‘Marcel was just sitting there when we arrived at the church. It was dark. He had fallen asleep, huddled in on himself, and there was blood on his chin. That idiot Pike had thought him to be interested in his pitiful possessions.

‘When I addressed him I did so as an equal. He had been brave beneath the knife all those years before. But the spirit had gone out of him. He did not want conflict. He wanted judgement and told me I should demand the same.’

As Favre spoke, the shadows behind him lengthened. The sound of the flapping leather and the hunch of his back made it seem as though I were trapped in the gloom with a colossal bird.

‘Killing him brought me no joy,’ said Favre. ‘I didn’t know I had done it until he was at my feet. It was over in seconds. It brought me no pleasure. Audrey didn’t turn away as I did what I had to. And when it was over it was she who fetched Fairfax and told him that Defouloy – the man he thought was Jean Favre – had attacked her and that I had no choice but to defend her. Fairfax chose the tomb. He said it would be years before it would be needed. Perhaps we should have demanded that the body be put in the bog but at that time, we needed the body stashing away as quick as could be. We dumped him in the old Kinmont tomb. We set fire to Fairfax’s transcript of our conversations. We demanded all evidence of his visit be removed.’

Favre wiped his forehead, running his delicate fingers back over his smooth scalp.

He sighed, displeased with people’s inability to do what they promised.

‘I know now that Marcel had a tape recorder and that Fairfax kept this for his own purposes. I know too that he did not burn all the papers as instructed. But none of that mattered these past months because killing that bastard Maquisard set something free in me. The man I was – the man I hide inside this pitiful shell. It felt good to be him again.’

He turned at that, staring at the hideous skins along one wall. Slowly, he gazed along the mound of skulls which were stacked like fine china behind me.

‘This is who I am,’ he said, with a note of triumph. ‘Le Tanneur. The torturer they despised and feared. For years I have been practising my skills on animals. I have satisfied the craving within me by watching the agonies in the eyes of God’s creatures. Have you heard the sound a deer makes when you stake it down and open its guts and it slowly empties onto the forest floor? Do you know how it feels to take the skin from cattle as the beast still bucks and lows beneath the blade?’