Ben wondered if the call had had something to do with the fact that she seemed so distraught. Out of curiosity he used his burner phone to call Michel’s number, but got no reply and didn’t leave a message. Then he listed the other numbers she’d called that weren’t stored in her address book, and called each in turn. There was a television repair man, a home insurance company and other assorted useless stuff that he crossed off his list one by one until there was nothing left.

Moving on to received calls he went through the same process. The mysterious Michel had also phoned her often, though not in the last month or so. Her parents phoned her from time to time, less often than she called them. The rest of it was just as inconsequential. This kind of detective work was seldom very exciting.

Next, texts and emails. Which were all work-related and concerned various dull administrative matters that Ben couldn’t make head or tail of. The outgoing mails bore an automatically added text at the foot of the message, which said ‘R. Juneau, Research Development Officer, ICS’, with the Institute’s address in the eighth arrondissement of Paris. A fairly swanky location, even though it was probably knee-deep in riot wreckage these days.

Ben keyed the Segal Cultural Institute into his search engine. It was a private organisation founded in the early nineties and run by a top French archaeologist called Julien Segal. Ben had never heard of him, though there was no reason why he should have. The Institute’s website described its mission as the preservation and protection of ancient art treasures, specialising in the ancient Middle East. They were one of the leaders in the development of new technologies to digitally reconstruct art treasures damaged by war, natural disaster or the ravages of time, and restore them using 3-D printing.

Middle East. War. Ben thought, Hmm.

Then he thought, Middle East. War. Nazim al-Kassar. ISIL.

Hmm again. Tantalising. Not exactly what a detective would consider hard evidence of an actual connection. But enough to make Ben curious to know more.

The website featured a little ‘About Our Founder’ bio of Julien Segal. A small photo showed a man in his early fifties, with a full head of silver hair and a craggily handsome face with striking, penetrative eyes like a hawk’s. He had spent decades travelling the world and been personally responsible for the rescue of countless ancient artifacts that otherwise would have been lost. He supplied museums, private and corporate collections, gave lecture tours and worked closely with international cultural heritage groups such as UNESCO and ECCO, the European Confederation of Conservation Organisations.