Josh Ireland

And then, you know, there's a very sad sort of coda as Natalia, his wife, who's loyal, adores him, watches him, you know, his breathing becomes slowly more shallow.

Then finally he sort of slips away and that's it.

He's arrested.

And his trial begins quite briskly.

And so there is kind of a couple of strange extra moments.

So one moment is that part of the Mexican justice system is they recreate the attack so that he comes back in and he has to go through it again and apparently looks terrified about what's happening.

but not as terrified as he is when he's forced to confront Sylvia Agalof, who is completely bereft, completely destroyed by the knowledge of what she has unwittingly done.

And she starts to attack him and has to be dragged off him.

Yeah, his girlfriend, wife.

And so she, and she is, she's also sort of

swept up by the police quite quickly who assume that she is in on it yeah and then she eventually is cleared and ends up as a sort of I think she lives in obscurity as a primary school teacher for the rest of her life whereas Ramon spends 20 years in prison does he

In a prison which is now, sort of fascinatingly, is the archive, the central archives in Mexico.

So when I went out to do the research for the book, you're also in the prison where Ramon spent 20 years.

And he holds fast to his alibi.

He never, ever gives any hint that he's anything other than Jacques Monard, a Belgian.

He won't speak Spanish, or he, as it were, pretends to slowly learn Spanish rather than...

Because it's Mexican justice system and it's slightly different to ours, he marries a woman in prison.

And the other element is, although the NKVD and later the KGB officially keep their distance, they make sure he lives comfortably.

He has the best lawyers you can get in Mexico.

He has a good cell.