The final page of the file had been scanned two days earlier. It was an order by the Minister for Justice pardoning Pierre-Alexandre and providing for his release from the Maca prison the following week. I imagined the number of intermediaries that would have had to be mobilised, the sums of endowments promised, to secure such a lettre de cachet.

It seemed self-evident that it had to be stopped. I didn’t even pause to consider. I stayed awake until morning, then, after dropping my daughter at school, I went to the former Palais de Justice building, which was almost deserted. So my IP couldn’t be traced, I used an old terminal that was still connected in the part of the building normally occupied by investigating magistrates, and I simply flooded the social networks of African newspapers with that document, as well as the inboxes of victims’ associations whose addresses I had found in the file.

Back then, I had never travelled outside France, but I had always heard my father and his Merchant Marine mates talking about the different ports where they had docked during their career, particularly those in Africa. They always used to say the same thing: it didn’t matter where exactly they were, the atmosphere was such a tinderbox they never really felt safe.

A place could be perfectly calm, people quietly going about their business, and then all of a sudden, because of some rumbling coming from who knows where, crowds of angry rioters would appear in the streets brandishing all sorts of weapons. The fact that there’s always an election on the horizon with candidates ready to spew their bile to the media merely served as a catalyst to the rebellion. When something like that happened, it was never a good thing to be white. You were always suspected to a greater or lesser degree of only being there to make money.

That was what happened in 2014 when Oilofina’s slop made its pestilential appearance in the town’s dumps. Quick as a flash, and with no warning, because the limits of what was intolerable had reached its peak, a hate-filled crowd had descended on the villas of both the Abidjan port manager and the environment minister, taken out their personal guards, pillaged everything they had been able to lay their hands on inside, and then set fire to what was left. The announcement on social media four years later of the date and time of arrival of a delegation comprising Philippe de Rigny, accompanied by a foreign office diplomat from the Quai d’Orsay and the Ivorian Minister for Justice, all three of them sent with great ceremony to Maca to release Pierre-Alexandre from prison, had the same incendiary effect.

Word of the impunity of those responsible for the environmental disaster ricocheted and spread, until a mob had gathered – and the prison was stormed.