He was comforted by the fact that the poachers had no qualms about what they were doing and were going about the hunt as if it were completely normal. They didn’t even have to play along. As accomplished hunters, they were happy to track game that had got away as they always did, except that, this time, they couldn’t possibly finish the animal off at the end of the chase, let alone shoot it. They just needed to track it down and bring it back. It seemed simple to them, normal even, but Franck was worried stiff and remained silent. Julien was at the wheel, doing his best not to lose the dogs, which were speeding along the rutted paths. The driving rain was too much for the old windscreen wipers, which were struggling to sweep it away. It was hard to see anything through the dirty windscreen.

‘If the dogs don’t find your guys in the next kilometre, I reckon they’ll have gone towards Crégols,’ said Julien, keeping his hands firmly on the wheel to stop the car jolting too much. ‘But if they go that way, they’re going to come a cropper.’

‘What?’

‘The cliff,’ replied Maurice, never one to talk much.

‘Which cliff?’

‘The cliff of one hundred sheep,’ Julien explained. ‘A steep hillside over a hundred metres high, above the river. They’ll be trapped because it’s a dead end. And they definitely won’t be able to jump over it.’

They could make out some sort of bulky shape in the distance through the misty windscreen, something wide, dark and glistening, a strange creature that the dogs stopped to sniff. As well as the rain, condensation kept forming on the dirty window.

‘What the hell is that?’

Franck couldn’t work it out at first, but the two men quickly realised that the enormous conical form standing in the middle of the track, the sinister phantom, was simply a penitent wearing a raincape that covered him from head to toe and puffed up with each gust of wind. He was leading a mule that was also wrapped in a flapping tarpaulin.

‘Don’t worry, it’s a pilgrim … Perfect timing, actually.’

They stopped the car. Julien rolled down the window to talk to the man.

‘Well, St Christopher, are you lost?’

The two men enjoyed their sarcasm; they probably thought the idea of taking a mule from Conques to Santiago de Compostela was ridiculous.

The man looked out from under his dripping hood. He clearly knew where he was going, indicating a map in a clear plastic bag, a map that was now soaked. The dogs were still sniffing him as if making sure their prey wasn’t hiding under the tarpaulin.

‘Tell me, pilgrim, did you by any chance see two guys and a dog this morning?’

‘No, I haven’t seen anyone since yesterday.’

‘Did you walk along the cliff?’