'You'll get it back. I'll leave it there for you to find.' Eusden pointed to the piece of paper with the word Marmorvej written on it. 'Now, give me the key. And hand over your mobile phone as well.'

Wij undid a couple of buttons on his boiler suit and reached into an inner pocket for his mobile and the scooter key. He laid them on the desk and Eusden picked them up.

'I'll need the key to the door as well, Wij. I'm afraid I'm going to have to lock you in here. Sorry, but there it is. You'll be able to call for help from the window in the morning. Oh and unplug Kjeldsen's phone.' He pointed to the landline receiver. 'I'll also have to take that. I'll leave it downstairs with your mobile.'

'Why you doing this, mister? You don't look... like a crazy man.'

'I don't have time to explain.'

'I got no money for a new scooter.'

'Don't worry. I'll ride carefully. Believe it or not, I am sorry.' Eusden sighed. 'This isn't the start to the weekend I had planned.'

TWENTY-SEVEN.

Eusden's most recent experience of two-wheeled transport lay many years in the past and even then it had not been motorized. His wobbly ride through the mercifully empty streets of Copenhagen on Wijayapala's scooter would ordinarily have been a nightmarish ordeal. As it was, its hazards and difficulties paled into insignificance compared with the other anxieties his mind was grappling with. Marty had vanished and Clem's attache case had been stolen. It had very possibly already been sold to a sinister and anonymous buyer. Certainly Eusden's chances of preventing the sale were negligible. Logically, there was no point even trying to prevent it. So far, the attempt had involved behaving despicably as well as criminally. And he was still breaking the law by riding without a crash helmet not to mention jumping a succession of red lights.

He could not simply give up, however. An admission of defeat at this stage would be more painful than pressing on until he had done everything he could, even if it was to no avail. The blow to his head had scrambled his thought processes and he was aware he might be acting irrationally, but he felt helpless in the grip of his determination to hit back at Kjeldsen and Norvig. One had cheated him. The other had betrayed him. He could not simply let them get away with it and pocket their ill-gotten half shares of twenty million kroner.

The docks were separated from the city centre by a dual carriageway and a railway line. The route into them by road involved a double-back after passing Nordhavn S-tog station. This brought Eusden out on to one of the harbour basins, with a vast warehouse complex between him and Marmorvej. He left the scooter there, conscious that he could not afford to advertise his arrival with the mosquito-whine of its engine, and jogged along the narrow road between the warehouse and the dual carriageway.

Beyond lay another basin, with a huge car ferry moored at a jetty on the far side. Marmorvej was the quay to his left and he heard the thrumbling note of a boat's engine as he turned on to it. A launch was moving away from the quayside, heading out into the harbour. And two men were walking towards a car parked in the lee of the warehouse. Widely spaced security lights cast a jumble of deep shadows and shallow reflections across the snowmelt-puddled wharf and the launch's ghostly wake. For a second, Eusden could not be sure what he was actually seeing. His perceptions were sluggish, his reactions slow. Then the scene became clear and obvious in his mind.

The two men were Norvig and Kjeldsen. They were walking towards Kjeldsen's Volvo. The lawyer was carrying a case that was marginally the wrong size and shape to be Clem's. They had handed his over, of course, in exchange for this case, containing their pay-off. The buyer was leaving in the launch. Eusden was too late. It had always been likely he would be. His heart sank. He strode forward, unsure of what he meant to do but set on doing something to sour the pair's victory.

Clunk, clunk: the doors of the Volvo slammed shut as Kjeldsen settled behind the wheel and Norvig in the passenger seat beside him. The engine coughed into action. The headlamps flared. The car was facing towards the sea, so they would not yet be able to see him. As Kjeldsen forwarded and reversed into a multi-point turn, Eusden broke into a run.

Almost at once, however, he stopped, confused by other movements and noises intruding on his senses, swifter than the manoeuvring car, louder than its muffled engine or that of the departing launch, which by now had left the basin. An unlit motorbike sped into view round the seaward flank of the warehouse. Its rider and his pillion passenger were black-leathered, sleek-helmeted shadows. The machine closed on the Volvo, fast and dark. Eusden guessed Kjeldsen and Norvig were unaware of its approach. And he also guessed its approach spelt danger for them. 'Look out!' he shouted.

The warning was in vain. Time was about to slow yet accelerate in front of him. Kjeldsen had reversed towards the warehouse wall as the motorbike reached them. It braked sharply. Its rear light bled into the night. The pillion passenger jumped off as the bike halted, wielding what looked like a gun in his hand. Doubt on the point was snuffed out by the sharp cracks of repeated shots. Glass splintered. The gunman yanked open the driver's door and unloaded more shots. Six, seven; ten, twelve: they came in rapid succession. The car horn blared. Eusden glimpsed slumped figures behind the windscreen. The gunman leant into the car. He pushed one of the figures aside. The horn died. Then the engine stopped. And the headlamps faded. Several more shots followed, less rapidly. They sounded calm and deliberate: a fail-safe guaranteeing of a specified result. The gunman recoiled from the car, holding the case, and climbed aboard the bike.

The flight response kicked in belatedly for Eusden. It was only now that he turned and ran. As he did so, he separated himself from the stationary shadows on the quay. To flee was also to become visible. He heard a shout from behind him, in a language that was neither Danish nor English. The motorbike engine revved, then roared. They were coming after him. At best a witness, at worst a confederate of the men they had just killed, he could not be allowed to escape.

Granted more time, Eusden would have cursed the instincts that had brought him to this place. If he had not been so obsessed with striking back at Norvig and Kjeldsen, he might have foreseen that they too could be double-crossed. But murder? The clinical executions he had just watched? His foresight would never have stretched so far. There was more at stake than he could ever have envisaged. And now that included his own life.

He turned the corner into the narrow road that led back to the other quay, where he had abandoned the scooter. A glance over his shoulder confirmed he would be overtaken before he got there. He was running to the end of a short leash. He had nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

Then he saw the gate in the fence. It gave on to a path that led to a footbridge over the dual carriageway. They could not use the bike to pursue him over that. He dodged through the gate and sprinted for the steps, not daring to look behind him.

He ran up the steps and out along the span of the bridge. There was enough traffic on the road below to blot out the noise of the motorbike. He let himself believe for a moment that they might have given up the chase. But a sharp ping against the parapet of the bridge told a different tale. He crouched forward as he turned on to the steps down, ducking and dodging as he descended. He thought he heard a second shot, then a third.

There was a subway ahead of him, leading under the railway line. It was a brightly lit tunnel in which he would be a clear target. But only to someone at ground level. His pursuers would have to cross the footbridge to reach such a position. He could not afford to hesitate. He plunged along it, bracing himself for the jab of pain that would herald the shot that did not miss.

It never came. He emerged from the subway on stbanegade, the road he had ridden along earlier before entering the docks. He risked a backward glance as he jinked right. There was no one coming after him. Maybe they had given up after all.

A short distance up the road was the bright-red hexagon of the S-tog station. Eusden did not know when the trains stopped running. If one happened to be due, it would be as quick and safe a getaway as he could hope for. But it was a big if. On the other side of the road there were apartment blocks and residential streets where he could hope to lose himself. Maybe they were the better bet. He stood on the pavement debating the point with himself as he panted for breath. His heart was thumping. Blood was singing in his ears. He did not know what to do. He took a chance with another glance into the subway. It was still empty. It was beginning to look as if- Then he heard the familiar growl of the motorbike. He whirled round and saw it heading towards him down stbanegade. They had taken the road route out of the docks, calculating correctly that they could cut him off. He had delayed too long. They would be on him in a matter of seconds.

To retreat along the subway was to become a rat in a maze. Eusden's only chance of escape was to make it to the street opposite and pray one of the residents would open their door to him. He launched himself across the road.

He heard the blast of its horn before he saw the lorry thundering towards him from the left. He had forgotten stbanegade was one-way at this point. But he could not stop now. He lowered his head and lunged on, reaching the pavement in a vortex of rushing air as the lorry swallowed the space behind him, its horn still blaring, its brakes squealing.

In the same breath there was a screech of tyres and a deafening thump of metal crunching into metal. Eusden shrank from the sound, stooping so far forward that he lost his footing and fell to the ground in three stumbling strides. The sound grew and extended itself into a yowl of squealing rubber and crumpling steel as he tumbled against the nearest wall and looked back, winded, into the road.

The lorry had struck the motorbike with crushing force as it crossed in front of it. The rider must have gambled on making the turn before the lorry could shield Eusden from the gunman. But he had misjudged fatally. Now, as the lorry slewed to a halt, jack-knifing slowly across the road in the process, the bike was a twisted shape juddering beneath the cab, the rider and passenger broken dolls bouncing and rolling to rest along the pavement ahead of it. The case had broken free and been split open. Fistfuls of kroner were whirling like autumn leaves in a gale.

The bikers did not move once they had come to rest and the lorry was thirty or forty yards away by the time it stopped. The driver pushed open the door of his cab and commenced an awkward clamber out, moving numbly, like a man in shock. Eusden could see the gun lying in the gutter, glimmering coldly in the lamplight. He rose unsteadily to his feet and edged back into the shadows as the lorry driver looked vaguely in his direction. A Transit van was braking to a halt as it approached. Windows were opening in the apartments nearby. Soon the alarm would be raised.

Eusden headed down the side street, away from the scene, moving as fast as he dared without breaking into a run. He did not know where the street would lead. But it did not matter. It led away. It led to safety.

TWENTY-EIGHT.

What the night porter at the Phoenix had thought of his bloody-browed and dishevelled appearance Eusden could not imagine. Waking in the morning after several hours of unconsciousness that could only technically be called sleep, he could remember little of his return to the hotel. He had not even undressed and was aching in every limb. His head throbbed painfully with every movement, he had developed a black eye overnight and generally felt as if he was engaging with the world through a thick curtain of delayed shock.

He showered, put on some clean clothes and headed out to a nearby 7-eleven for antiseptic and plasters. He suspected he should be checked by a doctor for the effects of concussion, but he also suspected drawing attention to himself in such a way would be unwise to put it mildly. Wijayapala had probably given a description of him to the police by now and they were bound to tie him to the carnage out at Nordhavn because Kjeldsen was among the dead. The only sensible thing he could do was lie low until he left Copenhagen. And he should leave soon. The longer he remained, the greater his chance of being dragged into a murder inquiry.

But he could not simply scuttle back to London and abandon Marty to an unknown fate. He had to find out what had become of his friend, even though that friend had been responsible for transforming his comfortable and predictable life into a raw struggle for survival. 'Fuck you, Marty,' he muttered several times under his breath as he plodded back to the Phoenix through the gnawing chill of a bleak Copenhagen morning. It was a sentiment he had often expressed before, of course. And one he had never quite succeeded in drawing the obvious lesson from.

He had banked on a quick ascent to his room, with a breakfast delivery to follow, strong black coffee being the self-prescribed medicine he proposed to dose himself with. But he was intercepted halfway across the marbled lobby by an unexpected visitor: Regina Celeste.

'There you are, Richard. I guessed it might be worth waiting to see if you'd be back soon. Well, where are you gonna go on a morning like this, after all?' She seemed even louder in manner and dress by day than night. Or perhaps, Eusden thought, he was simply more vulnerable. 'Say, what happened to you? Get in with the wrong crowd last night? That's quite a shiner.'

'I slipped in the bath.'

'Really?' She looked understandably sceptical.

'What brings you here, Regina? I'm afraid I've still no news of Marty.'

'You haven't?'

'No. Like I told Werner, I'll let you know as soon as I do.'

'But that's just the point, Richard. Werner has heard from Marty.'

'What?'

'I think you'll agree with me: we need to talk.'

They found a cafe over the road on Bredgade that had just opened for business and was only otherwise being patronized by a group of Japanese tourists intent on photographing their breakfasts. Eusden contented himself with coffee. While Regina fussed over the infusion of her herbal tea bag, he wondered just how monstrously Marty had misled him with his carefully presented plan to evade Straub. For misled him he surely had. It was only a question of scale. Regina's announcement had struck a chord in him that was wearily familiar. It seemed Marty had taken him for a ride yet again.

'Where's Werner now?' he asked.

'That's just it, Richard. I don't know. He was gone when I surfaced this morning. He left this note for me at reception.' She took a sheet of Htel d'Angleterre notepaper out of her portmanteau-sized handbag and passed it to Eusden.

Dear Regina, I am sorry to leave without warning. Marty has contacted me. I am going to meet him. I hope to get answers to all our questions. Wait for me here. I will call you later today. We will settle our business in Hanover as soon as possible after I return.

Best wishes, Werner.

'Best wishes, my sweet behind,' Regina continued as she retrieved the note. 'He must have known last night he was gonna take off like this. The only reason he didn't tell me then was that he knew I'd insist on going with him. Or at the very least on being told where he was going. I don't like being strung along, Richard, especially not by a lounge lizard like Werner. Know what I mean?'

'Yes. I certainly do.'

'Everything was sugar and sunshine when we went to Klampenborg yesterday morning. Hvidre's been turned into a conference centre, but he'd fixed it for us to have a proper guided tour of the place. You could imagine the rooms as they'd have been in Dagmar's day, stuffed with clumpy furniture and kitschy statues and dusty aspidistras. It gave me a real feel for the old lady, let me tell you. Especially the turret room she's supposed to have spent so much time in, looking out to sea. Anyhow, Werner couldn't have been a much more attentive host short of offering me his hand in marriage, resounding "no" though he'd have got if he had. We had a nice lunch at a restaurant just up the coast road from Hvidre, then we went on to Rungsted to visit the Karen Blixen Museum. Well, it was too good a chance to miss. I just loved that movie, didn't you?'

There came into Eusden's mind a memory that was both alluring and painful of going to a cinema in Guildford with Gemma some time in the mid-1980s to see Out of Africa, the film Regina had proclaimed her love for. He had been a contented husband then, Gemma a secretly discontented wife. Time, he often thought, was more of a tormentor than a healer.

'Werner got a call on his cell while we were looking over the exhibits. He came over kinda coy and went outside to take it. Told me when he came back the call had been from his mother, which I didn't buy for a second. But what's a girl to do? He was different after that. Edgy. Distracted. All the way through to dinner back at the d'Angleterre. Excused himself straight after. Said he needed an early night, which seemed way out of character. I didn't know what to make of it.' She smiled grimly. 'I do now, of course. The scheming weasel.'

'What time did he take the call?'

'Not sure. Around... three, I guess.'

Three o'clock was tantalizingly close to the time when Marty was supposed to have arrived in Copenhagen. Though what the timing signified if anything Eusden did not know.

'Any inspired thoughts?'

'I'm afraid not. I'm sorry, Regina. I've no idea what Marty's up to. Or Werner.'

'Cooking up a private deal between themselves, that's what.'

'I... suppose so.' Regina was right, of course. Nothing else made sense.

'The question is: are you and I going to let them get away with it?'

'What else can we do?'

'Pool our resources for starters.' That did not sound like a good idea to Eusden, though he did not propose to say so. He certainly had no intention of volunteering any details of his recent activities. 'Do you really have no idea what Clem Hewitson's archive contains?'

'None at all.'

'That's kinda... disappointing.'

'What's your "business in Hanover"?' Eusden asked, keen to switch topics.

'Well, I guess I may as well tell you. Werner's forfeited all confidentiality rights with this little escapade as far as I'm concerned. He's been negotiating with a collector of Nazi curios in Hanover called Hans Grenscher for the purchase of a cache of Gestapo documents supposedly including something crucial about Anastasia. She lived in Hanover throughout the Second World War, at the Gestapo's insistence. They didn't want her wandering around the country for some reason. She was taken to Berlin on one occasion, though, to meet the Fhrer. What Hitler had in mind for her is unclear. Maybe he saw her as a potential bargaining chip in his dealings with Stalin. Anyhow, I don't rightly know what Grenscher has on her, but Werner claims it can be matched with something Marty's grandfather preserved to prove Anastasia truly was Anastasia. Evidently, Grenscher isn't willing to split his hoard. We have to buy the whole lot for the sake of the one Anastasia-related item. In fact, I've already had to put up a hefty deposit just to get first refusal on it.'

Eusden could not help wondering if Regina's deposit was the source of the money with which Straub had tried to buy off Marty. It seemed typical of the man to use someone else's cash rather than his own assuming he had any. It also seemed typical of him to strike side deals whenever he needed to: with Regina, with Marty and, in all likelihood, with Grenscher too. 'How can Werner be sure this matching whatever-it-is is amongst the stuff Marty inherited from his grandfather?'

'Beats me, Richard. But he's been adamant on the point the whole way along. That's why I flew over here. Because he was so confident we could nail that DNA lie about the lady I met in Charlottesville being nothing but a Polish peasant once and for mercy's sake all. Now I'm wondering if Werner didn't overstate how much money we had to put up front to fix himself up with negotiating capital. You see where my thoughts are leading? Maybe he plans to put this proof together for his own profit. Write a book, sell the film rights and freeze me out. I might be nothing more than the cash cow he plans to milk in the meantime. Well, this is one cow that can do more than swish her tail, let me tell you.'

'What have you got in mind?'

'A trip to Hanover. A one-on-one with Hans Grenscher. I can do my own negotiating if I have to.'

'I'm sure you can.'

'But I need to know what's happening this end while I'm away. That's where you come in.'

'It is?'

'Werner's bound to turn to you when he gets back here and finds I've flown the coop. Well, I want you to point him in the wrong direction. Say I've vamoosed to St Petersburg to catch up with Dagmar pay my respects at the last resting place she now shares with the Tsar, the Tsarina and some of their children. I reckon he'll swallow that considering how tearful I came over during our visit to Hvidre. Well, I'm an emotional person, Richard. I'm sure you appreciate that. But the emotion I'm in closest touch with right now is suspicion. So, I also want you to figure out if you can exactly what he and Marty are up to and to let me know. What do you say?'

Now was definitely not the time to mention that the clinching document Clem's archive supposedly held along with the archive as a whole was conclusively out of reach of all of them and that no amount of intrigue and double-dealing could retrieve it. Eusden doubted if he would still be in Copenhagen when Straub returned. But he could not explain why to Regina Celeste. He regretted having to deceive her on the point, but there were other things he regretted far more. He gave her a reassuring smile. 'I'll certainly do my best, Regina.'

Eusden finally made it to his room at the Phoenix half an hour later. He patched himself up and ordered breakfast, then lay down on the bed to await its arrival. He was too tired to ponder the full depth and meaning of Marty's latest abuse of their friendship. All he knew was that it marked a new low and an end of his involvement in Marty's tangled affairs. It was time to cut himself loose.

He checked his mobile to confirm there was no apologetic or exculpatory message on it from Marty. Since, as far as he was aware, Marty did not even have the number, it was even more unlikely than would otherwise have been the case. But Eusden felt obliged to give him the benefit of the negligible doubt.

Sure enough, there was no message from Marty. But Gemma had phoned again. To Phone me asap had been added Very urgent. Eusden relented and rang her, despite his reluctance to face questions about what he and Marty had been doing for the past few days. He was at least relieved when Gemma, not Monica, answered.

'It's me.'

'Christ, Richard, why haven't you called before now? I've been going out of my mind.' She certainly sounded distraught, though Eusden could not begin to imagine why.

'What's the matter?'

'What do you mean, "what's the matter"? You're in Copenhagen, aren't you?'

'Yes.' Even as he replied, Eusden wondered how she knew that.

'So, why didn't you tell me? Why did I have to hear it from a Danish policewoman?'

'Hear what?'

'About Marty, of course.'

'What about Marty?'

'Are you playing games with me, Richard?'

'No. Marty isn't with me. I'm not sure where he is at the moment, to be honest.'

'Of course he isn't with you. He's...' She broke off.

There was a heavy silence. Dread formed a cloud in Eusden's mind. '

Gemma?'