It was too dark to see the dial on his watch, so Léon counted off the minutes in his head. Two minutes, three minutes. At four minutes he was tempted to slow his count but didn’t. At five minutes Eloïse was back, as he knew she would be. As good as her word.

‘Anything?’ she murmured, tucking herself in beside him. Her hair smelled of sea mist.

‘No, nothing.’

‘We wait?’

‘Yes.’

She touched her fingers to the back of his hand. ‘We can’t talk now,’ she whispered. ‘It’s dangerous.’

‘When this is done.’

He felt rather than saw her nod.

‘Is Marianne here in Arles too?’ he asked.

‘Not anymore. I just gave her my car keys to drive home.’

‘Good. I will take you home. Maybe André too?’

She didn’t reply, but he felt the heat of her and for a moment she leaned her weight against his shoulder. After that, they kept vigil in silence.

*

Headlights swept into the street at the far end, picking out a rib-thin dog slinking along one wall. The noise of the engine rattled off the walls, rowdy after the hour of silence to which Léon’s ears had grown accustomed. He pulled his jacket over his face and Eloïse hid hers against his shoulder when the car slid past, and for two beats of his heart he forgot about the car.

‘A taxi,’ he whispered into her hair.

She lifted her head, her lips almost touching his and only the faint gleam of her eyes visible, and she seemed about to say something. But instead she turned her head to observe the taxi pulling to a halt in front of the house they’d been watching. The front door snapped open. Had the occupants been standing on the other side of it? Léon could see André silhouetted on his crutches against the light. The urge to go over and speak to the man who had been his friend was strong, to offer him a lift home, to make a connection, but Eloïse’s words still chimed in his mind. It’s dangerous.

Dangerous for whom?

André manoeuvred himself and his crutches inside the taxi. The man in the doorway offered no help. He watched the taxi drive away and turn left at the far corner, before he stepped back and shut the door.

Léon exhaled. Eloïse could not drag her gaze from where the ruby tail-light of the car had been.

*

Léon drove fast. He had scant hope of catching up with the taxi because they had remained at their post in the doorway for another half-hour before accepting that no one else would be leaving that house tonight. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. Sane people had taken to their beds long ago.

‘What happened back there, Eloïse? What went on with André and that man in the Chevrolet?’

‘I wish I knew.’