‘Maybe Arnaud, maybe Bobo, maybe Daniel …’

‘Yes, maybe. Do you know who I’m talking about? He was around fifty or fifty-five …’

‘Arnaud, then …’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘What about him?’

‘Well, I’m British …’

‘I can tell this …’

‘And I work for Médecins sans Frontières. Arnaud gave me his card because I promised to get in touch with regard to some friends he was very concerned about in the Ivory Coast.’

‘Oh, OK …’

That did the trick; the merest suggestion of possible human rights abuses had transformed the receptionist’s previously indifferent attitude.

‘It’s just that I’ve lost the card and have no way of contacting him. Would you be able to ask him to ring me here in London or, if that’s going to be too expensive, do you have a number or an email where I could reach him in Marseille?’

As a ruse, it wasn’t watertight, but Kell possessed enough of an understanding of the French character to know that they would not refuse such a request purely on the basis of protecting Arnaud’s privacy. At worst, the receptionist would ask for Kell’s number and promise that Arnaud would call him back; at best, she would put them directly in touch.

‘He’s not working tonight,’ she said, which gave him hope that a number might be forthcoming.

‘That’s fine,’ Kell replied. ‘I can always call him on Monday when I’m back at my desk. I have all the files on the computer in my office …’

‘Hold on please.’

The line suddenly switched to an old Moby track; it wasn’t clear whether the receptionist was taking another call or had gone in search of Arnaud’s number. Within thirty seconds, however, she was back, saying: ‘OK, do you have a pen?’

‘I do.’ Kell allowed himself a quiet smile of satisfaction. ‘Thank you so much for going to all this trouble. I really think Arnaud will be pleased.’

Arnaud was in what sounded like a crowded restaurant or café and wasn’t much interested in taking a call from a complete stranger at nine thirty on a Sunday night.

‘Who?’ he said for the third time when Kell told him that he was a British journalist looking for information about one of Arnaud’s passengers, and willing to pay five hundred euros simply for the opportunity to sit down over a beer and talk.

‘What, now? Tonight?’

‘Tonight, yes. It’s urgent.’

‘This is not possible, my friend. Tonight I relax. Maybe you should too.’

A resident had emerged from one of the apartment buildings adjacent to the phone box. He turned the throttle on a motorbike and Kell had to shout above the noise of the revving engine.

‘I’ll come to you,’ he said. ‘Just tell me where you are, I’ll meet you near your home. It won’t take more than ten minutes.’

A contemplative silence ensued, which Kell eventually ventured to break by saying: ‘Hello? Are you still there?’

‘I’m still here.’ Arnaud was enjoying all the attention.

‘A thousand,’ Kell said, running out of Marquand’s money.

That did the trick. There was enough of a pause, then. ‘Which passenger do you want to know about?’

‘Not on an open line,’ Kell replied. ‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

A forty-five euro, forty-minute cab ride later, Kell was deep in the Quartier Nord, miles from the yachts and the Audis and the tennis court villas of the Corniche, in a thankless landscape of breeze-block towers and litter-strewn streets; everything that Le Corbusier, in the zeal of his idealism, had failed to imagine.

Arnaud was drinking pastis at a café in the basement of a slate-grey tower block patrolled by bored, undernourished youths wearing tracksuits and state-of-the-art trainers. One of the windows of the café had a pane of shattered glass; the other was obscured by a metal shutter daubed in graffiti: MARSEILLE. CAPITALE DE LA CULTURE ou DU BETON. Kell told his driver to wait on the street and ran a gauntlet of clicks and stares, entering the café in the expectation of total silence, of doors swishing behind him like a western saloon. Instead, he was greeted by the exclusively African clientele with half-interested nods of welcome. Perhaps Kell’s pronounced limp and the cut above his eye leant him the air of a man who had endured more than his fair share of misfortune.

‘Over here,’ said Arnaud, seated at the bar beneath a collage of photographs of Marseille footballers, past and present. On a facing wall were pictures of Lilian Thuram, Patrick Vieira and Zinedine Zidane, clutching the 1998 World Cup; next to this, a framed cartoon of Nicolas Sarkozy in exaggeratedly stacked heels, his eyes scratched out by a knife, a biro-drawn phallus swelling from his trousers. Arnaud stood up. He was a tall, well-built man, at least seventeen stone. Wordlessly, he ushered Kell to a formica table at the back of the café. The table was positioned beneath a television that had been bolted to the wall. They shook hands over an ashtray swollen with gum and cigarettes and sat on opposite chairs. Arnaud’s palm was dry and soft, his face entirely without kindness but not lacking a certain nobility. With his dark, indifferent eyes, he looked for all the world like an exiled despot of the Amin school. It made sense. Arnaud was probably losing face by talking to Kell but had calculated that a thousand euros for a ten-minute conversation was a price well worth paying.

‘So you are journalist?’

‘That’s right.’

Arnaud didn’t ask what paper. They were speaking in French, his accent as difficult to unpick as any Kell could remember. ‘And you want to know about someone?’

Kell nodded. Somebody had switched on the television and his reply was partly smothered by the commentary on a game of basketball. Perhaps Arnaud had ordered this so that they might speak in confidence; perhaps it was the manager’s way of expressing his disapproval.

‘This morning, at the ferry terminal, you picked up a man in his early thirties off the boat from Tunis.’

Arnaud nodded, though it wasn’t clear whether or not he remembered. He was wearing a button-down denim shirt and removed a packet of full-strength Winston from the breast pocket.

‘Smoke?’

‘Sure,’ said Kell, and took one.

There was a pause while Arnaud lit their cigarettes – his own first. Then he leaned forward.

‘You feeling nervous in this place? You look nervous.’

‘Do I?’ Kell knew that he didn’t and that Arnaud was trying to wind him up. ‘Funny. I was just reflecting on what a civilized place this is.’

‘Huh?’

Kell looked back at the bar. There was a half-eaten plate of spaghetti on the next-door table, two old men playing backgammon by the door. ‘You can get an espresso. You can smoke. The food smells good.’ He made a point of looking directly into Arnaud’s eyes, so that he wouldn’t have to waste time playing any more of his games. ‘I’m used to places where you can’t drink alcohol, where they don’t allow women to sit with men. I’m used to roadside bombs and snipers lining the white man up for breakfast. I get nervous in places like Baghdad, Arnaud. I get nervous in Kabul. Do you follow?’

The despot shifted in his chair, the plastic squeaking.

‘I remember this guy.’ It took Kell a moment to realize that the driver was talking about Malot.

‘I thought you might. Can you tell me where you drove him?’

Arnaud blew a cloud of smoke past Kell’s ear. ‘That’s it? That’s all you want to know?’

‘That’s all I want to know.’

He frowned, the tops of his soft black cheeks tightening under the eyes. A mixed-race boy, not much older than fifteen or sixteen, came to the table and asked Kell if he wanted a drink.

‘Nothing for me.’

‘Have something,’ said Arnaud.

Kell took a drag on the cigarette. ‘A beer.’

‘Un bière, Pep,’ said Arnaud, as though Kell’s order needed translating. He scratched at something on the side of his neck. ‘It was a long journey, expensive.’