‘Aurélia loved him. Really loved him. My daughter is a reasonable woman, very reasonable, on almost every level. But strangely, as far as her emotional life is concerned, she has always been attracted to men who are unusual, the jesters, tight-rope walkers, the troubadours, like a grey moth drawn by the light. It might have something to do with her being a nurse. Or perhaps the only way my poor Aurélia could have introduced a bit of fantasy into her life was by letting a Pierrot into her bed?’

‘That wasn’t my question, Cesareu,’ Clotilde answered crisply. ‘I was asking you why Natale said yes. Why he married a woman like her? No offence to Aurélia, but he could have had any other girl he wanted – the most beautiful, the funniest, the youngest.’

The policeman’s eyes wandered over towards the files. His life insurance, he had just joked. He seemed to hesitate before replying, then went ahead.

‘To protect himself, Clotilde. It’s as simple as that. In these parts, marrying the daughter of a policeman means putting yourself under the protection of the law, meaning the army, the state, France.’

‘To protect himself against whom?’

‘Don’t be so naïve, Clotilde. Against your grandfather, of course. To protect himself against Cassanu. After your parents’ fatal accident, Natale was gripped by an irrational, oppressive, paralysing fear.’

Clotilde thought about the almost incoherent words Natale had uttered to her.

The same second when your parents’ car crashed onto the rocks of Petra Coda, the second when your brother, your father and your mother lost their lives, I saw her appear here through my window, I saw your mother, as clearly as I can see you now. She stared at me as though she wanted to see me one last time before she flew away.

Was her mother’s disappearance and then that crazy apparition what had driven him mad?

Even if Palma, by the most incredible of miracles, had survived the accident at Petra Coda, had been taken alive to Calvi in an ambulance, she couldn’t have somehow pulled out her drip on the way, to reappear smiling outside the house at Punta Rossa.

‘Was he worried about his project?’ Clotilde suggested, not really believing her own words. ‘About his dolphin sanctuary? That after my parents’ death Cassanu wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it?’

Garcia swept the argument away with a wave of his hand.

‘Cassanu didn’t give a damn about the dolphins. It was about the accident. I shouldn’t be calling it an accident, by the way, it was an act of sabotage. A steering rod doesn’t disconnect itself. For Cassanu, and for me, it was murder pure and simple. And what he was looking for was a murderer.’

Clotilde suddenly felt dizzy.