Du Maurier pursed his lips. ‘No-o.’ He stretched the word out thoughtfully and then lowered his head. ‘I had information for you.’

Bannerman’s breath billowed into the night air. ‘But now you’re having second thoughts.’

The Inspector looked up and searched Bannerman’s face. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because you’ve been all fired up since they passed you over for promotion, and when the politicians descended to take away your murders at the Rue de Pavie you saw your chance to hit back. You saw that they were vulnerable. Now you’re not so sure if you’re doing the right thing.’

Du Maurier wished he had not drunk so much, for his head was fuzzy and he found it difficult to think clearly. He felt foolish for having unburdened himself like this to the Scotsman. He had only made himself vulnerable.

Bannerman said, ‘The trouble is, you’ve already committed yourself. There’s no going back now, Inspector. I could blow the lid on our little tête-à-têtes any time I choose.’

The years sat heavily on du Maurier’s bony shoulders and he seemed to age twenty years. ‘And would you?’

Bannerman let that hang for several long moments. ‘No.’

Du Maurier stared at him. ‘Why not?’

Bannerman shrugged. ‘No self-respecting journalist would ever reveal his sources.’ Then he said, ‘So what you want to say to me tonight is that you’ve changed your mind? Is that it? That you no longer feel able to pass me information from the inside?’ Du Maurier nodded.

Both men stood in silence then, one staring out over the city, the other with his back to the wall staring across the darkness of the cobbled square. Neither spoke for several minutes. Finally Bannerman said, ‘What was the information you had?’

Du Maurier turned his head slowly. ‘Mon Dieu! You really expect me to tell you now?’

‘I believe in what I’m doing, Inspector.’

The other man shook his head. ‘I wish I had that kind of belief in anything any more.’ He closed his eyes and hesitated for several long seconds before drawing a folded sheet of notepaper from his coat pocket and pushing it at Bannerman. Bannerman opened it up and squinted at the paper in the bad light. There was an address written across it in a tight, neat hand. ‘That’s the address linked to the phone number you gave me. A country house in West Flanders near Torhout, about seventeen kilometres south-west of Bruges. Monsieur Gryffe, it seems, had been renting it for about two years. The property is owned by a Brussels-registered company, a subsidiary of I.V. Internationale.’ There was irony in his smile.

Bannerman said, ‘Jansen’s outfit.’

‘Perhaps you were right after all, Monsieur.’

Bannerman’s fingers tightened on the slip of paper. No matter how tenuous, it was the first real lead to emerge from this whole bloody mess.