She looked up sharply. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Because if André has been continuing to work from home for whichever side he is on, before you came home he will have needed help.’

She nodded but looked away and picked up a shoe. ‘The other day I found something written on the leather of André’s wallet.’ She opened up the shoe and slid it on to his foot. He couldn’t see her face but he could feel the tension in her fingers. ‘It was a message. It said, “Take Me Out”. At the time I didn’t understand it.’ Her breathing paused.

‘Now you do?’

She tied the shoelace. ‘Now I think the wallet was intended to be passed to his Soviet handler if ever he thought he was in such danger that he needed to be taken out immediately.’

‘Taken where?’

‘To a Soviet safe house.’ Her voice was as soft as her hands. ‘It makes sense. It also makes sense for Piquet to burn down the cottage where the Communist activists met if he really is a CIA agent.’

She slipped on the second shoe and tied its lace, but when it was done she didn’t move. She sat staring at her hands.

‘Will I go to prison?’ she asked.

‘No, I won’t let that happen. We’ll go together to the police station, you make your statement about how you found the body of Bertin lying dead in his house and we will get you a lawyer. I know a good one. But why did the gunman leave the gun there?’

Still she didn’t move. ‘I entered his house illegally,’ she admitted. ‘It will look to the police as if Bertin might have surprised me while I was skulking around, believed I was a burglar and I shot him to silence him. That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it?’

‘No, Eloïse. There’s no reason to think that.’

She lifted her head. ‘You should be in bed, not running round the town.’ She attached a small smile to the end of it, though he could not imagine where she’d got it from.

He stood up but his movements were unsteady and she rose to her feet to balance him with a hand under his elbow.

‘Thanks for doing my shoes.’

‘You’re welcome.’

He lightly kissed her mouth and together they walked out to the air base car park. There was something she wasn’t telling him. He could see it in her smile, hear it in the whisper behind her words. As they walked side by side he wondered which vital piece of information she was keeping from him. And why?

*