‘May I say, they are not the only things round here that are breathtaking?’ he commented courteously, and eased his horse into a gentle canter.

Dammit. I didn’t mean him to get that connected.

*

Joel Dirke spotted it first. Sharp pilot’s eyes.

‘Look!’ he pointed up ahead.

A thin rope of smoke was rising straight into the air from the roof of the single-storey thatched cottage. It lay set back from the dirt road some way to the north of us, surrounded by flat open grazing land. A row of ash trees and poplars offered shade, but the place had a dilapidated and deserted air.

The smoke was not rising from the chimney, but from the thatch itself, and a flicker of red bled into the smoke as we galloped over the springy green glasswort. Another fire. Another malicious act of wanton destruction. Out here, in the middle of nowhere. What was the point? As we approached, the horses were snorting sharply and twitching ears rapidly back and forth, anxious and nervy. The instinct to flee was kicking in. Joel jumped off Tonnerre and threw me his reins, just as the red flicker became a crackling snapping sheet of flame.

‘Lead them away,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll make certain the interior is empty. Stay clear.’

He ran into the burning building, terrifying the life out of me, though the downstairs seemed free of flames so far. I turned the horses and moved them back, calming them.

‘Come out,’ I yelled as the flames started to slide down the thatch, but there was no sign of Joel.

A sudden movement startled the horses. It was in the garden off to one side of the cottage where a shed was struggling to stay upright. From inside it stepped a figure.

I felt a thud, inside my head. As though someone had taken a hammer to me, but it was only my thoughts slamming into each other. The figure was Maurice Piquet. Even in a heavy leather jacket and from a distance, I knew him. As if his image was branded on to my retina. I knew his thick black hair and eyebrows that met in the middle and the way he held himself like a boxer ready for the ring. A leather helmet was pushed back off his head.

He looked straight at me and for a moment I thought he was coming for me. He made a dart forward as though coming to finish the job of ripping my cheek off, but then halted when I swung back up into the saddle. Instead he ducked behind the shed. Instantly I heard an engine kick into life and a black motorcycle shot out with Piquet astride it. It raced up on to the dirt road and shot off at speed, making me think with a shudder of the one that had followed me out of Serriac the day I visited the mayor.