He moved quickly, towards the pot, and reached inside. He pulled out what at first I took to be a heavy coat. Slowly, the dreadfulness of the truth filtered into my understanding.

‘He has been softening for months now,’ said Favre, looking at the skin of Marcel Defouloy. ‘I find it pleasing – this idea of working again on a skin that I last played with so many years ago. There is a pleasing symmetry to it, is there not? If you look carefully, you will see the pattern of the coins which seared his flesh.’

I tried again to move. Managed to half slide and half shuffle into a position that allowed me a glimpse of the light that bled in through the open door. I saw a flicker of movement. A flash of colour against the grass and the mud and the snow.

‘Fairfax brought him to us after you found his resting place,’ said Favre, shaking his head, as if it had all been too perfect for words. ‘There was something in his eyes. Something I hadn’t seen before. He told us what had happened. A tree had come down and you and that stupid Goose woman had seen Marcel’s corpse. So he gathered him up and stuffed him in his car and drove him here. To us! I helped him remove the body from the boot. That was when it happened. Defouloy’s shirt tore open and we both looked upon the damage I had done to him in ’44. He still had the imprint of those burning coins against his skin. And Fairfax suddenly knew he had been lied to. He had not helped a victim avenge himself upon his persecutor. He had helped me – the Milice’s chief torturer – finally murder the man he had abused years before.’

I was coming back to myself. Could feel the blood in my veins. Could hear my own heart.

Keep trying, I demanded of myself. Don’t give in. Live. Live! They call you wicked. They call you stubborn. So be both. Fight. Fight!

‘He drove away before I could stop him,’ said Favre, and he reached down to his left and picked up a wooden frame, and a wicked-looking implement with two handles and a curved blade. ‘He was heading for the camp. Looking for a military man he could tell everything to. It was the storm and his own guilt that killed him. I don’t know whether he drove into the tree on purpose or whether fortune was simply on my side but his death was a pleasing thing. And now I have Marcel to myself again. I took his body from the boot of the car and have enjoyed every moment of his transformation. Did you know I once made a Maquis into a handbag? I can tell you while I skin you, if you wish …’