‘Orsu is innocent,’ she blurted suddenly. ‘I don’t know who killed Cervone Spinello, but it wasn’t Orsu.’

Cesareu merely smiled.

‘What do you know about that? You weren’t even there.’

That was true. What did she know?

‘Call it what you like, an intuition, a conviction …’

She saw Orsu’s face in front of her, his physical condition, his disability; he was the ideal victim, fodder for the hangman.

Cesareu Garcia held out a file to Clotilde.

‘His prints were on the murder weapon. A harpoon gun. The one used to kill Cervone Spinello.’

Clotilde’s reflexes as a lawyer took over, even though for years her skills had been focused primarily on dull divorce cases. She had quite a good reputation, particularly with men, and she almost always recommended an amicable separation. Logically, no man who wanted to enter into negotiations for custody or child support would have dared choose a woman to defend him.

‘Orsu’s prints?’ she queried. ‘They must be all over the campsite, he’s the one who puts everything away. The diving equipment, and everything else.’

‘He was one of the only people who was up and about at the time of the crime,’ Cesareu Garcia insisted. ‘He was told off by Cervone Spinello a few minutes before the murder. Humiliated might be a better word.’

‘If all workmen who were humiliated by their bosses stabbed them in the heart with the first sharp object they came across, my colleagues in the union would be out of a job.’

Sergeant Garcia smiled again, before opening the file in front of him. The room was cool, but his tight white shirt was already drenched in sweat.

‘There’s something else, Clotilde. The police have searched Orsu’s house. They found some pétanque balls.’

‘Pétanque balls? Are one-armed men not allowed to own them? Is that a crime in Corsica? No movement in your wrist, then no jack?’

‘These are rare, Clotilde. Prestige Carbone 125. It wasn’t difficult to identify them. Only one resident in the campsite owned this make.’

A silence.

‘Jakob Schreiber. The German who disappeared three days ago. And on those pétanque balls,’ the policeman wiped the drops of sweat from his temples with a corner of his shirt, immodestly revealing a fat belly that almost rested on the table, ‘the investigators identified traces of blood. Blood and grey hair. Without a doubt they belonged to the old German.’

‘I … I don’t believe it …’

‘Orsu isn’t an angel, Clotilde. He isn’t some poor, tortured little cripple. He does stupid things, he has plenty of convictions – for violence, for hitting people – even though, I acknowledge, it’s not impossible that someone asked him to deal those blows. Orsu is easily manipulated. A mother who committed suicide before he had time to remember her, a father he never knew, his grandmother Speranza who did her best to bring him up …’