A sound from the opposite bedroom but – as far as Kite could tell – no noise yet from the floors below. He made sure that the desk looked as he had found it, then turned around. Eskandarian had scrawled a list of names and numbers on a piece of A4 paper which had been left on the sofa. Kite photographed it. As he lowered the camera, he looked closer at two of the names: David Foreman, several times underlined and now spelled with an added ‘e’, and Asef Berberian, after which Eskandarian had added two question marks. They were the same two names Kite had seen in the text of the letter from Abbas’s suit pocket. What was the connection? He desperately wanted more time to comb the office for anything relating to New York, to the Air France flight or the Grand Hyatt Hotel. If Eskandarian was using the Lisbon conference as cover and planning to visit New York with Abbas under alias, BOX could follow him every step of the way. But why the question marks after Berberian? And why was Forman’s name now aggressively underlined and spelled in a different way?
A scream from the first floor. At least one of the children had been discovered. Martha shouted: ‘Found you!’ There was an eruption of laughter. Kite knew that he had no more than twenty seconds before Martha or Xavier bounded up the stairs.
He looked around the office. What else might be of interest to BOX? He grabbed a diary from the desk, crouched down behind the armchair so that he would be plausibly out of sight if someone came into the room, and began to take photographs. He flicked through the entries for July, August and September. It was in weekly format. He took photos for every page as quickly and as steadily as possible. While holding down the pages for the second week of September, he heard a noise on the stairs and knew he must stop. He took the shot, stuffed the camera into his back pocket and closed the diary.
José was the first to be discovered. The little boy squealed in delighted frustration as Martha opened the door of the bedroom and said: ‘There you are! Found you!’ in English. Kite was next. Martha came into the room to find him cowering behind the chair.
‘That’s the worst hiding place I’ve ever seen,’ she said. ‘What are you doing down there? At least make an effort.’ José was beside her, grinning. Kite held her gaze for a beat, sharing the moment with her. ‘Come on then!’ Martha said to José, taking him by the hand. ‘Lockie’s useless at hiding. Let’s go and get the others.’
They left the room. Kite walked around the chair, put the diary back on the desk and followed them. In his hyped-up state, he half-expected to run into Eskandarian or Abbas on the first floor, but they were not yet back from their walk. He ducked into his bedroom, left the camera on the chest of drawers and headed downstairs to the hall.
Jacqui was the last to be found, huddled with Annette’s daughter at the bottom of the garden in what Xavier described as ‘a clear breach of the fucking rules’. Jacqui said that she couldn’t remember Kite saying anything about not hiding in the garden, to which even Martha said: ‘Oh come on, Jacks’ and the game ended on a slightly sour note.
‘Does this mean you were the last person to be found?’ José asked.
‘It does,’ Kite replied, ruffling his hair.
The little boy leaped up and down on the sofa in the sitting room, shouting: ‘Lockie won! Lockie won!’ Martha looked at Kite and murmured: ‘You’ve made a friend for life.’ Moments later there were voices outside, the polite chit-chat of Rosamund, the booming laughter of Eskandarian. José, sensing that his mother was coming back from her walk, jumped down from the sofa. At lunch he had eaten two bowls of Hélène’s famously rich chocolate mousse and the sugars were kicking in.
There was a rug at the end of the room which was forever shifting on the varnished floor. Martha called out: ‘Careful, José’ but the hurrying little boy was oblivious to her warning. Shouting, ‘Mama! Mama!’ he ran at full pelt towards the hall, his body at a slight angle as he turned towards the door. His left foot landed on a corner of the loose rug which slipped beneath him. José lost his balance and careered sideways, striking his head on the doorjamb.
‘José!’
The impact was an awful soft thud of bone and tissue. Bita was in the hall and could hear her son’s screams. Martha covered her mouth and ran towards the stricken child. Xavier said: ‘Bambi on ice’ and went to fetch a tea towel from the kitchen.
Bedlam ensued. Bita was hugging the frightened, screaming boy. Luc demanded to know what had happened and looked embarrassed that the accident had occurred while guests were visiting the house. Annette apologised to Bita for not keeping a closer eye on her son while Jacques stood coolly by the front door wincing at the shrieks of pain. Kite felt wretched. Out of everyone, he had spent the most time with José. It was he who had suggested the extra bowl of chocolate mousse and the game of hide-and-seek which had wound the boy up into such a state of excitement. Now he was bleeding profusely from a deep gash on his forehead, just above the hairline.
‘He’ll need a doctor,’ said Rosamund. ‘He’ll have to go to hospital and have it stitched up.’
It was at this point that Eskandarian appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He had gone up to his room after returning from the walk
