He didn’t think the danger would come from Cervone Spinello. He didn’t suspect that the campsite manager had even more to lose than he did. Before he pulled the trigger and the harpoon pierced his heart, Spinello had confessed everything to him. Spinello had been frightened, the evening when Jakob had come to ask him for a wi-fi connection so he could recover his photographs. Cervone had panicked. Since Clotilde Idrissi had come back to the Euproctes, he had done everything he could think of to make her go away again, but Clotilde was stubborn, she was perceptive. Persuasive, too. Cervone was worried that she might persuade Jakob to admit the truth, that the two survivors of those two families destroyed by the tragedy might fall into each other’s arms, so that he might finally ease his conscience.

Jakob Schreiber clenched his fingers on the wheel. In front of him, the sun formed a long line of fire that set the sea ablaze. Yes, Cervone Spinello had been afraid of losing everything. If Clotilde discovered the truth, if she brought it out into the daylight, his whole business would collapse. Even worse, if that old Corsican up at Arcanu learned that twenty-seven years ago Cervone had witnessed the sabotage of his son’s car, and had kept his mouth shut for so many years, then he would probably have had no qualms about having him executed, whether or not he was his best friend’s son. Then Cervone had knocked out Jakob, without premeditation, in haste, by smashing a pétanque ball against his temple. He would probably have managed to do more than that if some campers leaving the poker game hadn’t called out to him as they walked along the path. It was impossible to hide the corpse, there was no time to clean up the scene of the crime, and Cervone had had to leave the mobile home. He probably planned to come back a little later, at night, to finish off the job. Except that Jakob had somehow found the strength to flee. To drag himself away from the campsite, taking something with him to sterilise the wound. After roaming the area for fifty years, he too knew the maquis.

What else could Cervone do except affect bewilderment, the following morning, before the pétanque players who were waiting for the old German? Except pretend to be surprised in front of Clotilde, when he found the mobile home empty. What choice did he have but to wait, tremble, hope that the German had gone off to die in a corner like a wounded, frightened animal?

Jakob had waited calmly, letting him ripen, so he could kill him at the right moment.

He’d simply needed some time.