The two women made an interesting contrast, although they seemed very easy with each other. Maria was tall, stately and unfailingly well dressed although she barely made minimum wage. Tara on the other hand seemed so uncomfortable in Western clothes that it was clear she'd just arrived: the first time she came to Penn Station she was wearing a loose white shirt that hung halfway down to her knees and a pair of dark trousers that flapped limply above her ankles.

But there was nothing awkward or freshly arrived about her manner. She gave Antar a smile and a crisp nod when they were introduced and slipped into the chair next to his. 'What's that you're drinking?' she said, tapping his cup. Mint tea, he explained, the owner of the shop brewed it especially for him, Egyptian-style.

'Splendid!' she said. 'Exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. Would you be good enough to ask him if I might have some too?'

Antar was taken aback by her voice: the plummy accent and the unexpected turn of phrase.

On the way out, walking towards the Broadway exit, Maria took him aside to say that Tara was looking for an apartment; that she had just found a job and needed a place to stay, in Manhattan.

'What does she do?' Antar asked.

'She's in child-care,' said Maria.

'You mean she's a babysitter?' Antar was surprised: somehow Tara didn't strike him as someone who would choose to look after children for a living.

'Yes,' said Maria. She went on to explain that Tara had been brought into the country by a Kuwaiti diplomat and his family, to care for their children. The arrangement hadn't worked out so she'd found another babysitting job, in Greenwich Village. But the family she was working for now couldn't give her a place to stay.

Antar nodded. Although Maria didn't say so, he guessed that the change of jobs had made Tara 's status illegal and that she needed to find a place where she could pay cash without having to deal with a lot of questions.

He shrugged. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'There's nothing I can do.'

Maria raised her eyebrows. 'But I've heard there's lots of empty space in your building,' she said. 'Isn't there a vacant apartment on your floor?'

Antar was taken aback. 'How do you know where I live?' he said. One of the unwritten rules of the doughnut shop was that they never enquired too closely into the details of each other's lives.

Maria made a bemused gesture. 'Oh, I just heard from someone…' she said. Her voice trailed away.

Antar had grown accustomed to having the fourth floor entirely to himself: he balked at the thought of having a neighbour again. 'It wouldn't be right for her,' he said. 'The building's in terrible shape, and so's the apartment.'

But he gave in when Maria begged him to show Tara the building: the neighbourhood would scare her off anyway, he decided.

He was proved wrong: Tara took an instant liking to the apartment and moved in within the month. It still took him by surprise when he went into his kitchen and saw lights blazing across the air-shaft. For years he had kept the kitchen window curtained because all there was in the airrshaft were dead rats and pigeons. Now he frequently found himself lingering there longer than he needed to.

Antar's eyes strayed to the timeline once again. 'Is it a quarter to six already?' he said out loud, inadvertently.

Instantly Ava bellowed confirmation, calling out the hour in the style of a village watchman in Egypt, perfect in every detail, down to the tapping of a wooden staff.

Chapter 4

THE PHOTOGRAPH on the ID card had begun to take shape in the centre of the living room, top downwards. The first detail to appear was a patch of hair, carefully trimmed, but rather thin and discoloured: definitely a man's hair. Then came a pair of bright black eyes. It occurred to Antar to wonder whether he might be Egyptian, whoever he was: he could have been – but he could just as well be Pakistani or Indian or Latin American.

But once the cheeks and nose and mouth appeared, Antar had no doubts left. He'd always been good at placing people, he prided himself on it, it was a talent you developed when you spent a lifetime working for a global agency. The man was Indian, he was sure of that.

The image was huge now, and it was shaking a little, like a banner in the wind. The face was full, moonlike, the cheeks as puffed as a trumpeter's, the aggressively jutting chin ending in a carefully trimmed goatee. It was the nose that gave Antar pause – a boxer's nose, sunken at the bridge. It looked out of place in that well-fed, rounded face. And it also looked somehow familiar.

Antar got up from his chair and stepped back: it was oddly disconcerting to look at a flat, two-dimensional image in a three-dimensional projection. He stepped to one side and then to the other, keeping his eyes on the image's mouth. He noticed that the lips were slightly parted as though in mid-sentence. The beginnings of a memory began to take shape in his mind – of someone glimpsed in elevators and corridors, a tubby little man with a pot belly, always immaculately dressed – pin-striped suits, razoredged trousers, starched shirts, always buttoned at the wrist, even on the hottest of summer days. And a hat – he'd always had a hat. That was why it had taken Antar so long to recognize him. He had never seen the man's hair; his head was usually covered – no wonder, really, with hair like that.

The image grew clearer in Antar's mind: he remembered seeing the man strutting busily down corridors, shoes clicking on marble, with files tucked under his arm; he had a recollection of an unplaceable accent, neither American nor Indian nor anything else, and a loud, screeching, selfsatisfied voice; a voice that would fill crowded elevators and echo through the Trust's polished lobby, leaving behind a trail of amused glances and whispered questions: 'Who the hell is that?' and 'Oh, don't you know? That's our own Mr… '

He recalled a meeting, a conversation somewhere, years ago, sitting across a table. But just as the memory was beginning to take on an outline, it dissolved.

The name: that was the key. What was his name?

It began to appear, a few seconds later, slowly, letter by letter, and then suddenly Antar knew. Already, when there were no more than four letters in front of him, he had darted over to Ava's keyboard and fed it in, along with a search command.

The name was L. Murugan.

The first search drew a blank, so then Antar took Ava hurrying into the Council's vast archives where the records of all the old global organizations were kept. It took a full ten minutes before the doorkeeper systems allowed him into the stacks, but once he was in, it was a matter of moments.

He smiled when the old-fashioned file turned up in front of him: a tiny little character, the Arabic letter 'ain, blinked at him from the top of the screen, above the heading 'L. Murugan'. He knew that symbol: he had put it there himself. Someone in the office had started a pool, taking in bets to see who used Spellcheck most often. They'd all devised symbols for themselves, to mark their work. He'd chosen the 'ain because it was the first letter in his name, 'Antar.

But the file surprised him: he had expected something longer, bulkier; he had a recollection of feeding in a lot of material. He flipped quickly through it, going straight to the end.

On reaching the last line, he sat back, rubbing his chin.

He remembered it now – he had typed it in himself, just a few years ago.

Subject missing since August 21 1995, it said, last seen Calcutta, India.