Although the midsummer night had been pleasantly warm when first he had left his room, by the early hours of morning it had become bitterly cold. He had run from hotel to hotel at first, shouting at staff, asking if anyone had seen her. Most had looked at him as though he were a madman and in two he had been accosted and thrown out by security. After an hour of this, he had remembered to return for his phone. Karla had still not come back and so he’d waited for her until he thought he would literally go out of his mind with a kind of sick terror. From then on he’d wandered the streets, shouting and calling, ignoring the cars which nearly knocked him down in the fast thoroughfares of Monaco, haunting casinos and lobbies like a deranged figure. Sometimes he railed against Karla, blaming her for everything that had happened, and then he’d remember what he’d done—how things must have looked to her—and he would cry self-pityingly. He had left so many messages on her phone, pleading with her, begging her to answer, but she never switched it on.
