I dumped the day sack in the passenger foot well of the Polo and tucked the Sphinx under my right thigh. Mr Lover Man would know it was fuck-all use, but it might stop anyone who didn’t getting too close. And I could always throw it at them if the shit hit the fan.

I drove on through the one-way system, avoiding the heart of the village, and took a right towards Le Praz, past a floodlit ski jump that seemed to be its social centre even when there was no snow anywhere near it. A handful of people milled around outside a bunch of all-weather tepees that lined the base of the landing strip.

I was still searching my jumbled memory for something significant Frank might have said. It didn’t get me anywhere. All I knew for sure was that I hadn’t been able to save him, and he hadn’t been able to save himself.

I pulled off the road and tugged the map book out of my day sack. A bunch of euro notes came with it, and fluttered into the foot well. I leant over to gather them up.

I paused, midway.

Money …

Mexican drug money …

Frank had laundered it, then fed my share into the bank in Zürich that had supplied me with my magic debit card.

I grabbed one of the Nokia bodies and slotted in a battery and a SIM card. ‘Mate, I’m just getting out of the car again. But I won’t be far away. Stay right where you are.’

13

I punched out what I hoped was the Swiss dialling code and my account manager’s mobile number. The key to conjuring up regularly accessed data sequences was to crack on instinctively. Interrupting the process with any kind of rational thought only fucked things up. And because I never compromised my security – or anyone else’s – by storing contact details, it had become second nature.

Whether I got through now would show me if my medium-to-long-term memory was salvageable, or as elusive as my grip on the recent past.

‘Bonsoir.’

The voice was familiar. And it didn’t give me a bollocking for calling after hours.

I rattled off a nine-figure code.

‘Oui …’

So far, so good.

‘About two years ago I received a series of payments from a Mr Frank Timis.’

‘Oui.’

‘Do you have any record of those payments?’

‘Bien sûr.’ I heard a keyboard being tapped. ‘No movement for … eight months, then another transfer yesterday evening, from the same source.’

‘What source?’

‘La Banque Privée, in Albertville.’

‘Address?’

I scribbled it on my arm as he gave it to me.

‘Who authorizes the transactions?’

‘The manager. A Monsieur Laffont.’

I was about to ring off when he asked if I’d like him to confirm the amount of the most recent payment. I said I would.

‘Five hundred thousand euros.’

Fuck me. ‘Any description?’

‘Non.’

Of course there wasn’t. Frank would have told me what it was for. He didn’t need to share the job spec with anybody else.

I dismantled the phone, trod the pieces into the earth and got back into the Polo.

My immediate objective had been to get out of the resort area. Now I knew where I was going. Albertville was less than fifty Ks away. It looked large enough for us to lose ourselves in for a day or two. And it was where I would find Mr Laffont and the Adler depot.

Before sparking up the ignition, I called back over my shoulder. ‘All right, Stefan? We’re about to go somewhere safe.’

I got a muffled grunt in response. Maybe he believed what I’d just said as little as I did. The fact was, nowhere was completely safe, for either of us. But I couldn’t just mince around. I needed to find somewhere out of the immediate firing line to hide the boy, then to track down Mr Lover Man.

The further I got down the valley, the more comfortable I began to feel, and not only because I didn’t see any flashing blue lights or overly interested Range Rovers in the rear-view. We were back in the real world, where people scraped a living, shopped at discount stores and chopped their own wood.

There were no Gucci cable cars here, just columns of electricity pylons marching along beside the Isère river, through pleated-tin prefab industrial estates, cement factories and parked-up earth-moving equipment. Lights blazed from the odd car showroom. A pillar of rock rose up from between the carriageways, topped by some kind of shrine.

A big fuck-off set of white neon horns announced the presence of a Buffalo Grill, a macho version of McDonald’s, to the right of the main. I’d emptied the contents of my gut up on the hill, and I was pretty sure Stefan hadn’t got anything down his neck since breakfast, apart from the chocolate bar I’d given him while I went and borrowed the ATV, and the one in Frank’s drawer. I pulled off at the next exit, asked him what sort of stuff he liked, and went in to order a takeaway.

The place wasn’t heaving with customers, but there were enough to stop me drawing too much attention to myself, and judging by the plates in the parking area, quite a few of them were Brits. I emerged ten minutes later with burgers and chips and a couple of bottles of Coke.

I pointed the Polo further away from the main and found a floodlit communal sports facility with an AstroTurf football pitch and a basketball game in full flow, where no one would give a second glance at a scruffy guy taking time out with his lad.

I lifted him out of the boot and told him we didn’t have to do the whole hugging thing, but from now on anyone looking in our direction had to pick up that vibe. ‘Kids with strange men always stick out like a sore thumb. Boys with their dads pass unnoticed in places like this.’

He shut and then opened his eyes a couple of times, but he managed to stop them leaking. Then, while the local dudes rocketed around the court, dreaming of stardom, Stefan sat and looked at his dinner like it was something I’d wiped off his shoe. I thought for a moment that he was going to push it away. I suddenly remembered that Frank had kept as strict an eye on his diet as he had on his education.

‘What’s the problem, mate? Not enough curly kale?’

He grimaced. ‘I hate curly kale.’

He took an experimental bite and got stuck in. I did too. I’d never been a big fan of acid reflux, and this stuff was exactly what I needed to combat it.

When we’d finished, I sat him in the front of the wagon and went in search of a cheap motel with several exits and no security cameras. I found one between the pitches and the train station that was just about perfect. I circled the area around it. My head hadn’t been straight at the chalet, and I’d fucked up. I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.

It wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for. Beside the railway track: a wooden shed where the locals came to dump their household waste, their wine bottles and empty boxes. I pulled up alongside a pile of discarded bin bags and opened the door. Three big plastic wheelie-bins with different-coloured lids stood in front of me. There was enough space between them for a small person to squeeze through.

I gave Stefan a wave and motioned for him to join me.

His expression told me he didn’t know what the fuck I was up to. When he’d poked his head inside, he was none the wiser.

‘ERV.’

He really thought I’d lost the plot.

‘Take a good look. I’ll explain later.’

I told him to get down in the foot well as we turned through the main entrance to the motel and to stay there until I gave the signal. There were about forty parking spaces and almost as many vehicles. All good. I didn’t want to find myself somewhere with so few guests that the owner could provide a Photofit for every one of them.

The check-in desk was on the opposite side of a courtyard from the main block. The lad behind it had more zits on his face than brain cells between his ears, and was a lot more interested in what was on TV than he was in me. I gave him enough cash to cover two nights in a room on the ground floor and he handed over a key with one of those lumps of metal attached that are supposed to be heavy enough to stop you walking off with them by mistake. I waved my passport at him but he didn’t give a shit.