‘Poor woman,’ Bea heard the second gendarme saying. ‘A mother. My God, poor woman.’

‘It will be necessary for at least one of the family to identify the body,’ said Blanchard. ‘Would it be possible for you to come with us to Bourg-en-Bresse?’

‘They need us to identify him,’ Bea said to Griff.

‘Fine,’ said Griff. ‘And tell him I want to see where it happened.’

Bea did as she was told. ‘He doesn’t know if that’s allowed,’ she said. ‘We need to identify him first.’

‘They may have got the wrong person,’ said Griff. ‘They’ve probably made a mistake.’

She realised her father was in shock, too, and hadn’t taken in what had happened. None of them had. They were at the beginning. They were nothing in the face of it.

‘I don’t think they’ve got the wrong person,’ she said. ‘I think they’re sure.’

‘Ask him, Bea,’ said Griff.

‘All right,’ she said, but she didn’t, she just asked the officers to wait, so they could get dressed properly.

Blanchard wouldn’t let Griff drive himself, and Griff wouldn’t allow anybody else to drive his car. Nobody wanted to directly contradict him, or tell him he wasn’t in his right mind, and there was an awkward, circular argument. In the end, Dan and Bea went in the police car, and Blanchard drove Griff’s Porsche, with Griff sitting furiously in the passenger seat and Liv in the back, alone.

It was more than two hours to the Hôpital Centre Fleyriat, which was on the outskirts of Bourg-en-Bresse. Bea and Dan sat in silence and the journey was timeless, just being taken to the next thing, like space travel. Sitting in the back of a French police car was no more strange than anything else. It was as if her brain was deep-frozen. Dan held her hand, and their hands did not change position all the way.

The Centre Fleyriat was surrounded by vast, brand-new-looking car parks in a featureless landscape. The police car and the Porsche parked side by side, with an expanse of tarmac around them. They walked all together in a group to the front entrance, and went inside. There was almost nobody in sight, anywhere in the clean, empty spaces of stone and glass. A woman approached them. She was in her fifties, and had a chignon, an identification badge and highly polished shoes.

‘Hélène Guerin,’ she said. They all shook hands. ‘I am here to help you.’ She led them down a corridor and into an immaculate lift. She pressed the button for the basement with a precise movement. ‘This must be very hard for you,’ she said in French, looking up at the numbers as they illuminated. ‘You and your family have my sympathy.’