She could hear the two men moving around in her brother’s room above her. She waited, listening, gaining strength, and then she went upstairs. The door was half open, their shapes moved back and forth. She knocked. Lecuyer poked his head out.

‘Would you like some coffee, or some water?’ asked Bea.

‘Coffee!’ he said. ‘Thank you very much!’

‘What are you looking for?’ she made her voice casual.

‘Information.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s normal.’

‘Normal?’

‘With a murder.’

‘What?’ Bea said.

‘A murder,’ he said again, and hesitated, thinking she hadn’t understood. ‘After a murder,’ he said in French.

She didn’t respond. It felt as if her mind stopped, as if her pulse had stopped, and she had no need to breathe.

‘OK.’ He shut the door in her face.

Of course she knew. Of course she had known. She went slowly down the stairs, feet landing slowly, step after step. A murder. She pushed the heavy fire door and went into the kitchen and the door swung closed behind her. It was dark and warm. Murder. Nobody had said it. Alex had died, and for five days, there had been a vacuum. Now it showed itself. Murder. The word rang. It wrote itself on her eyes. Murder. It was a Trojan Horse. Childhood fears and teenage thrills. Red letters, painted backwards on a mirror. Screaming. A newsreader’s voice. A man appeared in court today charged with one count of. Charged with. Murder. A man has been found dead. A man was found murdered. A thirty-seven-year-old man has been found dead in his car. Her brother Alex had been murdered. She washed out the aluminium coffee pot under the tap, fingers swiping the ridges on the rim. As she opened the new bag it tore a strip like a cuticle down the side, and spilled coffee grounds onto the floor. She tried to pick it up with kitchen paper, and felt the little dots in the creases of her palms. She rinsed the filter and filled it, and packed down the coffee with the back of a spoon and turned on the gas. With white noise in her mind, she found some biscuits and put them on a tray. Shock, reaction. Shock, reaction. Shock. Murder. Murder. Murder.

She heard a car on the gravel and peered out through the tiny kitchen window, then went to the front door, her phone loose in her hand. The newly arrived car was unmarked, parked neatly next to the white van. Capitaine Vincent, trim and tidy in his ironed jeans and loafers, locked it, with a little pip.

‘Bonjour,’ he said, putting on a suit jacket as he came to meet her.

She was beyond politeness, she couldn’t find it in herself to pacify or appease. ‘I’m sick of speaking French,’ she said. ‘Can we speak English?’

‘I prefer French,’ said Vincent.

‘Fine. Fine,’ she said. ‘Why have they taken my husband in?’

‘It’s normal.’