This time Clotilde stared at him intensely.

‘What do you know about the truth?’

Cervone nudged the door of the mobile home closed with his toe. In his hand he held a case of three rusting pétanque balls. If that was a weapon, Clotilde thought, she would be no match for it with her string bag and three peppers. She was forcing herself to be facetious, but she was worried. What was the boss of the campsite doing here? Had he followed her? If he tried to do anything to her in this construction of planks and sheet metal, she could always scream, and people would hear her. The first face that came into her mind was Franck’s, not Natale’s. Because Franck was closer. Stupidly, that was what she thought.

‘Look.’

In the gloomy mobile home, Cervone pointed at a photograph. In front of the cars parked in the Euproctes car park, some men were playing pétanque. Clotilde didn’t recognise them, but there it was, behind them. Unharmed. She trembled with the shock. The red Fuego.

‘Did you go and see Sergeant Garcia? I imagine he told you about his theory.’

Was Cervone aware? Did he know about the sabotaged steering system? Yet Cesareu Garcia had assured her that his investigation had remained confidential, that he had only informed Cassanu Idrissi. No one else. Not even his daughter. So what was Cervone Spinello’s part in this whole business?

Play for time.

‘What theory?’ Clotilde asked, trying to feign innocence.

The campsite manager smiled, without taking his eyes off the Fuego.

‘That the steering column of your father’s car failed. All of a sudden. And that it wasn’t just an unfortunate stroke of luck.’

And bang!

‘Except that the old sergeant doesn’t know everything,’ Cervone added.

Spinello’s finger ran across the photograph. His index finger stopped on a man with his back to the camera.

‘Take a good look at your father. And look behind him, you can hardly see but …’

He was right. It was her father, picking up his pétanque balls. And a little way further back, between the players, it was impossible to miss him even if his whole body was almost entirely concealed from view.

Nicolas.

Her brother was not interested in the game. But he was in the parked car.

Cervone was delighted.

‘These pictures are unbelievable, don’t you think? If you take the time to study them, the foreground, the background, the expressions, the attitudes, they all tell a story. Almost all of them reveal a secret.’

‘What are you getting at, Cervone?’

His hand rested once more on her bare shoulder, as if he were about to lower the strap of her dress. As if he wanted to negotiate, but of course it was probably all just her imagination.