Putin gets out of the car, followed by Cara, who hands him the remote then gets back in, behind the steering wheel. Putin opens Kate’s door. She thinks again about making a break for it. Her only chance of escape is if she can put enough distance between herself and the remote. It must have a limited range. She just doesn’t know how limited. And the pain…

  Run.

  ‘Do exactly as I say,’ Putin says, gesturing for her to get out as he looks around. Why have they chosen to fly her out of the country from here? Presumably there will be checks like any other airport and her name will trigger an alert of some sort.

  ‘Do you need my passport?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s not necessary.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  Twenty minutes later, she’s watching London below her turn into a diminishing patchwork of houses and roads, laced through with the glistening thread of the Thames. Her chances of escape are diminishing too. She prays that Jake and Bex are down there somewhere, looking for her. Will Jake have contacted DI Hart? There were no Border Force officers at the heliport, no last-minute intervention by the police. It will be too late if anyone notices after she’s left the country.

  She’s terrified of what will happen when they arrive in Brest, who will be there. The airport represents her last chance of escape. Crowds, people, police. She suspects she’ll be on her own once she gets to Rob’s house. Just her and…

  ‘Who’s Gilmour Martin?’ she asks Putin, recalling what he said to the policeman who stopped their car.

  ‘No questions,’ he says. ‘No names.’

  She hopes Rob’s safe.

  93

  Silas

  Silas parks up in Queen’s Square, north of Holborn, and waits. He needs to calm down. They are here to see Dr Varma, who works out of a private practice in the square.

  ‘You want a coffee, boss?’ Strover asks.

  ‘I need something stronger than that.’

  A moment ago, he hung up on a liaison officer with Border Force, the law enforcement command within the Home Office that’s meant to patrol all gateways into the UK via air, sea and rail. The officer rang Silas in response to his earlier request for an all-ports marker on Kate. According to the officer, Kate left the UK via London Heliport in Battersea ninety minutes ago – information that’s only just been relayed to Border Force in a general aviation report that was filed by the pilot once he’d touched down in Brest.

  ‘And there were no Border Force officers at the heliport?’ Silas asked incredulously.

  ‘We keep no permanent presence there,’ the officer said. ‘Only at times of heightened security.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  It wasn’t much consolation and it still rankles with Silas now as he gets out of the car and walks across Queen’s Square with Strover.

  ‘Let’s see what this Dr Varma’s got to say for himself,’ he says.

  Two minutes later, Silas is sitting with Strover in a bleached-out waiting room, staring at an illustration on the opposite wall of the human brain. Strover is flicking through a copy of Auto Express. Silas started to get more interested in neurology when he set up the super-recogniser unit, learning about the fusiform gyrus, the part of the brain where human faces seem to be recognised and processed. As he begins to trace the temporal lobe, a man comes out of Dr Varma’s consulting room. Silas and Strover haven’t made an appointment to see Dr Varma, but his secretary said he would see them between patients. Silas gets up and passes by the man, who keeps his face averted.

  ‘Did you clock that?’ he says to Strover, knocking on Dr Varma’s door.

  ‘Didn’t want anyone to see him,’ Strover says.

  They wait for a few more seconds, but there’s no answer from behind the door. A flicker of concern. Silas knocks again and waits, glancing around the empty waiting room. Dr Varma’s next patient has clearly not shown up yet.

  ‘Dr Varma?’ Silas calls out, head close to the door. His stomach starts to tighten. He looks at Strover, takes a deep breath and opens the door.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he says, taking in the scene. ‘Quick, out the front,’ he adds. Strover spins around and runs.

  Silas walks forward into the spacious room. An Asian man, presumably Dr Varma, is slumped behind a large desk at the far end. The wall behind his head is sprayed with filigree red patterns. For a split second, Silas thinks it’s one of those strange images that psychiatrists show to their patients. And then he realises it’s blood, from a gunshot to Dr Varma’s forehead. His eyes are open, staring up at the ceiling, as if permanently in awe of the sky.

  Silas checks outside the large sash window. A car drives off at speed, chased by Strover, who runs after it for a few yards before stopping. Silas turns away, walks over to Dr Varma and feels in vain for a pulse, scanning the mass of papers on his untidy desk.

  ‘Too late. Sorry, boss,’ Strover says, coming back into the room.

  ‘Check his diary with reception,’ Silas says, still beside Dr Varma. He needs a few moments on his own. ‘Find out if his killer made a booking.’

  Once Strover has left the room, he pulls out his phone and takes photos of various sheets of paper on the desk, careful not to touch or dislodge anything. Dr Varma’s laptop is to one side, angled towards where he’s sitting. Silas pulls out a hanky and carefully presses the space bar, waking up the screen. Leaning closer, he starts to read, glancing up at the closed door.

  When he’s finished, he peers at the entry wound in Dr Varma’s forehead, wondering if it was made by the same type of bullet that killed the man in Cornwall. An even bigger, nineteenth-century illustration of the brain looms above Dr Varma on the wall behind him. Silas straightens up to look at it, wondering which parts of the brain the bullet passed through. And then he notices the white lumpy flecking on the picture, sprayed across the right temporal lobe, and reaches for his hanky. For the first time in years at a crime scene, he throws up.

  94

  Jake

  Jake glances up and down the Eurostar carriage, scanning the passengers for anyone who might be following him. DI Hart’s on the phone, explaining about Dr Varma and warning him to be careful. Jake wishes Kate were here. She’d be able to spot a tail, give them a silly nickname. For some reason, old ladies were always Ethel, bald guys were Bill, gingerheads Rich. She saw lots of ‘serial killers’ too – at least that’s what she used to call anyone who looked dodgy.

  ‘Maybe Dr Varma was trying to warn Kate about something,’ he says to Hart.

  ‘According to the doctor’s diary, he had a 9 a.m. appointment with her,’ Hart says.

  ‘We met him coming out of the apartment.’

  ‘And that’s when he told you the address in France?’ Hart asks.

  ‘He wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the information.’ Jake closes his eyes. An image of Dr Varma slammed up against the wall comes and goes. The doctor must have known what he was doing when he decided to put his Hippocratic oath before his life and tell Jake where Kate had been taken.

  Jake looks around the carriage again. The man who has just returned from the buffet car throws him a suspicious scowl. The woman across the aisle is still talking in whispers on her phone.

  ‘He said he couldn’t tell us anything,’ he continues. ‘He had a wife and children, said that we didn’t know who we were dealing with.’

  ‘But you managed to persuade him,’ Hart says. There’s no accusation in the detective’s voice, only procedural interest. Hart must have persuaded a number of people in his time to tell him things that they didn’t want to reveal.

  ‘I reminded him of his Hippocratic oath,’ Jake says.

  ‘I guess words are your business,’ Hart says.

  ‘His family will need protection.’

  ‘We’re on it already.’

  Jake’s relieved. He didn’t know Dr Varma, but he’s still shocked by the news of his death, feels guilty about their encounter in the street. Bex will be even more upset. She liked Dr Varma. So did Kate. Bex has gone back to Wiltshire to relieve her neighbour of Stretch and sleep for a few hours before being on hand to help. It was an early start. He’s knackered too, knows he must keep going.

  ‘There’s more bad news, I’m afraid,’ Hart says. ‘Kate’s already in Brittany.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I wish I was.’

  Hart explains how the Eurotunnel plan was a deliberate misdirection and that she flew out on a private helicopter from Battersea. Right under everyone’s noses.

  ‘No one was there to stop her?’ Jake asks incredulously.

  He has already had his passport checked once in London. His face too, ironically. According to the investigative website he was trawling earlier for information on Rob, the Paris Eurostar terminal is one of only three places in France where the government allows facial-recognition cameras. The other two are Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports.

  ‘Stay safe,’ Hart says. ‘And keep in touch. We’ve flagged up Varma’s death with Europol – they’re putting out an arrest warrant for Gilmour Martin.’

  After signing off with Hart, Jake calls up the investigative website again. He will tell Bex about Dr Varma in a while. It’s not the sort of news anyone wants to be woken up to hear. Dr Varma’s murder will soon be on the news and he needs to alert the website to the connection between Dr Varma and Rob. But then he sees a small story about a super recogniser who has gone missing in France. According to the report, she was part of a secret surveillance unit in Paris that had been set up to target the gilets jaunes, the yellow-vest protestors who’d been bringing Paris to a standstill in their calls for economic justice.

  The story is full of indignation that such a unit even existed – further proof that France, champion of civil liberties, is becoming a Big Brother state – but Jake is more interested in the missing woman. She doesn’t look like Kate, but she’s of similar age and was the unit’s star super recogniser. And someone thinks they might have seen her after she disappeared – in Brittany.

  95

  Kate

  Kate touches the neckband again as Putin follows the coastal road around the bay. If she were there in different circumstances, she could appreciate the scenery more. Rob was right. Brittany and Cornwall are uncannily similar, like twins: the hidden sandy coves and rocky headlands, high hedgerows and Monterey pines, windfarms and gorse. It’s enough to make her cry. Rob has often raved about Brittany – Cornwall without the crowds – but she knows Jake would love it here too. And she has a terrible feeling that she’s never going to see him again.

  There were no checks when they arrived at Brest Bretagne airport. No opportunities to put some distance between her and the neckband’s remote. They were waved through the VIP channel and Putin picked up a car from the car park. Rob must have passed through the airport many times. He never talked about it though, not until recently, when he suggested they visit Brittany together. And now she’s here, wondering if he is too.

  As far as she can tell from the car’s satnav, they’ve since headed west from the airport, skirting around the north of Brest and through Saint-Renan and Ploumoguer to the coast. They’re now somewhere northwest of Illien, driving down an increasingly narrow lane to a headland.

  ‘Is this the house?’ she asks.

  ‘No questions,’ Putin says. ‘He will explain everything.’

  Who will? Kate holds her breath as the car rounds what she assumes is the final bend. The countryside feels so familiar – glimpses of the sea through five-bar gates, the fresh salty air, the promise of holidays – but there’s nothing reassuring about it. And then the lane opens up and she struggles to take in what’s before her. They could be at Rob’s house in Cornwall. The property looks identical: the same modernist mix of glass and oak and concrete, cut into the hillside and overlooking the sea.

  They pass through high open gates that close behind them and head down the gravel driveway. A man and a woman are waiting for them in front of the house. One looks like Rob. And the other… looks like her.

  96

  Silas

  ‘First it was Cornwall and now it’s central London,’ Detective Superintendent Ward says on the phone. Silas rolls his eyes at Strover. They are both standing on the pavement outside Dr Varma’s practice in Queen’s Square. ‘You seem to be making a habit of investigating murders committed outside Wiltshire.’

  ‘I think they’re related, sir,’ Silas says, watching as more scene of crime officers in white oversuits enter Dr Varma’s practice. The square has been sealed off to traffic and there are a number of police vehicles parked up, including a Major Incident mobile command van. He misses his time in the Met, envies their resources.

  ‘I don’t need to remind you that you are employed by Wiltshire Police, with a publicly funded remit to prevent crime in the county,’ Ward continues. ‘I’ve just had the Met’s SIO on the phone, wanting to know why the first person on the scene was a Keystone Cop from Stonehenge.’

  ‘Sir, Dr Varma worked for Rob,’ Silas says, mindful of what Ward said last time about Rob being a ‘very good friend’ to Swindon. ‘He was assessing the mental recovery of Kate, the former super recogniser, who is currently in a relationship with Rob. I think someone’s trying to frame Rob with this murder and possibly the murder in Cornwall, as well as the abduction of a number of super recognisers in the UK and Europe, including France.’

  Jake has just rung him about an item on a French website, suggesting that a super recogniser has disappeared from a covert unit in Paris. Silas wasn’t even aware of the unit’s existence; he’d assumed that the use of super recognisers in France was not permitted under the country’s tougher regulatory framework.

  ‘All news to me, Silas,’ Ward says. ‘You really need to keep others in the loop, particularly your immediate boss. That’s how these things are meant to work. I thought we’d talked about you being more of a team player.’

  ‘A lot of the evidence has been circumstantial until now. And I know you don’t like—’

  ‘Do we have any idea who might be trying to frame Rob?’ Ward asks, interrupting him.

  ‘Our prime suspect is a man called Gilmour Martin, who happens to bear an uncanny physical likeness to Rob.’

  ‘His “doppelgänger”, you mean,’ Ward says.

  ‘He arrived in the UK on a fake passport six months ago,’ Silas continues, ignoring his boss’s cynical tone. ‘And we have reason to believe he’s been impersonating Rob as part of a long-held grudge to destroy him – and possibly Kate too. Kate left the country earlier today, we think under duress.’

  ‘Anyone see her go?’

  Silas glances at Strover again. ‘Her ex-partner.’ He doesn’t want Ward to linger on the unreliability of his source. ‘Her best friend also saw her leave. Kate could be in real danger.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ Ward asks.

  ‘Brittany, where Rob has a number of business interests and another home. I’ve alerted Europol – they’ve issued a European arrest warrant alert for Gilmour Martin.’

  ‘So I gather.’ Ward pauses. ‘What do you want from me, Silas?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours. Strover and me.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours when modern slavery is allowed to tighten its pernicious grip on Swindon. You’re a pain in the arse, you know that.’

  And the last time his boss’s arse hurt, Silas caught a serial killer, but he stays quiet.

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ Ward confirms. ‘And that’s it. I don’t want Rob being unfairly framed for anything.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Silas says, smiling at Strover.

  97

  Kate

  Kate sits in the back of the stationary car, staring ahead. She can’t bring herself to look at him. Or at the woman. Is it Rob? She needs to hear his voice before she sees him.

  He steps forward and opens the rear door on her side. She closes her eyes.

  ‘How was your journey?’ he asks.

  It sounds like Rob.

  ‘Shocking,’ she says and turns to look at him.

  It’s not Rob. Rob was always awkward, restless, buzzing with a warm, infectious energy. This man is focused and withdrawn, dead-eyed.

  She manages to step out of the air-conditioned car into the warmth of a French summer’s day, hoping her legs don’t buckle beneath her. Waves break somewhere below the house, seagulls cry above. For four months in Cornwall, this was the soundtrack to her happiness. Now these noises fill her with dread. Is the house the same inside too?

  She forces herself to look at him. It’s easier than before. He’s no longer an unknown impostor, no more not-Rob. He’s Gil from Thailand – Gilmour Martin, Rob’s doppelgänger. She can’t believe she slept with this man. She wheels away in disgust at the thought. The tarnished memory. Rob was right to be worried. They both were. His past has finally caught up with him, just as he feared. She prays that Rob, her Rob, is still alive, wherever he is, whatever this man has done with him. If only she had pushed Rob harder when he first mentioned his fear of doppelgängers, persuaded him to tell her more. She might have been able to do something, help him, save them both.

  And then she turns to the woman. It’s like standing in front of a mirror. Kate glances at the ground. It’s early afternoon, a high sun. No shadow. Her stomach lurches. And this must be her own doppelgänger. She thinks again of the Rossetti painting in Rob’s office in Cornwall, the couple confronting their doppelgängers. How They Met Themselves.

  ‘Meet Catrine,’ he says.

  The woman seems subdued, broken, dark rings below her eyes. Kate hopes she doesn’t look that unwell. Catrine is wearing a summer dress from Ghost, identical to the one that Rob left for her in the wardrobe, and her hair is up, like Kate’s, exposing a similar neckband. It looks so innocent on someone else. Innocuous. Sporty. Kate shudders again at the pain it inflicted.