But if you were someone who had known the dead man, and not particularly liked him, you were probably standing in the cold out of a sense of duty, and the aesthetics would be lost on you. You would get little more out of it than cold feet, and maybe a lingering depression brought on by your own heightened sense of mortality. If you were here to report it, you would go first to buy a drink and then you would write fine words about a man you never knew, before contriving indignation at the way the case had been handled by the Judicial Police. If you were the priest, then you were doing God’s work.

And if you were Slater you were dead and none of it could touch you.

Tait shuffled impatiently beside Bannerman as the coffin was lowered into the hole that had been dug for it out of frozen ground. He had not spoken a word during the drive from the Sacré Coeur to the Cimetière de Bruxelles, smoking one cigarette after the other. The dreary, almost pagan, ritual of the Mass had done nothing to improve his humour.

Bannerman no longer cared. He was watching Marie-Ange Piard, who stood at the far side of the grave. She was wearing a three-quarter-length black dress beneath a black cape and wide-brimmed hat with the obligatory black veil. Bannerman could not see her face and so could not discern what emotions it might be concealing. But she did not have the bearing of a woman in mourning. She appeared almost bored, standing very still and upright, and perhaps if her face had been visible it might have borne no expression at all. Bannerman could not imagine that Marie-Ange was a woman who would shed tears for anyone. He found it hard to believe she’d had feelings for Slater, and yet she had been his lover. Apparently. The incongruity of their relationship came back to him. He had not thought about her at all since Slater’s death, and now she was resurrecting his curiosity. She was, it seemed to him, yet another ill-fitting piece in this strange jigsaw.

Sally stood beside her in a long dark coat and beret. She had glanced towards Bannerman once or twice, but not approached him either at the church or the cemetery. Perhaps she had sensed the antagonism between Bannerman and his companion and decided not to encroach. Or maybe she was simply struck by the sadness of the occasion and did not feel it appropriate.