More likely he just knew that the time was not yet right. Major Abbas had been in the police for all of his adult life, beginning his training under the French, and he had seen, done and made others do many things he would rather forget.

So instead of making the boy take the whip, the Major flicked it through the air a couple of times, like a conductor testing a baton, and then slashed the girl abruptly across the upturned soles of her feet, stepping back to watch as she reared up against the pain, her scream constrained by a leather gag.

"Stay silent," he ordered, reaching for its buckle.

"Tell them," said Malika before Major Abbas had even got the gag properly undone. "Tell him I was--"

"I said silent," the Major said. Another slash of the whip and this time Moz could almost feel the scream that echoed round the dusty gymnasium. "Did anyone tell you that you could speak?"

The girl shook her head.

"Then don't," said Major Abbas. "Untie her," he ordered, not bothering to look at the boy.

Moz scrabbled with the knots. He was on his knees, staring up at the girl who lay trapped and sobbing. The knots were simple but Moz's fingers were shaking and his eyes kept sliding from the tear-blurred rope in front of him to the sight of a breast squashed against the leather edge of the vaulting horse.

"Get on with it," ordered Major Abbas.

When Moz continued to fumble, the Major swung his riding crop and Moz felt Malika's body jerk furiously a second before her scream had him curled into a ball on the gymnasium floor with his hands over his ears.

Major Abbas kicked him. "Cut her free," he said, dropping his own pocket knife on to the floor beside Moz. "You've got five minutes." The last thing Moz heard before the Major slammed the door and bolted it from outside was a suggestion. "Use it well."

"You have to tell them," Malika said before Moz had even returned to the knots, before he'd had a chance to saw at the rope around her wrists and ankles, lift her off the vaulting horse and lower her as gently as he could manage to the floor. "You have to tell them I was with you."

"When?" Moz asked.

"Last Wednesday. You have to say that I was..."

Moz thought about it. Working the days back in his head.

"You were," he said, "we were--"

They both knew what and where. On the roof of the dog woman's old house, with the late afternoon sun in his eyes and Malika sitting in his lap, her bare arms locked round his neck and her legs curled around his hips. It was not something he was likely to forget.

"You'll tell them?" Malika said desperately.

"That we were on the roof?" Moz nodded. "Of course I will."

"I told them," said Malika.

"What's going on?" A very inadequate question.

Her answer came in tears and ragged sobs that echoed round the gymnasium. She didn't know, she really, really didn't know. She'd told the old Frenchman this already but he refused to believe her. Malika's voice was broken, helpless.

Dark circles surrounded her sunken eyes, her right thumb jutted at an obscene angle and all the fingernails from one hand had been ripped out. Excrement smeared the inside of one thigh. As well as shaving her head, the Frenchman had taken all her body hair and what was left looked like bruised meat.

He was crying too, Moz realized. A knot in his stomach as tight as any that might have bound his own hands.

"What do they think you've done?"

Malika was sobbing so hard and was so busy clinging to him that she couldn't answer. And by the time she could, Moz had worked it out for himself. They thought she was Polisario. That was why Major Abbas had asked him what he knew about the bombing in the Nouvelle Ville.

"I said we were together," Malika said. "I know I shouldn't but he wouldn't stop." Her words were barely audible, as if whispering could lessen the horror of what had happened. "He just wouldn't..."

And as Moz knelt in front of her, he understood that he was a coward, whatever Malika thought.

"What exactly did they ask?"

Jagged sobs were his answer.

"You must tell me," Moz insisted.

"The bomb," Malika said. "They wanted to know where I got the explosives."

"You?"

"Me," Malika said bleakly. "I made it and planted it."

"Who said so?"

"I did," said Malika. "When I signed his bit of paper."

"That's what it said?"

"That's what the Frenchman said it said," she replied.

"But you don't know?"

"No." Her shrug was tiny. "They wouldn't let me read it."

"This man," said Moz. "He was definitely French?" Moz felt sick to the bottom of his stomach.

"Yes," she said. "An advisor."

"Why do they say you planted the bomb?"

"I don't know," said Malika. "That's a secret so they won't tell me. There was someone else," she added. "An American or English. Only he left because he didn't like what the others were about to do."

It was a question that had to be asked, until the desolation in Malika's haunted amber eyes persuaded Moz that it didn't have to be asked after all.

"So," said the Frenchman, "it's true. You really are an informer." They faced each other across the cheap linoleum and Claude de Greuze seemed vaguely amused by something.

"No," Moz said. "It's not true."

"I've seen the files. Major Abbas has you down as a monthly expense. Forty dirham to Marzaq al-Turq, informant. He's just shown me."

This was the first Moz had heard of it. His only memories of payment were a handful of sweets, a glass of orange juice, cigarettes given grudgingly and the occasional glance in the wrong direction when Moz was busy helping Hassan move some cart which should have stayed where it was. There'd been no money, ever. Well, not very much and not until recently.

"So inform me," said the Frenchman. "What did you find out?"

"There's nothing to find out," Moz said. "She was telling the truth. We were together on the roof of Dar el Beida. She was with me all the time."

"No," said de Greuze, "I don't think so."

"We were," Moz insisted.

"Really?"

Moz nodded. He was standing so close to the old man that he could have reached out to touch his shabby jacket and Moz was breathing through his mouth, something he'd learnt from watching the Major.

The Frenchman was already dead in all but fact. Maybe that was why he cared so little for the living. "It's true," Moz said, "I promise."

Claude de Greuze's smile was as sour as the stink rising from his body. "I hope it isn't," he said, "because then I'd have to question you too, whether Major Abbas liked it or not."

CHAPTER 39

Lampedusa, Sunday 8 July [Now]

The chat with Katie Petrov was interesting, mostly for what it revealed about Dr. Petrov's views on emotional autism.

"Good morning," said Petra Mayer, shutting a door behind her. She listened to it lock from the other side and smiled. The Colonel was keeping to his orders. "I'm Professor Mayer," she added. The small woman said it like Prisoner Zero should know that already. "And you're..."

Petra Mayer glanced at Katie's folder, mere pantomime. "It seems you're more of a problem than we first thought."

The folder was simple and buff-hued, suggesting common sense, frugality and prudence. All virtues that Katie, Petra Mayer's second most famous pupil, liked to project as hallmarks of her work.

"Gene sent me."

Even this casual reference to America's President didn't rate a flicker of interest from the naked figure who sat with his back against a wall staring flatly at an utterly blue sky. And it was a very casual, we-go-back-a-long-way kind of mention.

The room was on the ground floor of Hotel Vallone but it was in the main building and had metal bars rather than steel mesh set over the windows. An en suite shower-room had been stripped of everything sharp and the door between the two rooms removed along with all the furniture except the bed. A notepad lay untouched beside the bed and the walls were still as pristine as when they were repainted. Prisoner Zero hadn't even opened the wax crayons he'd been given.