ He shook his head. ‘Can you imagine?’
The spiteful old bastard. Anna felt sickened. Her dad had been worth ten of him.
‘Julian told me he honestly didn’t know if he had the strength to go on.’ For a moment, Chris held her eyes and Anna understood his implication; that night, Julian had come close to suicide. Whatever had been said or done at the Scott-Nevilles, which had so horrified her father, had to have been more than some vile, racist joke, if he’d felt – even for a few haunted hours – that killing himself was the only way out.
She took a breath and asked, ‘did my dad ever mention anything about a stolen painting?’
Chris poured an extra splash of hot milk into his coffee. ‘I’m not sure. Can you give me a bit more context?’
She filled him in about everything that had happened, from finding Lili Rossetti’s body to David Fischer’s wild-seeming accusations against Hempels, which Anna was now beginning to suspect might be true.
‘I’ve been back to Hempels twice now,’ she said, ‘and I have this sense of being charmingly fobbed off and I don’t think it’s just my paranoia talking.’ She gave an awkward laugh, wondering if Chris knew how close his daughter had come to the edge. Then she saw that he was waiting calmly for her to continue, so she related Thomas Kirchmann’s story about his father; the righteous gentile of Innsbruck, who had hidden precious works of art from the infamous Kunstschutz and been executed by the SS for his pains.
‘But David Fischer said that the paintings his family had given into Kirchmann’s safe-keeping, including what he claims to be a Vermeer, had been seen – had actually been photographed – in the homes of prominent Nazis, at a time when they were supposedly safe in Michael Kirchmann’s secret vault. Fischer’s father believed the Vermeer had somehow made its way to Soviet Russia, where it was eventually used as a bribe to ensure a safe passage to the west, for some defecting Russian official … But an art-savvy porter told Fischer he thought he’d seen one of the Fischer’s family’s paintings in my grandfather’s office at Hempels. Only, it turns out, he may have been suffering from dementia … And breathe, Anna,’ she added with an apologetic laugh. ‘Sorry, that was a bit of a long speech!’
Her phone buzzed. Isadora again. Anna switched it off. ‘Somebody’s lying or, at least, not telling me the whole truth,’ she said, frustrated. ‘I just don’t know who.’
‘But, most of all, you want to know if your father had let himself be a party to a particularly despicable art theft?’
She nodded unhappily, thankful that she hadn’t been the one to put this distressing possibility into words.
Chris scratched gently at his chin. ‘Actually, listening to you just now has jogged my memory. I do remember Julian mentioning some problematic painting. It could have been a Vermeer. Did it have the word “yellow” in the title?’
‘Gold,’ Anna said before she could stop herself.
‘Yes! A Study in Gold? Does that sound right? I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more than that. Your father started to explain, but then he immediately backtracked. He said that Julia was always telling him he got things out of proportion when he was over-tired and everything would probably seem more manageable after a good night’s sleep.’
Anna felt tears prickle her eyelids. She could just imagine Julian saying that.
‘You know,’ Anna said, ‘before Lili Rossetti was murdered, she emailed David Fischer to say she’d actually seen the painting.’
‘Did she now?’ Chris said.
‘If her stalker-ex hadn’t caught up with her, it’s possible she could have produced some damning evidence against Hempels.’
‘It’s equally possible that she might not have,’ Chris suggested very gently.
‘That’s true,’ she admitted.
They talked of other things for a while, then Chris had to go back to UCL to give a tutorial. She could feel his reluctance to leave her.
‘You know you even have my smile,’ he said almost shyly.
She swallowed. ‘I know.’
Chris briefly covered her hand with his own. ‘You mustn’t worry. I mean about blowing the whistle if you uncover anything at Hempels. You mustn’t feel you’re being disloyal to your dad. He’d be cheering you on, Anna, seriously, if he was here.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘However, I do remember Julian saying that the Scott-Nevilles were every bit as ruthless as the robber-barons they presumably descended from, so if I’m allowed to give you advice …’
‘I already know to steer clear of that family’, she told him.
If you think I’m a monster, Dominic is the devil … Alec Faber’s words kept coming back to haunt her.
Anna returned Isadora’s call as she hurried to the Tube.
‘Darling, where on earth have you been! I’ve left you dozens of messages. I just called Liam.’
Why would Isadora need to call Liam? Anna wondered.
‘Is something wrong?’ Anna hastily veered off the pavement to avoid a group of Japanese tourists.
‘No, but I had this thought. You’ll probably think it’s mad. The disgraced official that David Fischer said had to pay British agents to help them defect. I was thinking if anyone would know what was going on back then, it would be Tallis.’
After a stunned pause, Anna said, ‘You’re right. I do think that’s mad. You can’t seriously be thinking, what I think you’re thinking, not after everything that man put you and your friends through.’
‘But Anna, surely—’
‘Isadora, he murdered your best friend! Not to mention you were still practically a schoolgirl when he recruited you – under false pretences – to be part of his perverse little game of spies.’
‘But if we can help David right this terrible wrong?’ Isadora’s rich, actressy voice vibrated with emotion. ‘You know they’re not going to try Tallis now?’ she rushed on. ‘I asked Liam and he said no further action is going to be taken against him. There’s no material evidence that he ever committed any crimes.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Anna said, appalled. ‘They’ve let him out of prison?’
‘They’ve taken him back to the hospice. He’s a sick old man, Anna. He’s only got a few weeks left to live.’
‘And so was Adolf Eichmann a sick old man,’ Anna said, furious, ‘and all those other disgusting war criminals. Do you really want to go to see this man who is a liar and a murderer and Christ knows what else?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Isadora said crisply. ‘Don’t try to talk me out of it because I’ve made up my mind. It’s time to exorcise him from my life after all these years.’
On the Tube, rattling through the dark below the streets of London, Anna tried to imagine how Isadora would feel when she came face to face with the dying Tallis. To be honest, she couldn’t imagine Tallis ever dying. He’d talk his way out of it somehow, the way he’d talked his way out of everything else.
As it turned out, Anna wasn’t the only person to be concerned. Over Sunday brunch, at The Rusty Bicycle, Isadora defensively repeated her decision to visit Tallis. Tansy traded horrified glances with Anna.
After a long pause, Liam said, ‘Well, I can’t stop you going, Isadora, but I’d feel much happier if you’d let me come along.’
‘I’ll come too,’ Anna said quickly, ‘If that’s OK?’
‘Would tomorrow morning suit you both?’ Liam asked. ‘After you’ve walked the dogs?’
He arrived at Anna’s on the dot of ten. She watched him surreptitiously as he drove them over to Isadora’s, his elbow resting on the half-open window.
She wondered what was going on in his life. Liam had seemed relaxed and cheerful during their brunch, until Isadora had asked him when he was taking his inspector’s exams, then he’d completely shut down. His withdrawal was so noticeable that Isadora and Tansy instantly began overcompensating in that way that women do, chattering and laughing, as if, they could somehow cancel out the crashing silence from Liam. But this morning Liam seemed like his normal straight-forward self. So perhaps he and Tansy had sorted it out, whatever it was?
They stopped off in Summertown to collect Isadora, who was looking unusually pale under her makeup. On the short drive to the hospice, they discussed David Fischer and his search for his grandfather’s painting.
‘It’s one hell of a story,’ Liam said, shaking his head. ‘Tansy’s been keeping me updated. Don’t know if she said, but I’ve put some cautious feelers out. Not promising anything, but something might come back, you never know.’ He flashed a boyish grin at Isadora. ‘Got to help the dog-walking Charlie’s Angels. It’s how me and Tans first got together after all.’
Despite his careless tone, Anna detected real tenderness underneath. He loves her, she thought, whatever’s wrong, it isn’t that.
‘So if there’s anything you think I can do, just shout,’ he said as they pulled off the Woodstock Road turning up the wooded lane that led to the Little Sisters of Mercy hospice.
When they went to announce themselves to the nun at the reception desk, Anna was startled to see Liam flash his badge. Not a major deal in the wider scheme of things, yet dismayingly out of character for the normally upright, do-everything-by-the book, Sergeant Goodhart.
A young, sweet-faced nun came to take them to Tallis’s room. Like the nun at the desk, she was dressed in a sweater and skirt; the gold cross on a chain around her neck was the only outward sign of her calling. She led them along hushed corridors to the room where Isadora’s former handler would spend his remaining days. The nun knocked gently at the door before she opened it.
‘Some people to see Matthew,’ she called softly. She hurried away, leaving the door slightly ajar, enough to give a harrowing glimpse of what was inside. Anna felt her nostrils flare at the escaping miasma of smells that no disinfectant could entirely mask. Raised up on pillows amidst a forest of wires and tubes, Matthew Tallis lay with closed eyes. His skin was blotched and yellow. A nurse leaned over him, moistening his cracked lips with a sponge.
Isadora backed away. ‘I can’t,’ she said in a panic. ‘I can’t be in the same room. I thought I could but I can’t.’
‘Why don’t you wait for us in reception?’ Liam suggested calmly, ‘I doubt we’ll be long.’ He’d known it would be like this, Anna realized. That’s why he’d insisted on coming. He knew how tough it would be for Isadora to confront the man who had inflicted so much damage on her and her friends. Anna was tempted to flee with her but she squared her shoulders and followed Liam inside.
‘Matthew,’ the nurse said into the sick man’s ear, then in a slightly louder voice, ‘you have some visitors, Matthew. I’m not sure how responsive he’ll be,’ she said apologetically. ‘Lately he tends to drift in and out. I’ll just be in the next room if you need me.’ She left with a rustle of crisp cotton and without closing the door, to Anna’s relief.
Matthew’s eyelids had lost all their lashes. They flickered twice then opened to reveal faded eyes with discoloured whites. For a moment, he couldn’t seem to focus, and then, like a raptor, his cold blue gaze fastened on Anna. He remembers me. The thought creeped her out. Like the black box in a fatal plane crash, some part of Tallis was still mechanically recording, calibrating and calculating.
‘You’ve come back to see me, my dear,’ he said hoarsely. ‘How frightfully sweet of you.’ He had deteriorated shockingly since she’d seen him last. His thin, papery skin was stretched so tightly over his bones that he resembled a talking skull.
‘Good morning, Sir,’ Liam said. ‘My name is Sergeant Liam Goodhart. I believe you’ve already met Ms Hopkins. She has something specific to ask you.’
Tallis’s thin lips twisted into the insinuating smile that Anna remembered from her last visit.
‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘That sounds most intriguing.’ She heard his breath whistle in his lungs, as he struggled to talk and breathe.
‘Yes,’ she said coolly. ‘I want to know if it was common practice to demand bribes from people trying to defect to the West?’
Tallis made a wheezy sound, somewhere between a laugh and a cough.
‘Oh, dear me. I thought you were here for my charm and good looks, but you just want to pump me for information.’ He sniggered, delighted with his double entendre.
Anna felt Liam unobtrusively squeeze her arm, reminding her that he had her back.
Tallis gave them his sly grin. ‘And who is this chivalrous Sir Goodhart you’ve brought along for protection? He’s not the same chap who came last time.’
Liam said, stony-faced, ‘Can you please answer the young lady’s question?’ He leaned down to show Tallis his badge, sending the dying man into an alarming paroxysm of laughing and coughing.
‘Oh, how priceless!’ he wheezed. ‘How absolutely bloody priceless!’
‘Let’s go,’ Anna said to Liam. ‘He’s just wasting our time.’
To her secret revulsion, Tallis beckoned her closer. ‘Defectors, you say?’ he said in a hoarse whisper and she smelled his fetid breath. ‘I think I did once know someone who might have been mixed up with something like that.’
This was also typical Tallis. Having toyed with them, to show who held all the power, he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to show off how much he knew.
‘And who might that alleged someone have been, Sir,’ Liam said in a deliberately unimpressed voice.
Anna saw cold anger flare in Tallis’s eyes. ‘A very close colleague, my fine Sir Goodhart,’ he rasped. ‘His wife worked at one of the Oxford women’s colleges. He helped some poncey, little official escape the Gulag. I believe my colleague may have been rewarded with some artwork or other, but that could just be folk lore.’ He had to stop to cough.
How Tallis must have adored being in intelligence, Anna thought; manipulating and misdirecting from behind the scenes, availing himself of other people’s secrets while he remained hidden and invulnerable at the heart of his sticky web of intrigue. Even now, with weeks or days left to live, he was addicted to that world of smoke and mirrors.
‘Do you remember the name of your colleague?’ she asked. ‘Or maybe his wife?’
The sick man turned on her with a venomous expression. ‘Do you know who you’re talking to, young woman?’ he hissed. ‘I know people who could take you out in a million different ways and it wouldn’t leave a mark. A jab with a poisoned umbrella. Quick shove from behind on the underground. I’ve got people secretly working for me in London Transport, at the BBC, in the Vatican.’ His eyes held a feral glitter. Spittle dripped from his lips as his ranting descended into incoherent mumbles.
The nurse came hurrying in. ‘It’s the morphine,’ she said in a low voice. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’
Shaken, Anna couldn’t agree. She felt as if she’d had a chilling glimpse into a toxic old man’s innermost soul.
They found Isadora pacing nervously by the car. ‘I’m sorry I was such a wimp.’
‘No, Jesus!’ Anna said. ‘You made the right decision.’
‘You did,’ Liam said with feeling. ‘I see a lot of this kind of thing. Victims of crimes or their families, who turn up when the case comes to trial, hoping for closure or whatever pop psychologists call it. They usually end up sick to their stomachs, poor buggers.’ His phone started to emit a hectic ringtone. Pulling an apologetic face, Liam walked off a little way to take the call.
‘I still feel sick to my stomach just from being in the same building,’ Isadora confessed.
‘He’s an utterly repugnant man. Why wouldn’t you feel sick?’
Isadora gave her a watery smile. ‘Was it helpful though? Did he tell you anything new?’
Before she could answer, Liam came over looking sombre. ‘I told you I’d put some feelers out? That was a courtesy call from the Reading police. There was a bad fire last night in the Harris Arcade.’
For a second, Anna couldn’t think where he meant. Then she flashed back to the crowded little bedsit with its faded echoes of Vienna. She saw David Fischer kneeling in front of the safe. ‘Experience has taught me that I can’t be too careful.’ And then she remembered the books piled at the sides of the stairs, like an inferno just waiting for a match.