The document in his pocket was a page of a recent bank statement, one of many pages that had been carefully stored inside the manila envelope Segal kept hidden in his desk. The envelope was addressed to the ICS offices but the statements were for a personal savings account showing a balance of over a million euros, which suggested to Ben that this was where he was keeping his ill-gotten gains from the business he was doing on the side with his jihadist cronies. The subterfuge also made Ben wonder if Segal wasn’t hiding assets from his wife. Men were known to do that when they were secretly planning on running out on their beloveds. Maybe when Segal hit the two or three million mark he’d be off to Monaco or Switzerland with his mistress.

Segal’s financial and marital affairs were of little interest to Ben. But the man’s home address was very much so – and there it was, crisply laser-printed at the head of the bank statement sheet.

It took Ben forty minutes to get there, by which time the rain had stopped and the clouds had peeled away to reveal a bright moon. Montfort L’Amaury was a picturesque little commune that nestled by the foot of the hills north of the Rambouillet Forest. The archaeologist’s home, a modestly proportioned chateau in a secluded location, stood within a wooded park surrounded by a high stone wall. Ben drove slowly by the gates and saw the big house all in darkness at the head of a long, sweeping driveway. The surface of a private lake glistened under the moonlight.

He circled the property’s perimeter for several hundred metres until he came to a leafy track running up its side, and turned in. A little way up the track, he parked the car under the shadowy canopy of a stand of oak trees and waded through the bushes towards the wall. It was high, but its craggy stonework was easy to climb. Ben scrambled up and over, and landed stealthily on the other side among the shrubbery of Segal’s country park. Invading the same man’s property for the second time in one night. This was getting to be a habit.

He still wasn’t convinced that the woman he’d spoken to at ICS had been telling the truth about Segal being out of the country. He obviously travelled a lot, but having only just returned from Libya it was odd that he’d leave again so soon.