By now the tranquillity of the rural Normandy morning was well and truly shattered. The sharp reports of rifle fire could easily be heard from the beach, where Nazim and the others were guarding the grounded boat. And they could certainly be heard from the house half a field away from the cottage.

The terrorists had been right in supposing that this was the home of real, actual farmers. Seven of them: four brothers called Jean-Luc, Jean-Étienne, Jean-Claude and Jean-Pierre Pasquinel and their three cousins Léon, Noah and Axel. All strong, rough-hewn and brawny country boys, aged between eighteen and thirty-one. The Pasquinel land covered twenty-nine hectares, enough to keep them busy, and had been in the family for eight generations. René Pasquinel had died some years back, leaving his sons to work the place and look after their mother. The cousins had joined them a while later; the most recent arrival was twenty-three-year-old Axel, currently on the lam after skipping bail over a petty misdemeanour.

Like all farmers the Pasquinel boys and their cousins had been up early that morning, and were finishing breakfast around the long farmhouse kitchen table when they were startled by the sound of gunfire coming from the Simonot place next door. ‘What the—?’ said Jean-Luc, the eldest, spilling his coffee as he jumped up from the table and went to the window to look.

Moments later, they were grabbing the hunting rifles that hung on racks near the door, and running outside. Jean-Luc and his brothers leaped into one of the pickups and went tearing out of the farmyard and across the field that separated their property from that of Maurice and Suzette Simonot. As they approached the cottage they stared in horror at the torn, bloodied bodies on the ground: Maurice sprawled out on his back near the barn, Suzette crumpled in the flower bed. Stunned shock quickly gave way to speechless anger as the brothers spotted four strangers, clutching what appeared to be Kalashnikov rifles, piling into the Simonots’ little bright red Citroën C1 and taking off in a hurry.

Jean-Luc whipped out his mobile phone to tell his eldest cousin Léon back at the house the barely believable news that a bunch of crazed killers with machine guns had just murdered their friends next door and stolen their car. Moments later, Léon, Noah and Axel were arming themselves with another rifle and two shotguns, leaping into the second pickup truck and hammering across the field to join the four brothers.

By the time the pickup trucks reached the road the killers had vanished. It took a couple of screeching wrong turns on the maze of country lanes before they realised that the fleeing perpetrators had been heading for the beach. ‘I see the fuckers!’ roared Jean-Pierre, pointing down the hillside at the little red dot of the car hammering along the rocky path. He skidded and turned back, the second pickup truck following right behind.