Jean-Luc’s voice was cracking up with stress and barely audible over all the noise. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t know me.’

‘I know that you’re with your brothers Jean-Claude and Jean-Pierre and your cousin Noah, driving a red Citroën C1 belonging to your neighbours Maurice and Suzette Simonot, who are dead. You’re in pursuit of your own two pickup trucks, which are being driven by a gang of armed and dangerous men who will murder you all without thinking twice if you get any closer to them. I repeat, this is not a wise action. I strongly recommend that you stand down, right this minute. Am I making myself clear?’

There was a silence on the phone. For a few seconds all Ben could hear was the background buzz of engine noise resonating around the cab of the speeding Citroën. Then: ‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘I’m sorry about your brother and your cousin,’ Ben said. ‘I understand what you’re feeling. I’d probably feel the same. But if I was going to do something about it, I’d do it the smart way. Not like this.’

‘I’ll fucking kill those bastards. Every last one of them.’

‘No, you won’t,’ Ben assured him. ‘You’ll end up just like Jean-Étienne and Léon. Or worse. You don’t know these people. I do.’

While they were talking, Roth had been entering Jean-Luc’s number into a GPS mobile geolocation app and now he was staring intently at his phone as he waited to get a fix on the target. Ben was impatient to get moving. There was more muffled shouting on the line as Jean-Luc had an exchange with the others in the car with him. Ben caught the words ‘go faster’, and the driver yelling back, ‘I told you, it won’t go any fucking faster!’

‘Jean-Luc? Are you there? Hello?’

‘They’re getting away. There’s something wrong with this car. It’s overheating and losing power. I think it caught a bullet in the radiator. The temperature gauge is right in the red.’

‘How close are they? Are they still in sight?’

‘Just about,’ Jean-Luc replied. ‘But we’re gonna lose them, damn it. Who are these fuckers anyway, since you seem to know so much about them?’

Ben replied, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’

‘Why should I trust you? You won’t tell me who you are. How do I know you’re not one of them?’

‘If I’d been one of them, your cousin Axel would be lying on the beach right now with his head sliced off. Instead of being on his way to a nice comfortable hospital. And a jail cell, too, but at least he’ll be safe there.’

‘Are you the cops?’ Jean-Luc asked suspiciously.