I saw the doors to the ward swing open and the suits enter. Two of them. They looked as out of place as elephants in a birdcage. Big, broad, hard-muscled men who walked in, chest-first, as if they owned the place. The old man took one look at them and closed his eyes. They approached the vacant bed, muttered something to each other and turned to inspect me, taking in my hospital gown, my plaster and the wound dressing on my face.

‘Where is the man who was in this bed?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He was already gone when I arrived. Try asking the nurses.’

‘The old man? Did he see anything?’

‘He’s been asleep.’

The suit studied me for a long moment and I felt a thin trickle of dread that he would associate my damaged face with a car crash. I rose to my feet. He towered over me as I committed each feature of his square face to memory. Grey eyes, cold as stone. Large nose, black spiky hair and spiky eyebrows in a dead-straight line that met in the middle.

‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘His family?’

‘Keep your nose out of my business, bitch.’

The pulse in my temple under the dressing was pounding like a jackhammer.

The other suit frowned and muttered, ‘Draw the curtain.’

He was thinner, with the eyes of a man who liked to give orders. Dark trim moustache. Efficient and precise in his movements. A deep cleft in his chin.

They drew the privacy curtains around the bed with a dismissive flick of the wrist and I heard them rummaging behind it. The bed had already been stripped and I counted to twenty in my head, then reached out and grabbed a handful of curtain. I yanked it open. One suit had the empty drawer of the cabinet dangling from his fist, the other had propped the mattress up on its edge and was examining the underside of it. Like vultures picking at bones. If it was André’s wallet they were searching for, it was not there.

‘If he comes back,’ I said helpfully, ‘who shall I say was looking for him?’

‘Fuck off.’

‘That’s not polite, monsieur.’

‘Neither is this,’ said the suit with stone eyes.

He came close to me and hooked his thick fingers into the bulky dressing on my face. I very nearly jerked my head away but I could see how much he wanted to rip off the white gauze, so I stood still.

‘How did you get this?’ He grinned at me.

‘I was in a fire.’

‘Shall I take a look?’

I gripped his hand and he didn’t shake me off.

‘For Christ’s sake, Piquet,’ the moustache suit snapped. ‘Enough of this shit.’