Someone thrust an aged hunting knife with a honed blade into his hand; he sawed at her thick, dark hair. The idea took off: someone produced a pair of scissors, a cut-throat razor. Three men were working at her now. One was pulling her head back while the other two with drunken concentration rasped the blades across her scalp. They wielded the knives with a clumsy skill that might at any moment have veered into an accidental slashing of cheek or ear, or into something more. With her head thrown back her throat was exposed from jawbone to clavicle; a single stroke and she would have been dead. The three barbers went on with their scraping, Ariane’s hair falling in thick clumps onto the grass.

They were all watching, the whole band, swigging wine from bottles passed from hand to hand, focusing on the scene with the quiet at its centre. For no one spoke and she did not cry out. For all of them the chief interest was to inflict shame on an aristo. As long as it went on she was safe, but he could not guess what would come after the humiliation was over. In the event, she was saved by the next victim, the girlfriend of a paramilitary, who offered better sport. She shattered the silence with her shrieks. Her ripped clothes revealed spilling breasts, which she nursed in her folded arms. Taunts and laughter broke out again.

Vernhes hustled Ariane away. Her skirt was torn to the waist and the bodice hung down in tatters from the belt. She made no attempt to hold up a shred over her nakedness. He was grasping her by the upper arm as if she was under arrest, but when they had passed the first thicket he released her.

‘Go,’ he hissed. ‘Just get going, now.’

‘Not a nice story,’ he said.

Even sharply censored for Cazalle’s ears, it wasn’t pleasant. But he didn’t mean it to be. No mention of the shootings, of course, or of the rapes. Cazalle’s head was bent. His face bore no expression.

‘I did my best for her. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen men in that state, but it’s not easy to deal with them. It’s the mob.’

Cazalle was getting up once again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Vernhes said. He wasn’t, of course. He had enjoyed it.

‘No. I wanted to hear it. Thank you for telling me.’

It was dark outside and Theo cycled cautiously out of the village in the direction of the little farm called Pechagrier to visit the Russian. Vernhes had given no indication of why his men should have seized Ariane. He implied that he had tried to protect her. Because he had thought her innocent, or because he thought her guilty but did not want to say so to her husband?

At the turning for Pechagrier he dismounted and searched the hillside for a light. The house was dark and lifeless. The Russian was his best hope of discovering what had happened to Henri. He had, perhaps, been with him on the last day and would be able to give a first-hand account of his capture.