Ben badly needed to know, just as he eagerly wanted to hear what they’d been talking about. He let the video run on once more, holding the phone close to his ear and straining as hard as he could to sift their dialogue from the mess of the audio track. Nearly all of it was just too garbled and muffled to catch. But here and there he was able to pick out a word. They were talking Arabic, which it made sense for Segal to be able to speak, in his line of work. Ben thought he caught the word ‘shuhna’, referring to a ‘shipment’. A moment later Nazim pointed towards the statues and Ben heard him say something about ‘humula’, which Ben recognised as the Arabic word for ‘cargo’. Then there were a couple of passes of dialogue that he couldn’t catch a word of, before he heard Segal mention ‘almakan almaqsud’, meaning ‘destination’.

Then the conversation was over. Ben watched as Nazim turned away from the older man and started walking towards an exit off-camera, with Segal sheepishly following. Their path was going to take them straight past Romy’s hiding place. The picture, already shaky, now scrambled into nothing as she darted back around the edge of the pillar to avoid being seen. Ben could hear the sharpness of her breathing, caught by the sensitive mic. He could almost smell her fear.

An instant later, the video clip ended. All fifty-two seconds of it.

Ben laid the phone down on the table and lit another Gauloise. Was Romy’s employer doing some kind of deals with Nazim al-Kassar? What was the shipment? From the little that Ben had understood of their conversation, it looked as though the cargo they’d been talking about consisted of the old statues stored inside the warehouse. Since when was a murdering fanatic like Nazim in the antiquities export and import business? It seemed insane. Especially considering that Segal’s business partner was supposed to be dead.

Romy must have thought it was insane, too. Ben tried to picture her movements after the two men left the warehouse. Waiting there, hidden, terrified, until the coast was clear. Sneaking out unseen, hoping she had left no trace that could bring suspicion on herself. He wondered what she must have been thinking as she travelled back to France, perhaps sitting on the plane right next to the man she’d covertly filmed and whose secret plans she’d somehow stumbled into learning. The fact that she’d kept the video clip encrypted on her phone had to mean that she was intending to use it somehow. As leverage against Segal? Blackmail? Or to expose him? Whatever her idea had been, she’d been too slow, or too careless. Somehow they’d found her out. And she’d paid the price for it.

Ben could answer none of the questions that buzzed in his mind, without knowing more.