A boy. A life extinguished before his first pint. And now the Republic, that land of Gauloises and existential shrugs, is finally shaking off its Gallic torpor.
A suspect in a child murder case, a name that should have been blotted from the record, turns out to have a dossier thick enough to stop a guillotine. It was a case of the system failing, as systems are wont to do. The mob, naturally, took to the streets with their baguettes of fury and their banners demanding justice (or at least a decent riot).
Over the murky water, perfidious Albion stirs. The UK, in a moment of righteous indignation that cuts through the usual fog of Brexit bickering, now calls for cross-Channel justice reform. The logic, as far as I can ascertain from my seat in the Soho snug, is that a child killer in Calais is a threat to a child in Clacton.
That borders, like bad plumbing, leak. So we want a joint task force. A super-squad of coppers with polyglot skills and a shared disdain for paperwork.
The Home Secretary, a woman whose face looks like it's been carved from a block of custard, has proposed a 'radical new approach'. In practice, this will mean more forms, more acronyms, and a lot of stern nodding across a conference table in a windowless room in Brussels. The French, to their credit, are too busy burning bins to form a coherent response.
But the real story, the one that chills the blood faster than a double gin on a Tuesday morning, is the sheer predictability of it all. The suspect's past was known. The warnings were filed.
The child is dead. And we sit here, with our gin and our laptops, pretending that a joint communiqué will make a difference. It won't.
It never does. But at least the riot footage will be spectacular.
