‘I don’t know … maybe he’s talking to them, the police are … here already. They’ve been here since this morning … Because of Cervone …’ Her sobs got louder. ‘I know you didn’t like him, Clotilde, that you never liked him … but Cervone deserved better than …’

‘Are you calling me right now to talk about your husband?’ Clotilde cut in.

She had finally found her keys and was desperate to hang up and leave the line free.

Anika’s reply was without animosity. Maintaining that spirit of hospitality, in spite of everything, to the end.

‘No, Clotilde. No, I’m calling you because I remembered something.’

Clotilde’s heart thumped in her ears as the key got stuck in the door of the Passat.

‘The message we got at reception telling Valentine to go up to Arcanu was a simple note scribbled on a piece of paper and signed with your name. I should have been more suspicious and checked … but my God I’m so exhausted …’

‘What was the thing you remembered, Anika?’

‘Just before, or just after that note was dropped off, a car was parked in front of the campsite. It slowed down, it stopped, then it waited for a few minutes. At the time I didn’t think about it. I’ve only just made the connection.’

Clotilde opened the car door and put the key in the ignition, ready to speed off as soon as Anika had finished talking.

‘Cervone told me everything,’ she went on. ‘So many times … But it was such a long time ago. I was just curious, it was like an association of ideas that weren’t quite slotting together … then I found the message, and Valou turned up and I forgot.’

‘What was it about the car, Anika?’

‘It was a Fuego. A red one. Like the one that Cervone told me about so many times. Like the one in which your parents and your brother lost their lives.’

~

Clotilde turned the key and the engine of the Passat rumbled into life, but she didn’t put it into reverse, she didn’t put her foot on the accelerator. Three alerts were going off in her head, three sirens wailing, a triangle of fire.

First of all, a red Fuego.

Then some map coordinates, the ones revealed by the spyware in Valou’s phone, Franck had mentioned the forest of Bocca Serria, which wasn’t far from Petra Coda.

Last of all, her mother and her daughter missing.

Everything converged on the same obvious fact: someone had deliberately borrowed a car identical to her parents’ car, had put her mother and her daughter in it, and was bound for the corniche at Petra Coda.

Clotilde didn’t know who, how, or why, but she was sure that something was going to happen there. She stared anxiously at the clock on the dashboard.

8.44 p.m.