No one else was in the room. I stood at Bertin’s side, staring down at the dead body of the man who had struck such fear in me, and I hated the feel of tears on my cheeks. I turned away. He wasn’t worth my tears. Quickly I searched the rest of the house, creeping on tiptoe, jumping at the slightest shadow, but I forced myself into every room.

Reluctantly I returned to the main bedroom. Neat, tidy, dark furniture, damask bedcover. I recalled only too well what was hiding behind the bedhead, so I went over, located the photographs in the pouch and dropped it into my bag. I forced my gaze back to the bloody shirt on the body on the floor.

I must go and telephone the police. Léon won’t be there. But still. Go. Telephone.

Instead I dropped to my knees on the hard wooden floor that Léon had torn up. This close, Bertin’s face was slack and without menace, eyes closed, specks of blood glistening in his moustache.

Glistening? Not dried to black flecks?

It had only just happened. Get out. Get out now. Run.

A noise behind me. I spun round still on my knees and found myself nose to nose with the wrong end of a gun.

*

‘Eloïse! Merde! I almost shot you.’

I looked up. My mother’s face stared back at me.

‘Isaac!’ He’d been behind the door. I jumped to my feet. ‘Isaac, what are you doing here?’ My words came to a halt as I took in the gun in his fist. The blood on his fingers. The smear of scarlet streaked across his shirt-front. My hand grasped at his arm and clenched it tight. ‘What have you done?’

My brother’s wide eyes clouded with panic. ‘No, Eloïse, no, no. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.’

He opened his fingers and released the gun as though it burned his skin. It clattered to the floor and both of us jumped back from it. I stared at its blued metal. I knew the weapon, a Smith & Wesson revolver, Chief’s Special. Small, compact, a five-round cylinder, American manufacture. Somewhere my brain registered these facts. As if they were more important than the fact of a man lying dead at my feet with a sticky hole blasted through his chest. That fact got pushed away to somewhere dark. Somewhere I didn’t want to touch.

‘What the hell happened to your face?’ Isaac demanded.

I swung back to him, suddenly angry. I didn’t know whether the anger was at my brother or at the man on the floor. ‘What the hell happened to your hands?’