“Would you be prepared to act as an eye witness in the arrest of this person?” asked the other.

I said “yes” immediately but after they’d thanked me and left I started to think of all the reasons why I should have said “no.” My life hadn’t seen a great deal of excitement up until then. I’d studied, I’d traveled, I’d worked in a cinema. But I hadn’t lived the adventures I saw on the screen. Then, suddenly, there I was front seat at an assassination and on the trail of a man with a loaded gun. I was playing the sheriff role but I honestly didn’t know who the good guys were. What if the military had planned the kill? What if the shooter was a patriot? I knew Doumer was no angel. How dare I condemn his killers? But I’d pushed that wagon up to the top of the hill and those wheels had a habit of building up speed on the way down.

Late that night, I was awoken by the hammering on the door of our tiny apartment.

“Siri,” someone shouted, “come and drink with us. We’re celebrating.”

I could only open the door a few centimeters when the bed was down and through the gap I saw my young military friends. They nodded and gestured for me to come. I told Boua a classmate had just . . . no, I can’t remember what lie I told her. But she believed me because I’d been an honest man until then. If I felt any guilt, it was diluted in fear for my own life.

I was driven back to my man’s apartment building opposite the tram stop. As we entered, the concierge was being led away. I was told to wait in the foyer. An older military man in a tracksuit silently waited with me. There were no sounds of doors being broken down, no gunshots, no shouted threats. But, ten minutes after our arrival, half-a-dozen soldiers in plain clothes came down the staircase escorting a man in pajamas with a sisal bag over his head. He wasn’t cuffed or shackled, which made the situation more tense than was necessary. They stood their prisoner in front of me and pulled off his hood.

He still wore the crust of sleep around his eyes.

“Monsieur Paiboun,” said one of the young officers, “is this the man you saw at the Hotel Rothschild pointing a gun in the direction of the President yesterday afternoon?”

I was distraught that he should have used my name. I put my trembling hands in my pockets.

“It’s him,” I said.

“And did you follow him from the hotel to this apartment at 235 Constantinople immediately after the assassination?”

“I did,” I said.

“Should we not ask him why?” said my man.

There were six guards around him. Surely one of them could have told him to stop talking. But, no.