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stained and dog-eared with age. It was a densely written journal, in a sloping script and numerous different inks dating back to 1985. Max flicked through, past newspaper cuttings, postcards from friends and dried flowers. A complete life recorded in detail. Even the handwriting had changed over the years. Letters became smaller and neater. She stopped dotting the letter ‘i’ with a circle about 1987. In recent weeks the entries had become terse notes and finally stopped a couple of weeks ago. Curious, he flicked back to June, just a few weeks after they had met and found a larger entry.

    I saw Max in his workshop today. He was working on a piece of sheet copper bigger than a double bed. The copper had holes punched through it all around the edges and he was fixing a steel cable diagonally between the two farthest holes. After an hour he had laced the whole sheet like a metallic corset. He used a spanner on the fat bolts holding the cables in at one end and began to tighten them, each a quarter turn at a time. The metal shivered and curled as the two opposed corners lifted off the floor. Soon it was bent almost double, trembling with so much constrained force that I was scared to go near it in case it shattered. Max tapped one of the cables with his spanner and the room hummed with an eerie resonance. He tapped another and there was a different sound.
    â€˜The notes vary depending on how I set the holes and the gauge of the wire, the tone depends on the thickness of the metal sheet and whether it is steel or copper, aluminium or brass, tin or lead. I am thinking of ways to burn or chill the metal to get some change in the tones.’
    I realised his sculptures describe the character of the physical world more eloquently than any chemist or physicist. He said it best: ‘You torture the metal to get it to show you its soul.’
    It was at that moment that I realised I had fallen in love with him.

    Max didn’t know how long he had been staring up at the ceiling when he saw the mosquito. It sat motionless on the plaster rose above the light fitting. Its hunchbacked shape was shadowed on the white paint. Max took his International Herald Tribune, carefully rolled it up and stood in his socks on the centre of the bed. A noisy moment later the mosquito was just a red smear beneath the wildly jiggling light bulb. And Max’s breath was coming in raw gasps as he hit at the smear again and again and again.

Chapter Seven
    Jack Erskine, Penny Ryan and Don Quiggan walked out of the chill of Amsterdam’s central mortuary and heard the heavy door bang behind them. No-one spoke. The vision of Bob Mazzio’s pale hairy body hung like a ghost before their eyes, the dried foam riming his blue lips, the empty eyes.
    Penny knew Jack would ask her to speak to Heidi Mazzio, to answer the inevitable questions that her terse telephone briefing from the Dutch cops would leave unanswered. Yes, he had been alone. No, he had not been robbed, his wallet was still in his jacket. Yes, he just seemed to have fallen in. No, Amsterdam isn’t considered a dangerous city to be out in at that time. Yes, we were also surprised no-one heard him struggling in the water. No, we do not believe he had been drinking. No, they do not need a post mortem. Drowning was the official cause of death. Yes, we’ve got him to a very good chapel of rest until we can get the body flown home. All of you there have our deepest condolences. Heidi, let me tell you Bob will be sorely missed.
    What Penny would not tell Heidi was that the canal where her husband drowned was in the Red Light Area. She would destroy the damp but still legible receipt found in his wallet; a transaction only three hours old in which he had paid nine hundred euros, for ‘business services’ on his corporate gold card. She would keep to herself evidence of uncharacteristic sloppy dressing - the assistant coroner noted Bob’s Van Heusen shirt was misbuttoned