Dave only just had time to put a call through to Milan before the police burst into the house and arrested him and his wife. Rivelli himself answered the phone, nodded a few times and said nothing.

Downstairs in the reception room, the Contessa Luisella Mirabelli delle Chiaie was entertaining an old admirer with biscotti and vin santo, getting gently stewed while reminiscing about the good old days when people knew their place, law and order reigned throughout the land and the trains ran on time, not that she ever had cause to take one. Her gentleman friend, who remained unmarried in his sixties and rather specialised in aristocratic ladies with not much longer to go, refilled her tiny crystal glass and admired her collection of rings. How lovely, he thought, they will look on my fingers . . .

Neither of them heard Rivelli’s footsteps as he stomped from office to bedroom, hastily packing a bag.

Joel was picked up wandering around Hollywood Boulevard, his clothes torn and stained with blood. The officer who took him in for questioning said that he was in a confused state of mind, and that he became unconscious in the car. During the subsequent interview, he nodded out frequently, and he could give no coherent account of his actions or whereabout in the last twelve hours.

He was picked up just five blocks away from where Will was found, lying unconscious in a locked garage. The police had been alerted by a man walking his dog, who had become alarmed when little pooch started licking at a pool of blood seeping from under the garage door. He dialled 911, the police arrived quickly on the scene – which, given it was Oscars night, was little short of a miracle – and found the badly battered but still living body of a male in his twenties, the contents of whose wallet identified him as Will Francis, a British citizen.

While Will was treated for serious head wounds in the Cedars-Sinai emergency room on Beverly Boulevard, Joel was in an interrogation room at West Hollywood Station. He didn’t seem to know who he was, and was carrying no form of identification.

They asked him repeatedly where the blood had come from, as it was clearly not his own – there were no cuts on his body. His face was bruised, and he was walking awkwardly, as if his feet or legs had been hurt, but he could give no account of this and there were no outward signs of injury.

Most of the time, he made wordless slurring noises, slumping over the desk or slipping down in his chair until he was almost on the floor. The police recognised the signs of a GHB overdose; they saw it in West Hollywood all the time. A doctor was on standby if he became unconscious.