The officer shot Mayor Geroux with his pistol. He was still talking when the bullet entered his head – punching a black hole into his top lip. The back of his head blew open like an aerosol thrown on a fire.

That was when the boy on the front of the car woke up. He started shouting curses. Angry, bitter, spiteful noises that seemed to come from beneath him; as though he were a mouthpiece for Hell. I think they’d have let him die easy if he’d just kept his mouth shut. But he was proud and he was foolish. That was when Favre came forward. We didn’t even know he was there. But even as the mayor lay dead on the ground it was the presence of Favre that made us shake with fear. His reputation was that of a monster. He had been a leatherworker before the war. A good one at that. Rumour had it he had been born in a little village in the Dordogne. Others said he was a German by birth but had grown up in France with Jewish parents whom he butchered before he was fourteen years old. We never knew what to believe. He was just the name in the darkness; the handprint on your window. He was in prison when war broke out, I’ve learned that in the years since. When the Vichy Government decided to establish the Milice they did not discriminate against men with blood on their hands. Do you know of these men? They were the Nazis’ hired sadists. The Milice were brutes. Rapists, killers, torturers. And Favre was the best of them. He could make people talk. Could make them tell things they did not know that they knew. He went to work on the Maquisard in front of us with a leatherworker’s knife. The boy withstood for a long time. Then Favre asked for a brazier full of coals. We watched as he heated a handful of coins in the fire. One by one he seared them into what was left of the boy’s skin. When he whispered his confession into Favre’s ear, Favre nodded to the captain. He had given them the town. The distant place where six hundred men and women would die amid the flames.

That was when the screaming started.

That was when they opened fire.

Please, Fairfax. Let me stop. I need to rest.

End of session.

CORDELIA