All of a sudden the sergeant got to his feet. His obese body splashed water over the concrete as he climbed up the step-ladder. In the well, the water level fell abruptly, leaving it almost dry. A tiny pair of red trunks disappeared beneath the folds of his belly as if he were wearing a thong backwards, with the pouch over his buttocks and a G-string to cover everything else. Without even drying himself, he went into the house and grumbled as he moved furniture around, ‘Where has Aurélia put that damned file this time?’, and then came back out a few seconds later wearing a dressing-gown around his shoulders and with a cardboard folder in his hand. He picked up a plastic chair and pulled it towards the shade of the fence, holding the dossier out to Clotilde.

‘Open it.’

Clotilde sat down, put the folder on her knees, opened it and found the first page.

A name. A registration. A date of birth.

Renault Fuego. Model GTS. 1233 CD 27. First on the road 03/11/1984.

Photographs of the corpse of a car.

In colour.

An eviscerated roof. Charred tyres. Close-ups of broken glass.

Clotilde almost retched.

‘Go on, Clotilde. Go on before I explain.’

A few more pages.

Red rocks. Three bodies lying on the rocks. Blood. Blood everywhere.

Another page.

A name, Paul Idrissi, born 17 October 1945, died 23 August 1989.

A dozen photographs, details taken from the earlier pictures, enlargements, a swollen face, an arm twisted into a right angle, an asymmetrical torso, a heart crushed in a vice.

Another page. Nicolas Idrissi, born 8 April 1971, died 23 August …

Clotilde couldn’t read any further. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, tried to look back at the file again, then dashed towards the circular swimming pool, knelt down and vomited her guts up.

Cesareu held out a tissue.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She remained kneeling on the ground.

‘I’ll bet you are. They say it’s going to be thirty-seven degrees today. And the person who does the maintenance for my pool is on holiday until the twenty-first of August.’

Clotilde’s eyes rested on the net used for fishing out leaves that was leaning against the fence. The sergeant held her back by the shoulder.

‘Leave it, Clotilde. I’m teasing you. I don’t care. It’s my fault, but I wanted you to go all the way through … All the way to …’

‘To the photographs of my mother?’

Cesareu nodded.

‘My mother isn’t dead. Is that it?’

She had guessed. It was obvious. All the clues were so obvious, convergent. That explicit letter about the dark room, Orsu’s mop, the Labrador called Pacha. So many mysteries that could only be explained by the presence of her mother, here, alive on the island. Cesareu Garcia knew the key to the solution of the impossible problem: how had Palma Idrissi survived the accident?

‘My mother isn’t dead?’ she repeated.