There was an awkward silence.

‘That sounds cool,’ said Bea, to help him out.

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s not serious.’ He brushed off his spotless jeans again.

‘But it’s good. Your job is very serious,’ said Bea.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I am the group leader of an SR. We are the elite in the gendarmerie.’

‘There’s a version of that story I like,’ said Bea, ‘where the men aren’t blind –’

‘But they are blind.’

‘No,’ said Bea.

‘Yes, they are.’

She looked away from him at the invaded room. She had read the Hindu version of the story, the Jain, and the Buddhist. The Christian telling, like his, was a children’s story. The one she liked best was the poet Rumi’s, and even that had been warped by time and telling, and the Islamic heart of his work altered by western sentiment and soundbites. Rumi’s story was a short parable. There was no king and no fight; no wise men, or blind men, just ‘a crowd of Hindus’ who bring an elephant into a dark room. Nobody in the crowd knows what an elephant is, but each has their opinion. The sensual eye is like the palm of the hand, she remembered, it has not the means of covering the whole beast. She tried to remember the last line. We are in a clear sea, but we choose only to look at the foam. She felt the calming pull of it. She looked around the room and thought about the things in it, and how limited they were: herself and Vincent, and then the objects; the bed she sat on, the chair, table, window. She looked harder and seemed to see places where the police had walked, and hand prints, the airplane tracks left by their searching eyes. The room felt very small, and she did, too. It was tempting to fall into rage, and easy to cling to the myth of resolution.

‘I’m sorry about before,’ she said. ‘You have your job to do.’

She stood up, and, taking his cue, Capitaine Vincent did too.

‘Don’t apologise,’ he said. ‘It’s very difficult. But we are the good guys, yes?’ He said good guys in English.

She nodded.

‘Thank you for talking to me.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Vincent. ‘And thank you, for your courage.’

As they left the room he closed the door behind them quietly, as if a child were sleeping.