But there was one witness, a direct witness. Cervone Spinello. On 23 August 1989, working at reception in the campsite, he hadn’t taken his eyes off Nicolas and Maria-Chjara; he had seen Hermann sliding under the Fuego, then he had heard rumours about the damaged steering column. Cervone had been careful to let Jakob know that he knew who had murdered the Idrissis, but he never publicly accused Hermann, he never talked about him to the police or to Cassanu Idrissi. Jakob had wondered why, at first, until the first bricks of the Roc e Mare marina began to grow, until the breeze on Oscelluccia beach blew on the Tropi-Kalliste beach bar and it didn’t fly away. The explanation was obvious. Cervone Spinello was blackmailing Cassanu Idrissi. He had a hold on him, even if Jakob didn’t quite understand, didn’t know which version, which false truth he had invented. He knew only that Cervone held a trump card in his hand: he knew who the real murderer of Paul and Nicolas Idrissi was. Cassanu would never have suspected Hermann Schreiber, the young German tourist whose existence he was unaware of.

Jakob glanced back. Valentine wasn’t reading the notebook any more, he had heard her putting it carefully back in the plastic bag. Palma Idrissi and her granddaughter were motionless, only their hair was moving, stirred by the wind that passed through the slightly open rear windows. The two women were staring at him, at the back of his neck, his shoulder, his arm. And his eyes, which met those of Valentine in the rear-view mirror.

He had waited patiently for this August to come around, he had waited to see the Mediterranean one last time, to share one last beer, play one last game of pétanque. According to the doctors, the cancer would at least allow him that, one last summer, just one. And all of a sudden here was Clotilde Idrissi, getting off the boat, searching, investigating, claiming the impossible. That her mother was alive! A hobbyhorse, a folly, but she was stirring up the past, interrogating Maria-Chjara, Natale Angeli, Sergeant Cesareu Garcia and his daughter Aurélia, she was bringing back memories, stripping the shrouds from the ghosts. As he had foreseen, she had come and asked him if she could see all the pictures from the summer of ’89. Who knows whether one of them mightn’t have helped her guess the truth? He had feigned his surprise perfectly in front of Clotilde Idrissi, when he had opened the empty file. And if he had wanted to retrieve the photographs held in the cloud, it was so that he could destroy them for ever.