He hung up.

They left the city in a taxi as the sun was setting, holding hands, quietly delirious with distress and exhaustion. An afternoon in the gendarmerie, and then they were to have a five-star dinner.

‘This is so nuts,’ said Dan.

‘Batshit,’ she answered.

‘I suppose we have to eat.’

‘We’ve got all that food in the fridge,’ she said. ‘We did all that shopping. I hate throwing food away.’

‘I know, babe.’

The taxi took them up the winding lane to the Chateau L’Orée des Vignes. Flares lit the driveway, leaded turrets gleamed against the blue night sky. They got out, and climbed endless shallow steps.

‘What is this, Versailles?’ said Dan in awe. He’d taken a module on the Baroque. The scale and grandeur, then and now, were so foreign as to be almost alien.

‘It looks like a Disney movie,’ said Bea, dismissively, and he felt rebuked.

She plucked at her shirt. ‘I think I actually smell.’

‘Shh!’ said Dan.

They stepped inside. A man in livery approached, exuding disdain.

‘I need to go to the loo and sort myself out. I’ll see you up there,’ said Bea, and deserted him, her Adidas slapping as she ran across the gleaming floor.

‘Monsieur?’ The waiter could barely be bothered to open his lips. A mile away, from behind a golden desk, the receptionist looked on.

‘Mr Adamson?’ said Dan. ‘Griff Adamson. We’re meeting him for dinner?’

Like a magic wand, Griff’s name transformed the waiter into a warm and deferential companion.

‘Monsieur,’ he suggested. ‘Come with me.’

They went up a mirrored staircase, across a ballroom to an enormous terrace restaurant, and the waiter bore him proudly to Griff’s table, a white linen circle surrounded by other white circles in the dusk, all candlelit. Griff, Arun, Roche and Liv were already seated.

‘There you are,’ said Griff.

Roche and Arun nodded, and Liv said, ‘Hello,’ like someone had a gun to her head, and then looked at Griff, as if it was him.

‘Bea’s – she’ll be out in a minute,’ said Dan, feeling awkward. He wished he had stopped for a wash, too, and wasn’t in a T-shirt.

‘No problem,’ said Griff. ‘Sit there. Drink?’

It was as if they were celebrating something. Dan sat down and reached for a bottle of mineral water but a waiter snatched it up, and poured him a glass, smugly.

‘Will you have some wine? A beer?’ said Griff.

Nobody else spoke. Before Dan could ask for a beer, red wine was poured into his long-stemmed glass. He thought of Alex sloshing wine into the smeary tumblers at Paligny. He’d been transported from one off-kilter reality to another, from the cops’ insinuations in that concrete barracks, to this ancient terrace over a gauzy view, and reflections of candle flames in porcelain and glass.

‘So, where’s Bea?’ asked Griff impatiently.

‘Freshening up,’ said Dan.