‘These men kill,’ he’d once said to me. At the time it had sent a shudder through me and I thought I’d understood. I’d worked with wild bulls on my father’s farm, hadn’t I? And I’d seen them kill a man, so I knew what that meant. That’s what I thought in my innocence. But I was wrong. Only now did I understand what those three words really meant: These men kill. And it sent a streak of fear through me that chilled the blood in my veins.

I released my grip on the steering wheel and peeled my fingers off one at a time. I didn’t want André to see my fear, but nevertheless he put out a hand and briefly touched mine. He possessed long square-tipped fingers and the hands of a man accustomed to years of hard physical labour in his boyhood, but now his skin had grown smooth. His nails were groomed Parisian-style, instead of cracked and grimy. Sometimes it worried me. I felt as though the brother I’d known and loved all my life was abandoning me.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked lightly.

‘I’m okay.’

His smile by the faint gleam of the streetlamp that crept under the door was slow in coming, but it was worth the wait. In repose his face was long and serious, his eyes watchful. Years ago he used to have the wild looks of a pirate with long unruly golden locks, riding bareback through the Camargue on a vile-tempered white horse called Charlemagne. But these days you would mistake him for a lawyer. The suit sharp-edged. Hair clipped. Mouth tight. Briefcase under his arm.

My disguise, he called it.

Your tamed soul, I teased him.

‘You’ve done well,’ he told me. ‘Really well. I couldn’t have driven better myself. We are secure here. I’m lucky you found it.’ He uttered a soft laugh that caught me unawares. ‘What have you got planned next?’ he asked. ‘We stay locked up here in this garage for a week?’

‘Sit back,’ I said. ‘Trust me.’

My brother stared hard at me through the gloom. ‘I trust you,’ he said.

I jumped out of the car, threw open the garage doors, eager to get out of there, and let the lamplight invade the blackness. Sometimes I lost my bearings in the shadows of André’s dark world and couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down. I saw André frown as I slid back into the driving seat and started the engine.

‘Is that wise?’ he asked.

‘They will be long gone,’ I assured him, so bright and so sure of myself. ‘We’ve been here well over an hour and they’ll have scuttled away back to the holes they came from. You’ll see.’