The voice on the line was a woman’s. She sounded hesitant and perplexed that a man had picked up the call. ‘This is Françoise Schell. I’m responding to a voicemail message I received two days ago. Is this the right number?’

Françoise. The mystery woman who Romy had said could help her. ‘Romy Juneau called you,’ Ben said. ‘This is her phone.’

‘The name she gave was Jane Dieulafoy. But I figured that was a fake. I get that a lot, in my line of business.’

‘Which is what?’ Ben asked.

‘I’d actually rather speak to … what did you say her name was? Romy Juneau. Is she available?’

As they talked Ben was whipping out his own phone and running a web search on Françoise Schell. He found her right away. She was an investigative reporter and the top search result with her name on it had three lines of metadata that contained the title of an article she’d written. It was called HOW THE ANTIQUITIES TRADE FUNDS TERROR.

And a light bulb lit up inside Ben’s head. He said, ‘Please don’t hang up. This could be very important.’

‘Why would I hang up?’ she asked, sounding as though she was arching an eyebrow.

‘Because you can’t talk to Romy Juneau.’

‘I see. And why is that?’

‘Because she can’t talk to you. She was murdered this morning.’

‘I’m hanging up.’

‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘Talk to me instead. You’re the reporter she tried to call. She thought you could help her.’

‘I can’t talk to you if I don’t know who you are.’

‘My name’s Ben Hope. I was Romy’s friend.’

‘As in boyfriend?’ The way she said it sounded jaded and cynical. But then, in Ben’s experience seasoned investigative journalists were generally a jaded and cynical bunch.

‘Just a friend.’

‘She was killed only this morning, but you don’t sound like you’re exactly paralysed with grief.’ Direct, too.

‘I express emotion in other ways,’ he replied. In the middle of talking he clicked open the article Françoise Schell had written and quickly scanned the text. It was from a few months earlier. There was a photo image of her beside the title. It showed a thin-faced woman with long blond hair and intense, intelligent eyes, maybe forty or a little younger.