Now my old companion was resuming its place at my side. Just in case.

It had taken me two days and a night to transfer the drugs from the wind turbines to my place.

I understood why Khadija had used the term little fish when she had spoken with her son on the telephone: the Benabdelaziz’s trademark was two fish, drawn head-to-tail, yin and yang, branded into their resin. But that was only the loose bricks I had found stashed into the pile of gravel. The rest — the Moroccan bags — belonged to the other families she’d told me about. Other tags, to use the lingo, were thermo-engraved onto the bricks. A third were branded with the Audi logo, with four interlocking circles; others with the number 10, in the style of some hot-shot dude’s team football shirt; and others had some bizarre symbol that looked like a pentagon.

Before closing my cellar door, I stepped back to admire my organizational handiwork: there in the cellar were 1.2 tonnes of cannabis. One thousand two hundred kilos of top-quality frappe, at 5,000 euros a kilo. I hardly dared do the sums I was so overcome by my audacity. I had shifted 1.2 tonnes on my own back. Fifty-two Moroccan bags, each weighing 20 kilos, two per airtight container that I had filled one at a time, stacking them up as I went, as well as 160 loose 1-kilo blocks. I had even thought of a little step ladder.

Completely exhausted, I dropped in to the geriatric intensive care unit at the hospital to see how things were with my mother.

In the corridor off her room, I came across the inevitable families bivouacking under the fluoro lights with thermos flasks, blankets and Candy Crush, no use to anyone but there because . . . well, because they had to be there, didn’t they, so that whatever happened they didn’t miss the last wheeze of the Ancient One.

The manager of the unit, a woman as neat as she was disagreeable, and an absolute dead-ringer for Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, received me, explaining what was likely to happen in the coming days.

“Your mum is not yet terminal . . .”

“I think you’re mistaken there! In fact, it’s been quite some time now that she’s been terminal, that she’s been suffering and all you’ve done is stuff her full of sedatives,” I replied bitterly.

“She’s able to swallow again, and so apart from the macular degeneration, she’s not suffering from any other illness. She hasn’t got any bedsores and her bloods are like those of a young woman . . .”

“There’s nothing left of her mind and even less hope for any improvement . . . and her back is in agony as a result of her being confined to her bed!”