Platt was in no hurry, remembering how Bannerman had made him late for his deadline that morning. He filled his cup for the third time and sank back again in his chair. ‘Lapointe,’ he said at length, ‘is the legal brain behind I.V. Internationale. He’s a short, stout man in his middle fifties. Very grey and very proper. Wears neatly tailored suits and carries his wealth discreetly. Old-fashioned, conservative. A widower with one grown-up daughter. Divorced, I believe. He began his career in criminal law and went on to specialize in company and commercial law. He worked for Jansen’s father before he died and has been associated with the family for many years. He’s not a man in the public eye in any way, but a key figure in the company.’ Platt sipped his whisky. ‘And that’s about it. Although perhaps a little surprisingly he’s a Walloon, a French-speaker.’

Bannerman stood up suddenly and Platt blinked at him. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve got to go. You can let yourself out.’ He lifted his coat and headed out into the darkness of the hall.

Platt heard the front door closing, and a few minutes later Bannerman’s car coughing to life in the street below. He smiled, satisfied with his day. And the whisky was having its effect. He would show them! Especially Bannerman. His eyes wandered towards the Brueghel snow scene, reminding him of how it was outside. That, and the dull ache of his ulcer, were the only things that troubled him now. He took a tablet from his pocket, crunched it between bad teeth, and prepared to pour himself another whisky to wash away the taste.

II

The Palais de Justice took on a sinister air at night. During the day it was one of those vast blackened buildings whose pillars and ornate façades seem somehow eternal, if now a little shabby. Odd pieces of scaffolding had been erected by artisans on a crusade to restore its original dignity with limited civic funds.

Through a small window Bannerman saw a night watchman pouring himself coffee from a flask at a desk pushed against the wall of a tiny office. Behind him a stove glowed brightly and warm yellow light fell out across the snow.

The Place Poelaert was deserted. Night traffic rumbled past in the Boulevard de Waterloo two hundred metres distant. At the far side, where Bannerman waited, snow crusted along the top of a high wall beyond which the city shimmered below him in the cold. A floodlit church, steeply sloping snow-covered roofs. The tail lights of traffic on the boulevards. And in the misted distance, the Martini neon on the Manhattan Centre at the Place Rogier.