“You’ve got to throw your phone out right now and then take exit 12 to hide the fish, you hear me? Exit 12! After that you won’t be able to get off.”

“Bye, Mum,” he said to his mother, hanging up.

Khadija stared at me, eyes wide with fear, then burst into tears.

I had a lump in my throat.

I held her tightly in my arms and we sat down to wait, huddled up against each other, holding our breath, eyes and ears directed towards the door, our minds even further away, alongside the police who were waiting for Afid.

At some point, I finally stood up and went to visit my mother.

Afid obeyed and was arrested as expected when he reached the five wholesalers who were still waiting for him patiently at Vitry, despite the fact he was grossly late. Needless to say, the officers found only an empty hiding place — presumably identified by Platoon and Laser, the two Belgian Shepherds from the dog squad, who must have barked like the possessed.

At around seven o’clock in the evening, I was summoned to translate the interview of the courier from the village, who only spoke Moroccan dialect. I went in, my spirit light, with no sense of culpability or dread, but rather, I’d say, with a sense of cheerful detachment.

When I arrived at the drug squad offices, I found the usual hive of activity. Detectives who hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours were frenetically going from one room to another with statements from the most forthcoming interviewees, which were then used to confuse the most reticent. Apart from Afid, the courier and the five wholesalers who were waiting for the merchandise, the police had arrested a dozen collaterals — girlfriends, parents and a few dealers, each of whom was being cooked in a separate room. Khadija hadn’t yet been questioned, but it would only be a matter of hours because she would soon finish her shift and they were waiting for her outside her apartment block.

Young men, all of Arabic background, were coming in and going out in handcuffs. I didn’t know which one was the famous Afid until a detective pointed me out, shouting, “The interpreter’s here!” at the top of his voice, and a boy waiting his turn for a medical check turned to stare at me. I flushed red as a beetroot.

I translated the courier’s interrogation. From his pithy responses to the questions put to him by the detective: I don’t know what drugs you’re talking about . . . if you say so . . . etc., I quickly realized that none of the interviewees would be giving up any information to speak of.