‘No reprisals,’ said Florence. ‘They’ve gone for good.’

‘Ah, let’s hope so,’ said Petignat. He looked round helplessly. He was feeling distinctly ill. He’d had nothing to eat yet and he had seen enough death to make you heave.

‘You need a drink,’ Madame de Cazalle said. ‘Let us give you something, a glass of brandy.’

They’d walked through to the farmyard, leaving the body where it was. He noticed that the linen boiler was already lit, and steam was seeping out at the edge of the lid. They must have been up early to do the laundry and then found that thing in the courtyard.

So he had to do it. Dealing with the body was nothing, it was no more than a pig’s carcass to be carted away. But telling the women about Henri, telling Micheline that her husband had been shot by this very guy, that was worse than anything he’d ever had to do.

They’d sat in Micheline’s kitchen, and it was as if the social order was inverted. Micheline and Florence sat down. Madame de Cazalle poured him some brandy. The old girls had disappeared. He told them, straight out, what had happened yesterday. They wouldn’t believe him at first. They made him repeat it, begin at the beginning, but where was that? The beginning for him was when the Germans burst into the Gendarmerie and he was herded into the square with the rest of the men. That’s when he’d seen Henri, but it wasn’t the beginning for him, it was the end.

‘He was already wounded,’ he said, as if that might comfort them. ‘I don’t know how, but they only got him because he was wounded.’

Micheline was sobbing, racking her chest. Florence’s tears flowed down her cheeks, her mouth turned down like a clown’s. Madame de Cazalle was the worst. She turned to the sink and retched. Nothing came. She probably hadn’t eaten that morning either, what with the body and all. But she continued to try to throw her heart up until at last she spat out a gob of greenish phlegm.

Petignat had had it by then. He threw back the dregs of the brandy and left. He lugged the body away by himself, because he couldn’t leave it there and he couldn’t ask for help. What more could he do? That’s the way it was. And he still had the eight bodies on the road to deal with.

Theo rode on to Pechagrier. It was all the more important now, he thought, to identify someone from Group Rainbow who could tell him about the events of that night from the viewpoint of the Maquis. How did their movements fit in with those of the Germans? Who were the attackers, who the attacked? He had caught glimpses of Henri’s Group Rainbow in Lepech in the afternoon of 17 August, in the battle at Bonnemort in the early evening, then at their final tragic appearance in the square when Henri was shot and six others hanged. But what was the rationale behind these actions? What had they been trying to achieve? The Russian who might tell him was not to be found. A thread of smoke emerged from the chimney of his cottage and a dog barked furiously from within, but he could raise no other response to his knocks and calls. With regret, he once again abandoned his attempt and rode back to Bonnemort.