Cesareu looked at her as if she had blasphemed.

‘What on earth are you talking about, Clotilde?’ He seemed genuinely devastated. ‘Don’t go getting an idea like that into your head, you poor thing. There’s no doubt about it. Your mother died in the ravine at Petra Coda, along with your father and your brother. You saw them die in front of your very eyes. I saw their bodies too, it was the worst experience of my life. There were dozens of other witnesses. So no, I didn’t bring you here to tell you that your mother has come back from the dead.’

Clotilde pressed her lips together to stop herself crying.

‘S … so what is it?’

‘Look at the following page. After the photographs.’

Clotilde took the folder again, skipped the page about Nicolas but summoned the strength to look at the one about her mother – six pictures of her shredded body, six enlargements of the photograph of her corpse, which looked as if it had been torn apart – before turning to the next page.

Crumpled metal replaced battered flesh. She found photographs of the Fuego. The whole thing, first of all, then pictures that probed the intimacy of the carcase, the engine, the passenger compartment. Clotilde studied close-ups of a fan belt, a cam shaft, a steering column, the double wishbone suspension, a brake cable. At least that’s what she imagined them to be. She’d only ever had to open a car bonnet once in her life, in the middle of winter, to clean some dirty spark plugs, and that day she had shocked herself by navigating the huge steel puzzle almost instinctively.

She set down the file and turned towards the policeman, her eyes level with his belly. Clotilde had a sense that the sergeant’s body was almost melting in the sun, that he’d told her the truth, and that if he stayed out of his water hole for too long he would indeed turn into a puddle of viscous, gelatinous flesh.

A huge wave of disgust bubbled up in her stomach again. She nearly screamed.

‘What are you getting at then?’

‘That last page, Clotilde, those photographs, they aren’t official. If you check the date you’ll see that they were taken a few weeks after the accident, when the investigation had officially closed. I waited until everything had calmed down before asking one of my mates to examine the remains of the Fuego. Discreetly. Ibrahim has a garage in Calenzana. We’ve known each other since we were children. He keeps his hands clean, even if the judges have never actually sworn to it.’

‘Why wait so long?’

He smiled.