Never mind the question on her lips; never mind her presence at my door.

This was Edinburgh in 1983, and no one dressed so well or spoke so fair. I leaned back and pictured her how she might truly be: a smaller meeker woman dressed in a shapeless old coat, her thick brogue tempered perhaps by a difficult upbringing that left her doubting her own mental and physical self-worth. Or maybe she was as her host had found her–heels a danger to tarmac, pointed and red, a skirt that barely covered her shapely behind, two hundred pounds of cotton and silk clinging to her breast, two thousand pounds of gold hanging about her neck. There were some–a few–who had the confidence to march around the city dressed in such a guise, but even the most vainglorious of self-admirers baulked at doing so casually.

“Are you the estate agent?” she said again, impatience rising in her tone, so I said yes.

“I need a man.”

I resisted the obvious and gestured to the chair opposite my desk, won’t you please, may I give…

She was too busy for courtesy. “Young, strong–a complete medical history. That’s the important part. I want cardiogram, blood tests, lung capacity test, allergies. Do you think you can do me someone ex-military?”

I could certainly look into it. Would madam be looking for a short-term or long-term habitation?

“Short. Doesn’t matter about family history. And blond. I like blond. But not curly hair. And not too hairy on the back either. OK if he uses oils and shaves, but I don’t want hairy when I collect.”

Any particular needs more than an ex-military blond non-hairy physical hulk of a man with clean medical history and a penchant for razors?

She thought about it, then said, “It’d help if he has a boat.”

“A boat?”

“Something nice. A yacht. Seagoing.”

“I can certainly investigate, Miss…”

She seemed to see me for the first time. “What?”

“What should I call you, Miss…?”

She stared down at herself as if surprised by both the question and her gender. Then her gaze returned to me, startled and clear. “Why the fuck should I know? Does it fucking matter?”

“I am an estate agent, the only one operating in this area. I have many clients, and considering how rapidly their appearances may change from meeting to meeting, I like to keep some sort of coherent client list for future reference.”

“A name?”

“If you would.”

She thought about it and smiled. “Call me Tasha. No–call me Tulia. I think I suit Tulia better.” Then the smile was gone, and the memories which it stirred sank beneath the choppy waters of the present. “Now get me someone beautiful.”

My commission for the job was fifty thousand pounds.

I found her Eddie Pearce, an ex-marine with a love of sailing. With the muscles beneath his neck he could have broken doors down; with the end of his finger he looked like he could lift my desk.

I said, do you like what you see?

Tasha–or perhaps Tulia–clapped her hands together with delight, exclaiming, “He’s beautiful! He’s so beautiful! Oh I want him!”

Can I ask what for?

What for? What kind of question is that? I want him because he’s him! I want him because everything about him is enviable, everything about his body is handsome and toned, everything about his life is sensational. I want him because he sails with his face turned to the wind, because he has women who love him, men who adore him, strangers who look up when he walks by. I want him because I’m bored and he’s something new. I want him because he’s beautiful. Don’t you understand? Don’t you love him?

Yes, I said. I understand.

“But do you love him?” she demanded.

“Not yet. But perhaps I could.”

She smiled at this, wrapping her arms about her chest as if to contain the jubilation welling up inside. “I love him already,” she breathed. “I know he’s going to love me too.”

Two nights later she was on his yacht sailing out through the Firth of Forth towards grey seas and open horizons.

Four days after that the yacht was found drifting by a Dundee fisherman and his crew. When interviewed, he looked as if he had swallowed his own raw fish, which yet wriggled and writhed inside him. He spoke in the softest whisper of the things he had seen, and reported himself grateful, so very grateful, that at the moment his hand had brushed the skin of the one living thing inside he himself had passed out, to remember no more until waking on the shore.

Knowing I did not want to look, and knowing I had no choice, I read the autopsy report on Eddie Pearce. What acts, what violence, what violations that the mind could devise had perforated what little remained of his flesh, the deed prolonged over two days of suffering below the decks of his own vessel. Yet, the coroner concluded, somehow through all this there must have been at least an element of consent, for though his body was tortured with every constriction it could bear, still incredibly it had inflicted equal violation, equal pain upon the woman found barely conscious in the cabin besides his corpse, whose final words, as the fisherman pulled her up on to the deck, were a half-whispered

Do you like what you see?

Three days later my Edinburgh office was cleared, and I was

someone else, standing on a railway platform.

Two days after that a document was sent anonymously to an organisation operating out of Geneva. It listed various accounts held across the globe. The most recent payment made had been to an estate agent in Edinburgh, for the sum of fifty thousand pounds, though if anyone bothered to look, they would find no record that the estate agent had existed at all.

Janus said you ratted out Galileo.

I said yes.

Good. Takes guts.

I said I sold him out to Aquarius. They weren’t Aquarius then, just killers with a cause. Aquarius was who they became. I gave them everything they needed to track him, by his monies, by the accounts he used when he was some other skin.

I said that’s why he tried to kill me in Miami

why so many skins died.

I thought I was helping Aquarius kill Galileo.

All I did was help him on his way.

Chapter 67

We walked back to the hotel in silence.

Alone, I lay down on the bed, flicked through my useless wallet, turned on the TV, swept through the channels one way, then back the other. Politics from Brussels, football from Marseille, beautiful cops from America, dangerous robbers from Russia, concerned journalists before the hulk of another burned-out-building-in-do-you-know-where?

I wondered if Sebastian Puis would have cared.

His face in the mirror looked like it was capable of guilt by remote control, but like most of the emotions his gently bristling chin expressed, he probably would have got over it quickly enough.

Hotel toothpaste is grainy and leaves a prickling aftertaste.

I turned the lights down and listened to stories of recession, development, light local tales of gap-toothed children excelling in a wildlife drawing competition and old women uniting against dog fouling, and as my mind began to drift, the newsreader cleared her throat and returned to the story of the moment, which, in among all the other moments, I’d somehow missed.

Two images, more fluent than the words.

A windswept reporter, shivering against the dead-night cold. She stood before the floodlights of the Brandenburg Gate, police behind and camera crews all around.

A shot–not from film itself, but of a film running on a computer screen, softly out of focus.

I listened to the story, and, hotel dressing gown pulled tight, padded down to the foyer. The girl behind the counter was sleepy, the computer by the lift was unattended. It took no time to find and a while to load. The YouTube video that was the centre of this breaking news was six hours old, had been pulled and re-released, pulled and re-released, and on its fifteenth reincarnation was at three hundred and forty-seven thousand one hundred and twelve hits and climbing.