We reached the end of the village in a couple of nanoseconds and kept on going. The first of the four lifts we needed was a K and a half south-east. The valley wasn’t filled with trippers, but we weren’t alone. I could see a mixed bunch of enthusiasts ahead of us, from bearded tree-huggers in open-toed sandals shepherding their wives and kids uphill to manic endurance freaks with top-of-the-range everything bent on breaking land-speed records. We fitted comfortably at the lower end of the scale.

As a pair of middle-aged men in Lycra pedalled past, drenched in sweat, I showed Stefan how to get the best out of his poles. His expression made it clear he didn’t think it was rocket science. To hammer the point home he set off at speed, arms pumping, with only a hint of a limp.

I told him we still had a fair distance to go, there were no prizes for getting there first, ‘And if you fuck that ankle of yours again, you can get some other dickhead to give you a piggyback …’

He slowed as the incline steepened and was ready for a pit stop by the time we’d got halfway.

An energy bar and half a litre of water took us to the base of Les Mossettes, a four-seat chair to the ridge. When I’d done winter training here as a young squaddie we used to stand up there with a brew and watch the big-timers somersaulting down what they called the Swiss Wall. If you failed to negotiate the concave bit at the top of the slope you wouldn’t see your skis again until you got back from the hospital.

When we were almost there, the Suunto told me we were 2,200 metres above sea level. I showed the read-out to Stefan. He shrugged. I guessed his room in Courchevel was almost as high.

There was a uniform waiting at the top station, but it belonged to a lift attendant. And he seemed to be paying more attention to the dudes filming themselves biking along the Col than to us. A lad on an ATV buzzed around the bare hillside below us.

On the way down into Switzerland, I realized that something the Omani had said, when we were giving ourselves lung cancer and becoming new best mates, was still nagging away at the back of my mind. Very spiritual, he’d called Mr Lover Man.

A true believer.

I tried to remember if I’d ever seen the Nigerian with a prayer mat, and failed. ‘Your BG, he’s your godfather, isn’t he? Does that mean you go to church together?’

The kid was gazing at the rooftops of Les Crosets, on the wooded slopes at the far side of the valley. ‘We used to go when I was young. Not very often, though. Then he started going to the mosque instead.’

I didn’t know whether that was important. Maybe the atmosphere of fundamentalist lunacy that was gripping Europe right now was gripping me as well. Just because he’d converted to Islam didn’t necessarily mean he’d suddenly turned into Jihadi John. But I tucked the int away for future reference.

Two more lifts and not much hiking took us to Champéry, another Disney village. It was on the outer edge of the Portes du Soleil area, so our multi-pass got us into its bike park.

Stefan thought he’d died and gone to heaven when we stepped through the entrance. The whole area was heaving with über-cool teenagers in mud-spattered kit pulling stunts on mountain bikes. There was some kind of competition going on.

The main track was like a rollercoaster, part bare earth, part grass, in the open and running through the trees. A series of smaller circuits featured more bumps, jumps, ramps and bridges than you could bounce over in a week.

He was even happier when I bought him a full-face helmet, a pair of Ali G goggles, a T-shirt with go-faster stripes, some gloves and elbow pads. He wasn’t going to get on a bike, but he’d fit in nicely. And there was no way he’d be recognized in that gear unless he collided with someone he knew.

I told him to be within reach of the finishing line every thirty minutes until the bike park closed, and I’d come and find him. Then I gave him a cheery dad-like wave and headed back the way we’d come.

There were two obvious routes to Champéry from Les Lindarets. I chose the one via Lac Leman. It was forty Ks further but only about twenty-five minutes longer.

So two and a half hours after saying goodbye to the goats and the green parasols I was back at the bike park with a big wad of Swiss francs in my pocket and a bigger one in my day sack, telling Stefan to get a fucking move on.

We still had more than three hundred Ks to travel.

2

Stefan went quiet as we hit the main to St Gallen. I glanced at him from time to time, between keeping eyes on the rear-view and wing mirrors as well as the road ahead. His body language told me it wasn’t because he’d run out of things to say: he was miserable.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that any kid whose dad had been killed in front of him only forty-eight hours ago wasn’t always going to be a bundle of laughs, but this was about something different.

‘I guess you must be getting to know this part of Switzerland quite well by now …’

He turned his face to the side window and shook his head. ‘I have never been here.’

‘Never visited your mum’s new house?’

That didn’t even earn me a shake.

After a while he muttered, ‘She’s not my mother.’

‘I know, mate. Your real mum was a friend of mine.’ I hadn’t forgotten that. I’d buried it somewhere in the darkness, along with a whole lot of other shit. Tracy had been a mate since my Regiment days. That was why Frank had asked me to go and dig her and Stefan out of a hole in the ground in Somalia, and why I’d been with her when she took a round and died there, trying to save her son.

I decided to take another tack. ‘The woman I called Mum wasn’t my real mum either.’

He didn’t turn back towards me, but I sensed that I’d sparked his interest.

‘She used to get really pissed off with me. But you know what? She looked after me too.’

The wagon ate up another K or two before he spoke again. ‘Pissed off?’

‘Yeah. Angry. You know. Cross.’

‘Why?’

‘Me and my mate Gaz … we used to do all sorts of stupid stuff when we were your age. Our favourite hiding place was on the roof of his block of flats – his apartment block. We sat up there and watched the world go by. One time we—’

‘My father owns apartment blocks. He owns many apartment blocks.’

‘Your dad was a very rich and clever guy.’ I paused. ‘Gaz didn’t own his apartment block. The council did. But maybe I’ll explain that some other time—’

‘You were going to tell me why your stepmother got pissed off with you …’

‘Pissed off … yeah. Very, very pissed off. We made some bombs – not real bombs, tomato sauce, you know, ketchup, in, er, plastic bags – and went up on the roof and threw them at people in the street. Hardly ever hit anyone, but we made a bit of a mess. Explosions of red all over the place.’ I’d lied about the bags. We’d nicked a packet of Gaz’s dad’s condoms, but now wasn’t the time to explain.

He did turn then, and I could see he wasn’t enjoying the story as much as I’d hoped. ‘Did she beat you?’

‘Nah.’ I tried to make light of it. I suddenly had a fairly good idea of where this was leading. ‘She clipped me across the ear. She and Gaz’s mum went ballistic because they didn’t know we climbed up on the roof and they thought we might fall off and kill ourselves. It was a fair way down to the pavement.’

He went quiet again. He seemed to be watching the very well-behaved Swiss houses and countryside sweeping past his window, but I knew he wasn’t taking much in.

‘Remember all that shit, eh? It’ll help the cover story. You remembering some stupid stuff your dad did back in the day.’