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there was not even a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
    Liz stood up reluctantly. ‘If you change your mind, let them know and I’ll come back.’ She walked over to the door, and the guard opened it to let her through. Khan could have asked to go to his cell an hour ago and spared us both, she thought. But at least she’d learned one useful thing.

Chapter 6
    Liz and Cassale retraced their steps to the grim reception room on the Rue Messier side of the prison. ‘Let’s get out of this place and have some coffee,’ he suggested, to Liz’s relief.
    Outside the prison she breathed deeply, taking in lungsful of warm air and blinking in the bright midday sun. Cassale took her elbow. ‘This way,’ he said, steering her along the pavement towards the Boulevard Arago, where the new leaves were unfurling on the plane trees.
    They stopped at a pavement café. As the coffee arrived, Cassale lit a Gitane and asked, ‘Any luck?’
    ‘Not much,’ she admitted.
    ‘Did he talk at all?’
    She waited while a young man walked past their table. He was dark – from Algeria perhaps, or equally plausibly from the Middle East. For a moment it looked as though he might sit down nearby, but he went inside the café.
    Liz said with a snort, ‘He certainly talked! He would have made a great storyteller in another life. He was trying to convince me that he’s been swanning round Europe, apparently without a passport or any money, and ended up in Somalia by mistake. I’ll send you my notes of what he said; if you believe any of it I’ll be amazed.’
    Cassale looked sympathetic. ‘Frustrating. Still, it’s good that he talked at all. Well done.’
    ‘He did more or less acknowledge that he was acting under someone else’s orders – and that he wasn’t given the orders in Pakistan.’
    ‘Really? Where did he receive them then – in England?’
    ‘I don’t know, and he wasn’t saying. If you can find out anything about that it would be a big help.’
    Cassale nodded. ‘Do you know if you will want him back in England?’
    ‘We’ve got a bit of work to do first. At least he admitted that he was Amir Khan. We’ve located his parents in Birmingham, and we’ll see what they say, though I gather they’re very respectable people and will probably be as surprised as I was to hear about their son. When I mentioned them, Khan got very upset – he just managed to stop himself from crying. You might want to try that on him again.’ Liz looked at her watch. ‘I’d better be going if I’m to catch my train.’
    ‘Of course.’ Cassale put some coins on the table and pushed back his chair. ‘Before you do, is there is anything in particular we should try and get out of him? Assuming he will now talk to us as well.’
    A big assumption, thought Liz, remembering the tight-mouthed expression on Khan’s face as she’d left. ‘Two things for a start: where he really was after he left Pakistan, and of course who was directing him.’
    ‘We will do our best.’ Cassale offered her his hand. ‘He is a mystery man, this Khan. I think somehow you and I will be seeing each other again.’
     
    Liz walked back along the prison wall, retracing her steps to the Metro station. The high wall cast a deep shadow over the pavement now, a welcome relief from the bright sun for Liz in her black suit. She’d forgotten her sunglasses too and the glare was irritating her eyes.
    She thought again of Maigret in the story. The prisoner he’d visited was about the same age as Khan, not much more than a boy, but he’d been condemned to death. The old prison must have witnessed any number of gruesome events – she wondered if they’d executed people in the courtyard where the prisoners had been exercising today. When she heard the sound of someone’s footsteps echoing on the pavement behind her, her back crawled and she turned round in alarm. It was only an old man a long way down the street – he must have been wearing particularly noisy shoes.