Ah, le pouvoir. Unlike hizb fransa, there’s good reason to believe, as most Algerians do, that some power over and above the republic’s constitution - some authority that is almost inhuman, despite humans being its ready and willing accomplices - has always had and always will have the final word in the nation’s disputes. And that authority is known to all simply as … le pouvoir: as tireless as it is merciless, always ready to crush any organisation - any citizen - who dares to dream of a free and uncorrupt Algeria; the ultimate arbiter of all their fates, that will not be defied and cannot be defeated.

Taleb nods. ‘Superintendent Meslem always said our difficulties in the case were caused by the actions of those far above Laloul and Zarbi in the hierarchy protecting themselves.’ Meslem was the lead officer in the inquiry, long since retired and deceased. But Taleb knows Bouras will remember him, as he does, as one well familiar with the machinations of le pouvoir.

‘Just do your best, Taleb,’ Bouras says with quiet emphasis. ‘Don’t take any unnecessary risks. And don’t do anything you know I wouldn’t approve of. Is that clear?’

‘Absolutely.’

Bouras takes a mobile phone out of one of the desk drawers and slides it towards Taleb. ‘Keep me apprised of progress by standard means. But use this for emergency communications. It has a number on it where I can be contacted. But in an extreme emergency only. It would be best for both of us if you never needed to use it at all.’

‘Then I hope I never will.’

‘So do I, Taleb, I assure you.’

A brief silence falls, broken by a faint squeak emitted by the sofa as Taleb stands to pick up the phone.

‘You’ll want to look through the files on the case, no doubt.’

‘Such files as there are, Director, yes.’ As he recalls, the Ministry of the Interior requisitioned the files, but Meslem, as he also recalls, contrived to hold some material back.

Bouras flaps his hand in a gesture of dismissal in which there’s also a hint of a blessing. ‘Then I won’t detain you any longer.’

On the way back down to his office, Taleb pauses on a half-landing to light a cigarette and gaze out through the grimy window at the no less grimy city, some seedy tracts of which are visible from this vantage point. He knows these crumbling steps and winding streets and malodorous back alleys from long and often bitter experience. They are the map of his career and his life. He also knows their inhabitants, possibly better than they know themselves: hard-pressed, dry-humoured, trapped together in a struggle to thrive, or, if not to thrive, at least to survive. Such is the city of his birth and such are its people.