‘I can’t.’ I opened my mouth to object but he stepped away. The initial shock was passing. He was gathering himself together, his limbs stiffening, his mouth firmer. ‘I can’t tell you, Eloïse, because I don’t know. The leader of our action group within the Parti Communiste Français contacts our controller by telephone. We have no idea who it is. It’s safer that way.’

‘So you do the bidding of someone you don’t know.’

‘It is not as blind as you make it sound.’

‘Isn’t it?’

Now was not the time to argue the point. I steered him out the door on to the landing.

‘Run,’ I said urgently.

He blinked hard. Realisation was dawning on him. ‘Eloïse, you must leave with me. Right now.’

‘Go, Isaac, go. After what happened at the air base, the police will be looking to show the Americans how they treat violent Communists.’

Abruptly he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. ‘Thank you.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘Come too.’

‘First I must deal with the gun.’

He’d forgotten the gun. His fingerprints all over it.

‘Go now,’ I urged. ‘I’ll follow.’ I pushed him to the stairs. ‘I promise.’

With a last nervous look back at me, my brother raced down the stairs and out the front door. I lifted my skirt, snatched off my waist-petticoat, wet it under the tap and wiped every surface either of us might have touched, including the gun. When I’d finished, I stood over Bertin. I wasn’t sorry. I couldn’t find it within myself to wish him back into his life. The cleft like the mark of Cain on his chin. But he held no power over me now.

Who was responsible?

I hurried down the stairs and out into the street, ears straining for the sound of police boots. When I turned the corner at the end I heard a car’s engine come roaring into the street behind me. We’d made it out only just in time. As I wove my way through the old streets of Arles back to my car, I thought about the gun lying on the floor back in the house. I hated the knowledge of what it had done. I hated the hand that had held it. When I said I knew the weapon, the Smith & Wesson revolver, I didn’t mean I knew the make of it. I meant I knew the gun. The actual gun. I knew it because I’d last seen it in the drawer of Mayor Durand’s desk.

CHAPTER FORTY