The Alpina’s throaty engine drone filled the cabin and would have made it hard to have a conversation, even if Ben hadn’t been so intent on driving that he had nothing to say. But his mind was crowded with one troubling concern after another. It was bothering him that he couldn’t figure out where Nazim was going. There was a plan at work here. If only he knew what it was.

Almost forty-five minutes had passed since leaving Vaucottes. Towns and villages, farms and forests and signposts flashed past in a mad blur. They were cutting due south straight through the heart of Normandy. Getting closer to the point where they’d pick up the motorway just beyond Gacé, and catching up fast with the target. Too fast, Ben thought. The little red teardrop was still moving in the same direction as before, but it seemed to have slowed right down. Then, speaking for the first time in a while, Roth said, ‘They’ve stopped moving.’

Sure enough, a few kilometres before the motorway, Ben spotted the little red Citroën C1 with a chromed fish on the back, parked up in a layby at the side of the road. He braked hard and pulled into the layby in front of them.

The Citroën’s bonnet was up, and there was smoke rising from under it. A pair of young guys were standing looking inside the engine bay, one of them scratching his head and the other with his arms folded in obvious disgust. Another two were sitting inside the car, smoking cigarettes and looking glum, frustrated and angry. All four were hefty country boys like Axel Roux, in jeans and denim and check shirts.

Ben and Roth got out of the Alpina and walked towards them. The two country boys in the car got out too, and stood defensively with their fists bunched. The two standing by the open bonnet turned around and scowled at the approaching strangers. It looked like the preliminaries to a bar fight, but Ben understood that it was just a bunch of angry, grief-stricken and deeply frustrated young blokes posturing as a way of working off their emotions. He said, ‘Which one of you is Jean-Luc?’

‘That’d be me,’ replied the one with folded arms.

‘That’s what I thought,’ Ben said. Jean-Luc was the eldest and the biggest of the bunch, and he had the most aggressive scowl. Behind all the angry expressions Ben could make out some facial resemblances among the three surviving brothers. Which made the fourth fellow Noah, the cousin who’d managed to escape unscathed.

Jean-Luc asked, ‘Are you the guy who phoned?’

Ben took out Axel’s phone and tossed it to Jean-Luc. ‘You can give it to him when you visit him in jail.’

Jean-Luc frowned at the smears of dried blood on the casing. ‘How’s he doing?’