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good.”
    “How reassuring.”
    “But I don’t think you can get that sort of cliff arising naturally in the environment. Especially not if it’s a
flic
.”
    “Let’s hope you’re right, sir.”
    A young woman stood uncertainly at the Commissariat door. The door did not actually say “Commissariat,” but there was “Brigade Criminelle” in bright black lettering on a door plate affixed to the lintel. It was the only thing that was clean about this otherwise filthy and dilapidated building, where four workman with an ear-splitting power drill were still putting iron bars on the outside windows. Maryse reckoned that whatever was on the door, there had to be policemen behind it, nearer to hand than at the Commissariat down the road. She took a step towards the door, then checked herself. Paul had warned her that the police would just laugh her off. But she was worried, what with the children and all. What would it cost her? Five minutes of time, no more. She would just say what she had to say, and then go.
    “My poor Maryse,” Paul had said, “the
flics
won’t take a blind bit of notice. But if that’s what you want to do, go tell them!”
    A fellow emerged from the side door, went past her down the street and then turned back. Maryse stood there fiddling with her handbag strap.
    “Are you all right?” he asked.
    The man was short and dark, and he looked like a pig’s breakfast. His hair was all tousled and he’d rolled his jacket sleeves halfway up his unshirted forearm. Looked like a guy with troubles to tell, just like she had. But he was on his way out.
    “Are they nice, inside?” Maryse asked him.
    The dark fellow shrugged. “Depends on who you get.”
    “Do they listen?”
    “Depends on what you tell them.”
    “My nephew thinks they’ll make fun of me.”
    The man leaned his head to one side and looked at Maryse attentively.
    “So what’s this all about?”
    “My block, a couple of nights ago. I’m sick with worry because of the kids. If there was a nutter inside the other night, how do I know he’s not going to come back? Am I right?”
    Maryse was blushing and biting her lip.
    “Look, this is the Brigade Criminelle here,” the man said, waving at the grimy frontage. “It’s for murders. You know, when someone gets killed.”
    “Oh!” said Maryse in consternation.
    “Go down to the station on the boulevard, please. It’s lunchtime, they’ll not be too busy, and they’ll listen to you properly.”
    Maryse shook her head vigorously. “No, I can’t do that. I can’t because I’ve got to be back in the office at two and the manager is a right dragon. Can’t the men here pass it all on to their boulevard branch? I mean,
flics
all work for the same firm, don’t they?”
    “Well, not quite,” the man answered. “But what’s happened? A burglary?”
    “Oh no.”
    “A fight?”
    “Oh no.”
    “Tell us what it was, it’ll make it easier to put you on the right track.”
    “OK, OK,” Maryse blurted out, beginning to quake.
    The man propped his elbow on a parked car and waited patiently for Maryse to find her words.
    “It’s black paint,” she explained. “Or rather, thirteen black paintings, on all the front doors of the staircase. They scare me. I’m on my own with the kids, you see.”
    “Paintings? You mean pictures?”
    “Oh no, not pictures. They’re fours. Number 4s. Big black 4s, like they were old-fashioned or something. I wondered if it wasn’t some gang doing it for a lark. Maybe the
flics
know what it is, maybe they’ll understand. But maybe they won’t. Paul told me, ‘If you want to get laughed at, go tell the
flics
.’”
    The scruffy fellow stood up straight and took Maryse by the arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and get that all down, and then you’ll have nothing more to worry about.”
    “Hey, wouldn’t it be better to find a
flic
first?”
    He looked at her for an instant with his eyebrows raised.
    “I am a
flic
,” he said.