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Sudden darkness and abruptly the black window was a paler square behind the Russian’s head. No bang of overstretched circuits this time, just the sudden death of all-electric light. Outside the village was blind and silent, snow-muffled under the blank sky. Beyond the rickety fences and quiet barns, the winter-dumb forest tumbled downhill to the lake, it’s snow covered ice a ghostly ribbon of faint luminescence in the dark of the night. Back up the hill towards the bank, a dog barked, wearily.

Across the frozen water, Banje and everything southward into Kosovo was emptiness, while to the north the few lights of Vitkoviće and the arc lights of the border crossing twinkled merrily, throwing shadows across the ice and climbing through the sawtooth blackness of the trees in a scribble of fire. The Serbs were playing with them again.

Sighing, she stood up from her seat across his thighs and put down his white shirt – a genuine Brookes Brothers from a genuine shop in the genuine United States – and stepped with practised ease to the nearby table and the matchbox and the candles. The match flare and the slow swell of candle-light threw deep glossy shadows into the room and painted her bare flanks and the skin of her belly a rich, warm gold. It was the light of Holbein, of Raphael, of Caravaggio.