As agreed, Julien Segal was waiting for them in the small, dimly-lit lobby. He was alone. Through the glass doors he looked old and shrivelled, a man worn to the bone with fear, worry and guilt. Margot let out a cry when she saw him, broke away from Ben and rushed inside to meet him. Ben and Roth hung back outside to let the couple have a minute or two in private. It was an emotional scene as they clung tightly to one another, both of them weeping.

But it was no unmitigated moment of joy either. By the time Ben and Roth stepped into the lobby, Margot had started firing the inevitable questions. ‘Why is this happening, Julien? What have you got us involved in?’ Her husband stood there looking utterly helpless and defeated with his head hanging. He muttered, ‘I’m so ashamed.’

Margot stepped away from him and gripped Ben’s arm. ‘This is the police officer who rescued me, Inspector Jacques Dardenne. And this gentleman here is his colleague, Agent Anderson from America.’

Ben said, ‘Why don’t we go up to your room? There’s a lot we need to talk about.’

Segal’s poky single room was on the third floor and had a partial view of the docks in the distance, France’s largest container port covering a broad expanse of coastline, a million lights reflecting on the water. He had a chair pulled up to the window and a pair of binoculars on the sill, as though he’d been sitting for hours scanning the horizon for the arrival of the cargo ship. The bed was rumpled, though he didn’t look as if he’d been getting much sleep. He motioned to a coffee-maker on a sideboard and offered some to his visitors. It tasted like stewed compost, but both Ben and Roth had drunk a lot nastier brews when they were in the army.

Roth carried his cup over to the window and stood looking out through the binoculars. Ben sat the couple down on the rumpled single bed, and pulled a chair opposite them. ‘First things first. Margot, I have a confession to make. My name isn’t Jacques Dardenne, and neither I nor my friend here are police officers. If we were, your husband would be in handcuffs around now. As he knows very well. What matters here is that we are your friends. The only friends you’ve really got. So please listen carefully to what I’m about to say.’

Her outburst of surprise and consternation was understandable enough. Julien Segal clasped his wife’s hand and said, ‘Chérie, please, let him talk.’