My mind clutched on tight to that thought and a bubble of relief began to rise in my chest. I thrust the photographs back in their hiding place and took one last look in each room to see if I’d missed anything.

Afterwards, I wished I hadn’t.

His bed was not flat against the wall. I’d not noticed it before. The wooden bedhead was at a slight angle as though someone had reached behind it. I could have walked out. I should have walked out. Bertin – or, worse, Piquet – might return at any moment and I needed to get away from there fast.

But it was too tempting. I hurried over and yanked the bed away from the wall to see behind it. Taped to the back of the bedhead was a black leather-zipped pouch. A voice in my head told me to back off, to leave it there. Walk away. Don’t touch.

Don’t jump that fence.

Don’t climb that roof.

Don’t take that risk.

Don’t break into a mayor’s desk.

Since when had I listened to that voice?

I snatched the pouch from its position and unzipped it. I felt a twinge of disappointment. Inside lay more photographs and I lifted them out. At least fifty. But these were not of bombers and fighters or anti-aircraft guns.

These were all of me.

*

I stared at myself spread out on the floor. Fifty of me. Time took an odd lurch and I wanted to rewind it, to put it back where it belonged. I couldn’t tell whether it was fear or anger that curdled in my stomach.

There were pictures of me going about my life unawares. Images of me entering the police station with a basket of eggs for Léon, of me perched on the fountain watching the protest march in Serriac, of me striding out of the church with a keen sense of purpose. Me with a scarf over the lower half of my face shovelling the burnt remains of the stables. Me walking Cosette across the yard. And worst of all: me kneeling with blood on my hands and a face twisted by grief beside the body of Mickey in the street.

Me. Again and again.

A darkness spread across the back of my mind. How dare he? How dare Gilles Bertin invade ever y moment of my life?

The close-ups were the worst. My eyes. My scar. My hair. My mouth. I wanted to tear them into a thousand pieces. Too intimate. Too private. Too intense.

Why? Why all these images of me?

Time abruptly clicked back into place and I bundled up all the photographs into a neat pile, hands jittering. I swore long and loud, then put ever ything back the way I’d found it and left the house with a sense of relief. Like coming up for air.