‘So how do you know about it?’

‘Fazackerly started boasting about it! In his cups.’ Sanderson mimed a drinking hand. ‘Zhenrong says Fazackerly was a terrible boozer. There was a genomics conference in Perpignan about six months ago when Fazackerly got ratarsed. And he told everyone that him and Nairn, they were gonna publish something that would amaze everyone, that would make Eugen Fischer look like a nonce. That’s not how Zhenrong phrased it, by the way, that’s me.’

‘Eugen Fischer? I heard that name. Recently.’ Simon frowned. Exhausted by the mystery. ‘The young guy in France, Martinez, he mentioned him.’

‘That right? Well, Fischer was a race scientist. Worked in Namibia, and then for Hitler, one of the founders of eugenics. A real bastard. Thought Germans were supermen.’

‘Namibia.’

‘Namibia.’

‘I remember…’ Simon said, ‘I remember there was, ah, a picture in Fazackerly’s office of Francis Galton. He was a eugenicist…and he worked in Namibia.’

‘You see?’ Sanderson was broadly smiling. ‘It all connects. The Namibian Connection! I’m only telling you all this because you had a detective sargeant’s premolar embedded in your face this morning. Please keep shtoom for now. I guess you will wanna write a book when we’re done, won’t you?’

Simon found himself blushing.

‘Hah.’ Sanderson chuckled. ‘Fucking writers can’t resist. Make sure you give me a good haircut. Six foot two. Strong jaw. You know. And here’s another thing. Nathan Kellerman, the Jewish heir to all those diamond billions, he and Nairn became very close. Kellerman and Nairn would have these…chinwags, apparently, when he used to come and visit London, see how money was being spent.’

‘Conversations?’

‘Yes. About the Bible.’ Sanderson shrugged. ‘The Curse of Canaan. Genesis 3 or whatever. Zhenrong listened in. Sometimes. To their…chats.’

‘The doctrine of the Serpent Seed? The Curse of Cain?’

‘Yeah. All the stuff you got from Winyard. Odd, eh?’

‘When you say he and Kellerman were close…how close?’

‘Well they weren’t boyfriends. But a couple of years back Nairn started visiting Namibia.’

The car was now stalled on Baker Street. The sun was properly out; the streets were lively with people. Three Arab wives in turquoise hijabs were walking several paces behind the husband – attired in jeans and baseball cap.

‘Right. And?’

‘It’s a pretty expensive place to go, the other side of the world. Nairn wasn’t rich.’

Simon saw the clear light of logic.

‘Kellerman paid for his trips!’

‘Yup. We’re pretty sure he paid, because Nairn went several times, in three years. Never told anyone why or what he did there.’

‘Holidays?’

Sanderson’s expression narrowed. ‘Long way to go surfing.’

‘You believe he’s in Namibia now, don’t you?’

The DCI smiled with a trace of smugness. ‘I do. I even tried writing to him, on his email address. See if I could coax him out, tell him about the case. If he’s down there he’s probably still receiving emails. Reckon.’

Simon sat back. Sanderson confessed: ‘I didn’t get very far. Not good coppering. Tut fucking tut. But hey, at least I saved your Danish – just in time.’

The policeman’s weary smile was warm: genuine and warm. Simon felt a little better. Then he remembered the expression on Tomasky’s face. The growling anger. Ferocious. He felt worse.

Simon was quiet for the rest of the journey to New Scotland Yard. He was subdued during the debriefing; he was almost silent when he got home and hugged Suzie and embraced Conor with a fierce paternal love that almost broke his own heart, and his son’s ribs.

The subdued feeling hung around like an unwanted, overstaying visitor, like the bloodstain that couldn’t be removed from the hallway floor, no matter how many times it was sanded and polished. The journalist was melancholic and disquieted. He watched the fat housewife put out her fat housewifely washing. The fat black crow hopping along the garden. A policeman came to live with them, sleeping in the spare room. His radio buzzed loudly at odd times. He had a gun. He read football magazines.

Meanwhile, Simon researched Catholic sects and Polish skinheads. He drank too much coffee and researched genetics. He emailed David in France, and got a couple of emails in return. The emails were fascinating, and full of information, but they also added to his sense of danger and guilt. Simon felt guilty that he’d told the police about David: because Martinez and his friend – Amy – were, it seemed, suspicious of police involvement. Everywhere and everyone was suspect, unreliable, a menace.

And now Simon wondered if he could really trust Sanderson. Tomasky had, after all, seemed trustworthy and funny and decent; he had rather liked Tomasky – and Tomasky had tried to kill him. Who was to say that Tomasky’s superiors were in the clear? How deep, how high, how far did this go?

This isn’t any old fish and chip job, Quinn, this isn’t a fish and chip job.

Five days later, sitting at his desk, bleakly daydreaming – yet again – he got a call from a distraught Polish woman.

Tomasky’s sister.

Her English was appalling but her meaning was obvious: she was harrowed with guilt for what her brother had done, she wanted to apologize to Simon. She had tracked him down through ‘The Scottish Yard policing man’.

He listened to her sincerely weepy, flamboyantly Slavic grief for several minutes, feeling his own awkwardness. Even if Tomasky had attacked Simon, the poor woman’s brother had died. What could you say? Never mind, it wasn’t that bad?

The woman was burbling again.

‘Andrew was a good Polish man, Mister Quinn. Good man, regular guy! Regular.’ Her words retreated into a taut, choking silence. ‘He like smalec and piwo. He good. Normal. Like any men. But then the place change him, it change him.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Yes! Strasne. The monastery…the monastery Tourette in France.’ Another suppressed sob. ‘When he go there something happen. Something very bad like it change him. Pyrzykro mi. I am very sorry. Pyrzykro mi.’

The sobs came, and the phone call ended.

27

‘Bonjour!’

Leaning out of his hotel window, on his tiny balcony, David returned a nervous hello to the affable, middle-aged French gentleman, sitting with his copy of Le Figaro on his lap, on the next balcony along. David weakly smiled – then turned resolutely away. He didn’t want to talk, he didn’t want to be recognized and acknowledged. He wanted pure and inconspicuous anonymity.

So he stared in the other direction, along the Biarritz seafront. The scene was boisterous: the beaches were wide and golden, hemmed by the glittering lace of the crashing waves; the architecture was a remarkable mix of Victorian townhouses, concrete casinos, and pink stucco palaces. The strange and clashing mixture matched his mood.

They’d been hiding out in this hotel for a several days, using only payphones, and occasionally sneaking out to cybercafes to send and receive emails. He’d got two emails from Simon Quinn, updating him. Which was useful.

But it was still a dislocating sensation. Being here. And the disorientation was compounded by one dazzling new fact: he and Amy had begun sleeping together.

It had happened their second night in Biarritz. They’d decided they’d had enough of skulking in their tiny adjoining hotel rooms, so they had quietly wandered to the Rock of the Virgin, the local beauty spot high on a promontory, and when they got there they had shyly stared at the lamps and the stars and the moon over the bay and the tourists downing oysters by the Porte des Pecheurs – and she’d started crying.

Her tears were unquenchable. She had cried for half an hour. Unsure what to do, David had escorted her to his room – and there she had shuddered and slipped into his bathroom to shower. He sat there, listening to the noise of the water hissing fiercely against the shower-curtain. He began to worry: was she OK?