Dmitry went to work, came home, tried to sleep. There was nothing he could do. Nihal had gone to Stockholm after all; there was silence from Katie. He felt completely deserted. He thought that if he sat tight and did nothing, perhaps the whole situation would somehow go away, resolve itself. It was impossible to go on living in this state of crisis for long. On Wednesday morning Panini rang Dmitry. He said, ‘You know, it occurred to me: we had a batch of tapes we had to pull off the machine when we were doing the back-ups. They’ve been sitting here for several weeks, since the beginning of January. It happens every so often, we get a faulty batch that don’t record well. I was about to send them back when I remembered these were about the time you were interested in – some changes you had lost or something. Do you want me to see if I can get that file for you?’ Dmitry said, ‘Hang on, I’ll come down.’ He didn’t want to talk on the phone. He hurried down to Panini’s office.
