To my horror, his eyes filled with unshed tears. I had never seen my father cry, not once in my whole life. Not even when my mother died giving birth to Isaac. He snatched up a porcelain statue of Saint Genesius, the patron saint of Arles, which had stood on the sideboard eyeing us sternly for as long as I could remember, and hurled it with a bellow of rage at the tiled floor. Without a word he strode out of the room, slamming the door so hard that the plaster on the wall cracked.

‘What is it?’ I said urgently to Léon Roussel. ‘What has happened? Is André worse?’

His expression had grown sombre, his police captain face firmly in place.

‘Goliath,’ he said, ‘has been hacked to death.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

LÉON ROUSSEL

Captain Léon Roussel moved quickly into the cobbled yard, because he didn’t want the Caussade girl running headlong into what lay in the barn. He’d been there. Seen it. Smelled it. The stench still clung to his nostrils. He stepped in front of her slender figure as she took off towards the largest of the old barns and placed a restraining hand on her arm. Her bare skin was cold.

‘Steady, don’t rush. It’s not going anywhere,’ he said.

She jerked to a halt. Shock changes people. He’d witnessed it time and again in his work in the police force. When it hits hard, really hard, some people freeze. Some scream. Some shake or weep their hearts out. Others seem to lose their bones, they crumple, eyes glazed. With Eloïse Caussade, shock stole her tongue.

They stood awkwardly in silence while he gave her time, aware of the scar on her face pulsing bone-white. He’d heard rumours. That she’d almost killed her brother in a car accident – you can’t keep that sort of thing quiet in a small town like Serriac. The last time he’d laid eyes on Eloïse Caussade she’d been a scrawny fifteen-year-old who’d possessed the wildness of the marshes in her. All elbows and knees, galloping her horse through a rainbow of sea-spray across the wetlands, long black hair streaming loose behind her like river-reeds.

Now look at her.

Eight years later, a Parisian to her polished fingertips, she was wearing a sleeveless blue shirtwaister, the colour of the wild irises among the glasswort, with a full skirt and cinched tiny waist. She obviously hadn’t come to ride horses. Her patent leather shoes were out of place in a bull-yard but she was like her father. They had the same capacity for silence, and the same bloodless lips today. Léon turned his face away, giving her a moment of privacy. A fitful breeze from the south carried the tangy scent of the sea and the sun hovered low on the vast horizon as though reluctant to leave the scene.