His immediate response was to sit down. But there was nothing, not a rock or a tree stump, still less a bench or handy Voltaire chair to settle into. So instead, with arms hanging by his sides, he walked several times round the perimeter of the patch of yellowed grass where barely an hour ago his camper van had stood. The interesting thing about the last word is that it isn’t the last word at all, but can be multiplied at leisure to fill the void of an unsolvable enigma. Which he did, in a range of tones of voice, like an actor rehearsing lines. Then, trying to regain control of the situation, he began constructing a series of hypotheses to find a semblance of sense where apparently there was none. Anne had been attacked … by a prowler … gypsies … She had been kidnapped, raped … Knowing his daughter, this seemed unlikely. She had been killed, then, strangled, stabbed and thrown into a ditch, a ditch so thick with brambles it was impenetrable. And Boudu? What had they done with him? Was he still in the camper van or huddled against the mutilated body of his mistress?

Having armed himself with a stick, Marc was beginning to beat back brambles, muttering ‘Boudu? … Boudu?’ when the familiar sound of a diesel engine caught his attention. Anne drew into the exact spot the van had occupied an hour earlier. She was not alone – a young man resembling a baby ostrich, his long neck emerging from a loose polo neck jumper, was sitting beside her.

‘Anne!’

‘What on earth are you doing with that stick? Looking for snails?’

‘Anne, where were you?’

‘I went for a drive. I wanted to give it a spin. It’s great.’

‘But you don’t have a licence. You—’

‘Who gives a toss? I know how to drive. Oh, this is Zoltan. He’s Hungarian.’

Anne gestured to the slender Magyar who unfolded his six-foot frame and marched purposefully towards Marc, a carnival smile hanging from his sticking-out ears.

‘I Zoltan, Hungaria.’

Marc shook the cold, bony outstretched hand, wondering how they were going to deal with this.

‘Anne, where’s he going?’

‘No idea. He hardly speaks a word of French. He was hitching, I picked him up. He seems nice, doesn’t he?’

It was true, he didn’t seem aggressive. He carried his village-idiot grin with as much conviction as his huge red rucksack, gazing enthusiastically at everything around him – the trees, the sky, the camper van, Anne, Marc and the village bell tower.

It had nothing to do with his finger, although it did now have the turgescent appearance of a freshly dug carrot. No, this time it was his legs. They had simply refused to obey him when he tried to stand up from the step and dust the crumbs of his sandwich off his lap. No pain, pins and needles or cramp. His legs had simply gone on strike, without prior warning. The rest of his body – the torso, arms, neck, head – continued to work perfectly. Marc had been reduced to a torso as Anne, munching a slice of ham, looked on in bafflement, as did Zoltan, who could not tell if Marc’s vain attempts to stand up were part of some weird after-dinner ritual. Anne swallowed the ribbon of fat and rind she always saved until last.