Her eye took in the sweeping view. She recognised the sleeping crocodile. The coast, from L’Ile Rousse to Calvi, from the Revellata Peninsula to Galéria, looked like a rim of white thread, a fine piece of lace, a pure line drawn by a sure hand. She knew, however, that it was merely an illusion, a question of scale. The coast was jagged, and the white rocks threw themselves into the sea, sharp and pointed like a thousand sharpened knives.

‘For that?’ Clotilde repeated.

‘For that. For this view. This landscape. For the privilege of looking at it one last time. With you. You can call our little family meeting whatever you like, a blessing, a handover. You are our sole heir, Clotilde, the only direct descendant. All of this,’ he drew a large circle with his hand, ‘will be yours one day.’

Clotilde didn’t reply. Such a legacy seemed so unreal, so remote, so alien to what she was going through, to the urgent questions at stake. She didn’t want to provoke her grandfather straight away, to ask him about the sabotaged steering column of the Fuego; she preferred to stick to her plan. Check first, then accuse. Like any good lawyer. Check if Cervone Spinello was telling the truth. Only then accuse her brother Nicolas. And for that she needed Cassanu. She adopted the tone of an angry nurse, assessing the seven hundred metres of altitude.

‘Do you think it’s clever, engaging in this kind of feat at your age?’

‘You call this a feat! I read about a Japanese man who climbed Everest at eighty, and his father had skied down Mont-Blanc at ninety-nine. So climbing to the top of this goat-path …’

His voice had got louder. Cassanu seemed to be in outstanding shape, but it had probably been more of a test than he was letting on. He coughed for a while, then continued.

‘The first time I came up here was in 1935, and then from 1939 onwards I climbed up here several times a day to help the partisans, bringing them food, guns and ammunition. We were the first to get rid of the Nazis, here in Corsica, well before the Normandy landings, and without any help from the Americans! The first French département to be liberated, but the history books have forgotten that. The first time you climbed up here, my dear girl, you were fifteen. You remember? Of course you do, it was just before …’

Papé couldn’t finish his phrase. Of course Clotilde remembered. The binoculars around her neck, the snack of goat’s cheese and coppa, the rising sun, the peregrine falcons wheeling through the sky. Cassanu had seemed old to her even then. But he was indestructible, more indestructible than the cross.

She studied the varnished wood, which was already cracking. The iron nails, already rusty.

Her grandfather would survive this one too.

Perhaps.

‘Lisabetta must be dying of worry,’ she said.