The sun had risen fully now and half the courtyard was out of shadow. If they had looked through the window, they would have seen the group of women gathered around the body of the man who lay naked, face down: the last one, who would never leave. But enthralled with what they had found they were oblivious to the cries and movement outside.

They were still at work on the jigsaw when the police arrived.

Part One

Bonnemort

7 September 1944

Chapter One

The car drove fast along the narrow lanes. The light was failing and the beam of the headlamps merged with the dusk, which still lacked the clarity of darkness. The driver gripped the wheel, leaning forward. Since their journey began they had met roadblocks and blown-up bridges, tank-trap trenches and shot-up trucks, the debris of war left deliberately or involuntarily on the road. The passenger beside him gave directions, never doubting his route.

They did not talk. While the driver concentrated on the blurred road in the decaying light, the other gazed at the countryside with a passionate intensity of focus, devouring the scene with his eyes. For four years he had been starved of his homeland, and now he was back. He was filled with a joy composed of recognition, reunion and a triumphant sense of vindication. He had been right; he was returning victorious, resurrected. The opposite of the prodigal, he was the justified son.

He had felt this ever since he landed in the country, three months ago. In the north, people had welcomed them, shouting and waving as they passed through the towns. Here, they had seen no one in the last few hours. The landscape was secretive, yet to him deeply familiar. It was hilly, gouged by valleys, covered with forest. The chestnut trees absorbed the evening light, breaking the horizontal rays of the sun into bewildering patterns. The car ran through tunnels of oaks whose branches closed out the sky, their meagre trunks wrapped in vivid moss. Then, suddenly, they would emerge into a high meadow and, just before the road plunged once again into the trees, they would glimpse a panorama of layered hills, the thick pelt of the forest cut away here and there on the uplands into clearings round a farmstead.

About an hour later, night having fallen, they halted at their first roadblock. Rounding a corner, they were forced to an abrupt halt. The light from their headlamps struck two chestnut poles blocking the road which had been narrowed by a lorry parked on one side. Three figures stepped into the light. They wore berets, belts and armbands, but there all regularity of dress ceased. All were armed, two with Brens, the inefficient sub-machine gun air dropped by the thousand to the Resistance, the youngest with a Mauser rifle.

The driver revved the engine and pulled the gearstick into reverse. The passenger took his pistol from its holster and laid it on the ledge in front of him.