I got myself a bit flustered. Janet turned her shoulder to me, just like she did at school when I admitted to playing with somebody else while she had been at an uncle’s house over the summer. She didn’t like to share me.

‘What you got there?’ I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

‘Map,’ she said, pettily.

‘Where of?’

She thrust the map at me. Her look said I might as well take this as I had already taken everything else, whereas life had given her nothing but slaps and cow shit. She loved to tell people she’d only been put upon the planet to be shat upon. Our John had a reply to that. Said it were nobody’s business what went on in another couple’s bedroom.

I turned over the map. Saw more of Fairfax’s spidery writing on the other side. I couldn’t make much of it out but he seemed to have been copying out of a reference book. The words ‘Le Tanneur’ were underlined and he had scribbled a drawing of a stick man hanging from a rope in one of the gaps between his sentences. I found myself reading before I could tell myself to stop.

‘… born 1910, Limousin area, links to Alsace region, apprenticed to a leatherworker … arrests for theft, violence, sex assault … jailed for knife attack on suspected love rival … freed by Vichy Government. Trained by Milice due to local knowledge. Excelled in interrogation. Witnesses to incident in Tulle describe “dispassionate” way in which he used burning coins on the skin of victim. Left victim alive …’

I tried to stop reading but I found myself entranced by the words.

‘… fled in 1944, three weeks after D-Day. Captured by Maquisards. Evidence to suggest he was disfigured in the traditional manner … large swastika carved into skull … last seen in 1946 in rural Normandy … thought to have been killed by Resistance or living under assumed identity after collaboration with security forces …’

I felt cold all the way through. Didn’t know whether to throw the map down or start a fire and toss it on the flames. The words were ugly.

‘What’s this bloody thing?’ asked Janet, looking behind the sofa and dragging out a large, butter-coloured box. She put it on the table and opened the clasps. ‘Typewriter! Well I never. Fairfax as a secretary, eh? I’d never have given it credence.’

I looked at the object she was staring at. It was a nice looking bit of kit; white, circular keys and a black body, all oiled and greased and expensive-looking. It had the name ‘Remington’ stencilled on the front.

‘He typed, did he?’ asked Janet. Then she looked around at the bundles of paper with their scribblings in ink. ‘Well I never. Why all this scrappy writing, eh? Why not just type it all up?’