Water jets played up and down the frontage, mostly turning to steam as they touched the superheated walls. A lad in full urban disaster kit was poised to jump off the top of his ladder as soon as he could get close enough. But, unless the fire started above ground level and the bank staff had found a way of sealing themselves into the basement vault, I doubted he’d be bringing anyone out.

I wasn’t the only biker in the audience, so keeping my helmet on wasn’t an issue. From behind the safety of the visor, I scanned the surrounding area for anyone I recognized, and anyone whose only reason for being there was to check on the results of the explosion they had triggered.

It took me a while, but I spotted one of each. The guy I’d pinged as the potential arsonist hadn’t given himself away by his behaviour. I spotted him because I’d seen him before. Shiny head. Sharp lapels. Getting out of a Maserati outside the front of the hotel in Aix-les-Bains about half an hour before Mr Lover Man took his dive off the balcony. And then again at the Adler construction site last night.

He was in the mix on the far side of the blaze, where another couple of wagons were keeping onlookers at bay.

I was scanning the place for a route through to him when I saw Laffont’s assistant about fifteen away, to my half-right. She wasn’t as crisply tailored as she had been when she showed me to his office, but she wasn’t smouldering at the edges either. She glanced towards me, but there was no hint of recognition on her face. That was partly down to the helmet, and partly because she was obviously completely shell-shocked.

I didn’t approach her. I waited for her to decide that she’d seen enough, and extricated herself from the growing crowd. Then I peeled off too, and followed her at a discreet distance. It wasn’t difficult. There were plenty of people weaving their way towards the place we’d just left. They only had eyes for the drama behind us. She was going against the flow, staring straight ahead.

She crossed the road, away from where I’d left the Harley, and took the next right. I had no idea where she might be aiming for, and I’m not sure she had either. She was doing a pretty good impression of an automaton. After a couple more turns she went into a café and sat down. I gave her some time to settle, and myself some time to make sure she hadn’t been tailed, then followed her inside.

I removed my helmet as I went through the door, walked up to her table and sat down. She looked straight through me for a moment, then finally showed a spark of recognition.

Her lips moved, almost by remote control. ‘He was waiting for you to call. Then he … I …’

Keeping eye-to-eye and my voice low, I leant forward. Tears gathered on her mascara, toppled off and rolled down her cheeks. ‘He was definitely in there?’

She grabbed my arm and threatened to squeeze the life out of it. She nodded and tears jumped from her cheeks on to the tablecloth. ‘He let me leave early. Stomach pains … I might have … I was only two minutes away when I heard the explosion …’

She removed her hand and reached for a paper napkin as the waitress appeared, so I ordered two frothy coffees and let her sort herself out a bit before speaking again.

‘When I called him this morning, he was really worried. He’d found out something. Did he tell you what it was?’

Her eyebrows headed north. As if. ‘Monsieur Laffont … He shared very little. But I know he was … investigating … Monsieur Timis’s Italian shipping company.’

‘A container vessel, maybe? Minerva?’

She nodded again, more slowly this time, but with increasing conviction. ‘Minerva.’

Another tear gathered and dropped.

‘It wasn’t an accident, was it, Monsieur?’

‘No.’ There was no point in bullshitting her. ‘So tomorrow you need to go and talk to the police. And right now, you need to go somewhere safe …’

‘My boyfriend?’

I told her to stay right there and call him. Get him to pick her up. And not to mention me to the police unless she really had to.

‘Oh, one more thing. Do you know the address of Frank Timis’s house near Brindisi?’

‘Of course. I processed the paperwork.’ She gave me the details. ‘In fact, it is closer to a place called Ostuni …’

I didn’t wait for the coffee to arrive. Maybe her boyfriend would get there in time to enjoy it.

I paid at the bar on my way out.

PART THREE

1

I ditched the weapons and the Laguiole knife before I got anywhere near the outskirts of Milan, dumped the Harley in the middle of town and swapped the helmet for my baseball cap.

I had bought a clean set of clothes in Albertville, from boxers outwards, so I didn’t look like I’d been living on the streets for a month. I changed before catching a cab to Malpensa airport and arrived in the departures hall of Terminal 2 just before three in the morning. The first available flight to Naples wasn’t until 09:40.

Since there wasn’t a single chair in sight, I found a cubicle in the toilets. I hung my day sack on the back of the door, lowered my arse on to the plastic seat and unfolded the Minerva blueprint yet again. I spread it on my knees, hoping it would trigger any kind of memory of my briefing with Frank. Had he told me why the fuck it was so important? Had he let me know where it was going to dock and when?

I could picture him talking to me, and pointing at something. I could see his lips moving, but I hadn’t a clue what he was saying. It was like watching a silent film, or having him under surveillance from across the street without any sound coming through my earpiece.

I decided to get my head down. With my shoulder wedged in the corner of the partition and a guy banging around with a mop outside, I’d had better nights. But I’d done nine hours on the bike since leaving Zürich, and I didn’t fancy another nine.

I cranked myself up at 06:00. My eyeballs and tongue felt like sandpaper, and my back and neck ached. I banged some euros into a wall-mounted chew-ball dispenser and gave my teeth a clean, then filled a basin with cold water, splashed my face with it and felt halfway human again.

I couldn’t see or feel any swelling on my head, so I peeled off the dressing and took a closer look. The wound still wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t going to leak any more blood unless someone gave it another hammering. Until that happened, the baseball cap was all I needed.

As the departures hall swung into action I bought a plane ticket and found a copy of Il Diavolo on one of the newsstands. I flicked through it over a brew and four or five slices of pizza, followed by a marmalade brioche.

Luca Cazale had two major pieces in this edition. The first explored the Mafia’s role in the people-trafficking business. Swarms of refugees – from Ukraine, Syria, North Africa and as far off as Indonesia and the Philippines – handed over everything they had to be lifted out of their own local gangfucks, and were then left pretty much to fend for themselves.

The Italian government had kicked off Operation Mare Nostrum – their attempt to rescue the victims from drowning in international waters – in late 2013, but had had to cut it back the following year. It had been costing them nine million euros a month. I could only guess what kind of cash the traffickers were making.

Luca’s second article was on the Islamic State doing shit in Mosul and Syria. I’d kept a close watch on the Middle East since getting fucked over in Iraq during the First Gulf War, and this guy really delivered. His mugshot said he wasn’t going to take any prisoners, and his journalism kept the promise.