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insisted that he take a “proper” diploma first, and so he had enrolled at the Faculté de Droit et Sciences Économiques d’Assas
.
But such was the young Jacques’ genius, that this was not enough to keep him fully occupied. And so he had also enrolled at the Sorbonne, studying history.
    By the time he graduated from both institutions, he had developed a good network of politically engaged friends. And had started his research into the history of early French cinema.
    Acceptance to Science-Po was a formality, and given his previous academic record, his course there was reduced from four years to two. Such was his reputation for intellectual brilliance that by the time he sat the competitive exam for entry to ENA, he was already known to nearly half the members of the examination board. He sailed through the gruelling forty-five minute
Grand Oral
, during which prospective students are grilled, in public, on any subject chosen by a panel of five experts.
    According to memoirs published later by some of that panel, and others who were there that day, Gaillard barely allowed them to get a word in.
    Finishing in the top ten of his twenty-seven month course guaranteed him a pick of the top jobs in the Civil Service. Over the next twelve years his career went from strength to strength, and after a highly successful stint as principal advisor to the Minister of Finance, he was actively pursued by the Prime Minister’s office, eventually being appointed an advisor to the Prime Minister himself.
    Which is when he published his book on the History of French Cinema, and his spectacular rise to prominence hit a brick wall.
    Satirical cartoonists in the French media used him as a club with which to beat the Prime Minister. He was variously depicted as whispering advice into the premier’s ear on which of that week’s movie releases he should watch, or offering him tips on the most likely winner of best actress at the César Awards, or which film would take the Palm d’Or at Cannes. One particularly cruel cartoon in the satirical journal
Le Canard Enchaîné
conjured up an exceptionally gross-featured Prime Minister slipping JG a thick wad of two-hundred franc notes and asking if he could fix him up for the night with Sophie Marceau.
    It seemed, however, that Jacques Gaillard was enjoying his new-found celebrity, and positively thrived on his increasingly frequent television appearances.
    Then, between 1994 and 1996 he was “invited”—a clear euphemism for “instructed”—to direct students at ENA in an investigation into the history of French financial policies since the war. Perhaps an attempt by the government to lower his profile. But if that were the case, then it failed. For it was during that same period that Gaillard was asked by the French broadcaster TF1 to host his own cinema review show on television once a month, a chance he jumped at.
    And then, that August, he vanished off the face of the earth. Enzo re-read Raffin’s account of it in the book.
    He failed to return to his desk at the end of the August holidays. It caused a huge stir at the time. The papers were full of it for weeks. But the police made no progress at all. And, as always happens with these matters, the press found other things to write about, and the curious case of the disappearing Jacques Gaillard gradually slipped from public view. That was ten years ago. It still crops up from time to time. An article here, a feature piece there. But no one has ever shed new light on what happened to him.
    Enzo had never seen Gaillard’s show, but when he looked through the various photographs in Raffin’s file, his face was very familiar. A cartoonist’s gift. Aged forty-nine when he disappeared, Gaillard had disguised his encroaching baldness by contriving an extraordinary bird’s nest of dyed and lacquered curls. He had also cultivated one of those excessive French moustaches which, after an initial droop, curled extravagantly up around his