"What happened to your butler?" asked Murad Pasha, his voice thoughtful.

A smile broke across the face of the Marquis and in it Raf saw pure emptiness. "There was a building accident," said the Marquis. "Such things happen. Well, they do in North Africa." Glancing from Hani to Murad, St. Cloud raised his eyebrows. "You should know," he told Raf, "I've been very cross with you–so it was sensible to bring me presents."

Hani merely blinked, but Murad's eyes widened and he might have stepped backwards if the girl at his side hadn't taken his hand, then hastily let it go. Both Hani and Murad suddenly blushing.

"This isn't a social visit," Raf said flatly. "And the children stay with me. We're here so Murad Pasha can meet the man who tried to murder his grandfather." He turned to the still-flustered boy, almost as if intending to introduce him formally to St. Cloud.

"I did no such . . ." Outrage froze words in the old man's throat.

"You are not to leave this house," announced Raf. "And you will surrender your carte blanche to me and the keys to all the cars in your garage."

"And the helicopter," Hani whispered. Catching Murad's eye, she shrugged and explained, surprisingly gently for her, "there's a helipad on the lawn."

"Out of the question." St. Cloud had found his voice. One that Raf could only describe as oozing bile. "I have total diplomatic immunity. God . . ." The old man shook so hard with fury that for the first time since his visitors had entered Dar St. Cloud he actually need his silver-topped stick. "You can't just march in here."

"Actually," said Raf, "I think you'll find I can. Because the alternative is that I place you under arrest and call police HQ in Tunis to have a van come out to collect you." Raf shrugged. "Who knows," he added, "given your tastes you might enjoy a week in the cells with a child molester. I'm sure you'd have lots to talk about . . ."

"And if I refuse?"

"Refuse what?" Raf asked. "To be arrested?"

St. Cloud's nod was stiff. His scowl that of a man who'd faced worse things than two nervous children and the black-suited son of an Emir. "What will your officers do," said St. Cloud coldly, "manhandle me into a car? They wouldn't . . ."

"Dare?" One second Raf was watching St. Cloud, the next he had a pearl-handled Colt pressed hard into the side of the old man's neck, at an angle guaranteed to remove most of his skull.

No one could remember seeing him move.

"Other people might be afraid of you," said Raf. "I don't have that problem." Pulling back the hammer the way the Sufi had done, he squeezed the trigger so that only his thumb kept the hammer from falling. "You really think you can resist arrest?"

Around the Marquis the hall began to darken as the face in front of him changed unexpectedly/impossibly from human to something positively other.

The old man could taste smoke and feel a flat wall of heat that threatened to sear his papery skin. Every tile beneath his feet was burning. Except that there were no tiles because he was walking over a glowing chasm of red ember and flickering flame, while some unseen thing ripped mouthfuls of flesh from his shoulder.

He knew, without needing to be told, that he was standing over the entrance to hell.

"Well?"

St. Cloud blinked.

The tearing in his flesh dissolved as the pressure against his throat lessened, then almost disappeared.

"Well what?" he asked in a voice little more than a whisper.

"Still feel like resisting arrest?"

Merely blinking was enough to spill tears down cheeks no amount of laser peel had been able to give back their beautiful youth. "No." St. Cloud shook his head, the slightest movement. All he wanted to do was check his shoulder for scars and look in a glass to see if that unforgiving heat had seared his face, but he didn't quite dare.

"I had nothing to do with that attempt," he said. "Nothing at all to do with the death of Eugenie de la Croix. You have my word."

"And you have mine," said Raf, "that I will find who tried to kill my father. And when I do that person will be arrested, no matter what." The very flatness of Raf's words threatened more clearly than any anger could do. "Feel free to pass that on to anyone you think should know . . ."

CHAPTER 35

Thursday 3rd March

As dawn's white thread became visible over the Golfe de Hammamet a call quavered onto the wind from the minaret of Nebeul mosque, Allahu Akbar intoned four times, followed by Ashhadu anna la ilah ill'-Allah, I testify there is no God besides God. And finally, towards the end, a phrase to distinguish this call from those that came later. Al-salatu khayr min al-nawn. Prayer is better than sleep.

Though both of those were a rarity for Raf.

Only now was he beginning to understand, as opposed to know, the difference between various types of Islamic building. A mosque was a church, well, it was to Raf. A marbarat the tomb of a saint at which believers might pray (a habit discouraged in the Middle East, but popular in North Africa where Berber instincts lightened the stark purity of their conqueror's interpretation).

A ribat was a fortified monastery, medressa were schools, somewhere between a tiny university and a religious college, zaouia were shrines, often Sufi . . .

What Raf didn't understand, or even know, was what value this knowledge had for a man who lacked all belief in God; for whom mosques were works of intricate beauty and calls to prayer haunting echoes of antiquity; but who saw nothing at the centre. Who saw, in fact, no centre at all.

"Can I ask you something?" said Hani, when she'd finished her prayers.

"Of course." Raf dropped the Bugatti down a gear to overtake an elderly truck loaded with soldiers.

"Who's Tiri?" She hesitated for a second. "When you left that note. You signed it ‘Tiri.'"

"My fox," Raf said and Hani nodded.

"What fox?" Murad demanded crossly. He was leaning on Ifritah's basket, which rested between Hani and him on the fat leather backseat of the Bugatti. Raf wasn't sure where he'd put his action figure but Ninja Nizam hadn't appeared once since Hani accused Murad of being childish.

"The fox . . ." Raf thought about it. "The fox is an identity."

"Ashraf Bey's an assassin," said Hani. "So he needs to be lots of different people . . . I didn't know the fox was called Tiri," she added.

"It's called lots of things," said Raf. "And I'm not an assassin."

"No," Hani said. "Of course not."

Beyond Hammamet was a turning for the A1, south towards Sousse and Kairouan. Glancing in his mirror before overtaking the next truck, Raf saw Murad still staring at him. The moment the boy met Raf's gaze he dropped his own.

They'd had a brief quarrel on the road back from Dar St. Cloud. Anger exploded from the boy as he demanded to know why Raf had failed to arrested the Marquis. In that shouted fury had been everything the twelve-year-old felt for his father; mostly love and fear, plus a primal, night-waking panic at the thought of life without certainty or comfort.

"You should have arrested him."

"St. Cloud didn't do it," Hani had said softly, resting one hand on the boy's arm. Murad shook her off.

"But Ashraf Bey said . . ."

"He was bluffing," explained Hani as she climbed into the car. Her smile faded the moment new fury twisted Murad's face. This time it was at being excluded from what Raf had known and Hani only suspected. Their visit to Dar St. Cloud had been cage rattling, little more. The Marquis paid no taxes, had tastes that were highly dubious and based himself in a country without a single extradition treaty. He had more to lose from Emir Moncef's death than almost anyone.

Since learning this, Murad had been almost translucent with silence. Pointedly ignoring Hani and her endless spray of facts about Khayr el Din, better known as the Barbary pirate Barbarossa, and the sack of Tunis by Charles V of Spain, in which seventy thousand men, women and children were slaughtered.