Bannerman sat at the back of the conference room, a small lecture theatre with rows of seats stepped back in tiers. Du Maurier took the conference, accompanied by a younger man. Both looked burned out in the glare of the television lights. A bank of microphones was mounted centrally on the rostrum for the dozen radio and television stations that would give the deaths widespread European coverage. There were more than fifty scribes straining not to miss a word, scribbling their shorthand outlines in tattered notebooks, cigarettes stuck in the corners of mouths.

Du Maurier delivered a terse statement in French and then English to a hushed silence. He covered most of what he had told Bannerman, though in less detail, and made no initial mention of Tania or the drawing. Neither did he make any reference to Bannerman.

Then came the questions. Thick, fast and confused, in French and English and Flemish.

‘Are you treating this as murder?’

‘At the moment we regard both deaths as suspicious.’

‘What was Slater doing at Gryffe’s house?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Do you think the motive was political or financial?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘How were the bodies discovered?’

‘The alarm was raised by a passer-by who heard a child screaming in the house.’

There were a few seconds of stunned silence, then a barrage of voices out of which no single question was distinguishable. Du Maurier raised his hands.

‘Monsieur Slater’s daughter was found in the house.’

‘Did she see what happened?’

‘We don’t know. The child is autistic. She is unable to say.’

The excitement among the scribes rose like the temperature of a fevered man. The story had just got better. Bannerman imagined how tomorrow’s headlines would read. Already he could see excited reporters knocking out copy on well-worn keyboards, polishing their clichés, dreaming up colour, emotive catchlines, seductive intros. All packaged and served up to be digested at breakfast along with the cornflakes.

‘How old is the girl? What’s her name?’

‘She is eleven years old. Her name is Tania.’ Du Maurier was impassive. He was making them work for it.

‘Is there a pic of the girl?’

‘No photographs.’

A chorus of voices raised themselves in protest. Again du Maurier lifted his hands.

‘As I said, the child has been able to tell us nothing.’ He paused. ‘However, as a result of a drawing she made showing a man, clearly in the hall of the house in the Rue de Pavie, we are now working on the assumption that there was third-party involvement.’

Silence fell again. Absolute, if short-lived. The possibilities were turning themselves over in the minds of the scribes. Then the questions began again. But du Maurier pre-empted them all, lifting a folder from the bench and handing it to the young man beside him. ‘Copies of the child’s drawing have been made for your use. Monsieur Lousière will distribute them.’