His voice twisted at that, as if he was saying something so revolting that it made his gorge rise.

‘Audrey was already one of the team,’ he said, and his voice was without cadence or song; just flat monotonous crochets that fell upon me like hail. ‘She is an exceptional woman. Throughout the war she had helped spread counter-intelligence. Her brother – he is an important man. Loveday. A silly name for one so skilled. He read my file and chose to place me somewhere he knew to be impenetrable.

‘A word in an ear here, a polite letter there. You English are so … well-connected. Our story was a cover. We did not begin as true man and wife. But something grew between us, of that I am certain. We have lived a true marriage, Audrey and I. She has learned so much from the prisoners of war she befriended and who write to her with such glorious titbits each week. Christopher uses her the way a surgeon uses a knife. She sends her old friends the messages that the world needs to hear. She receives replies rich with confidences. She is valuable, and we have been well rewarded. We never spoke of my crimes.’

I tried to speak. Even through the fog I had to understand. ‘Did … she know …?’

He smiled at that – a fleeting thing, like the flash of an axe-blade in the dark.

‘What she knew, I cannot say. But when news came last year that the Maquis bastard in France was asking questions, it was she who thought of Fairfax and a way we could protect ourselves. The old fool was always so interested in stories. Such a busybody – always scrabbling around asking questions as if he were a writer or somebody who mattered. Christopher may have suffered at the thought of his grieving father but he never did a thing to stop his pain. He did what he had to, and that is all I have ever done. Audrey fed Fairfax such a tale. Fed him such a wonderful tapestry of lies. Told him I was this heroic figure by the name of Abel. A hero of the Resistance, tortured by the devil Favre. And so when Defouloy sniffed me out and slithered into this place, Fairfax knew he was looking at a bad man who had done bad things. He got him talking. Acted friendly even as he plotted his end. And then he came and told us.’

He gave the tiniest smile at that. Seemed to like the memory.

‘It pained him, of course. He was such a gentleman, you see. Could not stomach the idea of handing a man over to those who might have done him harm. But he had experienced grief. He hated the Nazis as they had robbed him of his son. I enjoyed that – enjoyed knowing that the man he grieved for was the same who had brought me to Britain.