‘Can we sit down somewhere and talk?’ Bish asked Sarraf, aware of the stares from the rest of the men.

Sarraf retrieved a newspaper from a nearby bench and threw it at Bish, who didn’t need to be fluent in French to understand it. The familiar photo of him standing behind Violette. Good to see that the British and French were united in something.

Jamal Sarraf walked out of the gym and into a back alley and he followed.

‘Is it true you’ve spoken to her?’ Bish asked, and suddenly he felt a grip around his throat and found himself shoved against the steel fence. He saw rage in the man’s eyes, glimpsed a clenched fist.

‘I don’t sit down and talk to cunts who lock my niece up in a storage cupboard.’

Sarraf’s face was menacingly close. Bish held up a hand of warning. Not that he believed it would be powerful enough to stop Sarraf, after seeing what he could do to a younger, fitter man in the ring.

‘I removed Violette from that cupboard,’ he said. ‘She’d tell you that herself if you asked her.’

Sarraf let go and shoved Bish away. ‘She’s not here.’

‘Where is she then?’

‘No idea.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’d be out there looking for her otherwise. So that tells me you know exactly where she is.’

‘It tells you nothing.’

‘Did she say why she took the boy?’

‘For a concerned father, you’re beginning to sound like a copper.’

‘I’m both.’ Bish took a business card from his pocket. One he currently had no right to hand out. He found a pen, crossed out his work landline and scribbled his personal mobile number. ‘Bring her to me and she’ll be protected,’ he said. ‘No one wants to hurt her or the boy. She’s just a kid.’

‘Yeah, well, so was I,’ Sarraf said bitterly, not taking the card held out to him. ‘And guess where I ended up when I was her age?’

In Belmarsh. Where good-looking boys like Jimmy Sarraf would have walked into a never-ending nightmare. Bish couldn’t help flinching at the thought.

‘If you do know where they are, then God help you should something happen to them,’ Bish said.

‘If I knew where my niece was we’d be halfway down to North Africa by now,’ Sarraf said before walking away.

Jamal watches Ortley drive away. He’ll be heading for the port, and it makes Jamal heartsick just thinking of the trip home. On an honest day he’ll admit to himself that he chose to live in this town because he’s sentimental. He may have been denied entry into his own country but it doesn’t stop him yearning for it. When the weather is good, he can see England from the port.

Not that he doesn’t have an affection for this town. Calais has been good to him. He likes its lack of pretension, the hardiness of its people. The transient quality of the place. No foreigner stays long enough to recognise him or ask questions. He’s had a dog’s breakfast of paid work, but it’s got him by from year to year. When he’s not teaching at the gym he works with the kids in the makeshift migrant camps, because the local charities want someone who knows French, English, Arabic and football. Or he works at the piano bar on Rue du Duc de Guise. Nothing changes in Calais for Jamal. Days mesh into weeks mesh into months mesh into thirteen years in exile.