Leaning by the stove he ate a croissant beurre, a painkiller, a vitamin pill, then dressed himself in grey slacks and a linen shirt and went down into the street feeling like a Hemingway character, some old boxer ennobled by weakness, hauling himself into the ring for a last big fight. The day was for settling things, and it was in this spirit he intended to have his talk with Franklin Wylie, though quite what he could say to him that would be of any use he was not at all sure. Something to shame, something to encourage. It was impossible, or at least unacceptable, that all their years of friendship should end in silence, a dull glare of mutual incomprehension.

He caught the Metro from Montparnasse Bienvenue, changed at Sebastapol and arrived at Parmentier shortly before noon. At the greengrocer’s on the corner of Rue Jacquard he bought a large bag of cherries, then walked to the rue du Deguerry and tapped in the code to the outer door, but as he crossed the vestibule to the stairs, Madame Barbossa spied him from her office and flagged him down. She had met him on many occasions, knew he was ‘like family’ with the Wylies, and revered him as a man of culture whose name might be found in the newspapers from time to time, though she had no practical idea of what he did. She told him that Monsieur Wylie had gone out early, eight o’clock, just as she herself was coming in. Madame Wylie had left two hours later to have lunch with her mother at the old folks’ place in Epinay.

‘I should have called,’ said László, though he was surprised; it was almost always safe to assume Franklin would be at home at this time of the day, working or mooching, sleeping even. He offered the gardienne a cherry. She was looking at him as if he might, handled in the right way, reveal some item of scandal, something she could add to her collection of Wylie stories. Something to amaze a neighbour.

‘The spare key?’ asked László. He was not averse to a little gossip, but this was not the occasion for it. ‘I’ll put the cherries in the fridge so they can be enjoyed cold.’

‘As you like, monsieur.’

She fetched the key from her office. László wheezed his way to the fourth floor and let himself in. It was an old apartment, and little had been altered since the Wylies had bought it in ’78 or ’79, choosing it for its high ceilings, the pretty church across the street, the flood of the evening sun. The walls in the hallway formed a little gallery, densely hung. There were things by Franklin there, but most of the pictures were the work of dead friends, including a Phillip Guston, and even a Beuys sketch of what looked like a severed head, Orpheus perhaps, ‘his gory visage’ floating down the Hebrus.