‘Fairfax, what happened next will never leave me. The things that happened in that town, that town which had no Maquis and which posed no threat … Das Reich wiped them out, Fairfax. The Nazis and the Milice – they destroyed an entire town. Hundreds of men, mown down with machineguns. Women and children, packed in the church and the church then set ablaze. The heat was so intense that the bell melted. It dripped upon the floor and onto their corpses. The treasures of the church became puddles of gold. One of my brothers in the Maquis was among the first men to see the devastation. He said he could never imagine such horrors. He did not believe men capable of such brutality. In the doorway of the church he found soft gold, still steaming, still half fused to the ashes and dust that had once been a person. He took it, Fairfax. Not for its value but because of what it meant. It had been something real – an emblem of a life. It had seemed important.

‘Later, he gave the gold nugget to me. Whether he knew of my betrayal I do not know but one morning I found the gold on the doormat of my home. The note told me that it was to ensure I would never forget. Can you imagine it, Fairfax? To carry the weight of so many deaths? I had the gold fashioned into a tooth to replace the ones smashed out by the Nazis who passed by my bloodied, half-cooked body as they exited Tulle. That tooth was pushed deep into my gums – a memorial that I would taste and feel for every second of every day.

‘Last year the doctors told me I was dying. My thoughts turned at first to vengeance. I needed to find Favre – the evil man who had burned me to the bone and directed the Nazis to unleash bloody vengeance on innocents. I had succeeded, after the war, Fairfax. I found a good job in a paper mill. A bookkeeper, far from the scene of my terrible betrayal. But I had never found love, nor had children, or allowed myself friends. For twenty-five years I lived a solitary life as those who had served in the Milice prospered or fled. Many were forgiven. They formed part of the new government after the war. But those who had committed atrocities fled France to new lives in new countries. Favre was among them. I asked questions, Fairfax. I dug and I bribed and I begged until I came across a man who told me a story I could hardly credit. After the war, the British had helped war criminals escape. Those with specialist skills or special knowledge were given a free pass. A new life. A new career. A new identity.