The body that lay on the stainless steel table was naked beneath the glare of surgical lights. The stench of death and acid preservative was nauseating, and Bannerman felt his stomach heave.

There was a look of serenity on Platt’s face, but his chest was open, like a carcass in a butcher’s shop. The white flesh around the wound was tinged with blue, all blood drained from the body.

‘Jesus, Christ! Where’s the toilet?’

The man in the white coat took Bannerman across the hall to the men’s room, leaving him to kneel on the floor and vomit into the pan. Bannerman remained doubled over it, breathing hard for several minutes, before pulling himself to his feet and staggering to the washbasin. He turned on the cold water to sluice his face and swill his mouth, before taking a long, cool drink.

Du Maurier was waiting in the corridor and they went back out to the car. The two men sat in silence while the policeman rolled down a window and lit a cigarette.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Can you give me a formal identification?’

Bannerman answered mechanically. ‘Richard Joseph Platt.’

‘What was he doing with Slater’s car?’

‘He borrowed it. Give me a cigarette.’

Du Maurier lit it for him and watched him screw up his face at the taste.

‘What happened?’

The policeman sighed. ‘Someone used both barrels of a sawn-off shotgun. Close range. We found the body in Slater’s car. It was parked in a side street near the Gare du Nord.’

Bannerman tried to make himself feel something, but couldn’t. His only thought was why had Jansen done it. The man had played it smart until now. The Inspector held out a folded wad of paper. Bannerman took it. There were about a dozen sheets, all clumsily typed.

‘It’s in French,’ he said. ‘I can’t read it. What is it?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Maybe I can guess.’

‘And what do you guess?’

‘I guess maybe it’s a story about how René Jansen, Michel Lapointe and Robert Gryffe formed a consortium to sell arms. Knowing Platt he’ll have dressed it up a bit. He probably paints a picture of Gryffe as a high-powered salesman with access to heads of state. Lapointe as a kind of wizard of company law who set up a network of companies that enabled them to sell to whomever they liked from behind a veil of anonymity. And Jansen as the quiet power behind it all who supplied the money and creamed off the lion’s share of the profits. Of course, he’ll have made the biggest play of the sales to South Africa and Rhodesia.’

‘Is it true?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why in God’s name did you not tell me?’