At the apartment they drank fresh coffee and made each other laugh, wondering – in ever-wider loops of absurdity – how the Garbargs had spent the night. Then László stripped off in the bedroom, put on his bathrobe (he favoured a Japanese yukata for the summer), and went to take a shower. He had just worked up a good lather of shampoo on his head when Kurt leaned into the room. László shook the foam from his ears and turned off the shower. ‘What?’

‘Laurence. On the machine. I think you’d better hear it.’

Wrapped in a towel, László hurried to the study and stood dripping on the parquet as Kurt rewound the tape. The message was halting and mostly unintelligible, but there was no mistaking the desperation in her voice. It sounded as if some ferocious undertow was pulling her away even as she spoke. Something had happened, or was perhaps about to happen (it wasn’t clear which). Something very bad indeed.

‘When did she call?’

Kurt checked the Minitel screen on the front of the phone, then looked at his watch. ‘Just over an hour ago. What do you want to do?’

‘You try to call. I’ll put some clothes on.’

In the bathroom he rinsed off the shampoo, then dressed in the same smoky clothes he’d been wearing in Le Robinet. He was back in the study in five minutes.

‘Anything?’

‘Nothing. They’ve even switched off the answerphone.’

‘OK. Let’s go.’

They took the stairs rather than wait upon the stately descent of the elevator, then drove in silence through the littered streets, the car’s long bonnet slicing the air, the needle of the speedometer flickering at sixty as they motored on to an almost traffic-less Beaumarchais. How tender the city looked! The first of the early risers carrying a newspaper or walking a dog. The street cleaners in their green overalls hosing the pavements and opening the sluices; fresh water running in slack silver ropes around the wheels of the parked cars. Impossible to think any crisis could occur at such an hour, and when, pulling up at rue du Deguerry, there was no police van or Samu ambulance, László began to wonder whether he was overreacting, whether the call had been nothing but the sequel to another fight, and the pair of them were upstairs now, sleeping it off and snoring like ogres.

He left the car by the church, crossed the road to the street door and tapped in the code. Inside, the courtyard was scrubbed and chilly. The gardienne would not be in for another hour or two. A neat little ‘fermé’ sign hung from a nail on the door of her office.

They found Laurence in the gloom of the third-floor landing. Two female neighbours were in attendance, sombre, greyhaired women in slippers and bed-jackets. László vaguely recognized one of them. Madame Bassoul. Blumen. Some such.