The sudden silence tweaked my nerves. I tucked myself deep into my shallow doorway till I could feel a doorknob indenting itself into my back. I reminded myself that I had done surveillance work before in Paris for Clarisse Favre, this was no different, no need for the sour taste in my mouth.

But no. This was different. This wasn’t a headmaster cheating on his wife with one of his pupils, or a woman frittering away her accountant husband’s hard-earned cash on the horses at Longchamp racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne every Saturday. No, this was different. This was a man who had tried to kill the brother I loved. Was he here in Arles to finish the job he’d started? Or was he spying on the USAF air base as a Soviet operative, and if so, what did his friendship with Major Dirke imply?

I had no answers. Not yet. In the silence I heard the click of the car door lock and I stopped breathing. The car was parked near the only lamp in the street and its light picked out the man who emerged from the driver’s seat. He had his back to me and stood still, listening. Then, apparently satisfied, he turned.

It was Gilles Bertin.

*

Gilles Bertin crossed the road, moving quickly as though suddenly in a hurry, and by the light of the streetlamp I could make out that he was carrying a briefcase in one hand. He unlocked the door of a house on the opposite side of the road that I was on, but about ten houses further down. The houses along this stretch were all attached to each other, cheek by jowl, and their front doors opened straight on to the road.

The streetlamp’s muted triangle of light didn’t reach as far as my doorway, nevertheless I didn’t move a muscle, didn’t take a breath. Didn’t risk a heartbeat. I watched as Bertin opened the door, placed his briefcase inside, then turned and walked back to the car. But before he reached it, I heard another heavy click, the sound of a car door. To my surprise the Chevy’s front passenger door swung open and slowly a man’s head and shoulders appeared. A hand grabbed the car’s roof rim and the figure straightened up, his gaze immediately scanning the street.

It was André. My brother.

In Gilles Bertin’s car.

I had a sense of dread like a living thing caught inside me. I blinked, as if I could change what I was seeing in this dark backstreet, as if I could wipe it clean like a blackboard and start again.