He gestured to Perrin and they both went outside. He made a brief phone call, then the two men conferred with one another and then Vincent came back in alone.

‘Would you come into the gendarmerie with us now?’ He looked from Bea to Dan.

‘What did he say?’ said Dan.

‘Now?’ said Bea. ‘Both of us?’

‘What?’ said Dan again.

‘Yes, now, you can follow in your car,’ said Vincent. ‘OK?’

Beaune’s medieval centre was distinctive and immaculate, with steep roofs of coloured tiles and cobblestones, but outside the city walls the town could have been anywhere in France. There was nothing medieval about the Gendarmerie Nationale, no touch of the Romanesque; a brutalist concrete barracks in a residential street, facing a row of bourgeois villas. At the end of the road, lollipop trees grew tidily on a roundabout. Two bored-looking young gendarmes armed with assault rifles stood at the gate. Bea and Dan, accompanied by Vincent and Perrin, showed their passports, first to the teenage-looking soldiers, and then a desk sergeant. Bea’s bag was searched. They passed through a metal detector and two more soldiers led them across a drill square to another building, upstairs, to an office.

The office was open plan, with cubicles along one side, divided by plastic screens. The air smelled of bitter coffee and cigarettes – not fresh, but smoked outside and carried in on breath and clothing. Perrin and Vincent told them to wait, and they stood by a water cooler. Uniformed gendarmes passed back and forth, some leaving for the day, others working. Bea was the only woman. No one took any notice of them. All around, men talked on phones, officiating over the chaos, as if they could control misfortune. Perrin came back and showed them to a desk, with three chairs and a pot plant. Then he went away. After about five minutes Capitaine Vincent returned and sat down. Clasping his hands together, leaning forward, he said, in English, ‘Do you want a glass of water?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Bea.

‘OK.’ He began to speak. ‘As you know, my name is Capitaine Christophe Vincent –’

He talked fast. Every so often he would say, Do you understand? and Bea would say Yes, and translate for Dan. He and his team were officers of the judicial police, he said; OPJs in an SR unit based in Dijon, temporarily operating out of Beaune. SR stood for section de recherches. The procureur had assigned Alex’s case to the Gendarmerie Nationale. Procureur translated as public prosecutor. It wasn’t the same thing, but it was the closest word they could find –

‘Wait,’ said Dan, ‘hold on –’

Caught up in detail, she was frustrated. ‘What?’ she said.

‘Ask him why Alex’s death is being investigated.’

She turned back to Capitaine Vincent. ‘We don’t understand why it’s a police matter,’ she said.