‘Mr Nikola?’

‘Yes?’

‘Could I have a word with you, if you’re not too busy?’

‘What about?’

‘Henri Menesplier.’

‘Oh, very well. Come on up.’

Looking at Henri’s lieutenant, he saw someone who was defined immediately as Russian. He was a big man, tall and solidly built, with a round, bald head that made up for its lack of hair on the skull by its profusion on the jaw; a thickly curling brown beard tinged with grey. Below the massive forehead was a face like a hunk of uncooked bread, doughy and pliable.

‘I’ve about finished,’ he said. ‘You can take the tools.’

He handed them to Theo and he himself dragged a sack of logs behind him.

‘So, you’re a friend of Henri’s?’

‘Yes. He was like my older brother. I’m Theophile de Cazalle from Bonnemort.’

‘You’re the one who was supposed to be dead? Rose again with the liberation?’

It took some time to reach the point of conversation. First the wood had to be tipped onto the wood pile, tools chucked into the tangle of instruments on the shelf in the porch, boots and coats removed and hung on a hook so overburdened that they simply slid off onto the floor, before they could enter the house, in stockinged feet, through the back door. The Russian closed the door of the living room behind them with care.

‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating a rush-seated armchair, sagging and frayed, that looked like a natural growth projecting out of the flagstones of the floor. A sudden chirruping and Theo ducked instinctively as a missile of Cretan blue swooped past him. Canaries and budgerigars, yellow, blue and green, filled the air. In one corner the red glow of a lamp in front of an icon was almost obscured behind a half-drawn curtain.

‘Will you have tea?’ Nikola spoke fluent French with a pronounced accent.

‘Tea, ah, yes, please.’

He detested tea, the drink of his London years, yet this was not that sickly, fatty, opaque brew which the English drank ad nauseam. When it came, in glasses encased in filigree holders, it was black, translucent and fragrant, accompanied by a teaspoon and a saucer full of a thick dark brown substance.

‘Jam?’ His host held out the saucer.

‘No, thanks.’

‘No lemons for five years, but I still have jam.’ He ate it appreciatively. ‘What do you want to know about Henri? I’d have thought they could tell you anything you wanted to know over there at Bonnemort.’

‘You don’t always hear…’ Theo began.

‘Women, eh?’ Nikola commented shrewdly. He looked at him out of small pale blue eyes set deep in their sockets. ‘Well, what is it you want to know?’

‘I want to know what happened to Henri. I’ve been given hints and rumours: he was betrayed; he was incompetent; even that he was a coward.’

The Russian laughed. ‘All that? What can I say? Henri was a good man. He wasn’t a fool; he wasn’t reckless; he wasn’t a coward. You know that anyway. Perhaps it helps if someone else says it to you, eh? Now, what happened here? You mean with the Resistance?’