Returning to the car, Ben rolled down the cliff path and made a discreet escape back along the narrow country lanes. They weren’t leaving a moment too soon, as the police were descending en masse upon the once sleepy village of Vaucottes that was now experiencing its bloodiest day since the Wehrmacht’s defences had collapsed in the face of the Allied invasion, and tank battalions rumbled over this picturesque landscape. More sirens were screeching and wailing from further inland, a few hundred yards from the beach, and Ben could see flashing blue lights among the scattered properties up there. It looked like they’d found the bodies of Maurice and Suzette, adding to the death toll.

Police cars zipped by in the opposite direction as Ben sped away from Vaucottes. If it had been him, he’d have ordered every car in the vicinity to be stopped and searched. He was glad that the local police commander didn’t think the same way he did.

He had cousin Axel’s phone in his pocket, and when they were far enough from Vaucottes to be sure they’d got away clean, he pulled over in a grassy layby, killed the motor and took the phone out. He wiped the blood off the screen, then checked the contacts menu. It held a list of names, of which four were the initials J-L, J-C, J-P and J-E. Ben reckoned that if the eldest brother was called Jean-Luc and his late sibling’s name had been Jean-Étienne, the other two were most likely Jean-something as well. Nothing like having imaginative parents.

Ben brought up the number for J-L and held it for Roth to see. Roth knew what to do. He took out his own phone and got to work as Ben dialled the number from Axel’s phone. He put the call on speaker so Roth could hear.

The number rang, and rang, and was on the verge of going to voicemail when the call was picked up. The sound of a hard-pushed car engine was audible in the background. In the foreground was a strained and urgent male voice saying, ‘Axel? Axel?’ Jean-Luc had probably thought that his cousin was dead.

‘I’m not Axel,’ Ben said. ‘But he’s alive. He’s going to be fine, Jean-Luc. And I need you to listen to me very carefully.’

There was a stunned silence. Just the rasping engine noise and someone else’s muffled voice in the background yelling in French, ‘What’s happening? Is he okay?’ Jean-Luc yelled back at him to shut up and drive. Then asked Ben, ‘Who the fuck is this? Why are you calling on Axel’s phone?’

‘Think of me as your best friend in the world right now,’ Ben replied. ‘And your only chance of coming out of this alive. What you’re doing is very stupid.’