They had to ring the doorbell at the hotel. Inside, the owner took their names, tapping them into her computer with long varnished nails. There was an overweight little dog with ears like small wings, staring at them from the stairs, and leaflets on a table and fans and birdcages in corners by tiny polished tables. The hotelier had blonde hair with the dark roots showing.

‘May I show you to your room?’ she said. ‘If you want something just ask, there’s always someone here.’

They could hear laughing and talking from behind closed doors.

‘My brother-in-law’s birthday. We’re having a party,’ she said. She smelled of cigarettes and perfume.

Their bags almost filled the floor of the room. There were flowers, everywhere; on the wallpaper, the bedspread, in small oval paintings and on the corners of the towels. And a bunch of miniature fabric roses in a china vase.

They got onto the bed, on top of the bedspread, staring straight ahead and numb. They didn’t even shower, they just crawled onto the strange, deep bed together, and slept.

30

30

The next morning they sat in the dining room and had croissants, coffee and fruit. It was just as she’d imagined. There were strangers at the other tables, sunshine coming in through the windows, and the young girl helping was friendly, with a clean white apron. The tiny dog wandered about between the tables looking for crumbs and at the reception desk a couple with a baby were checking in. The baby, ignored in a car seat at their feet, gazed with myopic wonder at the chair leg and her mother’s jeans.

‘Let’s go and look at the town,’ said Dan.

They locked their room, and walked beneath the medieval arch into the centre. They took leaflets from the display in the hotel, then forgot them in the first cafe they went to. Bea had an ice cream. They shared it on a bench in the courtyard of the Hospice de Beaune. It was a suntrap. The ice cream melted down her hand while they looked at the multicoloured patterns in the tiles of the roof. They both licked ice cream from her fingers and wrists and Dan dabbed at her with a paper napkin, squashed into a tiny ball.

‘Messy girl,’ he said.

Detective Dufour rang to update them. The permission to seize the money would come through from the juge very shortly. Once the paperwork was in order they would collect it as soon as possible.

‘We’ll see you at Paligny at four o’clock,’ he said.

Bea thanked him and hung up. ‘We’re meeting Dufour at four,’ she told Dan.

‘He’s the knob,’ said Dan.

‘The racist knob?’ said Bea. ‘The other one was a knob, too.’

‘The hairy one?’

‘He perved on me.’

‘Cops the world over,’ said Dan. ‘Pervy racist knobs.’

‘Look at us, police interview veterans. We’re so street.’