He glanced in the mirror, wondering whether his passengers had any idea of what awaited them. Palma would have understood, inevitably: the red Fuego, the destination that appeared on the Satnav, her granddaughter in the back seat, all the clues were plain to see. Valentine must have realised too; she knew everything now, she had read her mother’s notebook. Yet they both remained calm. Although what else could they do, trussed up like a pair of Christmas trees in a net? Perhaps they were hoping that this little drive was nothing but a charade, a bad joke, a piece of theatre … or that the parapet at Petra Coda had been reinforced since 1989.

Coming within sight of the Bay of Nichiareto, Jakob Schreiber maintained a cruising speed. The last few days, rereading Clotilde’s diary, page after page, had revived the burning embers of a hatred that had never truly gone out.

His son, Hermann, wasn’t responsible for any of this.

It was all the fault of Maria-Chjara, Nicolas, Cervone, Aurélia – of all the other teenagers in that group during the summer of ’89, with their contempt, their selfishness. He hadn’t invented anything, Clotilde had described the situation perfectly in her notebook. They were the ones who had fed that fury, that jealousy, that madness. Without it, nothing would have happened. His son was a nice, serious, hard-working, well-mannered boy. At the Catholic primary school and then at the local grammar school; a cub scout from the age of six, a Pioneer at less than fifteen, always with a sculptor’s chisel in his hand, a bright pebble in his pocket, a blade of grass between his teeth.

Hermann was a gentler person than the average.