‘It’s a matter of life or death.’

‘It’s a matter of pissing me off!’

She lit the gas lamp with a sigh and took his hand. Sitting in the ring of white light, she had something of the fortune teller in a gypsy caravan.

‘We could cut it at the first knuckle. You’d still have a bit of finger left.’

‘Do whatever you think. Just be quick.’

He immediately regretted what he had just said. Anne had picked up the board and the knife, clutching his hand firmly between her knees. He had not expected her to make up her mind so quickly. ‘Be quick’ was a figure of speech, like ‘Just a minute, Mr Executioner.’ But Anne was a woman of action, she acted first and thought about it afterwards, if she thought about it at all. Her knife-wielding shadow loomed terrifyingly behind her.

‘Anne, wait!’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know … Give me some rum.’

‘You’re such a pain in the arse! Do you want this to take all night?’

She poured him a glass, all the while muttering about how hungry and cold and tired she was and how now was really not the time and a whole lot of other things he didn’t catch because the drink had set off a violent coughing fit. Having caught sight of the chopping board and the long knife, sacred objects generally used to cut food from which he would be offered scraps, Boudu had come to join them.

‘Right, ready? I’ll count to three. One …’

Neither two, nor three. It was the noise that hurt the most. The same crack you heard when you struck a bit of cartilage in a veal chop. Other than that it was just cold, an intensely cold sensation that paralysed him from head to foot. His jaws seemed welded to one another and his eyelids forever sewn shut on a vision of the past.

‘Shit, the blood’s pouring out! We’ll have to cauterise it.’

‘Just a bandage. A bit of alcohol to disinfect it and a bandage.’

‘And you think I’ve got all that stuff with me? It’s not as if I was planning on doing an operation this evening. I’m telling you, we need to cauterise it. Wait, I’ve got an idea.’

Anne went to the front of the van and searched the dashboard. She was like a giant striding about inside a matchbox. Marc’s face was glazed with cold sweat. The hostage was right, you hardly felt anything, maybe just a lack … After a minute, Anne reappeared holding something in her hand that was glowing like embers.

‘What’s that?’

‘The cigarette lighter. Don’t move, it’s the perfect fit.’

The burn was so sharp and so sudden he didn’t hear himself scream before losing consciousness.