I remembered reading something about a couple of designers winning a competition to create a public living space that looked and felt like a room where you could hang out with your mates. Fuck knew where their inspiration came from. The only rooms I’d ever seen like that had been in Iraq and Afghan, when the grenades had detonated and we’d had to scrape what was left of the inhabitants off the walls.

I drove past a big fuck-off cathedral and found a very shiny shopping mall a few blocks from the train station that advertised a cyber café and a McDonald’s. I parked up on the street a couple of hundred beyond the entrance, opposite a tram stop the size of a suspension bridge.

He made to get out but I gripped him. ‘No, mate. You stay here …’

Then I thought, Fuck it. This might go on for ever. He can’t spend the rest of his life living on takeaways, staying off the radar. Even if his photograph was on the Net now, we had to get used to hiding in plain sight.

I threw on my baseball cap and jacket and guided him inside. Stefan still limped a bit, but I didn’t need to carry him.

We got some Big Macs, fries and Coke down our necks and practised our father-and-son act. That was the trick. We weren’t the only ones doing it. Some of the dads in the restaurant area were in jeans and T-shirts. A few others were in grey suits and looked less like they were in the mood for a Happy Meal than we did. It was after seven p.m., but they had probably only stepped away from their desks for a quick break between currency swaps.

Stefan told me that what we were eating had zero nutritional value and I told him not to talk with his mouth full. Whatever, I don’t think either of us gave a shit. It filled a space.

The cyber café was on the floor above, and felt like a designer schoolroom. I paid for an hour, chose a keyboard and monitor in one corner and began by checking out the location of its most obvious competitors. I might need them later, and I never liked going back to the same place twice. Three names and addresses went into the Moleskine.

Next I ran through the budget accommodation directory. The Swiss didn’t really understand the meaning of ‘cheap’, but there was quite a bit of choice. I got scribbling again.

On balance, I thought we’d avoid the B-and-Bs. I liked their anonymity, but preferred the idea of being able to disappear into a crowd. Top of my list was something that called itself a hostel, with four storeys and an external staircase leading to each one. It was in a stretch of open ground dotted with trees on the far side of what was apparently the oldest library in the world. I pointed at a picture of visitors in blue felt slippers admiring ancient illuminated manuscripts in display cabinets. ‘What do you think? We could pop in there if we get short of reading material.’

He was still stressing about our visit to Lyubova, but he managed a weak grin.

I googled Adler Gesellschaft. Laffont had been right. Their glass and steel executive HQ was on the northern edge of town. Their manufacturing bases – which seemed to turn out everything from aircraft fuselages and wing panels to fence posts and stripy poles – were mostly in Eastern Europe and their distribution depots were scattered across the continent, but their tax returns were definitely filed in the canton of Zürich.

They weren’t the kind of outfit to broadcast precise details of their ownership, but I found my way to the glossy PR section of the corporate website and discovered that the George Michael lookalike I’d spotted at the Albertville depot was IC logistics. His name was Adel Dijani, which sounded more Lebanese than Swiss to me.

I was about to leave the site when I pinged a shot of their head of security at a recent event – maybe the opening Frank had been invited to. The first thing I noticed was a flash of red and silver on his ring finger. I zoomed in on it.

A silver double-headed eagle on a red enamel background.

An Albanian eagle.

I’d definitely seen that ring before. When its owner’s hand was clapping Mr Lover Man on the back. Celebrating the fact that me and a Nissan X-Trail had fallen off a cliff.

As far as I knew, this was the first time I’d been able to have a good look at Hesco’s face. Sideburns that had been given a little too much love and attention. Dark, tightly curled hair. A neat white scar running down his nose that looked like someone had shoved a stiletto up his nostril and taken it out sideways.

I stared at the photograph.

He was definitely one of the two on the hill. He was definitely at the Aix marina. Had he been in the chalet? On the road before the crash? The harder I tried to remember, the less I could. That part of my recent past was still splintered and remote.

But now I had the fucker’s name.

Zac Uran.

Zac Ur-an.

You … ran …

That settled it.

Mr Lover Man had known he was dying. He knew he’d been fucked over. He had nothing to hide. He had given me the name of the guy who had fixed for him to kill Frank.

But Zac wasn’t at the top of the food chain. If he had been, he wouldn’t have been bouncing about on the hill. He wasn’t simply chomping around in the pondweed though. It took more than that to drive a Maserati.

I surfed the news sites, starting with the sport and UK-based shit, as any Brit would. Then I got more local. The assassination victim in the French Alps had been formally identified as Ukrainian multi-millionaire Frank Timis. There were a number of theories about what lay behind his death. The police had released a photograph of the oligarch’s son, who, sources claimed, had been abducted – possibly by the killer.

Stefan’s picture had been taken from the shot I’d pinged on the wall of the green room. Everyone around him had been cropped, but you could still see the BG’s hand on his shoulder.

I felt myself relax a fraction; it was at least eighteen months out of date. His features had thinned out since then. His nose seemed sharper now, his cheekbones more pronounced, his eyes darker. And a trip to the mini-market on the ground floor, followed by a session upstairs, would help me make him even more difficult to recognize.

I ran through a few of the story links and found some footage of a hillside farm I recognized. A couple of big lads in dungarees were being interviewed by a French news crew. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but that wasn’t a problem. They were so fired up that they mimed the highlights of their recent experience – the fight, the theft of the ATV – vividly enough to leave no need for subtitles.

The piece was followed by an e-fit of the fucker who had ruined their day. Apart from the stubble and the head wound – which Claude or the artist had transposed from right to left – it didn’t look remotely like me. Or I hoped it didn’t. The shadowy figure staring at us from the screen looked like he’d be completely at home on the Planet of the Apes.

Neither of them would have pinged Stefan, and the authorities didn’t seem to have joined the dots between the gangfuck in the barn, the events further up the mountain and the chalet in Courchevel. I guessed they would at some point. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

Next came an update on the investigation into last night’s fatality at a marina in Aix-les-Bains. The text for this one was in English. The police were looking for two men who had been seen entering the victim’s suite. There was no mention of a Brit in a green Polo.

I didn’t expect to find much on the Net about Lyubova Timis, and I was right. When you’ve had a child kidnapped and not quite ransomed, you didn’t advertise your wealth and your whereabouts in Hello! magazine. And Frank had always done his best to keep in the shadows, even when he was up to something legal. All I learnt was that she divided her time between Russia and Switzerland, and had once been an air stewardess.