That unidentified body dragged from the Bay of Crovani had been the opportunity he had dreamed of; probably some reckless swimmer, the kind they fished out of the sea almost every summer. Jakob had only had to throw some clothes, a watch and his papers off the top of the Mursetta headland, where the current in the Mediterranean was the strongest. The police wouldn’t fall for it for long, it would only take them a few hours, perhaps a day, to find out the real identity of the corpse, or at least to work out that the decomposed body did not match his own. But a few hours was all he needed to lull Cervone into a false sense of security.

The campsite manager couldn’t have known that Jakob was already a condemned man, and that he didn’t care how he ended it all. That his hatred wasn’t reserved only for the Idrissis; that he planned to make everyone here feel it, everyone who had taken away his paradise. Cervone couldn’t have suspected that grief and loneliness had driven him mad, that he too was giving half of his pension to a therapist; that he too, in avenue B3 of line 07 in the factory, had come to a stop by the vat of lye; that he had made himself dizzy leaning over the white rocks on the island of Pag, the red rocks of Petra Coda, at the foot of the Revellata Peninsula.

It was only this morning that Jakob had learned Cervone Spinello’s secret, the one that had meant he could enjoy Cassanu Idrissi’s protection.

Palma Idrissi. Alive.

Sentenced by a people’s jury in place of Hermann; imprisoned ever since the summer of 1989 in a shepherd’s cabin.

Over the years, Cervone had staked his lot on both versions, letting each party believe his own truth: Cassanu was unaware of the real culprit, Jakob Schreiber was unaware of the accused. Cervone hadn’t even needed to lie – his silence had been enough to make him master of the situation. Until the return of Clotilde Idrissi.

Cervone Spinello hadn’t deserved to die, but firing an arrow into his heart was merely a patient form of self-defence. The Idrissis, they deserved it. And they deserved to suffer before they died. If it wasn’t for all their lies, over three generations, none of this would have happened.

*

9.01 p.m.

The sun had not yet disappeared behind the Bay of Calvi. It was floating above the citadel like a dazzling spotlight, transforming the world into a theatre of shadows. Jakob’s eyes became blurred. Ever since this morning, since this summer, for twenty-seven years, he had been replaying the same words in his head:

We were just an ordinary family, we liked simple things, we came here to spend our holidays in the sun.

On the Island of Beauty.