‘Of course I can identify him,’ she replied, her sorrow flaring into anger that flushed her cheeks. ‘Didn’t I always tell her that boy was no good for her? No good for anything, just like all his kind. He doesn’t even have a proper job. But she fought me and fought me. Wouldn’t listen. Said her salary was enough to support them both until he found decent work of his own. Said they were going to move in together and get married. I told her, “You have a child with that filth, I won’t have it in my home. I won’t see it, and I won’t acknowledge it.”’

Madame Juneau was growing more charming by the second, but Ben had to play along. Let her get it out, he thought, if that’s what helps her deal with her pain.

‘I was happy when she finally saw sense and dumped him. I thought she would be free of him then, free to find someone new and worthy of her. But how wrong I was. Because now he’s killed her,’ she said in a hollow and ghastly voice, her eyes clouded with brimming tears. ‘She jilted him and he murdered her for it. Our baby, taken from us. Just like that. Thanks to that scum. How is that right? Tell me how that’s right.’

The depth of her agony was so overwhelming that Ben found it hard to look at her. He asked, ‘Are we talking about Michel?’

Hearing the name made her flush even more angrily. ‘Michel Yassa,’ she said, her face twisting as though it tortured her to utter it. ‘He’s the filthy Arab who killed my daughter.’ She pushed herself unsteadily from her armchair and teetered over to a framed picture that sat on a sideboard. Picking it up, she brought it over to show Ben. The photo was a few decades old and showed a man in French military uniform, who Ben presumed must be her husband. Madame Juneau croaked, ‘If poor Henri wasn’t so sick he would hunt him down like the animal he is and give him what he deserves. Henri was in the army, like his father. He shot an Algerian.’

‘Henri shot an Algerian?’

‘No, his father did, in the war over there in ’61. But Henri would have shot that bastard Yassa. So would I, if I could.’ Madame Juneau put down the picture and crumpled into the armchair, melting into floods of tears.

Ben could have told her that Michel Yassa wasn’t the killer, but that would have been inviting too many questions about what else he knew. And he couldn’t discount the possibility that Michel Yassa was somehow mixed up in this. There could be more going on than Ben had realised.

He waited a few moments for her tears to subside, then asked, ‘How did Romy and this Yassa meet?’