There is a low ripple of laughter in the courtroom. Marianne Andrews shimmies slightly. Liv detects unfulfilled stage ambitions.

‘Indeed. Have you read all your mother’s journals?’

‘Oh, good God, no,’ she says. ‘There’s thirty years’ worth of stuff in there. We – I – only found them last night.’ Her gaze briefly flickers towards the bench. ‘But we found the important bit. The bit where Mom was given the painting. That’s what I brought in here.’ She places great emphasis on the word ‘given’, glancing sideways at Liv, and nodding to herself as she says it.

‘Then you haven’t yet read Louanne Baker’s 1948 journal?’

There is a short silence. Liv is aware of Henry reaching for his own files.

Jenks holds out his hand and the solicitor hands him a piece of paper. ‘My lord, may I ask you to turn to the journal entry for the eleventh of May 1948, entitled “House Moves”?’

‘What are they doing?’ Liv’s attention is finally drawn back to the case. She leans in towards Henry, who is scanning the pages.

‘I’m looking,’ he whispers.

‘In it Louanne Baker discusses her household move from Newark, in Essex County, to Saddle River.’

‘That’s right,’ says Marianne. ‘Saddle River. That’s where I grew up.’

‘Yes … You’ll see here that she discusses the move in some detail. She talks of trying to find her saucepans, the nightmare of being surrounded by unpacked boxes. I think we can all identify with that. But, perhaps most pertinently, she walks around the new house trying …’ he pauses, as if ensuring he reads the words verbatim ‘… “trying to find the perfect spot to hang Liesl’s painting”.’

Liesl.

Liv watches the journalists rifle through their notes. But she realizes with a sickening feeling that she already knows the name.

‘Bollocks,’ says Henry.

Jenks knows the name too. Sean Flaherty’s people are way ahead of them. They must have had a whole team reading the journals through lunchtime.

‘I would now like to draw Your Honour’s attention to records kept by the German Army during the First World War. The Kommandant who was stationed at St Péronne from 1916, the man who brought his troops in to Le Coq Rouge, was a man called Friedrich Hencken.’ He pauses to let that sink in. ‘The records state that the Kommandant stationed there at the time, the Kommandant who so admired the painting of Édouard Lefèvre’s wife, was one Friedrich Hencken.

‘And now I would like to show to the court the 1945 census records of the area around Berchtesgaden. Former Kommandant Friedrich Hencken and his wife, Liesl, settled there after his retirement. Just streets away from the Collection Point storage facility. She was also recorded as walking with a pronounced limp, given a childhood bout of polio.’

Their QC is on her feet. ‘Again, this is circumstantial.’

‘Mr and Mrs Friedrich Hencken. My Lord, it is our contention that Kommandant Friedrich Hencken took the painting from Le Coq Rouge in 1917. He removed it to his home, seemingly against the will of his wife, who might reasonably have objected to such a – a potent image of another woman. It stayed there until his death, upon which Mrs Hencken was so keen to dispose of it that she took it a few streets away to the place she knew held a million pieces of artwork, a place where it would be swallowed up and never be seen again.’

Angela Silver sits down.

Jenks continues – there is a new energy about him now: ‘Ms Andrews. Let’s go back to your mother’s memories of this time. Could you read the following paragraph, please? This, for the record, comes from the same journal entry. In it, Louanne Baker apparently finds what she believes is the perfect spot for The Girl, as she calls the painting.’

‘As soon as I put her in that front parlour, she looked comfortable. She’s not in direct sunlight there, but the south-facing window, with its warm light, makes her colours glow. She seems happy enough, anyhow!’

Marianne reads slowly now, unfamiliar with these words of her mother’s. She glances up at Liv, and her eyes hold an apology, as if she can already see where this is going.

‘I banged the nails in myself – Howard always does knock out a fist-sized chunk of plaster when he does it – but as I was about to hang her, something made me turn the painting over and take another look at the back of it. And it made me think of that poor woman, and her sad, embittered old face. And I remembered something I’d forgotten since the war.

‘I always assumed it was something out of nothing. But as Liesl handed over the painting, she briefly snatched it back, as if she’d changed her mind. Then she rubbed at something on the back, like she was trying to rub something off. She rubbed it and rubbed it, like a crazy woman. She rubbed so hard I thought she actually hurt her fingers.’

The courtroom is still, listening.

‘Well, I looked at the back of it just now, just as I looked at it then. And it was the one thing that really made me wonder whether that poor woman had been in her right mind when she handed it over. Because it doesn’t matter how long you stare at the back of that painting – aside from the title – there is truly nothing there, just a smudge of chalk.

‘Is it wrong to take something from someone not in their right mind? I still haven’t worked it out. Truthfully, the world seemed so insane back then – with what was going on in the camps, and grown men weeping, and me in charge of a billion dollars’ worth of other people’s things – that old Liesl and her bleeding knuckles scrubbing away at nothing seemed actually pretty normal.’