I didn’t know whether the words were inside or outside my head. If I’d known how to start a boat I would have gone hurtling after him, but I didn’t. So I waited, gaze fixed, mind churning, and felt fear again slink its way under my skin.

The night had swallowed André’s boat because he was running it with no lights, but I knew precisely where it was headed. If he tried to climb back on board Clarisse’s boat he would be torn to shreds by her three Russian bears. He had no gun. Only a knife. A knife against a Tokarev gun.

But she was a traitor to France. My brother was not a man to walk away from that.

The low boom of the waves, churning and growling like a live animal, merged with my thoughts, pounding inside my head.

‘André!’ I shouted out to sea. ‘Don’t! Please don’t.’

But my words were lost, it was too late. A vein of lightning ripped the night sky apart and I saw clearly the two boats. The smaller one was racing towards the larger one, almost there, so close now. The white glare of the lightning flash vanished, robbing me of my night vision, but I blinked and found the boat’s light again. My toes dug deep into the wet sand.

Then an explosion shattered the night. A violent sheet of flame roared up into the black sky as André’s boat slammed at full speed into Clarisse’s vessel. I couldn’t hear the noise of it. I couldn’t hear the waves at my feet. I couldn’t hear the beat of my own heart. All I could hear was the scream from hell spilling out of my mouth.

*

Dawn trickled over the horizon, grey and soulless. I’d stood on the beach all night, waiting for my brother. But he didn’t come. Dimly I was aware of movement around me, of people, of uniforms, of voices. Some spoke to me, some left me alone as if I looked like a leper. They all merged in my mind, all lost in the mists of my grief.

Only Léon was real. Only his voice reached me and only his tender grey eyes brought a flare of warmth to the cold sorrow that lay behind my ribs. He wrapped a warm blanket around me and stood at my side hour after hour while his men questioned local inhabitants and trawled the sea for wreckage.

And for bodies.

‘How many?’ I asked.

‘Five.’

‘Are they recognisable?’

‘Some. One, sad to say, is Major Dirke.’

I nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

I watched a seagull stalk the surf with its feet like yellow plates that it slapped on the sand till a tiny pink crab emerged. The orange beak devoured it.

‘The other four men I don’t recognise.’

‘Do three have tattoos?’

‘Yes, they do.’