All these years later and I remember the shape and sound of those words. Sound daft in my voice, don’t they? But I remember them like the sound of me own bairns saying me name. It sounded as if they were being carried along on the water.

‘Don’t run. Sir! Damn you, I know you! And you know this face. I must speak. S’il vous plaît. There are secrets …’

The recording suddenly became muffled. There was banging and sudden steps and then the sound of voices. It was impossible to make out the words but it was the sound of an angry exchange. We listened to two minutes of unintelligible argument and then without warning the recording stopped.

Cordelia sat forward in her seat, peering at the machine. She threw herself back, exasperated.

‘That’s it? The end of the tape. For God’s sake …’

I saw my face in the glass of the picture frame beside the table. I looked pale, like scrubbed stone.

‘Did you know what it meant?’ I asked, softly.

Cordy pulled a face and shrugged. ‘Some,’ she muttered. ‘He wanted him to listen. Asked him if he knew him …’

We sat in silence, consumed with our own thoughts. The story that Fairfax had written down made it clear that a man called Jean Favre had done terrible, terrible things during the war. But we only know the name Favre because of Fairfax’s story. Was the man with the tape recorder Abel? It seemed likely from the tone of Fairfax’s papers. How, then, could their paths have crossed in the woods near Gilsland?

‘You know everybody,’ said Cordy, suddenly. ‘Who saw service in France?’

I shook my head. ‘Don’t start thinking that. So many people pass through, don’t they? It must have been a stranger.’

‘A stranger who told Fairfax their deepest secret?’ asked Cordy, scornfully.

‘Sometimes that’s easier …’

‘You must know who went where,’ protested Cordy. ‘Who fought where. Fairfax’s son! Could he have seen what happened at this little place? Could he have told Fairfax before he died?’ She scowled, knowing that there were too many missing pieces. ‘If we could just hear what they were saying!’

I was staring into the wood of the table top. I felt cold and sick. I felt let-down, more than anything else. I don’t think I’d ever imagined myself solving a crime or anything like that but it had become important to me that I make sense of what we had seen during the storm and now I had nothing but loose threads and confusion.

‘Who speaks French?’ she asked, suddenly. ‘If the man spoke to somebody in French he must have expected them to understand. We know he could speak English so why would he address them in French?’