Emile Narcisse is pleased by his appearance. Vanity has always been a weakness. Where, perhaps, others see him as just another old man, he still perceives himself as the young Emile whose smile won hearts, whose blue-eyed looks turned heads. And after all, sixty-five is not so old. Vintage. Like a good wine, some men just get better with age. Were he not so focused on his reflection in the mirror as he adjusts his tie and straightens his collar, he might have been able to look beyond it and see the certainty of death that lies in wait. But pride and greed blind him to his fate.

He has chosen a room at the back of the hotel with a view of the river. Or, rather, its black slow-moving backwater broken only by the reflection of trees on the sliver of island beyond. On the far side of the island the River Dordogne, swollen by recent rains, makes a stately but more rapid progress towards the Atlantic two hundred and fifty kilometres to the west. But it is dark now, and he can see nothing beyond the glass.

He glances at his watch. Time to go. He feels a tiny, excited frisson of anticipation. But also doubt. Is it really possible that fate could have sent such good fortune his way? It is hard to believe. And, yet, here he is.

Floorboards creak softly beneath his shoes as he descends lightly to reception. The hotel is quiet, the tourist season a distant memory. A notice on the counter reminds customers that the hotel will be closed in just a few weeks for a full month. The annual cong�s. It will reopen in December in time for Christmas and la nouvelle ann�e, if indeed Covid will allow for a celebration of either.

Narcisse glances through double French windows that open into the restaurant. Empty tables beneath cold yellow light, the chill October night pressing darkly against windows all along the far side. Not yet seven-thirty. Too early for the French to dine. But on his return he expects to eat, and crack open a celebratory bottle of Bordeaux. A car passes in the street outside. He drops his key on the counter, pleased that there is no one around requiring him to wear his mask. He fingers it in his pocket, glad to keep it there. He detests the damn thing, stuffy and claustrophobic. Yet, he knows, it is a significant barrier against the virus. And at his age he cannot afford to take any risks.

He does not see the man sitting in the bar, face obscured by a local newspaper, a half-drunk beer on the table in front of him. But as Narcisse steps out into the frosted air, the solitary drinker lowers his paper, rising to cross quickly to a door that leads to the terrace. From here he watches the art dealer make his way towards the palisade, breath billowing in the street lights. Anger burgeons in this man�s breast, a seething rage close to boiling point. The duplicitous peacock has no idea that Bauer is even here. Bauer knows he is not expected for another thirty minutes. But he knows, too, that beyond the gate opposite, a path will lead him through a garden straight to the top of the hill, where another gate will provide direct access to the terrace at the side of her house.

Narcisse turns left at the post office, before he reaches the palisade. Above it, the ch�teau cuts a shadow against the starlit sky, and Narcisse shivers, pulling his collar closer to his neck. Medieval shuttered stone dwellings crowd him on either side, reducing the sky to a ribbon of black overhead. The icy air is almost heady with the sweet-smoke smell of autumn oak, the cold of it burning his nostrils.

Where the road opens out left and right, the gate to the small park at the top of the hill lies open. Some work in progress near the war monument has been taped off, and Narcisse sees the thin strip of plastic catch light from the street lamps as it flutters gently in the cold air that snakes through these fifteenth-century streets. But before he reaches the park he turns off to climb the long flight of stone steps to the house that overlooks it. A small covered landing at the door lies in shadow. He pauses and takes a deep breath before slipping on his mask, as if to hide his identity. This is the moment of truth, perhaps the moment to which his entire career has led him. The window shutters to the left of the door stand open, but only darkness lies beyond. There is not a light to be seen anywhere in the house, and Narcisse experiences his first sense of apprehension. He lifts the cast-iron knocker and sharply raps it twice against the wood. Inside he hears the echo of it smothered by the dark. Apprehension gives way to irritation as he knocks again, louder this time. Irritation burgeoning to anger, and then frustration. Is it all just some elaborate hoax? He tries the door handle and to his surprise feels it yield to his hand. The door swings into darkness.

�Hello?� His voice seems strangely disconnected from his body.

There is no reply. He steps into the doorway and reaches around the wall, searching for a light switch with his fingers. He finds it. But it brings no light to this world. He curses softly behind his mask and calls again.

�Hello?�

Still nothing. He takes another step forward. He knows that he is in the kitchen because he was here earlier. A door at the far end, beyond a long table, leads to a short hallway, and then the grand salon. But he can see almost nothing, his eyes made blind by the streets lights he has just left behind. The house feels cold and empty, and his anger becomes incandescent, as if that might light the way ahead. He takes less cautious steps further into the kitchen, his fingertips finding the tabletop to guide him. Shapes are starting to take form around him now.

A sound that whispers like the smooth passage of silk on silk startles him. Movement in the darkness ahead morphs into silhouette. Momentary light catches polished steel, before he feels the razor-like tip of it slash across his neck. There is no real pain, just an oddly invasive sensation of burning, and suddenly he cannot breathe. His hands fly to his neck, warm blood coursing between cold fingers. He presses both palms against the wound as if somehow they might keep the blood from spilling out of him. He hears it gurgling in his severed windpipe. Just moments earlier he had been consumed by anger. Now he understands that he is going to die, but somehow cannot accept it. It is simply not possible. Consciousness rapidly ebbs to darkness and he drops to his knees. The last thing he sees, before falling face-first to the floor, is his killer. Caught in a fleeting moment of moonlight. And he simply cannot believe it.

A notice pinned to the door warned that the maternity unit was open only from 7 a.m. until 8.30 p.m., and Enzo wondered what happened if a woman�s waters broke in the middle of the night. Or were all births scheduled to fit into working hours these days?

He held the door open for Sophie who stepped out carefully, her left arm linked through Dominique�s right. They all removed their masks, and watched their breath billow in the cold afternoon air that blew up the Rue Wilson from the River Lot and the historic Valentr� bridge that spanned it.

Sophie was radiant and just six weeks from full term. Her check-up had gone well, and she had gazed in wonder at the ultrasound images of her baby boy. But she was thirty-five now, and with two miscarriages behind her, and a pandemic still sweeping the country, it was impossible to be too careful.

Enzo walked behind his daughter and the woman who had been such a large part of his life these past nine years and felt a wave of emotion wash over him. They were just like mother and daughter, even though Sophie�s birth mother, Pascale, had died giving birth to her all those years ago. He found himself fighting an internal conflict between happiness and regret. But only briefly. How could he be anything but happy for them both?

He listened to their excited chatter in the late autumn chill and felt a twinge of sadness for Dominique. They had both known from the start that she could not have children, and she had claimed to have come to terms with it. But he had seen that look in her eyes when glimpsing a baby in a pram, or a heavily pregnant woman, and knew that the absence of children would always mean there was something missing in her life.

In a way she had lived through Sophie�s pregnancy vicariously, and Enzo knew that she anticipated the imminent birth with the same unbridled joy of any grandmother. She had, too, been the only mother that Laurent had ever known beyond the first few months of his life. The child that he and Charlotte had made together. And even after all these years, Enzo could not shake off the image of Charlotte standing over the father of her son in the rain, a gun in her hand. Preparing to kill him.

They passed plasticised posters tied to rusted railings, and on the other side of the street the spreading branches of a pin parasol cast its shadow over the facade of the Banque de France. At the post office they took a right, and turned down towards the Place Gambetta.

�Can�t wait till this is all over,� he heard Sophie say, �and I can have a drink again!� He grinned. Like father, like daughter.

In five minutes they were crossing the Boulevard L�on Gambetta opposite the Th�atre de Cahors, to stroll down the Rue Georges Clemenceau to the little tree-lined square in front of La Halle. The trees were almost naked now, drifts of brittle, brown leaves blowing along the gutters. Tables and chairs still stood on the pavement outside La Lamparo pizzeria, peopled by a few hardy customers huddled in coats, to smoke or avoid wearing masks.

A familiar figure stood outside the door to Enzo�s apartment. She was in uniform, her brown hair neatly pinned beneath her hat. She had put on a little weight, but was still an attractive woman. Enzo had not seen her for some years, and his first thought was that something bad had happened. But her smile when she saw them allayed his misgivings. His instinct was to kiss her on each cheek, but he forced himself to leave a socially distanced two metres between them.

�Hello, H�l�ne,� he said, a little awkwardly. It must have been fifteen years since their nearly relationship.

�Enzo!� She beamed at him. �You�ve aged.�

He didn�t dare return the compliment.

Sophie said, �My dad�s always been old. Ever since I�ve known him.�

�Ancient,� Dominique chipped in.

Enzo spread his arms in despair. �My life is full of women who do nothing but abuse me.�

H�l�ne examined him more closely and frowned. �What happened to your hair?�

�It�s still there,� he said, reaching back to grasp his ponytail and run it through his hand, as if for reassurance.

�A little thinner, perhaps. But that�s not what I meant. Your white stripe. It�s gone!�

Enzo pulled a face. The white stripe in dark hair running back from one side of his forehead had been a distinguishing feature for most of his life. A physical manifestation of a condition known as Waardenburg syndrome, which had also gifted him one brown eye and one blue, but left him otherwise unaffected. At school it had earned him the nickname Magpie. �It�s still there, too,� he said. �You just can�t see it any more for all the grey.�

�Shame.� H�l�ne stifled a smile. �Now you�re just plain old Enzo Macleod. Nothing to distinguish you from any other Enzo Macleod.�

�Except for the ponytail,� Sophie said, �and the donkey jacket, and the cargoes.�

�And the hippy canvas shoulder bag.� Dominique gave it an affectionate tug.

And Sophie added, �He still looks like an exile from the sixties.�

H�l�ne seemed to notice her bump for the first time. �Looks like you and Bertrand have been busy.�

Sophie�s pleasure showed in her smile. �Due next month.�

�Well, congratulations.�

�Are you coming up?� Enzo said.

But H�l�ne shook her head. �I won�t invade the Enzo bubble.� It�s what the government was calling allowed family groupings to prevent spread of the Coronavirus. �I just came to pass on a message.�

�See you upstairs, then,� Sophie said, and she and Dominique pushed open the door of the brick tenement to release a breath of warm, damp air into the late October afternoon.

When they were alone, Enzo said, �So who�s trying to get a message to me?�

�An old friend.�

�Who?�

�Professor Magali Blanc.�

�The forensic archaeologist? Why didn�t she get in touch herself?�

�Lost your contact details it seems. She�s based in Paris these days, and her request for help in finding you landed on my desk.�

Enzo frowned. �What would she want with me? It�s years since I worked with her.�

�She appears to be engaged on a rather interesting unsolved murder, not far from home. Your home, that is.�

Enzo let his eyes wander towards La Halle and the little bistro that had opened on the terrace. He and Dominique quite often caught lunch there. In the square beyond, in the shadow of the twin-domed cathedral, he still took coffee every morning at the Caf� Le Forum. Life in south-west France, in this 2000-year-old Roman town contained by a loop of the river, flowed by as gently as the Lot itself. No stress. And he was enjoying it. He sighed. �I�m retired from all that these days, H�l�ne. Five years since I packed in my position at Paul Sabatier.�

�I thought cold cases were your speciality.� There was mischief in this.

He narrowed his eyes. �Only when I get conned into it by accepting a bet after too many glasses of wine.� He had solved all seven murders in journalist Roger Raffin�s book on French cold cases, but still lost his bet with H�l�ne and the pr�fet on a technicality.

�I wouldn�t have thought that a man with your forensic talents would ever lose his appetite for the challenge.�

Enzo smiled wryly. �You�re a wind-up merchant, H�l�ne, you know that?�

�Is that a technical term, or one of your quaint Scottish witticisms?�

He glared at her. �What�s the case?�

A smile divided her face, ear to ear. �I knew it.�

�H�l�ne!� The warning was clear in her growled name.

�It�s an old one, Enzo.�

�If Magali�s looking at it, it must be a very old one.�

�Seventy-five years or more.�

He frowned. �That would make it Second World War. A lot of people died then. What makes anyone think it was a murder?�

�The remains of a ranking officer of the Luftwaffe with a bullet hole in his skull, shallow-buried in a tiny medieval village on the banks of the River Dordogne, wouldn�t exactly fit a conventional wartime scenario.�

�They�re not likely to catch whoever did it now.� He was interested, in spite of himself.

�I don�t think that�s the object of the exercise. Isn�t it the job of archaeologists to unravel the mysteries of history? I think she just wants you to cast a professional eye over the grave, if one could call it that. She�s been unable to visit the site herself.�

�Where is it?�

�The village is called Carennac. It�s in the north of the D�partement. Not much more than an hour away.�

The old lady sits in her favourite rocker. To her listener it seems unyieldingly hard, softened for her fragile frame only by the thinnest of cushions at her back. Her hair, silver grey, has lost neither its lustre nor its abundance, but is pulled back into the severest of buns. The smooth, shiny-thin skin of her face is flushed from the heat of the fire, embers glowing in the blackened hearth of this vast chemin�e that so dominates the end wall of the salon.

Her voice, like her frame, is slight, and he finds himself realising that at seventy-five she is really only ten years older than he. Will the next ten years reduce him as it has her?

But still, there is a clarity in her voice, confident and unwavering as she begins the story she has heard many times, and no doubt repeated as often for hushed gatherings of silent confidantes. Thought-through, honed and polished to a professional patina.

He crosses his legs in his comfortable armchair and folds his hands in his lap, mirroring the storyteller, inclining his head very slightly to one side as she relates her tale.

She sits for a long time staring into space, lost in thoughts and memories that he suspects she will not share with him, before suddenly she turns as if just remembering that he is there. �Would you like a cup of tea, monsieur?� And without waiting for his response, eases herself stiffly out of her chair. �You won�t mind if I do?�

Her listener smiles. �Not at all.� He would prefer a coffee, but doesn�t want to put her to any trouble.

She is back in her seat a few minutes later, reaching down to lay her mug on the hearth. �Too hot to drink just yet. But it�ll not get cold there.� Bony hands clutch the ends of the chair arms. �Now, where was I? Ah, yes. London. July 1940.� And she resumes her story.

It was a cold, crisp, clear day when Dominique parked Enzo�s Citr�en on the castine of the palisade, the sheer walls of Carennac�s sixteenth-century ch�teau rising up behind them, lingering mist from the river below evaporating in the sunlight.

Near-naked trees cast spindly shadows on white gravel littered with leaves that crunched underfoot as they stepped out of the car. Enzo clutched the Michelin guide that he had been studying on the journey up from Cahors. On the drive into the village from the main road they had passed a couple of hotels, one of which was closed up for the season, and a small store that also served coffee. But the place was deserted.

Dominique looked around. �Where is everyone?�

Enzo said, �According to the guide, the out-of-season population is little more than 400. But that probably takes in the farms and outlying houses around here as well. They get hundreds of thousands of visitors in the summer, though.�

�Why? What�s here?�

�Apart from the ch�teau, an eleventh-century church and cloisters, and a twelfth-century tympanum.�

�What�s that? Some kind of drum?�

�An architectural feature of some kind,� Enzo said, flicking through the pages. �And there�s a tower down by the water where F�nelon is said to have written his famous Telemachus.�

Dominique screwed up her face. �Never heard of it.�

Enzo grinned. �No, neither have I.�

�Can�t be that famous, then. Which way?�

�Not sure. Let�s head to the end of the palisade.�

Dominique slipped her arm through his and pulled him close as they walked through the morning sunshine to where the road turned sharply to the left. Branching to the right it crossed a long bridge that spanned a dry riverbed leading down to the Dordogne. On the corner, an arch led to a steeply cobbled street that climbed along the side of the Eglise Saint-Pierre. A flight of wide stone steps led to an elaborately carved entrance, an assemblage of stone figures above a cluster of columns leading into the church itself. Enzo could almost feel the breath of centuries exhaling from its dark interior.

A small bistro on the opposite corner was shut, as was the tourist shop next to it. A staircase leading down to a terraced restaurant below was roped off. And Enzo felt a little of the sadness of the abandonment described in Francis Cabrel�s evocative song, �Hors Saison�. Out of Season.

Tall buildings with criss-crossing half timbers loomed over them as they followed a narrow street into the heart of the village. Shadows cast themselves deep across the tarmac, and the scent of woodsmoke filled the air. Evidently the diminished population of this chaotic jumble of stone houses built over centuries around the church were all indoors, huddled around hearths or wood-burning stoves.

At a curve of the street a small woman suddenly appeared, a split-cane shopping basket crooked over her arm. Grey-streaked dark hair was pulled back beneath a pale headscarf, her face deeply lined and still tanned from the long-departed summer sun.

Enzo asked if she could direct them to the park and she gave a mute flick of her head towards a street that climbed steeply away to their left, cantilevered houses pressing in close on either side to shut out the sun.

In a phone call with Magali the previous evening, Enzo had established that the Second World War remains had been found in a tiny park at the heart of the village. A recent storm had brought down a tree. Its roots, torn from the earth, had lifted a tangle of bones and leather and other remains with them.

At the top of the street the road opened out, branching up to their right and down to their left. Straight ahead stood a tiny patch of raised greenery delineated by gnarled old trees beyond iron railings and a handful of steps. A raised cross stood sentinel by the gate.

But their focus was drawn immediately away from the little park by the lights of several police vehicles, and the flashing orange of an ambulance. Uniformed gendarmes gathered on a covered landing at the top of steps leading to a house that overlooked the park. The door to the house stood open, and in the autumn silence of the village they could hear a hubbub of voices coming from within.

Dominique was instantly curious. �What�s going on here?�

But Enzo didn�t want to know. �None of our business.� And he took her hand and led her up the steps to the park. To their left three benches stood among several ancient trees amidst the drifts of brittle autumn leaves brought down prematurely by the storm. To their right a small war memorial was set among a collection of boulders, and flanked by four trees. Nineteen souls had been taken from this village by the Great War. Only one by its successor. And yet, someone else had died here. Someone quite alien, a long way from home. At the far side of the park stood an old chapel, now an exhibition space closed up for the season. To the right of it, almost against the back wall of the park, lay the skeleton of the fallen tree. The area of ground which had been torn up by its roots to reveal the long hidden grave had been taped off, and a canvas cover erected over it to protect the earth from rain.

�A lime tree,� Enzo said. �Looks like it�s been dead for some time.�

He fished out his phone and took several photographs to establish the setting, before moving in to take more detailed shots of the broken ground. He crouched down to brush aside fallen leaves, and picked up a curved piece of discoloured and broken terracotta. There were several more pieces of varying sizes lying in among the disturbed earth.

Dominique crouched beside him. �Mean anything?�

�Probably pieces of an old clay drainage pipe.� He moved to the outer area of the grass torn up by the roots and crouched again. With delicate fingers he uncovered the remains of the pipe itself, leading away beyond the chapel, about two feet beneath the surface, the merest hint of a depression in the grass. �Yes, here it is.� It was choked solid with earth. He glanced back along the area of disturbance to where the broken root system projected from the ground. It had brought up the bones and broken the old pipe at the same time.

Enzo stood up and took several more photographs.

Dominique slipped her arm through his again. �So what are you divining, Holmes?�

�Elementary, my dear Watson,� Enzo said. �The body was buried below the pipe.�

�You mean they dug beneath it to hide the corpse?�

Enzo shook his head. �No. The pipe was laid after the body had been buried. My guess would be that the trench for laying the pipe had already been dug, and the killers of our unfortunate victim took advantage of it to hide the body. After all, if they�d dug a fresh grave here, it would have been apparent to everyone.�

Dominique nodded. �So they dug down just below the level of the existing trench and covered it over, knowing that the drainage pipe would be laid on top of it then buried beneath fresh earth. And no one would be any the wiser.�

�The pipe was probably laid by a cantonnier, working for the mairie,� Enzo said. �So in theory, all you would have to do is go back through municipal records to find a date for when the work was done, and you�d have a reasonably accurate approximation of when he was murdered. Certainly to within a day or two.�

Dominique grinned. �Which is not at all bad after seventy-odd years.�

�Monsieur Macleod?� The voice rang out in the cold air and startled them. They turned to see a gendarme hurrying across the grass in their direction. He was a young man. Mid thirties, Enzo thought. Thinning mousy-brown hair was cut to a stubble in an attempt to disguise encroaching baldness. He was very nearly as tall as Enzo, and wore a short, dark blue fleece with a distinctive white stripe across chest and arms above a black leather gun belt hung with keys. He clutched his cap in his hands, and Enzo noted the three bars on his epaulette denoting the rank of capitaine. A pale blue mask dangled from one ear.

For a moment, Enzo thought he was actually going to shake his hand, but the gendarme stopped short, as if suddenly remembering himself. He was beaming like a star-struck schoolkid. �Monsieur Macleod, it�s an absolute pleasure.� He glanced towards Dominique and somehow managed to dismiss her with the briefest of acknowledgements before turning his gaze back on Enzo. �I recognised you from my cuttings collection. Followed every one of your cases and kept my own album. Outstanding, monsieur, just outstanding.�

Enzo shuffled uncomfortably at this sudden and effusive outpouring of admiration and flicked a look towards Dominique. He saw a tiny smile playing about her lips. �That�s not what the police thought at the time,� he said.

The gendarme was oblivious. �I�d shake your hand, but of course I can�t. I should introduce myself. I�m Capitaine Michel Arnaud. Based at Vayrac, just across the river.� His pale blue eyes positively shone.

To avoid further embarrassment, Enzo nodded towards the collection of police vehicles and officers at the house adjoining the park. �What�s going on here?� And he avoided Dominique�s look. After all, hadn�t he just told her it was none of their business?

Arnaud half glanced back towards the house. �A murder. Not very cold though. Happened just last night.�

�Domestic?� Enzo asked, although he had no real interest.

�Oh, no. Not at all. The very opposite, actually. It�s quite puzzling, and very bloody.� His face lit up with sudden inspiration. �Why don�t I walk you through it? I�d really appreciate your expert opinion.�

Enzo shook his head. �I don�t think so, capitaine. I�ve retired from all that sort of thing.�

�Oh, go on, Enzo. It would do you no harm to keep your hand in.�

Enzo turned a look on Dominique that might have killed a lesser mortal.

�What are you doing here anyway?� Arnaud asked suddenly.

Enzo inclined his head towards the fallen tree. �A colleague in Paris, a forensic archaeologist, asked me to take a look at this spot where it seems they found some Second World War remains.�

�Ah, yes,� Arnaud said. �The skeleton in the roots. The tree came down in a storm about a week ago. And the bones were hopelessly tangled in the root system. I think the tree was planted sometime after the body was buried, but it had been dead for a while. Some kind of fungus. Should have been removed. Our concern was establishing how old the remains were, given the bullet hole in the skull. But it quickly became apparent that it was historical. We were instructed to collect every last piece and send it to Paris. Not the most pleasant of jobs.�

�Indeed.�

A commotion on the steps of the house caused them to turn in time to see two men carrying a body bag on a stretcher down to the waiting ambulance.

�That�s them removing the body now. Finally. It took an age for the pathologist to get here, and forensics are pretty much done. Let me show you the crime scene.� He held an arm out to guide him towards the steps, but raised a hand to stop Dominique. �Perhaps your daughter should stay out here.�

Enzo�s face darkened. �My wife,� he said.

�Oh.� Arnaud blushed to the roots of his vanishing hair.

�And she won�t be fazed by a bloody crime scene, capitaine. Dominique was a gendarme herself for many years.�

Realisation bloomed suddenly in Arnaud�s recollection. �Dominique Chazal,� he said. �You were the investigating officer in the murder of Marc Fraysse, the Michelin-starred chef.�

Dominique inclined her head in acknowledgement.

�My sincerest apologies, madame. I had no idea.� He fought to recover himself. �All the better, then, to have an additional pair of expert eyes on my crime scene.� He pushed awkwardly past them to lead the way. �Come.�

Enzo glared at Dominique as they followed in his wake.

Arnaud barked a command, and the officers hanging about at the top of the steps quickly dispersed. Enzo and Dominique and the capitaine climbed up to the small covered terrace at the door, avoiding areas which had been taped off around several partial bloody footprints. A knotted old vine snaked its way up to the roof above them, shrivelled grapes still clinging to its leafless branches. The remains of autumn-withered geraniums spilled from plant pots along the top of the wall. They had a fine view from here of the uprooted tree, and Enzo paused to take another photograph. Arnaud attached his mask to his other ear, and Enzo and Dominique donned theirs. Impossible to socially distance here. Or inside the house.

�Let me explain before we go in,� he said.

Enzo sighed inwardly. This was not how he had envisaged his day. �Please do.�

Arnaud took out a notebook to consult. �The house belongs to a seventy-five-year-old spinster called Anny Lavigne. She was born in this house, and has lived here all her life. She inherited the property when her mother died twenty years ago, a lady then in her eighties.� Without consulting his notes he added, �Anny took a degree in English at the Universit� de Toulouse Capitole, and taught it at the coll�ge in Saint-C�r� for much of her working life.�

�Saint-C�r�?� Dominique asked.

Arnaud seemed mildly irritated by the interruption. �It�s a town about twenty minutes upriver.� He closed his notebook now. �She and her mother travelled a lot when they were both younger. But Anny�s been retired for over ten years now. She�s a well-known village character. Organises concerts in the church every year during the local music festival, carrying on the work of her mother who brought the Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra to the festival for many years. She had a younger half-sister who died in her forties, leaving a teenage daughter, Elodie, who married young and now has a teenage son of her own. Elodie�s an amateur opera singer and used to give impromptu concerts here at her aunt�s house. They would draw quite a crowd. Mostly wealthy Parisians who came down to stay in their maisons secondaires during the summer.�

There was a dreamy quality in his smiling eyes.

�She sings very well,� he said. �I attended a number of the concerts myself.� And then, catching himself, he cast his gaze towards the houses crowding in around them. �Carennac was in a dilapidated state for many years � half-ruined, you might say. It�s only the money of wealthy inheritors that has restored it to its present condition. Largely through the good auspices of Les Amis de Carennac.�

Enzo ran his eyes over Anny Lavigne�s house. �It looks like there�s been money spent on this place, too.�

Arnaud nodded. �Over many years, I think. Originally the habitable part of the house would all have been on this level. Over time they�ve built bedrooms in the attic, and a garage in the cellar.�

�And there�s no land with it?� Dominique said.

�No, madame. But there is a decent-sized terrace on the far side of the house for sitting out in the summer, though not much privacy since it gives directly on to the park. But I suppose the park itself must seem a little like a private garden. There�s hardly ever anyone in it.�

�I take it,� Enzo said, �that since you are speaking of her in the present tense, that Anny is not the victim.�

�No, no. Only in the sense that the murder took place in her house, and she discovered the body. Until we are finished with the crime scene, Anny is staying at the only hotel still open, the Fenelon. Ironically the same hotel where both the victim and the prime suspect were staying.�

Enzo cocked an eyebrow in surprise. �You have a prime suspect already?�

But Arnaud seemed less than happy. �Unfortunately, we haven�t the first idea where he is. Nor do we have any notion of why he might have done it. Equally odd, he appears to be entirely unknown to Anny. Although the victim himself had called on her earlier in the day.�

�And he is?�

�An art dealer from Paris. Emile Narcisse. Well known apparently, though not to me.�

Enzo shrugged. �Nor me.� He glanced at Dominique, but she shook her head. �And your suspect?�

�A young German in his twenties. From Berlin. His name is Hans Bauer. You might ask what either of them was doing in Anny�s house.� He shook his head. �We don�t know. Although they were both staying at the Fenelon, they were never seen there together. Narcisse was observed leaving the hotel on his own just before 7.30 last night. The only tenuous connection that we can find between them is art. Bauer is the director of a small private art gallery in the German capital. Though friends of Narcisse say he had never been to Germany. And as far as we know, this is Bauer�s first visit to France.�

Enzo said, �Where was Anny on the night of the murder?�

�Dining at a friend�s house in Vayrac. A few minutes� walk, in fact, from the gendarmerie. The friend came to pick her up, then drove her home afterwards. Which is when she discovered the body in her kitchen.�

Dominique said, �What makes Bauer the prime suspect?�

Arnaud scratched his head. �He checked out of his hotel room last night before the body was discovered, in spite of having reserved a table in the restaurant for dinner. Because no one actually saw him leave or enter the hotel during the course of the evening, it�s impossible to establish where he was at the time of the murder. But after he�d gone, the proprietor went to check on his room and found traces of blood everywhere, including the shower. The lab in Saint-C�r� has already established that it was Narcisse�s blood.�

Enzo whistled softly. �Well, that�s fairly compelling. How was Narcisse murdered?�

�His throat was cut, severing arteries and the windpipe.�

�A lot of blood, then,� Enzo said.

Arnaud nodded grimly. �Skid marks where it had pooled on the floor, footprints leading to the door, and bloody handprints on the door itself. And out here, as you can see. It would appear that Bauer lost his footing in the blood and fell. He must have been covered in it.�

Enzo said, �That was careless. How do you know it was Bauer who fell in the blood?�

�They were his bloody fingerprints on the door, Monsieur Macleod.�

�How did you establish that?� Dominique asked.

�Bauer has a criminal record in Germany. Assault. A fairly minor incident, apparently, when he was a teenager. But they have his fingerprints on file. We ran a check on AFIS.�

Enzo was impressed. �You have moved quickly.�

Arnaud allowed himself to bask in the glow of Enzo�s praise for only a moment before his face clouded again. �Not fast enough, though. Bauer has just vanished into thin air. He came down from Paris by train to Brive-la-Gaillarde yesterday, then took a local train to a station in a small town not far from here called Biars-sur-C�re. From there he took a taxi to Carennac. If he got away by train, how did he get to the station without calling a taxi? It would take more than two hours on foot, and there are no trains at that time of night anyway.�

�Perhaps he stole a car,� Dominique suggested.

�We�ve had no reports of any stolen vehicles, madame. And we�re quite isolated here. There�s really nowhere he could get to on foot. Certainly not without being seen.� He waved a hand towards the open door. �Shall we go in?�

The old lady has been silent for a long time, and he has been reluctant to prompt her in case somehow the spell of her story is broken and she draws a line under the telling of it.

�Shall I make myself a coffee?� he asks at length.

She looks up suddenly. �I can do that.� She places her hands on the arms of her chair to raise herself to her feet. But he gets quickly to his.

�No, no, I�m sure I can find everything for myself.� He was quite familiar now with her kitchen. �Can I make you tea while I�m at it?�

She shakes her head, sinking back in her rocker, clearly happy to let him get his coffee for himself. And he notices that she has barely drunk the tea she had made herself earlier. It would be stone cold by now, despite its proximity to the fire. The logs he threw on earlier have reduced themselves to embers, and are radiating a heat that he imagines must be burning her legs. He remembers how his grandmother�s legs had become mottled from sitting too close to the fire. Corned-beef legs, she had called them. �Shall I add another log?�

�Please.�

When he returns with his coffee the wood is well alight and she has not moved a muscle. As he settles once again in his chair she swings her head slowly in his direction. �Have you ever been to the Isle of Lewis, monsieur? It�s in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.�

�I know of it, but I have never been.�

�A brutal place, by all accounts. It is first in line to welcome the gales that have gathered their strength across five thousand kilometres of Atlantic Ocean. A windbreak for the mainland beyond.�

He wonders where on earth this can be leading, but forces himself to contain his impatience as he waits for her to resume her story. Which, at length, she does...

Ever since lockdown had first been enforced in March, Zoom had become the universal go-to means of internet communication between friends and family. Enzo had never heard of it before, but Dominique downloaded the software, and it had rapidly developed into their daily means of communication with Kirsty in Paris and Sophie here in Cahors, at a time when no one was even allowed to leave the house. It was easy to use and you could, it seemed, have unlimited numbers of participants in a single session, their images appearing in tiles across the screen, with whoever was speaking coming automatically to the fore. Ten years ago, Enzo thought, such technology might have been considered space age. But it was now taken completely for granted. All part of what everyone was calling the new normal.

On this session there were just three participants. Enzo in Cahors, with Dominique looking on, and Nicole in Gaillac. Nicole had effectively been Enzo�s research assistant during his investigations into the Raffin murders, his star pupil at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse where he had established a department of forensic science. Had she ever chosen to measure it, her IQ would probably have been off the scale, and Enzo knew no one better able to winkle information out of the ether through her extraordinary manipulation of the internet. Sadly, from Enzo�s perspective, she had not pursued a career in forensic science, choosing instead to marry a winemaker she had met in Gaillac, and have what seemed like an army of children.

In fact there were only three of them. It just felt like more as they ran around behind her shrieking and throwing things. He heard Fabien�s sharp admonishments in the background, the strain in his voice suggesting that paternal patience was wearing thin.

Nicole, however, appeared oblivious, chattering away at the screen without pause. It was some time since they had last spoken. He had emailed her earlier in the day, asking if she could dig up information for him on the victim and suspect in the Carennac case, then set up an evening session for them on Zoom. Now he found himself fielding a barrage of questions about Sophie and her pregnancy, Bertrand and whether or not his gym would survive the pandemic, Kirsty and Raffin and little Alexis in Paris, and of course Laurent � who was strumming Enzo�s guitar loudly on the other side of the room.

�Nicole, Nicole, can we get back to the murder?� Over his shoulder he shouted at Laurent, �Will you knock that off?� But the guitar only seemed to get louder.

�Oh, Monsieur Macleod, you�re no fun. Work, work, work. For someone who retired five years ago, you still seem obsessed by it.�

�Oh, this is brand new, Nicole,� Dominique said. �For months he�s been kicking his heels around the apartment complaining about boredom, and reminiscing about the good old days when people were trying to kill him.�

Enzo scowled at her. �I have not!�

She laughed and told Nicole, �At least this investigation seems unlikely to produce any attempts on his life.�

�Emile Narcisse,� Enzo said emphatically. �What can you tell me about him?�

Nicole frowned and scanned her screen, navigating away from Zoom to her research document. �Emile Narcisse...� Her eyes flickered from one side of the screen to the other. �Born 1955, in a small industrial town called Annonay, near Lyon. Only child of an art teacher and a local fonctionnaire.� She re-focused on Enzo. �Did you know that Annonay was the home of the Montgolfier brothers who invented hot-air ballooning?�

�No, Nicole, I did not.� Enzo sighed. �Emile Narcisse,� he prompted, in an attempt to get her back on track.

�Yes, yes, getting to it.� Now her head moved up and down as she scanned a document. �Encouraged by his mother, apparently he bought his first painting at the age of fourteen. By the time he opened his private collection to public view in 2005, it comprised more than 1300 pieces. In 2008 he donated 300 paintings from his collection to the French state. Worth, at that time, somewhere in the region of 63 million euros.�

Enzo whistled softly.

�Evidently he was a man of considerable means, then,� Dominique said.

Nicole confirmed. �His personal wealth has been estimated at more than 500 million.�

Enzo said, �Well, there�s motive straight away. Who stood to inherit?�

Nicole shook her head. �No one. He was an only child, never married, lived alone.�

Dominique said, �You can bet that some second cousin somewhere will come crawling out of the woodwork to stake a claim.�

Nicole seemed to be flicking through more documents, her eyes darting about the screen. �He had a gallery in New York City, and recently acquired a second Parisian gallery in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire in the Marais. Although his training was in classical art, he has traded almost exclusively for the last few years in modern contemporary, exhibiting a lot of new young American painters. He was a huge name in the world of international art, Monsieur Macleod, although you and I would never have heard of him. But he came to the attention of the general public about seven years ago, when he uncovered a haul of looted Nazi art in Switzerland.�

Dominique blew air through pursed lips. �I remember reading about that.�

�Found in an apartment in Geneva,� Nicole said. �It had belonged to the son of one of Hitler�s art dealers, a man called Anton Weber, who had been trickle-trading them in the marketplace for years to finance a very handsome lifestyle. Narcisse had sold a number of them, unaware, he claimed, of their provenance. The discovery was made when Narcisse flew to Geneva to keep a long-standing lunch appointment with Weber. When the man failed to turn up, Narcisse went to his apartment, where he got no reply. But a smell of gas prompted him to alert the authorities. The police broke in and found him dead.�

�Suicide?�

�Apparently. But anyway, it turned out the apartment was chock-full of looted Second World War art. Much of it stolen from Jewish collectors in France by Hitler�s art thieves, an organisation called ERR. Do you want to know what that stands for?� Nicole was nothing if not thorough.

�You�re going to tell me anyway,� Enzo said.

�Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg,� she said carefully. �The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce. Alfred Rosenberg was the Nazi�s chief ideologue, and he set up the ERR to appropriate cultural property from occupied countries during World War Two. In Weber�s apartment there were paintings by Claude Monet, Paul C�zanne, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, and lots of other star names. Worth so much they couldn�t even put a figure on it. Narcisse was appointed to track down the heirs of their rightful owners, and if no heirs were found to send them to auction. Mostly they were bought by museums and art galleries, and a few private collectors.�

�With Narcisse picking up the commission, no doubt,� Enzo said.

Nicole nodded. �Exactly. He was active in the art market right up until... well... until he was murdered. Working from his base at the Marais gallery.�

Enzo scratched his head thoughtfully. What was a man like Narcisse doing in an old lady�s house in a tiny village in south-west France? He said, �What about Hans Bauer?�

Nicole pulled a face. �Not nearly so much online about Herr Bauer, Monsieur Macleod. Twenty-five years old. Graduate of the Universit�t der K�nste, Berlin. That�s the University of the Arts. I had to look it up. He got into a lot of trouble as a teenager and earned himself a conviction for assault when he was eighteen. From the newspaper cuttings I was able to find, it seems that it was only his mother�s money and influence that managed to keep him out of jail. But he appears to have put his wild days behind him and is now the director of a small Berlin art gallery owned by his mother.�

A crash and a shriek drew her focus away from the screen.

�Oh God!� she said. �What a mess!� And turned back to Enzo. �I�m going to have to run, Monsieur Macleod. Delphine has just dropped her dinner on the floor. I think Fabien is going to kill her!�

And her screen went blank. Dominique leaned in to shut down the application and glanced at Enzo. �So what do you think?�

He shook his head. �No idea. But if I were to hazard a guess � which I won�t � I might think it had something to do with art.�

She grinned. �You don�t say.�

He leaned back in his seat and interlocked his fingers behind his head. �The thing that still troubles me about the crime scene, though, is how Bauer managed to get himself covered in so much blood. I�m sure I�m missing something.� He tipped forward again. �But we�ll not get anywhere until we find out why the two of them were in that house.�

Laurent was still strumming at his father�s guitar, trying to link an unlikely sequence of chords. Enzo turned and gazed at him fondly. �Try F sharp minor 7th after the E,� he suggested.

Laurent looked at him as if he were mad. �What?�

�Try it.�

The boy focused his concentration on making the right shape with his fingers, played his father�s suggested chord once, then tried it in the sequence. His face lit up. �That works!�

Enzo just smiled.

Dominique said, �Will I put the fish under the grill now?�

Enzo had prepared the dish before the Zoom call. White fish fillet in lime juice and ginger with sliced white grapes. The potatoes were already boiled. �Yes,� he said. �Five or six minutes is all it needs. I just want to have a look at those pics I took in the house at Carennac.� And as Dominique went through to the kitchen he crossed to the table and opened up his iPad. The photographs taken with his phone had already synced and he was able to look at them more closely on the larger screen. Again he shook his head. It made no sense. Bauer had attacked his victim face-on, slashing across his throat, probably with the missing kitchen knife. Narcisse had fallen in a pool of his own blood in the narrow passage between the table and the sink. Why would Bauer try to squeeze past, rather than make his escape through the side door behind him?

Enzo slipped half-moon reading glasses on to the end of his nose and peered more closely at the blood spatter on the floor, a frown slowly forming itself in two deep creases between his eyes.

Sophie�s pallor seemed all the more marked in contrast with the darkness of the hair that fell about her face. Her eyes seemed darker, too, and sunk in shadow. She�d had a sleepless night.

Their breath, diffused by masks, misted about their heads in the cold air as they stood on the step outside the maternity unit on this chill October morning. Enzo pulled the door open. Sophie hurried inside. Dominique was about to follow when the younger woman turned and raised a hand. �It�s okay. I�d rather be on my own.�

Dominique exchanged a quick look with Enzo. �Are you sure?�

�If it�s bad news I�d rather hear it by myself.�

�Darling, it won�t be bad news,� Enzo said.

The palest of smiles didn�t even reach beyond Sophie�s mask. �Bertrand will be back as soon as he�s parked the car. Just be here for us when we come out. Shouldn�t be any more than about thirty minutes.� And she vanished inside.

Enzo and Dominique stood in silence for nearly a minute before Enzo looked at his watch. �We won�t have long to see the pathologist, then. Better hurry.�

They turned down the Rue Wilson towards the Valentr� and turned left along the bottom end of the hospital. Neither of them wanted to talk about the cramps which had kept Sophie awake the previous night, or Bertrand�s panicked call for help at 6 a.m. His face had been even more bloodless than Sophie�s when he drew up outside the Lamparo, where Enzo and Dominique were waiting for them on the pavement. Almost forty now, Bertrand�s visage still bore the scars of the long-discarded studs and rings which had adorned it when he first started dating Sophie � to Enzo�s horror. But after a prickly start, the old stag and the young buck had won each other�s respect and were now more like father and son. Enzo would have done anything for him. But he was powerless to prevent the possibility of his losing another baby, and he shied away from the very thought of it.

Dominique said, �You�re sure the pathologist won�t mind me sitting in?�

Enzo shrugged distractedly. �She�s an old friend.� It was hard to concentrate on the Carennac case when his daughter was facing the prospect of a third miscarriage. But it would, at the very least, provide another focus to prevent him obsessing about it. Thirty minutes standing on the steps outside the maternity unit would have felt like a lifetime.

A plumbing crisis at the apartment had delayed Enzo�s departure, and it was early evening by the time he drove into Carennac. Lights burned in the Fenelon as he cruised slowly along the village main street. Its terrace was deserted, and through double glass doors he could see that the restaurant was empty, too.

Mist formed yellow halos around the street lights, and rose up from the river as he parked on the palisade. There was not another vehicle in sight, nor a light in any of the windows of the ch�teau, or the houses that clustered around it. Mired in an autumn fog, the village seemed spectral in the dark, emerging phantom-like from centuries past. But Enzo could smell woodsmoke in the cold, damp air, so the village had not been entirely abandoned to history.

He buttoned his coat up to the neck and briskly climbed the narrow street opposite the post office towards Anny�s house. Medieval stone buildings rose on either side, leaving only a sliver of sky on view above. A gibbous moon was veiled, its light diffused by brume as he emerged into the metalled area before the park. The gnarled, misty silhouettes of ancient trees stood stark against the night sky all along the railing above him, the stone cross at the gate casting its moon shadow long over the tarmac.

He wondered if he should have told Arnaud that he was coming in case the house had been locked up. It was a crime scene, after all. But he did not want to share his thoughts just yet with the gendarme, and in any case he need not have worried. Although a criss-cross of crime-scene tape had been stapled across the doorway, when he reached the landing at the top of the steps, the front door of Anny�s house opened at the turn of its handle. He pushed it into darkness.

The house breathed softly in his face. The faint perfume of stale cooking, and body odour, and damp. And the unmistakable metallic smell of blood. Enzo ducked under the tape and stepped inside, realising immediately that this is how it would have been for Narcisse as he had entered the house just a couple of nights earlier. It was around the same time. And stepping from street lights outside into the dark was like walking blind into the unknown. Or, in the case of Narcisse, to meet his maker.

Enzo left the door open at his back and took three short steps into the kitchen before his fingers found the table on his right. Still he could see nothing, his eyes taking an age to make the adjustment. This must have been just about as far as Narcisse had come before the blade came out of the darkness to cut open his throat.

A noise somewhere in the kitchen ahead of him brought his heart pounding up into his throat and he froze on the spot. In a moment of blind panic he imagined the same blade that killed Narcisse arcing out of the night to take his life, too.

�Who�s there?� His voice died in the stillness the instant it left his mouth. He was greeted by silence.

He turned quickly, stepping back towards the door, and found the light switch. Harsh yellow light flooded the kitchen and he saw, back arched, a black cat on the far end of the table, watching him with wide green eyes. Relief escaped his lips in a long breath, and he was aware of his heart hammering an erratic rhythm against his ribs. Only to be startled as the cat made a sudden and unexpected dash for the door, bills and letters and junk mail scattering in its wake.

It was gone before Enzo could turn, and he wondered if perhaps the cat had been witness to the murder. Not much use, even if it had. He stooped to pick up the bits and pieces that had fallen to the floor and saw that someone had made a clumsy attempt to wash the blood from the floorboards. And he felt a prickle of annoyance. The victim was barely cold; there had been no arrest. This was still a crime scene in an ongoing investigation. It was just as well he had taken photographs for himself.

He straightened up and saw a bloody plastic bucket and mop leaning against the far wall. Whoever had tried to erase the stains had underestimated just how stubbornly blood is absorbed into wood. In all likelihood, this physical manifestation of the murder which had taken place in the kitchen would outlast them all. An ever-present stain on the future, a reminder that here a man had died.

A man, Enzo thought, whose reason for being in this house at all remained obscure.

He stepped over the bloodstains and walked along the hall to the grand salon. Moonlight shone through all the stained glass. A dead light. The light of the night that brought illumination only in black and white. In faded fulguration and deep shadow. By its feeble luminescence, Enzo crossed the room to try the handle of the door on the far wall. It opened, allowing a wide shaft of naked moonlight to lay itself across the flagstones. Enzo broke it with his own shadow as he stepped out on to the terrace. The pavings extended to his right and broadened out into a decent-sized sitting area where chairs were tipped against a wooden table. Beyond the terrace, the old chapel and the park were washed in misted moonlight. Overhead, a Roman-tiled canopy sheltered the doorway, and to the left a stone staircase descended steeply to a narrow alleyway running between the houses, beyond the reach of street lights, and profoundly dark.

After a moment�s hesitation, Enzo descended the steps to the darkness below. On his left the alley ran along the end of the house to the street beyond, where the steps Enzo had climbed to the front door only a few minutes earlier were hidden from view. He turned to his right, and using the torch app in his phone, made his way along to a sharp turn, where the path led away between gardens and houses towards the main road above the village. The abandoned Auberge du Vieux Quercy stood in silent silhouette, dominating the village below.

Immediately ahead, a small gate opened into the garden of a large house on his left. There were no lights, no signs of life in the house. Enzo tried the latch on the gate and it swung open. A stone-tiled path fell steeply away through the garden towards large double gates at the foot of the hill, some fifty metres distant. Beyond them, he could see the lights of the main street where he had driven past the Fenelon on his way into the village.

His sense of the geography of this place was sketchy, and he determined to return in daylight at some point to make himself more familiar with its layout.

He turned back towards the alley, and was startled by the eyes of the black cat from the house glowing in the light of his phone. Staring at him out of the darkness, before slinking away to be absorbed by the night. For some reason, Enzo was spooked by it, and he hurried back up the steps to re-enter the house by the side entrance, closing the door behind him and making his way rapidly through the kitchen and out again into the light of the street lamps. He turned off the house lights and closed the door.

His breath billowed about his head like smoke as he ran down the steps to the street and headed back towards the main street. At the junction of the roads he stopped, hesitating just for a moment. It was clear that Anny had not yet returned to the house, and was likely still staying at the Fenelon. He turned to his right and walked towards the light that fell from the hotel across its terrace and out on to the road.

He pulled on his face covering before pushing open one half of the glass doors and walking into the warmth of the hostelry. From a door to his right, a young man emerged to greet him from the other side of a high wooden counter. �Table for one?� he asked, his voice muffled by his blue cotton mask.

Tempted as he was to eat, Enzo shook his head. �I�m looking for Anny Lavigne.�

The young man nodded towards the dining room. �Over by the window.�

In fact she was the only diner, sitting on her own at a table for two. Windows all along the far side of the dining room would, he assumed, give on to a view in daylight of the river below. But for now, only darkness lay beyond.

Enzo approached across a tiled floor and stopped a respectful two metres short of her table. She didn�t see him coming, lost in some private reverie, and only looked up at the last moment. �Mademoiselle Lavigne?� he asked.

Brown bewildered eyes looked at him uncomprehendingly. �I�m sorry, do I know you?� she said. �You must forgive me, my memory is not what it was.�

�No, mademoiselle, I�m sorry. It�s me who should apologise for disturbing your evening meal. My name is Enzo Macleod. I�m consulting for Capitaine Arnaud on the murder that was committed in your house.�

A pained expression flitted across her face. �Oh.� She seemed almost disappointed. �I thought you might be someone I knew. Would you like to join me?�

�I would love to. But I have to get home tonight, and there will be food waiting for me on the table.�

�Where�s home?�

�Cahors.�

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. �That�s a good hour or more away. You�ll be eating late.�

He nodded. �Also, I don�t want to risk coming too close. At our age, we�re both vulnerable to the virus.�

She sighed. �Yes. I�m beginning to fear that this life we are being forced to live � masks, social distancing, friend and family bubbles � is going to see me out. And that a long and interesting life, that has taken me halfway around the world and back, will end with imprisonment in my own home.� She paused, and her frown gave way to a smile. �At least take a seat at the next table. I�d enjoy a little company.�

Enzo pulled out a chair and sat at the far side of the next table along the window wall.

�Do you know,� she asked, �when I�ll be allowed home? I�d rather not spend my last days in the Fenelon.� And she smiled, a warm smile that twinkled in eyes that seemed now flecked with green. She ran age-spattered hands back through an abundance of silver-grey hair gathered in an untidy accumulation at the back of her head. �It�s so hard to keep up appearances without the lotions and potions and implements of destruction that one is accustomed to in one�s own boudoir.�

He grinned, enjoying her self-deprecating sense of humour. �Well, it looks like they�ve already made a start on cleaning up the blood.� And he stopped, realising how insensitive that was. �I�m sorry, that must sound pretty shocking to you.�

�Monsieur Macleod, after seeing the body of that poor man lying in a pool of blood on my kitchen floor, there is very little I think that could shock me.� She paused. �Have they managed to remove the stain from the floorboards?�

He shook his head.

�I didn�t think so. Blood comes very easily out of people, but not so easily out of floors. Perhaps I�ll lay a rug there.�

Enzo said, �I think if you ask Capitaine Arnaud, they�ll probably be able to let you back in sometime tomorrow.� He hesitated. �But perhaps you�d be better giving it a little more time. I might think twice myself before moving back on my own into a house where a brutal murder has been committed.�

�Time is a commodity in short supply at my age, Monsieur Macleod. I have lived on my own ever since my mother passed. And the house is full of ghosts anyway. One more or less won�t make any difference.� Again, that engaging twinkle. Then she said, �Macleod. It�s a Scottish name, is it not?�

�It is, mademoiselle.�

She threw up her hands. �For God�s sake, stop calling me Miss!� She used the English word. �It makes me sound like some old spinster.� And she grinned. �Even if I am.� She drew breath. �Madame, or Anny will do. What�s a Scotsman like you doing in France?�

�It�s a long story. But I�ve been here for well over thirty years.�

She nodded. �And why are you consulting on a murder?�

�Because forensic science was my speciality. Before I retired I was able to apply new science to some old cases that had been baffling the French police for years.�

�And solved them?�

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. �Pretty much.�

�Bravo!� she said. �So what do you want to know?�

�The capitaine told me that you�d been dining with a friend in Vayrac on the night of the murder.�

�Yes. Marie-Christine. We�ve known each other for years. Our mothers were friends before us.�

�She came to pick you up and then brought you home afterwards?�

�I no longer drive, Monsieur Macleod. I stopped feeling safe on the roads a number of years ago after a nasty accident. So I rely on friends now.�

�And it was when you came home that you found the body in your kitchen?�

�Yes.� Her lips paled as she pressed them together, her eyes glazed and stared off into some misted distance where she replayed the images that had greeted her that night in her own home.

�The capitaine also told me that the victim, Narcisse, had called on you earlier that same day.�

She nodded.

�You knew him?�

�Not before he knocked on my door. Knew of him, of course, as I discovered when he introduced himself.�

�What did he want?�

�He was writing a book, apparently, about Rose Valland. And he�d heard that my mother had worked with her during the war.�

�Rose Valland?� Enzo thought the name seemed familiar, but he couldn�t place it.

�Rose worked at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris during the Nazi occupation, monsieur. The Nazis used it as a sorting house for all the art they were stealing from French collectors before shipping it off to Germany. Unbeknownst to them, Rose kept meticulous records of every piece that came through the gallery. Where it was sent to, and when. So that after the war, she was able to go to Germany and track it all down to restore to its rightful owners. A legend in the world of art, but little known by the public at large, alas.�

�And your mother worked with her?�

�Briefly. She later wrote a memoir of those times � never published, of course � though I don�t think there was much in it that could have thrown light on the activities of Rose Valland. I told Monsieur Narcisse that I was dining out that night, but that I would look through my mother�s papers in the morning, and that if he chose to return in the afternoon I would share with him anything that I had found.� She turned sad eyes on Enzo. �It seems he returned earlier than anticipated.�

�And the German, Hans Bauer, the man police think killed him...?�

She shook her head. �I know nothing about this young man at all, Monsieur Macleod. What either of them were doing in my house is a complete mystery.� Her clear, pale skin crinkled in a frown and he thought for a moment that she was going to spill tears. �In a way, I feel quite... violated by it.� And she gazed at him, a pained look in her eyes.

Enzo thought how fragile she seemed, and vulnerable, sitting on her own in this cold, empty dining room, with the bloodstains of a violent murder still fresh on the floor of the only place she had ever called home. Which made him reticent about asking his next question. But he did all the same. �Your friend, Marie-Christine. I�d like to talk to her if I may.�

Anny seemed surprised. �Why?�

�It�s the nature of my profession, Anny. Forensics is the study of tiny details. She may have seen something that night when she came to pick you up, or on the way back. Something that hasn�t even registered in her own consciousness. If you could, perhaps, let me have her address?�

�Well, of course. Though I�m not sure that she�ll be able to tell you anything very much. Goes around with her eyes shut half the time, that woman.� She took out her phone to search for the address. �I�ll send you it.�

Enzo said, �It�s been an eventful week. A murder in your home, and the remains of a body unearthed in the park next door. I don�t suppose you have any idea who was buried there?�

She looked up, surprised. �Why would I? I must confess, I paid it very little attention. They say the body dates back to the forties. Whoever it was, he must have been put there before I was even born.�

Guido and I drove from Berlin to Carinhall in his fabulous Mercedes-Benz 32��Cabriolet. It is a seductive powder blue, and with the top down, and the wind in our hair, the journey took little more than an hour. It was a beautiful, sunny summer�s day and Guido was in a fine mood. The Wehrmacht had swept through Western Europe. France had fallen. G�ring�s Luftwaffe was in the process of blowing Britain�s feeble force of Spitfires out of the sky over southern Britain, and we�d begun bombing London to soften up the English for the coming invasion.

Forty-two years old and I was as nervous as my first day in the trenches. Dressed in my best suit with a stiffly pressed white shirt and blue tie, I had spent a good twenty minutes shining my shoes to the point where I could see my reflection in them. I was about to meet the second most powerful man in Europe.

Guido found my anxiety amusing. He never tires of teasing me and spent much of the drive berating me for my sense of humour, or lack thereof. G�ring, he said, was genial company and looking forward to meeting me. For his part, Guido is a regular guest at the hunting lodge.

�He built it in 1934 in the Schorfheide forest as a private retreat,� Guido told me, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. �Named it after his first wife, Carin, three years after she died. But it�s been much enlarged since then, and is now an official state residence and hunting lodge.� He turned towards me, amusement in his eyes. �All paid for by the German people, of course.�

Open countryside gradually gave way to the large area of forest north of Berlin that they call Schorfheide, and eventually we stopped at the gatehouse to the Carinhall estate to have our documents checked before being allowed any further. A long, straight road cut a swathe through the trees. I could see the hunting complex in the distance, shimmering in the heat of the day. Somewhere beyond it lay the D�lln lake, and there were birds circling lazily in the sky above the water.

�There are wings for staff, and a doctor and a dental surgery,� Guido said. �There�s a sauna and fitness room, and an indoor swimming pool. And, of course, G�ring�s model train set.� He laughed uproariously. �Nearly a hundred metres of electric rails, with tunnels, bridges, and even miniature aeroplanes. There�s also a cinema, if you fancy taking in a movie while we�re here.� He turned and shook his head at the look on my face, which I can only imagine was open-mouthed and foolish. I have been to Guido�s house many times, but wealthy as he is, he possesses nothing on this scale. It was all far beyond anything I might ever have imagined in my wildest dreams.

We drove past all the outbuildings and into a large courtyard in front of an impressive, white-painted lodge. A wild boar stood mounted on a plinth in the middle of a square pond, testament to the building�s legacy as a hunting lodge. A grand entrance was framed in stone with Party flags raised on either side. Life-sized couchant stags flanked the doorway.

We drew up alongside several other vehicles, and Guido cut the motor. He turned to me then, and warned, �Hermann�s good company, as I said. But he can also be unpredictable.� He lowered his voice as if someone might be listening. �You�ll probably remember the Beer Hall Putsch when Hitler first tried to take power in Munich. 1923. It was a disaster. A failed coup d��tat. A lot of Party members were shot and killed by police, and Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison. Hermann was there, too, and was wounded in the shooting. A nasty wound that got infected. The doctors gave him morphine for the pain, and the poor guy got hooked on the stuff. All these years later he�s still addicted.�

Guido stepped out of the car, but then leaned back in, lowering his voice even further. �Morphine addiction��� he shook his head � �leads to complications, Karlheinz. Excites the nervous system, creates excessive activity in certain glands. It can lead to extreme outpourings of energy.� His voice reduced itself almost to a whisper. �And sometimes abnormal vanity.� To my surprise he winked at me and grinned. �Which pretty much describes der dicke Hermann to a T. You never know quite how you�ll find him.� He straightened up and his voice returned to normal levels. �Come on, my friend. Time to meet the Reichsmarschall.�

I think he enjoyed stoking the flames of my anxiety, making me even more nervous than I already was. And to describe our host as �fat Hermann� just before we were to meet him was clearly and mischievously designed to unnerve me.

Inside a dark entrance hall, we were greeted by a flunky in white shirt and waistcoat. He made me think of a ma�tre d� in a restaurant. I was asked to sign the visitors� book, which stood on a lectern just inside the door. It was huge, and heavy to open, and the pages released a fusion of scents left by a procession of visitors over many years.

�You�re in exalted company now, young man,� Guido said, as I leaned over it to scrawl my name and date and signature. �If you look back through these pages you�ll see that they have borne witness to such visitors as former US President Herbert Hoover, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Benito Mussolini, the kings of Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia.� He grinned. �Now everyone will be able to boast that they�ve seen your name in here, too.�

A long, tiled hallway led us past walls mounted with classical works of art, many of which I recognised from my studies in Frankfurt. There were sculpted figures and vases raised on marble plinths, all lit by ceiling panels that diffused light from overhead to minimise shadows.

Finally we were led into the Jagdhalle, a vast salon with exposed beams rising into the apex of the roof. It was sixty-five-and-a-half metres long, Guido had told me on the drive down, but I�d had no concept of how big that was until I walked into that great hall. A huge fireplace at the far end occupied most of the wall. Rugs laid on polished floors stretched between groupings of soft furnishings, discreetly patterned three- and five-piece suites gathered around large tables, a long dining table in front of the fire. Electric chandeliers hung from the cross-beams all along the length of the hall. Punctuating the outer wall, antlers were mounted above each arched window, and on the wall facing, formal chairs and long wooden tables stood beneath regal tapestries and priceless paintings.

G�ring was lounging on a settee at the far end of the hall reading a newspaper. I could see that he was dressed in the white cotton summer tunic worn in many of the photographs I�d seen of him. A big, corpulent man with a full, round face and dyed black hair oiled back from a broad forehead.

Guido leaned in and whispered, �He keeps lions here, you know. So make sure you don�t get on the wrong side of him.�

G�ring saw us coming, put his newspaper to one side and stood up to greet us. It seemed to take an age traversing the length of this Jagdhalle, to reach him. As we approached I saw his Iron Cross attached at the neck of his tunic, and the famed Blue Max dangling on a piece of leather from his collar. He had a florid complexion that spoke to me of too much good living and dangerously high blood pressure. He shook my hand vigorously, fat fingers adorned with ostentatious gold and silver rings.

I felt quite small in his presence, but bathed in the warmth of his bonhomie and gently smiling blue eyes. �Herr Wolff,� he said. �I am pleased to meet you at last. Guido has told me so much about you.�

�All of it good, I hope, sir.�

He grinned at Guido. �Herr Fischer is nothing if not discreet...� He turned back to me. �May I call you Karlheinz?�

I have to confess to being quite taken aback. Though even had I wanted to, I was in no position to decline. And why would I? �Of course,� I said.

He took me by the arm, then, and led me a little way down the hall to show me a painting that took pride of place on the window-facing wall. It stood almost two metres high, and was a depiction of a handsome woman in hunting gear set against a clear blue sky. She wore a high, turned-up collar, and a falcon perched on her left arm, wings outspread. �What do you think?� he said.

�Magnificent.�

He glanced at me. �You know it?�

�The Falconer, by Hans Makart,� I told him. Guido had provided me with a list of G�ring�s most prized works. Homework for my visit. �A gift a couple of years ago from Herr Hitler, I believe. On the occasion of your forty-fifth birthday.�

G�ring turned a knowing look in Guido�s direction. �Well briefed, Guido.� His smile faded slowly. �Would you leave us now, please?�

If anything, I think Guido was even more startled than I. I could see him choke back his surprise. �Of course, Reichsmarschall,� he said, and they seemed suddenly on more formal terms. He nodded to me, and turned to walk back along the length of the great hall before finally vanishing through the door at the far end.

G�ring turned. �Come join me in a coffee.� The waistcoated flunky who had shown us in was still hovering at a discreet distance. G�ring waved a careless arm in his direction. �Fresh coffee for my guest, Daniel.� And he steered me back to where the impression of his ample behind remained pressed into the settee. He flopped into it again. �Take a seat.� And I sat, uncomfortably, in an armchair opposite, wishing to God that Guido was still there.

He seemed distracted. Searching about his person, and then the settee around him, for something that remained elusive. I sat in silence and felt as if he�d forgotten that I was even there.

The coffee arrived on a tray that Daniel placed on the table between us. He poured two cups black, bowed and left. G�ring emerged from his distraction to brandish a hand towards the cream jug. �Help yourself,� he said.

I poured a tiny drop of cream into my coffee and took a sip. It was as good a coffee, I think, as I have ever tasted. But G�ring showed no interest in his. Instead he had turned his disconcerting gaze fixedly on me. �Are you a lover of the modern, Karlheinz?� I frowned my lack of understanding and he clarified. �Art.�

�It is mostly what I have dealt in, sir.�

�That�s not what I asked.�

I panicked a little, then, wondering what would be the correct response, before deciding that honesty might be the best policy. �Some of it, yes. I am a great admirer of the impressionists, less so of artists in the mould of Picasso or Dali.�

�You are aware that Herr Hitler believes all modern art is degenerate, a symptom of the decay of Western civilisation.�

�I have read that, sir.�

�We have accumulated vast quantities of the stuff, Karlheinz. Confiscated it. Much of it from Jewish collectors. The F�hrer would have it destroyed. But this work has an inherent financial value on the international market and Herr Hitler has been persuaded that its sale will boost the war coffers. I would like you to trade in this marketplace on behalf of the Reich.�

I was stunned. Why me? Yes, I�d been trading in art for Guido Fischer, but this was an entirely different level of responsibility. I had no idea what to say.

G�ring smiled, as if he could read what was going through my mind. �At least, that shall be your cover.�

�My cover?�

�This war will extend the borders of the German state across all of Europe, Karlheinz. A redistribution of power. And wealth.� He paused pointedly. �And art. Our F�hrer has an admirable plan to build what everyone is calling a super museum at Linz in Austria. The world�s best art will hang on its walls.� His pause again presaged the unexpected. �He wants da Vinci�s Mona Lisa to be the centrepiece of that collection.�

I�m sure my astonishment was apparent in my expression, for it caused him to smile.

�You know a certain dealer in art called Paul Lange, I understand.�

Even the mention of his name was enough to summon dark clouds of remembered anger. I�m sure he must have seen the shadow of it cross my face. �Yes, sir. We studied art together at Frankfurt.�

�Herr Hitler has attached Lange to the Kunstschutz in Paris and asked him to secure the Mona Lisa for his F�hrermuseum. By fair means or foul.�

My astonishment was greater than my reticence. �Lange?�

�Yes, Lange.�

I said, �But surely, we know exactly where the Mona Lisa is. Why not just seize it?�

The Reichsmarschall smiled at my naivety. �Because, Karlheinz, there would be the most almighty international uproar. We would leave ourselves open to accusations of the looting of national treasures.� He chuckled. �We must be careful. Either we will go down in history as the world�s greatest statesmen, or its worst villains. So the acquisition of this work has to be achieved with subtlety, diplomacy, and preferably in the shadows.�

He fell silent for a long time, gazing at me, or rather through me. At least, that�s how it felt. And I found it hard to believe that I was sitting here, in the lion�s den so to speak, being taken into the confidence of the lion himself. Me, a Mischling. A lover of modern art. Everything that was anathema to the Nazis. And I very much feared for where this all was going.

�I want it,� he said simply.

I frowned. �Want what, sir?�

�The Mona Lisa. I want it for my collection. Even if no one ever knows it. Even if no one ever sees it. It will be mine, to gaze upon whenever I choose. And I will know, when no one else does, where the missing Mona Lisa resides.� Another pause before the coup de gr�ce. �I want you to get it for me before Lange acquires it for Hitler.� His smile was filled with warmth, but his words chilled me to the bone. �It�ll be our secret, Karlheinz. Just you and me.� And I understood in that moment just how fatally dangerous it could be to share such a secret with such a man.

But now that he had taken me into his confidence, there was no way out. He had committed me, whether I wanted it or not. There was no possibility to refuse.

He said, �You will, of course, accept my invitation to become an officer in the Luftwaffe. It will pay your wages, and open whatever doors you need. You will be attached to the ERR in Paris. You are familiar with this organisation?�

I was well aware that the raison d��tre of the ERR was to confiscate art and artefacts, manuscripts and books in occupied territories. Procurement under cover of protection. �Yes, sir.�

�Ultimately, they are answerable to me. So you will carry that authority. You know Paris, I believe.�

�I do. It is the world capital of art.�

�Good. ERR will arrange office and living accommodation for you there.� He shifted himself to the edge of the settee and leaned towards me. �I�m putting a great deal of trust in you, Karlheinz. Guido speaks most highly of your discretion, and I�m going to have to ask you to exercise that in relation to Guido himself. No one, and I mean no one must know about this.� He reached for a small bell that sat on the table and rang it vigorously.

Almost immediately Daniel appeared from a door in the fireplace wall carrying a brown paper parcel. He laid the neatly folded package on the coffee table and retreated. G�ring pushed it towards me.

�A gift,� he said, and smiled. �Go on, open it.�

It was with great trepidation that I unpacked the parcel to reveal a black leather flying jacket with a short, elasticated waist, large lapels and a collar that could be turned up for warmth. I gazed on it with astonishment, to G�ring�s apparent amusement.

�Usually it is only pilots who get to wear these,� he said. �But since it is my gift to you, you can wear it with pride. I understand that you were awarded the Iron Cross for bravery during the last war.�

�I was.�

�Then you can pin it with honour to the left breast of this jacket, and let no man doubt your courage.� As he spoke he absently fingered the elaborate gold and blue of the Pour le M�rite, best known as the Blue Max, that dangled from his collar. And, in spite of myself, I felt a frisson of excitement. I was no longer to be a bystander in this war of wars. I had a reason to be a part of it, and a precious function to fulfil.

I lay tonight with Lisbeth, in her apartment that overlooks the river. We left the drapes undrawn, and the same moonlight that reflected on the dark surface of the River Main also flooded her bedroom. I said my farewells to my wife and children this morning, and they believe me to be on my way to Paris already.

I am sitting at Lisbeth�s desk in the window that looks out on the river as I write this, and she lies sleeping among the warm folds of the sheets that wrapped themselves around us in the frenzy of our lovemaking. I love her with a great intensity, and never once have I felt those same base urges that have caused me to raise my hands to Kersten. They say that your partner can bring out the best in you. But they can also bring out the worst. I am happy to escape the worst that Kersten brings out in me, but sad to be leaving my Lisbeth. I feel that I owe her my honesty. The truth. But I simply cannot break the bond of silence that has been forced upon me by Herr G�ring.

On the drive back from Carinhall to Berlin last month, it was all I could do to fend off Guido�s questions. He knew perfectly well there was more to G�ring�s request that I trade confiscated modern art in the international marketplace on behalf of the Reich. And when it became clear to him that I was not going to share it with him, he fell silent and has been cool with me ever since.

However, I am consumed by excitement now. For tomorrow I will fly to Paris. I have been there many times since they had to drag me off that vile piece of excrement who made Erika pregnant. But always incognito. And never have I dared go near him again. Now it is different. Now it is I, and not the French authorities, who hold sway. I have often heard the aphorism that revenge is a dish best served cold, but never understood it. Until now.

What I found most extraordinary upon my arrival in Paris this morning was the sense of normalcy. If one can say that German soldiers standing on street corners in the French capital, and swastikas hanging from every other building, is normal. I think what I sensed was a lack of the tension I had most certainly expected. The streets were full of traffic, and pedestrians, all going about their daily lives as usual. Or so it seemed.

What I did perceive, perhaps, was a nervous excitement simmering just below the surface. A certain febrile quality to the atmosphere in this City of Light. But superficially at least, you would never have guessed we were at war, and that Paris was a city under occupation.

I strode along the crowded pavement of the Boulevard Haussmann, aware of drawing eyes that were reluctant to show too much interest. I cut, I think, a more dashing and exotic figure than those bored-looking soldiers in their field-grey uniforms and utilitarian helmets. As G�ring had foreseen, I wore my Iron Cross pinned to the left breast of my leather flying jacket with the fiercest of pride. An embroidered Luftwaffe eagle was pinned to my right, the pips on my epaulettes denoting the rank of Hauptmann. I had not yet become accustomed to the baggy thigh britches tucked into my black leather boots, but I walked, I suppose, with a confidence verging on arrogance. France had fallen with barely a fight, and we were in the ascendancy. I was returning to Paris with a certain sense of entitlement.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the window of the H�tel Commodore as I approached its entrance at the junction with the Rue Laffitte. With the peak of my Luftwaffe cap pulled down over my forehead, and my pistol in its leather holster, I thought I looked quite formidable. Not someone to pick a fight with lightly.

I very nearly walked smack into Bruno Lohse as I turned under the canopy at the entrance to the hotel. The Commodore had been commandeered by the ERR as its Paris headquarters. I imagined that as well as office accommodation, the hotel would also provide living quarters for many of the staff, and I wondered if I would be one of them.

I knew Lohse of old. Before the war he had traded art in many of the same markets as I, and although he was only number two to Baron Kurt von Behr here at the ERR in Paris, with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmf�hrer and the blessing of G�ring himself, he was effectively the Reich�s art looter in the French capital.

But he was not in uniform today. He wore a light grey double-

Bauer sat back in his chair, removing his eyes from the painful concentration of light that his desk lamp threw upon the diaries. All the various pains he felt seemed fused into one general ache. Bruised and battered, and enormously fatigued, the escape offered by sleep was seductive. But, still, his excitement at what he had just read banished any thoughts of calling it a night.

He leaned forward again, and selected the final diary, effectively fast-forwarding through four years of war. The entries now were much briefer, and felt hurried. Wolff�s careful, considered handwriting had become slapdash and erratic. There was the sense of uncertainty, of a turn in the tide of events. The final entry pre-dated the D-Day invasion in June, and was an abrupt end to his journal. Bauer imagined that this was when he had returned to Germany on leave and left the diaries in the safekeeping of his lover, Bauer�s grandmother, Lisbeth.

But before then, by the spring of 1944, it seemed he had tracked down the Mona Lisa to a ch�teau in south-west France, where it appeared to be in the safekeeping of a young woman called Georgette Pignal. In an increasingly irregular hand, Wolff wrote that he had heard that this woman had been specifically tasked by de Gaulle with keeping the painting safe, and out of the hands of the Nazis. He also suspected that she was somehow in league with his nemesis, Lange. Why he believed this was not clear, but Bauer imagined that the answer must lie in earlier entries.

Although it seemed that she was living a short distance from the ch�teau itself, in a village called Carennac, Wolff reported that she was spending her nights at the ch�teau.

That his grandfather�s journal ended here, so abruptly and without conclusion, was infuriating. Bauer felt frustration welling up from deep inside him. But there was nothing, and no one, for him to lash out at, no focus for the venting of his vexation. He dropped the diary on to the desktop and wakened his laptop with a sweep of his fingers on the trackpad. He opened his browser and brought up a Google search page. His bruised fingers had stiffened up, and it was only with difficulty that he typed Carennac into the search window.

His screen immediately filled with links to tourist sites describing the village as the epitome of provincial France in the Dordogne valley, with its medieval stone houses and Romanesque church. Several sites referred to it as one of the most beautiful villages in France. Images revealed steeply pitched red-tiled roofs with towers and turrets rising over honeyed stone. The Wikipedia entry listed its permanent population as 408.

Bauer sighed. This seemed like a waste of time. He was about to give up when a link to an article in a local newspaper well down the page caught his eye. The newspaper was La D�p�che du Midi, and the article which had appeared on an inside page just three days earlier, was headlined �MACABRE D�COUVERTE SOUS UN ARBRE MORT: UN CADAVRE DATANT DE LA DERNI�RE GUERRE�. Bauer selected and copied it, and entered it into Google Translate. MACABRE DISCOVERY UNDER A DEAD TREE: A CORPSE FROM THE LAST WAR, appeared in the translation window. Which excited his interest sufficiently for him to have the entire article translated.

He asks if she would like more wood on the fire. She has remained close to it, and the embers are undoubtedly still warming her. But he feels the temperature falling.

She looks up, surprised. �Are you cold, monsieur?� she asks.

�A little.� Perhaps it is because the sun is lost now in autumn cloud, and the warmth it shed earlier through glass has dissipated.

�By all means,� she says, and he rises stiffly to lift a couple of logs from the basket and arrange them carefully on the glowing braises, unsure whether they will catch. �Use the bellows,� she counsels.

The bellows lean against a blackened side wall and he lifts them to direct air at the embers, watching how with each puff they glow, and then spark, raising the first smoke from the fresh logs. Satisfied now that the fire will take, he returns to his seat. Hunger is a distraction, but it is not long before he is once more absorbed in her story...

Enzo had never enjoyed Paris in autumn or winter. Like London it was cold and damp and grey, and traffic pollution hung over the city in a sulphurous pall. Less so since lockdown. For several months in the spring, Paris had been an abandoned city. People working from home if they could, or simply staying away from their place of work and living on government subsidies. Traffic had reduced to a trickle and levels of pollution plummeted. Although a degree of normality had returned with the lifting of stringent restrictions over the summer, a second wave of the virus had once more curtailed daily life.

Just three-quarters of an hour north-west of the city itself, traffic on the Boulevard de l�Hautil, in the new town of Cergy-Pontoise, was light as Enzo headed past the Commissariat de police de Cergy, before turning into the car park of the IRCGN at number five.

He had driven up from the south-west the day before, and stayed overnight in Paris at a pied-�-terre belonging to friends in the Rue Gu�n�gaud in the sixth arrondissement. It was some years since he had last seen Magali, and he was looking forward to renewing their acquaintance. They had met when he first established the department of forensic science at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, and she had visited as a guest lecturer. There had been an instant attraction. But, then, she had been married. And he had broken a home once, causing pain to people he loved. So had no intention of doing it again.

The IRCGN, or Institute de Recherche Criminelle Gendarmerie Nationale, was a state-of-the-art forensic science centre, providing services for gendarmeries throughout France. It comprised laboratories in four departments over 20,000 square metres. The wearing of masks was obligatory within the facility, and Enzo slipped his on before getting his security pass at reception and being directed towards the Human Identification Department, and the office of Magali Blanc on the first floor.

It was a tiny office with a view of a staff car park at the rear, and a leaden sky above. Even masked by her face-covering, Enzo could tell that she remained a good-looking woman, and that warm penetrating look in her eyes still gave him butterflies. Frustratingly, they were constrained from a more intimate greeting by the two-metre rule, and stood looking at each other across her desk.

�How have you been?� she asked.

Enzo grinned. �Retired.�

�Yes, I heard.�

�Careless of you to lose my contact details.�

He saw her mask stretched by a smile. �Just putting temptation out of my way. I hear you finally settled down. Got yourself married.�

�Only because you weren�t available, Magali.�

She laughed. �You haven�t changed, anyway.�

He shrugged. �Just got older.� He retrieved a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and pulled them on before fishing a large buff envelope from his shoulder bag. He held it out for her. �Untouched by human hand in more than twenty-four hours. Quite safe for you to handle.�

She opened it and pulled out half a dozen colour prints. The photographs Enzo had taken at the site of the fallen tree in Carennac. She looked up, surprised. �I got the jpegs. You didn�t come all the way to Paris just to give me these, did you?�

He made a moue with his lips that she couldn�t see. �I�ve got a date for you as well.�

She frowned. �A date?�

�It was clear to me that whoever killed your unfortunate gentleman took advantage of a trench already dug in the park for a drainage pipe. A freshly dug grave would otherwise surely have excited interest.�

�So they buried him in the trench before the pipe got laid.�

�And records at the mairie show that work on laying drainage pipes in the park took place between June 5th and June 9th, 1944.�

�Right around D-Day.�

Enzo nodded. �If we assume that work was completed on June 9th, that�s probably when they laid the pipe and filled in the trench. If work began on June 5th, that�ll be when they started digging it. By hand. So it�ll have taken a day or two, presupposing the cantonnier was working on his own.�

�Which means that our man was probably buried on the 7th or the 8th.� She shook her head in admiration. �That�s quite a piece of detective work, Enzo. Would you like to see the remains?�

�Very much.�

She led him through to her adjoining laboratory where two long tables were covered with large sheets of newsprint. The remains found under the dead tree in Carennac were carefully laid out on both, beneath the glare of bright overhead lamps.

What was left of the skeleton was roughly assembled on the table that stood in the centre of the room. Various other artefacts recovered from the site were set out on the second table which was pushed against the window-facing wall. Many of the bones were broken. Others were simply missing. They were reddish-brown in hue, having absorbed the pigment of the soil.

Magali walked around the table. �It�s a little like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces. Over time the roots of the tree must have insinuated their way through the skeletal remains, breaking many of the bones.� She looked at him. �I�m assuming that there was no tree there at the time of the burial.�

�As far as I could tell, the remains pre-date the tree. But the tree was just as dead as our cadaver. Although it had probably enjoyed many years of growth, inflicting damage on the bones before it died.�

�What killed the tree?�

�Some kind of fungal disease, by the look of it. It was a tilia. Better known to you and me as a lime tree. And it had been dead for some time.�

�A bit like our man from the Luftwaffe.�

Enzo tipped his head in curiosity. �Yes... about that. Enlighten me. How can you tell?�

She crossed to the other table, and Enzo looked in detail for the first time at the odd collection of bits and pieces that the gendarmes had recovered from the grave. A rusted cigarette tin. The remains of a brass Zippo lighter. A corroded Iron Cross in poor condition. The remnants of a black leather jacket, and boots. Shrunken, faded and cracked. Cotton thread holding seams had disintegrated, and so they had mostly come apart. Magali snapped on latex gloves and very carefully turned over what was left of the jacket. �The fabric of his clothes � cotton and wool � will have biodegraded years ago. Leather lasts much longer. And we were lucky that a fold in the jacket preserved this almost intact.�

With delicate fingers she unfolded a flap of leather to reveal the remains of a Luftwaffe eagle patch with swastika.

�Insignia of the German air force. These things were embroidered with aluminium thread, and this one would have lasted for many more decades. Like all the other metal bits and pieces recovered.� She fingered them as she spoke, almost lovingly. �A zip fastening for the jacket, and a couple of pocket zips. Two longer zips that probably belong with the boots. We also have the remnants of a leather belt and holster. No gun, of course. Whoever killed him would have taken that.�

Using a pair of tweezers, she lifted one of a number of small, deformed metal shapes that seemed as if they might once have been round.

�Aluminium again. Epaulette buttons, and what look like they might have been four pips denoting rank. In this case, Hauptmann. Or captain, as we would say. Assuming we got them all.�

Enzo shook his head in admiration. �It�s amazing what survives us.� He looked at Magali. �And what you can tell from what remains. That�s an amazing piece of work.�

She flushed with pleasure at his compliment, but brushed it aside. �It�s my job, Enzo. It�s what I do.�

�What about the guy himself? What do you know about him?�

She turned back to the table with the skeletal remains and lifted what was left of the skull. �What appears to have been a single bullet has shattered much of the cranium. A wound like that would have killed him instantly.� With gentle reverence, she laid the Hauptmann�s skull back on the newsprint and lifted the left femur. �Fortunately this was still intact. The right femur was broken in several places and missing pieces. But from the length of this one I used an established regression formula to calculate height. He would have been around one metre eighty-two.� She smiled at Enzo from behind her mask. �Or, as you would probably understand it better, about six feet. Tall for the time, but shorter than you.�

She moved then up to the hips and the pelvic area.

�The pubic bones present a narrow sub-pubic angle with a narrow sciatic notch, and from what we can see of the remains of the cranium he had well-developed brow ridges. Take all that into account, throw in the external occipital protuberance and the mastoids, and I would stake my reputation on this being a male. Even without the external artefacts.�

Enzo laughed. �Not a female drag artist, then, disguising herself as the enemy?�

Magali canted her head in mock disapproval. �I think you can take that as a given, Enzo.�

�Ethnicity?�

She removed a pen from the breast pocket of her white lab coat and poked it gently around the skull. �High and narrow nasal root, narrow nasal aperture, nasal spine, laterally-placed cheekbones and a well-developed jaw. Almost certainly white European.�

�Age?�

�Judging by the pubic bones and the cranial suture closure, I would say somewhere around his mid-forties.�

�Sheer genius.� Enzo expressed his admiration. �It almost makes me wish I was back in the business.� He waved his hand towards the window. �This whole complex... there was nothing like it when I was working in forensics back in Scotland.�

She nodded. �It�s an amazing place to work. You know, they now have a mobile DNA analysis laboratory. They call it LabADN, and they can come up with someone�s DNA profile in under four hours � at the crime scene.�

Enzo scratched his head thoughtfully then nodded towards the table. �What about this fella�s DNA?�

Magali laughed. �I haven�t looked at it.�

�Why not?�

�Because I�m not going to find it on any database, Enzo. As you very well know, it was nearly five decades after the Hauptmann�s death before DNA fingerprinting was even developed.�

�DNA transcends time, Magali. I�ve lost count of the number of cases I�ve been able to resolve with familial matching.�

�Now, that�s what I call a long shot. That the DNA of some descendant is languishing in a European database somewhere?�

Enzo shrugged. �My whole life has been based on long shots.� He tipped his head towards the table. �You can get a sample from ground bone?�

�I could.�

�Might be worth a try, Magali. Wouldn�t it be nice to put a name to him?�

�It would be a bloody miracle.� Her smile faded as she gazed at him. �You miss this, don�t you?�

Enzo was reluctant to admit it, but in the end relented. �I suppose I do.�

�And what do you do? All day every day?�

�I get older, Magali. A day at a time. When you�re working you never stop to think about it. Time passes, and one day you look at yourself in the mirror and realise that ten years have gone by. And then twenty, and then thirty. And you only begin to notice it when everything starts hurting as you climb out of bed in the morning.� He ran a hand back through greying hair. �When you�re retired, you look at yourself in the mirror every morning and start counting off the days.� He averted his gaze from what looked like sympathy in her eyes.

�That doesn�t sound like much fun.�

He laughed it off. �I have other distractions. Like trying to keep up with the needs of a woman twenty years my junior.�

�Now that does sound like fun.�

They both laughed.

He said, �And I have the joy of watching my son as he grows up.� He paused. �And then an unexpected little murder that I have you to thank for.�

Her eyes opened wide in surprise. �Not our Hauptmann, surely?�

�No. But going to Carennac to take your photographs, I managed to get myself embroiled in a murder committed in the house right next door.�

�Embroiled?�

�They asked me to consult on it.�

Laughter lines creased around her eyes. �Well, maybe that�ll stop you looking in the mirror every morning.� She peeled off her gloves. �But what a coincidence!�

Enzo scratched his head. �Maybe.�

She looked at him blankly. �You don�t think there�s some connection, do you?�

�Probably not,� he conceded. �But I do hate coincidences.�

The Rue des Filles du Calvaire was a long straight street of three- and four-storey apartment blocks above clothes shops and bookstores and a proliferation of art galleries.

There was little or no traffic in the street and, unusually, many of the parking slots along each side lay empty. Most of the clothes shops were shut. Helios. Danyberd. Some of the bookstores were open for business, and a number of the galleries were open by appointment.

Galerie Narcisse had lights in its window, and a large poster advertising an exhibition of the work of Canadian photographer Alix Cl�o Roubaud. Enzo ignored the notice which read BY APPOINTMENT ONLY, and rang the bell. He saw a young woman approaching from the other side of the glass and pulled his mask up over his mouth and nose. She hurriedly produced one of her own before opening the door.

�Can I help you? It�s viewing by appointment.�

Enzo said, �I�m sure Ms Roubaud�s photographs are excellent, but I�m here to talk to someone about the murder of Emile Narcisse.�

She looked him up and down and frowned. �You don�t look like the police.�

�I�m not. But I�m consulting on the case.�

She looked at him uncertainly. �Wait there.� Then she hesitated. �What�s your name?�

�Enzo Macleod.�

Again, she frowned, then shut the door and hurried off into the interior of the gallery. Enzo stood shuffling impatiently on the pavement, feeling the cold and watching his breath condense around him, feeling it form droplets on the inside of his mask.

Finally the young woman returned and opened the door. �Follow me.�

He had trouble keeping up with her as she hurried ahead to maintain a two-metre distance. Dark black-and-white images hung in frames from aluminium rails. A woman whose face was blurred by movement, hair absorbed by her shadow on the wall. A man and woman kissing against the backdrop of a brick wall, her hands on the back of his head and on his shoulder, all that could be seen of her.

�Ms Roubaud must be disappointed to be exhibiting her work during a pandemic,� he said.

�Ms Roubaud is dead,� the young woman said, and stopped at the foot of a narrow spiral staircase leading up to a mezzanine level. A man stood at a large window looking down at them. �Upstairs,� she said. �Monsieur Moreau was an assistant to Monsieur Narcisse.� And she stepped back to give Enzo access to the stairs.

At the top of the steps, a corridor ran off to the left, doors opening from it right and left. To Enzo�s right, a door opened into the office from which the man at the window had watched him climb the stairs. The whole place was deceptively large.

The man turned from the window as Enzo appeared in his doorway and Enzo saw him clearly for the first time. A tall, willowy young man, hair cropped close on either side of his head, leaving a slick of thick black that swept back across his crown. He wore a black mask, a dark suit and white shirt, but no tie. �Stop there, please,� he said, raising a hand to make it clear that he did not wish Enzo to enter the office. �I�d be obliged if you�d keep your distance. I�m HIV-positive, so wary of catching Covid. What can I do for you?�

�I assume you have already spoken to the police?�

�Actually, no. Several officers arrived the day after the murder to search his office. They took away a number of items, including his laptop. They did speak to other members of staff, but I wasn�t here that day.�

�Were you and Narcisse close?�

�He was my mentor, monsieur.�

�So you know why he was in Carennac.�

His face coloured slightly. �No, I don�t.�

�He didn�t tell you?�

A curt shake of the head. �No.�

Enzo raised an eyebrow. �Is that not unusual?�

�He was my professional mentor, monsieur. We had very little personal contact outside of work.�

�So you think he went to Carennac on personal business? Otherwise he would have told you?�

Moreau seemed uncomfortable. �Probably.�

�I assume you knew he was writing a biography of Rose Valland?�

Now he frowned, deep creases that furrowed an otherwise unlined forehead. �I don�t believe he was doing any such thing.�

�You�d have known if he was?�

�Of course. But in any case, it�s not something he would ever have considered. Rose Valland? I don�t think so.�

His reaction was so categorical that Enzo was inclined to believe him. He said, �What do you know about the circumstances surrounding the murder?�

�Very little, other than what I have read in the press and heard on the grapevine.�

�You know that there is a suspect, then?�

�Yes, but they haven�t released details of who that is.�

�Would it surprise you to learn that it was a young German gallery director called Hans Bauer?�

This time, the colour rose high on Moreau�s face, and for the first time his cool composure deserted him. �Bauer?� he said incredulously.

Enzo was taken aback. �You know him?�

�Well, yes. He was here just a few days ago. He had an appointment with Monsieur Narcisse.�

Enzo felt his own cheeks burning now. �About what?�

�I have no idea. Monsieur Narcisse didn�t say. But Bauer didn�t stay long. Ten minutes at the most, and he left in a temper, the most foul of moods. A very unpleasant individual.�

�When was this exactly?�

Moreau rounded his desk to open a large appointments diary. He flicked through the pages then ran a long, thin, nicotine-stained finger down the entries. �A week ago to the day. At 3 p.m. Monsieur Narcisse himself made the entry, so he must have arranged it by telephone.�

�Or email.�

Moreau shook his head. �He never embraced the technology, Monsieur Macleod.�

�So what happened to put Bauer in such a bad mood?�

�I really couldn�t say. Monsieur Narcisse was in his office for an hour or so after he left. Most of that time on the telephone.� He nodded towards an intercom phone on his desk. �I could see his extension light on. Later he came and asked me if I would arrange return rail tickets for him to Brive-la-Gaillarde, and reserve him a room at a hotel in the village of Carennac. But I have to say, I never associated the trip with his rendezvous with Bauer.�

�So it was you who booked him into the Fenelon.�

�Yes. It was the only hotel open out of season.�

�And he didn�t tell you the purpose of his visit?�

�No, he didn�t.� And there was a defensive quality in his tone that told Enzo that perhaps Moreau had resented his mentor�s secrecy. He had not connected Narcisse�s hastily arranged trip with the visit from Bauer. But Enzo now realised it had everything to do with it.

If only he knew what they had talked about.

Paris, two days before the murder

Bauer gazed sightlessly from his taxi at the streets of the French capital drifting past his window, the waters of the Seine a sluggish leaden grey as it passed beneath the Pont Neuf. It was his first time in Paris, and he was surprised at how quiet it was. The pandemic, he supposed. Though the streets of Berlin were much more animated.

His driver, separated from the back seat by a perspex screen, pulled in at the Place du Carrousel, and told him over the intercom that the short drive from his boutique hotel just across the river had cost him twenty-three euros. Bauer paid by credit card on a machine in the back and felt contaminated after tapping in his code.

He stepped out into the Cour Napol�on and fished a small bottle of gel from his pocket to stand disinfecting his hands as he gazed at the glass pyramid. It was much bigger than he had expected, and clashed much less with the classical facade of the palace than his lecturer in architecture at university had led him to believe.

He was trembling with excitement. Just a few minutes away from seeing her in the flesh. He had booked a time for his visit online before leaving Berlin, and hurried now across the courtyard to the main entrance, descending to the reception area to join his time-slot-specific queue. He could not stay here as long as he might have liked. His rendezvous with Narcisse was in just over an hour, the only time the art dealer could fit him in. A brief appointment. Barely time for Bauer to convince him.

He gelled his hands again from the dispenser at the door, received his map, and stood in the foyer examining it and adjusting his mask. A one-way system to minimise social contact among visitors had been instituted by the museum, and he traced a route with his finger that would lead him to Room 711, the Salle des Etats in the Denon wing. It took him well over ten minutes to navigate his way through long galleries, past vast canvasses; the vibrant colours of The Wedding Feast at Cana, David�s iconic image of Marat murdered in his bath, the Coronation of Napoleon. In normal circumstances he would have soaked it all up, drinking in the works of artists he had only read about, witness for the first time extraordinary pieces he had seen only in reproduction. But his focus was singular and blinkered.

And then, finally, there she was. All alone, behind glass on a vast wall of midnight blue. In spite of the socially distanced crowds in the room, she saw him enter and watched as he approached. She had eyes only for him, and yet he felt himself unaccountably disappointed. She seemed small to the point of insignificance. Age had robbed her of her lustre and cracked her veneer in tiny crazed patterns. And still she stared at him, as if she knew why he was here, and slowly he felt himself falling under her spell. Even after all these centuries, she still had the power to seduce. Even if, as he suspected, she might not be what she seemed. He couldn�t take his eyes off her. The room was filled with chatter, raised voices heightened by the presence of greatness. His mouth was dry. And he wanted her. So much. As so many had lusted after her before him.

But there was no time. He glanced at his watch. Narcisse awaited. An appointment with destiny.

Little more than a week in Paris and I am bored already. I woke to a beautiful autumn morning today, and found myself a seat under the dazzling light of the fabulous stained-glass cupola in the lounge of the Commodore. Time to think, to drink coffee and bask in coloured sunshine while I plotted my revenge.

According to inventories supplied to the Kunstschutz by the Louvre, the Mona Lisa has been moved again, along with all the other evacuated art. From the Abbaye de Loc-Dieu, near Villefranche-de-Rouergue in the Aveyron, to the Mus�e Ingres in the provincial town of Montauban in the south-west. Still in the Free French Zone, and tantalisingly out of reach. I knew I was going to have to exercise the same patience that Lange would be forced to do himself. We will, both of us, be playing a long game.

Which meant that I had time to attend to other, outstanding matters. A long overdue reckoning.

It was a little after ten when I saw Bruno Lohse cross the foyer and push through the doors into the street beyond. He was in uniform today, so must have been on his way to a meeting with the brass. Which meant he would be gone for a while. So I took my time finishing my coffee before heading upstairs.

Bruno�s secretary is a pretty young thing. Lovely dark hair and the most startling blue eyes. In other circumstances, I might have been tempted to linger and chat, but although I suspected Lohse would be gone for a while, I didn�t want to tempt fate. I leaned into the office, and as she looked up, I said casually, �Bruno there?�

�He�s out at a meeting.�

�Ah.� I feigned annoyance. �I�ll catch him later then.� I made to leave, but stopped suddenly and turned back as if just remembering something. �By the way, I need the address of a French art critic here in Paris. Georges Picard. Bruno said to ask you for it.�

He returns to the house in the early afternoon following a solitary lunch.

There were guests at two other tables in the dining room of the hotel. A travelling salesman, and an elderly couple on an out-of-season tour. But he paid them very little attention as he replayed the old lady�s tale.

When he knocks and comes through from the kitchen, she is sitting exactly where he left her. The fire has been stoked. Fresh logs placed upon the embers crackle and send flames dancing against the tarry residue of the wall behind.

�Have you eaten?� he asks.

She shakes her head. �I am not hungry, monsieur.�

�Can I get you anything? A cup of tea? A coffee?�

Again she shakes her head. �That�s kind. But no thank you.�

He is pleased not to delay the resumption of her story, for he has been absorbed by it. He settles himself comfortably in his seat. �I�m ready when you are.�

She inclines her head a little to give him the palest of smiles and draws a long breath...

The flight to Berlin had been half-empty, and the cabin crew rearranged the seating so that everyone aboard sat well apart. Enzo wiped down his tray table twice, watched by Kirsty who told him that she thought once was probably sufficient. She took a coffee, but Enzo refused. He had gelled his hands before entering the plane, and again as he left. And now, as they sat in their taxi, separated from the driver by Plexiglas, he was glad of the card terminal in the back that accepted contactless payment.

They stepped out into a chill wind blowing along the canal, and a brooding sky that seemed to scrape the rooftops.

Bauer�s apartment stood near a bridge that led across the water to Maybachufer, and the red-roofed, six-storey, white-painted apartment blocks that lined it. A path flanked by black wrought-iron railings led to an arched doorway, past a row of mailboxes. Tall windows in the varnished wooden door revealed a long marble hallway beyond it.

Enzo stepped back and looked up at the building. �Nicole wasn�t wrong when she said there was money in his family,� he said. �Apartments in a place like this must cost the earth.�

Bauer�s name was printed beneath a third-floor buzzer on the door entry system. Enzo pressed it and they waited for a response that never came.

Then the rapid sound of heels on concrete made them turn as a young woman approached. She pulled up her mask when she saw them standing by the door, and navigated around them to punch in her entry code.

She seemed startled when Kirsty spoke to her. In German. And Enzo had no idea what she was saying. He watched the girl carefully as she and Kirsty exchanged several words, and he saw her pupils dilate and the skin around her eyes turn pale. Immediately she delved into her handbag to retrieve her mobile phone, tapping a name hurriedly into its memory before making a call.

Enzo�s impatience was barely contained by his mask. He turned to Kirsty. �What�s going on?�

�She lives across the landing from Bauer. She and Bauer�s girlfriend, Lise, were friends.�

�Were?�

�Apparently Lise moved out when she and Bauer split up.�

�Recently?�

�Last week,� Kirsty said. �She hasn�t seen or heard anything from Lise since. She was shocked to hear that Bauer was mixed up with a murder in France and thinks that Lise will be, too. She�s calling her now.�

It was late afternoon by the time Enzo was driving east again on the Boulevard de l�Hautil at Cergy-Pontoise. The flight back to Paris from Berlin had taken under two hours, but followed a five-hour drive back from W�rzburg, and Enzo was feeling the travel stress of the last two days catching up with him.

He had cleaned off Greta Jung�s folder and its contents with disinfectant wipes before handling them, then spent the evening in his hotel room reading through her researches. Twice. And once again on the plane. He had been fascinated by the story of revenge recounted in a memoir by a friend of Wolff. The trip to Paris to exact retribution on the man who had made Wolff�s sister pregnant. The art critic, Georges Picard. The frenzied display of violence that could so easily have led to the man�s death.

Enzo could see how Bauer would have been seduced by all of this. He had followed his grandfather�s footsteps into the world of art. Had that been inherited? It certainly wasn�t environmental, since grandfather and grandson had never met. And artistic talent was often passed on through a family, sometimes skipping a generation. Bauer, Enzo was sure, must also have wondered if he had inherited his grandfather�s temperament, a tendency towards irrational and uncontrollable violence. Wolff, his friend had written, would certainly have killed Picard had his companions not stopped him.

The sky to the west was painted red by the late autumn sunset, a few bruised and purple clouds bubbling up along the horizon. And the traffic was still light as Enzo turned into the campus of the Institute de Recherche Criminelle Gendarmerie Nationale. At the airport he had put Kirsty in a taxi, and driven straight out to Cergy-Pontoise.

A call to Magali Blanc�s office on landing at Charles de Gaulle confirmed that she had, indeed, followed Enzo�s suggestion of extracting DNA from the bones of the Carennac remains. Her assistant, however, was not privy to the results, and Magali was on a conference call that was likely to last most of the afternoon. Hence his drive out to the IRCGN. Enzo had grown increasingly impatient with age.

By the time he had cleared security and been taken up to her first-floor lab, darkness had fallen, and cold night air pushed against all the windows of the Human Identification wing. Her assistant was gone, and Enzo was left sitting in her office replaying everything he had learned in the last forty-eight hours. It was there, while he waited, that he made a decision that would probably haunt him for the rest of his days.

He placed a call to the Ministry of Justice and found himself talking to someone who had reason to be grateful to him for services previously rendered. A favour owed, now called in.

He hung up as Magali breezed into her office. She seemed surprised to see him. �Two visits in one week,� she said. �I�m flattered. What are you after?�

�I�m told you took my advice. About the DNA.�

�I did,� she said. �Developed a complete profile.�

�And?�

�Asked the boys across the way to run it through the European database.�

�And?�

She laughed. �You never have learned the art of patience, have you, Enzo.� Then sighed. �I don�t know. I haven�t had the results back yet. Unless...�

She sifted through fresh piles of documents on her desk.

�Ah yes, here we are. Must have come through this afternoon.�

Enzo was annoyed to think that they had been sitting there under his nose the whole time he had been waiting. He could certainly not have resisted taking a look. He watched Magali�s eyes as she scanned the paper in her hand, and saw her eyebrows push up on her forehead.

�Well, well. You were right.� She looked at him and grinned. �As always.� Then turned back to the document. �It seems that the search turned up a familial match in the German database. A teenager with a record for assault in Berlin. His DNA has been on file for the last seven years.�

Enzo said, �And his name is Hans Bauer.�

Magali�s head snapped up and she looked at him in astonishment. �How can you possibly know that?�

�An educated guess,� he said. �But since I seem to have hit the mark, then I know more than that. I know that the remains you have in your lab belong to a man called Karlheinz Wolff. A Hauptmann in the Luftwaffe, employed as a procurer of art by Reichsmarschall Hermann G�ring, and listed as missing in action somewhere in France in the summer of 1944.�

The document she was holding went limp in Magali�s hand, and if it were not hidden by her mask, Enzo was sure he would have seen her mouth hanging open. But he wasn�t finished yet.

�He is also the grandfather of the murder suspect in the case I�ve been consulting on. Which bears out my instinct to be sceptical about coincidence.�

Enzo felt sick as he drove into the visitors� car park in front of the women�s wing of the maison d�arr�t at Fleury-M�rogis. It was just under an hour�s drive from Paris, directly south of the city and close to the edge of the For�t de S�nart.

This was the largest penitentiary in Europe, built in the 1960s in the conventional style of French prisons. Five blocks, each with three wings, radiated from a polygonal central building. The MAF, or maison d�arr�t pour femmes, hosted more than 270 female prisoners in fewer than 170 cells, which meant that many of the women were forced to share.

A time-worn French flag fluttered listlessly in the autumn sunshine of this October morning. And somehow it seemed wrong for the sun to be shining, when people were locked away in tiny cells where the light of freedom was limited by small barred windows that provided only a tantalising glimpse of the world left behind. Parking slots were arranged around a scrubby patch of lawn boasting a few stunted shrubs. Enzo switched off the engine and sat holding the steering wheel for some minutes in an attempt to stop his hands from shaking. He was aware that he was under observation from security cameras left and right and knew that he could not sit here for any length of time. He drew a deep breath and stepped out into the cold morning air.

At reception in the tour centrale, they checked his identity and authorisation, and handed him a bar-coded security badge to pin to his coat. A female prison officer escorted him up a large spiral staircase to the couloir des parloirs, a long, pale blue corridor with tall, narrow windows along one side that spilled incongruous sunlight across a polished grey floor. A row of shiny, blue-painted doors on the wall opposite opened into the parloirs themselves, the private visitors� rooms. Narrow floor-to-ceiling windows next to each door allowed for observation by prison officers.

The officer who led Enzo along the corridor wore a dark blue skirt and open-necked pale blue blouse with dark blue epaulettes. Her hair was dyed blond and tied back in a ponytail, and her shoes slapped softly on reflecting sunlight. She stopped at a door halfway along the corridor and opened it for Enzo to step inside. This was a narrow room with an identical door and window at the far end of it leading to the cells beyond. It was divided in half by a thick wall that stood a metre high, designed to separate prisoner from visitor. It was clad in tiny flaking mosaic tiles, and Covid precautions had seen the installation of a Plexiglas screen that extended from the wall to the ceiling.

There was a solitary chair on Enzo�s side and the prisoner officer said curtly, �Sit one metre back from the screen.�

It wasn�t until she closed the door behind him, and the reflected sunlight vanished from the Plexiglas, that he saw Charlotte seated in a chair on the other side of it. At first he thought there had been some mistake. That they had brought him to the wrong room. Before he realised, with a shock that almost stopped his heart, that this, after all, really was Charlotte.

In his memory she had always been the woman he had fallen for all those years ago. A sardonic smile playing about full lips. Lustrous dark hair tumbling in glistening curls to her shoulders. Dark eyes which had held him in their thrall from the moment they met. He could still hear the laughter that spilled so freely from the mouth he had kissed so often, the cries of passion that accompanied their lovemaking. The vibrant young woman who had stolen his heart and his reason.

And here sat a woman he barely recognised. An old lady with grey hair cropped to an unruly shag. Dark shadows beneath dull eyes that seemed to absorb rather than reflect the light. A blue mask hid half of her ravaged face. She wore a short-sleeved smock, exposing skin stretched tightly over fleshless arms. Shrunken hands were clasped together in her lap, outsized knuckles on painfully thin fingers.

Instinctively she raised a hand to her mouth as she barked into her mask, a retching cough that left her breathless and brought tears to her eyes. The first light he had seen in them since he stepped into the room.

She blinked them away and stared up at him for several long moments. �For God�s sake, sit down,� she said. �And don�t look at me like that. The shock on your face is like looking at a reflection of what I�ve become. One I never look at myself.� She was breathing with difficulty, and her breath rattled in her throat.

Enzo lowered himself into his chair, face stinging as if she had slapped it repeatedly. He attempted to blink away involuntary tears and saw Charlotte flinch from his reaction. Somehow it had not occurred to him that the woman he had come to visit would not be the Charlotte he remembered. He could never have imagined that the woman he had once loved might be reduced by prison and time to the shadow that sat before him now.

She said, �Last year a fashion designer came to the prison to dress us up and make us walk the walk, parade her clothes down the red carpet. Sakina M�sa. I�d never heard of her. Of course, she chose all the young ones. The girls who still had their looks. I remember her looking at me, and how quickly her eyes moved on. Had she been casting a pantomime, she�d probably have given me the role of the wicked witch.� She forced a laugh. �Typecasting.� Then launched into another bout of coughing that lasted a full half minute.

Enzo could only watch from his side of the screen, shocked and unable to disguise his distress.

When finally the coughing subsided, she said in a voice scraped thin, �I caught Covid in the spring. It was rampant in the prison. They say I have recovered from it, but it has left me without any sense of taste or smell. And this damned cough.� She drew breath with difficulty. �Damage to the lungs. They say it�s permanent.�

�Jesus, Charlotte,� he said. Which seemed to amuse her.

She shook her head. �Not often I�ve seen you at a loss for words, Enzo.� But the smile which briefly lit her face quickly vanished. �How is Laurent?�

Enzo found it hard to meet her eyes. �He�s doing well.�

�Does he ever ask about me?�

�He used to. All the time.�

�And what did you tell him?�

�I made excuses. You�d gone abroad. Work meant that you couldn�t come back. At least not immediately. He couldn�t understand why you never wrote or phoned, and it broke my heart to lie to him.� He fixed his eyes on white-knuckled hands interlocked in his lap. �Of course, he knew I was. He�s a smart kid. In the end he decided you were dead.� He looked up to see tears brimming on the brink of her lower lids. �And maybe that�s better than the truth. Though one day, I suppose, he deserves to know.�

He saw her swallowing hard to try to control her voice. �I don�t think I�ll live long enough to see out my sentence. So I�ll probably not see him again before I die.� She sucked in more air. �Then it won�t be a lie any more.� She looked very directly at him. �I didn�t believe anything could ever be worse than death, until they brought me here. I wish Sophie had killed me that day.� And Enzo could still see the scar on her temple. �I wish I was dead, Enzo.�

This time Enzo couldn�t stop his tears. Hot and silent, springing from the depths of his despair and regret. He brushed them away with the backs of his hands.

�Good to see we can still cry,� she said, just a hint of the old Charlotte in her voice. �We spilled a lot of tears together in our time, you and I.�

�We did.�

He watched her use her mask to dry hers away, and was glad he had his own mask to hide behind. She said, �So why are you here?�

The whole Bauer enigma seemed almost irrelevant now. And for a moment he considered not even raising it. But how else to explain his visit? �A case I�m working on,� he said. �A murder suspect who is a complex and unusual individual. I thought your special insights might throw light into some dark places.�

An exhalation of air filled her mask. �I might have known. You always did have an ulterior motive, Enzo. Your own priorities. Selfish, self-obsessed, regardless of others.�

And he knew that this had been a mistake. �I�m sorry,� he said. And stood up. �Really. I thought you might have relished the challenge. A distraction from...� He looked around and spread his hands out hopelessly to either side. �This.� He sighed. �But I can see I was wrong. I won�t waste any more of your time.�

He turned towards the door, and her voice came to him like an arrow out of the darkness, piercing him so painfully he almost cried out.

�Don�t leave.�

He stood for a moment, still with his back to her, before turning to see that she had risen to her feet. And he was shocked all over again at how much weight she had lost.

�Time is all I have.� He saw her struggling for control. �Please stay. We have forty-five minutes before they throw you out.�

He sat down again, and wondered if Bauer had only been a pretext, the excuse for seeing her that he had never been able to find before. He realised now it would have been better had he stayed away, held on to those memories of her as she had been. Now, forever, he would see this wasted creature behind the Plexiglas who wanted nothing more than forty-five minutes of his time. And to die.

�Tell me.�

And so he did. Everything from the remains under the dead tree to the familial DNA tying the cadaver to Bauer. The mystery of who killed Narcisse and why. The doubt that the blood spatter had created in Enzo�s mind about Bauer�s guilt. The young German�s temper-fuelled violence, his search for the truth about the existence of an evil gene, his obsession with his dead grandfather and the possibility that he had somehow bequeathed his grandson the curse of inherited violence.

She listened in silence, interrupting him only once with a fit of coughing. When he had finished she said, �Quite a story.� And he could see that in her mind at least she was no longer sitting in a visitor�s room at the woman�s prison in Fleury-M�rogis. There was light and intelligence again in her dark eyes, a brain left to atrophy in a prison cell now actively sifting through her extensive knowledge and years of experience as a forensic psychologist. �There is no such thing as an evil gene, Enzo. Evil itself is far too difficult a concept for a scientific enquiry. Though it hasn�t prevented people from trying. A couple of researchers in San Diego managed, after twenty-one generations, to breed a fruit fly that was intensely aggressive. In its brain they found higher levels of a particular enzyme that seemed to be the cause of the aggression. And that enzyme was produced by a single gene. But an evil gene? I don�t think so. And given that it would take twenty-one generations, it�s hardly an experiment that could be conducted with humans.�

�What about inherited violence?�

�Oh, there�s plenty of evidence for that. Several genes acting together, with the right environmental conditions, can drive people to pathological violence. Genes that are inherited and lead to a genetic predisposition for aggression. Plenty of evidence.�

�So Bauer was right to search for something in his family history that might explain his behaviour?�

�I can see why he would want to. Lets him nicely off the hook, doesn�t it? After all, from what you tell me, there doesn�t seem to have been anything environmentally that would have led him to violence. Except of course for a domineering mother, the absence of a male role model, and probably the need to vent his frustrations. Men often feel emasculated by a dominant woman.� She smiled, and it almost broke his heart to see how it brought a glimpse of the old Charlotte to the ruined face. �Never had that effect on you, though, Enzo.�

And had he been able to, he would have reached out to touch her. Brush her face with the tips of his fingers.

�Those same researchers in San Diego studied a large number of males from birth to adulthood and found strong evidence of a genetic predisposition to violence. A couple of other studies showed a genetic variant in a particular enzyme called monoamine oxidase A, which had a significant impact on whether a man developed antisocial problems or not. A male with low levels of the enzyme was more likely to veer towards adult violence if someone had severely abused him as a child. High levels appeared to give protection against ending up in trouble, even if there had been earlier mistreatment.� She paused. �It seems that only men carry this genetic variant.�

A silence fell between them, each aware of the unspoken question about what might explain Charlotte�s predilection for violence. A question that neither of them was about to address.

Enzo said, �There�s nothing that I know of in Bauer�s background to suggest that he had been abused as a child.�

But she just shrugged. �It�s not an exact science, Enzo. But it�s true that behavioural patterns, or personality traits, or talent, often skip a generation. So it�s perfectly possible that Bauer might have inherited his tendency towards violence from his grandfather, particularly if there was no history of it in the rest of his family. The fact that he is abjectly apologetic afterwards suggests that he is engaging in an internal battle where violence wins out over an otherwise empathetic personality. A combination of psychology and genetics.�

�A pity he didn�t have you as a therapist.� Enzo attempted a smile which froze awkwardly on his lips.

�Maybe I could have done with a therapist myself.� That self-mocking look in her eyes that he recognised of old.

Reluctantly he said, �Do you want to talk about that?� He had no real desire to rake over the ashes of those events that had led her to this end, but thought that maybe she would. Even if just to apologise.

To his relief she said, �Good God, no! We�ve done well thus far in avoiding it. Let�s not spoil things now.�

And silence descended again between them. A difficult silence, reminding them both that it was using up what little time they had left. He had no idea what to say. And in the end resorted to the prosaic. �Do you share? A cell, I mean?�

She shook her head, resigned to the fact that the remainder of his visit would be conducted in an exchange of the banal. �I have a single cell. They force me to exercise every day and eat their lousy food.� And then for just a moment she lit up. �A Michelin-starred chef came once to do a cookery course with us, and we got to eat the food that he�d taught us how to prepare. What a treat after the pigswill they feed us here. All that was missing was a fine wine.� She smiled sadly. �No doubt you could have suggested something appropriate.�

He returned an equally sad smile.

�Of course, that was before Covid. I can taste nothing now. Even if you took me to the best restaurant in Paris there would be no pleasure in it.�

More silence. The door behind him would open any moment, and Enzo found himself wishing that his visit would not end this way. That he would not have to go and leave her like this. Even though she had attempted to kill him twice, he felt no hatred for her in his heart. Only the pain of remorse, and a deep hollowing sadness that her life would end so unhappily in this miserable place.

And even though he was expecting it, he was still startled when the door actually opened. The officer who had shown him in stood in the doorway. �Time�s up,� she said.

Charlotte remained seated as he stood. He knew that she didn�t want him to go.

�See you,� he said.

�Will you?� Her voice was tiny.

He said, �I�ll come again.� Though both of them knew that he wouldn�t.

At the door he glanced back. She remained in her chair, hands clasped in her lap, tears running down her face.

The old lady sits in silence. Her eyes closed. And he watches the infinitely slow rise and fall of her chest as she collects her thoughts.

Suddenly she opens her eyes again and turns her head to look at him. A sad little smile animates her face, and she continues with her story...

The waiting room was small and overlit. Unforgivingly hard plastic chairs and an ancient coffee machine whose hum filled the silence. Distant, muffled sounds from the maternity wing seemed to come from a very long way off. The pervasive perfumes of disinfectant and floor polish hung in the air.

Enzo sat next to Dominique and could barely meet the gaze of his son-in-law. Bertrand was perched on the chair opposite, despair apparent in the eyes above his mask. From time to time he stood up and paced the length of the room, then back again to resume his seat.

Enzo�s eyes stung with fear and fatigue. It had taken him a little over six hours to drive down from Paris, stopping only twice. Once for a coffee to keep his eyes from shutting as he drove. And once to call Dominique for an update. The only news had been no news, which was good news in the absence of bad.

He had arrived at the hospital a little after five and watched darkness fall through the windows of a waiting room witness to both the tears and the joy of all those who had passed through it over the years. It was now nearly midnight. A stream of coffees from the machine had kept hunger at bay but set him even more on edge.

The doctors believed that Sophie was suffering from what they called placenta praevia, in which the placenta that the baby required for nourishment had detached itself from the womb. She was several weeks premature and they were attempting to prevent her from going into labour. Both were at serious risk.

None of them had spoken for what seemed like hours.

And then swing doors pushed suddenly open and a lady doctor, still in gown and mask and shower cap, breezed into the room. Enzo and the others were on their feet immediately, fearing the worst, hoping for the best.

She said, �We�ve carried out a caesarean section.� And raised a quick hand to pre-empt questions. �Successfully. Mother and son are both doing well.�

Enzo�s legs nearly buckled under him.

She is more animated now in the telling of her tale than she has been at any other time, and he has the sense that perhaps it is nearing its end. But then he realises, with something of a shock, that the story cannot reach its conclusion until the summer of 1944. And that she has only reached the spring of 1942.

Enzo closed the door behind him and drank in the cold night air, almost heady after the stuffy warmth of Anny�s salon where he had spent most of the day listening to her story, growing gradually colder with the dying of the fire. He stood for a moment on the terrace replaying it all in his mind. Georgette�s extraordinary journey from London to the Outer Hebrides, and from Paris to Montauban, and finally here. Her relationship with Lange, her brutal encounter with Wolff at the headquarters of the Gestapo. All so long ago, and yet so vividly brought back to life in Anny�s telling of it. He knew he would not sleep tonight, counting off the hours until he could return here in the morning to hear the end of her story. And somehow hoping that it might bring clarity to the killing of Narcisse and the disappearance of Bauer.

He started down the steps to the street below and into a pool of lamplight. To his left, the park from which Wolff�s remains had been recovered simmered in darkness. He was about to turn right, down the narrow street that would take him back to the Fenelon, when a movement among the trees in the park caught his eye. He stood stock-still and listened, but heard nothing.

�Who�s there?� he called out, as if believing that someone might actually answer. He shook his head at his own stupidity and was about to turn away again when he heard the unmistakable sound of a twig snapping underfoot. This time he took several paces towards the steps that led up into the park, peering through the darkness.

The shape of a man suddenly detached itself from the shadows to flit almost silently between the trees around the war monument. It was there, and gone again, in little more than a second. But Enzo knew now that there was definitely someone in the park.

�Who the hell are you?� he shouted again into the shadows, and in response heard the soft sound of footsteps in fallen leaves. Then the silhouette of the man he had glimpsed earlier moved through the broken light of a street lamp filtering through the trees. Alarmed by the movement he had provoked, Enzo found himself confronted by the fight or flight response. He chose flight, and hurried off down the street, covering ten or fifteen metres before realising he had gone the wrong way.

He cursed under his breath, stopping to turn back, but froze as he saw the shadow from the park hurrying down the steps to follow in his wake. The man�s breath billowed rapidly in the lamplight. Enzo turned quickly to continue down the street. The buildings on either side seemed to close in around him. It was darker here, the glow of the next street lamp hidden by the angle of the street.

He turned right at the bottom of the hill and saw that the way ahead would take him to the far end of the palisade. It was more open there. Better lit. Behind him, he heard the scrape of leather soles on asphalt, hurried footsteps turning into a run. Enzo started to panic and began running himself. It was with relief that he passed the deserted caf� at the end of the street and moved out on to the palisade. The lit walls of the ch�teau rose almost vertically on his right. The tree-lined parking area stretched away on his left above a sheer drop to the river below.

There he stopped in his tracks. A figure at the far end of the palisade was coming towards him. Behind him the rapid footsteps of his pursuer. He was caught between the two. Panic morphed to blind fear and rose in his throat to very nearly choke him. His only escape route was through the arch that led up a cobbled alley to the church. He suspected it could very well be a dead end, but there was nowhere else to go.

He ran through the span of the arch, past an artist�s atelier and a gift shop. Both shuttered up for the season. A wide stone staircase climbed to the gaping entrance of the church, an elaborate archway supported on ten pillars that led into darkness. The ivy-covered walls of the abbey itself rose sheer into the night. He ran past the tourist office and stopped at the entrance to the cloisters, a pay-gate that would open only with a token from the Office de Tourisme. Ahead of him, as he feared, lay a dead end. He looked back down the hill and saw the figure from the palisade pass through the frame of the arch. A man walking a dog.

Enzo cursed his stupidity. He could simply have continued along the palisade, past the dog walker and the shops, arriving at the safety of the Fenelon in a matter of minutes. Instead of which, he had trapped himself here in this religious cul-de-sac.

Almost as soon as the man with the dog had passed out of view, Enzo�s pursuer from the park ran into the light, a slight figure that stopped, looking either way, before turning to see Enzo at the top of the alley that climbed to the cloisters. He stood breathing heavily for several moments, as though contemplating his next move. Then turned through the sweep of the arch and started walking slowly up the slope towards Enzo.

Enzo braced himself for a confrontation as the figure approached. With the light behind him his face was in shadow. But Enzo could see that he was young.

�Bauer?� He called out the name and the man stopped at once. Enzo knew he had a reputation for violence and didn�t want to provoke him. And if he had killed Narcisse, then who knew what he was capable of.

With panic robbing him of clear thought, Enzo turned into the entrance to the cloisters, and yanked hopelessly at the pay-gate. To his astonishment it opened. Someone had forgotten to lock it. Or maybe at this time of year they didn�t bother. He chose not to dwell on it, but hurried through the door and into a courtyard bathed in moonlight. The door swung shut behind him.

He had entered on a corner of the quadrangle. Colonnaded cloisters ran off to his left, and straight ahead. Vaulted stone walkways set around a sad-looking square of lawn bordered by autumn-withered shrubs. Moonlight fell in through the colonnades to lie cold across dusty flags, and he took the option to his left. His footsteps echoed back at him off ancient stone, and as he reached the end of the walkway, he heard the door opening from the alleyway outside. He turned right, still running. Past an open chamber where stone figures stood around the prone figure of Jesus laid out on a slab. A narrow doorway at the end of the passage had been bricked up, and he turned into the third side of the quadrangle. Had his pursuer taken the other route around the square he could easily have cut Enzo off. But Enzo could hear his feet on the flagstones running along the top end of the square, following in Enzo�s footsteps.

Now he saw a maroon-painted wooden door set into the far corner. It had to be the entrance to the church. He slithered to a halt and pulled on the handle. The door didn�t budge. He looked back along the cloister and saw the young man who was chasing him run into moonlight at the far corner. He stopped and they looked at each other along the length of the north passage, the breath of both men rasping in the silence of the night and echoing among the vaults. In desperation, Enzo turned and put his shoulder to the door. It swung violently open, and his momentum carried him staggering in astonishment into the vast breathless nave that rose endlessly above him into darkness. The damned door wasn�t locked. It just opened the other way.

Multiple columns rose up to support an unseen vaulted ceiling. Moonlight bled through stained glass to sprinkle dead light among the pews. Enzo clattered between the bench seats, the chancel and altar away to his right, and sprinted up the central passage towards the entrance. To his immense relief, the door opened on to the covered area at the top of the steps he had passed just minutes earlier. He ran from darkness into street light, and scampered down the steps and out through the arch into the open stretch of palisade.

His legs were shaking, his breath tearing at lungs that hadn�t had to cope with this level of exercise in years. He just wanted to stop. To lean forward, hands on thighs, and try to regain some degree of control over his breathing. He worried that his heart rate was now reaching dangerous levels. It felt like something in his chest was trying to punch its way out through his ribs. But the sound of feet on the steps behind him robbed him of that option. He crossed the road and started running. And it was a full ten seconds or more before he realised that he was sprinting across the bridge that led west out of the village, further away from the sanctity of the Fenelon with every step.

Where was everybody? He wanted to shout for help, but there was nobody here. Full-time residents had long since shuttered up windows in thick stone walls, and were sitting watching TV or preparing dinner.

At the far side of the bridge he stopped again and clutched at the handrail. Looking back he saw his pursuer jogging steadily towards him.

�Jesus Christ!� he shouted at the night. �What do you want?�

Which brought the chasing figure to a halt at the mid-point of the bridge, and there was a stand-off that lasted almost half a minute. Just enough time for Enzo to regain his breath and look around for some way out.

A cobbled track dropped away from his end of the bridge, past a dark house on three levels, down towards the river and the footpath that ran back below the palisade towards the village.

He set off again on legs that would barely support him, slithering and sliding on dew-wet cobbles, to stagger on to the footpath by the river. The black water of the river itself reflected shimmering moonlight. He saw clusters of narrow wooden rowing boats tethered to trees, bobbing gently on slowly eddying water. And he set off back towards the village, legs burdened by lead weights that made every step a supreme effort of will.

The palisade rose into the night above him now, and he glanced over his shoulder to see his stalker walking after him, no more than twenty metres back. He no longer felt the need to run in order to catch up with his prey.

Enzo had reached that moment in the chase when the will to run had left him. When the need simply to stop was greater than the fear of facing up to his pursuer. But a part of him was still looking for a way out, a brain that remained functioning more efficiently than his body. Just ahead of him, a rowing boat, like the ones he had already passed, was tied to a tree on the riverbank. If he could get himself into that boat and push off into the flow of the river...

He stooped quickly to untether the rope, and stepped into the boat. Immediately it moved away from under him, rocking dangerously, and he fell along its length, crashing through the cross boards. To his horror, he felt the whole boat disintegrating beneath him, rotten wood giving way to drop him into icy water.

The cold stole away what little breath he had left, and he was incapable even of crying out with the shock of it. The water here was not deep. No more than a metre. But the riverbed comprised a thick sludge of mud and decaying vegetation, and he found it impossible to get back to his feet. His nostrils were filled with the stench of decomposing flora, and the more he struggled, the more he felt himself being sucked into the alluvium. It was all he could do to keep his head above water. And then he felt it wash over his face and knew that he could not hold his breath for more than a few seconds. The final seconds of his life. Time enough to curse his stupidity and regret all the foolish things he had ever done in his sixty-five years on this earth.

He prepared himself for the shock of cold water filling his lungs, and felt fingers close around a hand still above the surface. Another hand joined it, and their combined strength pulled him clear of the water. They grasped him now beneath the armpits and dragged him free of the clawing sediment and up on to the footpath.

Enzo lay on his back, shivering uncontrollably with the cold. He gasped to fill his lungs with recuperative oxygen, his eyes open, staring up at stars that glistened like jewels fixed to an eternity in which, to his amazement, he still existed. A face swam into view above him. A face caught in the moonlight. A young face, full of concern. This was his pursuer, and Enzo was shocked to see that he was no more than seventeen or eighteen years old.

�Are you alright?� the teenager asked him.

When finally he found his voice, Enzo spluttered, �No, I�m not alright! Do I look all-fucking-right?�

The young man seemed distressed. �I�m sorry,� he whispered. And then he was up on his feet and sprinting away along the footpath, back the way they had just come.

Enzo heaved himself up on to one elbow and glared after him. �What the hell?� he shouted. �Come back here, you wee bastard!� But the youth was gone, quickly swallowed by the night, and Enzo lay for several minutes recovering his breath before attempting finally to get to his feet.

It was fully daylight, although the sun had not yet risen above the cliffs behind the village. The sky was clear, and it was bitterly cold, mist drifting lazily from the surface of the Dordogne into the early morning air as Enzo stepped from the Fenelon into the village main street.

A hot meal the night before and a full eight hours� sleep had partially restored him. A copious breakfast of hot milky coffee and pain au chocolat had set him up for the day ahead. Almost. Every muscle in his body had stiffened up. Every joint ached. He walked in pain, but was determined to keep going until the circulation of his blood had restored him to at least some semblance of normal movement.

Besides, he wanted to retrace the footsteps of his chase the night before, to get to know and understand the layout of this village that had been so bewilderingly confusing to him in the dark. To place Anny�s house, and the park next to it, in the greater context of the whole place. And he spent the next half hour simply wandering through the labyrinth of streets and alleys and footpaths of this medieval jumble of stone houses. Courtyards and gardens, bridges and lanes, and crystal-clear streams that disappeared beneath narrow streets to emerge tumbling through rocky outcrops and into the river.

Finally he found himself standing on the palisade looking down on the scene of carnage which had played out in the dark the previous evening. The remains of the boat he had attempted to climb into were no longer visible. Sucked down into the glaur. Its tethering rope lay in a tangle on the footpath next to the debris he had dragged with him from the water. The ground was still wet.

A voice at his shoulder startled him. An elderly man, shrunken by age and tanned to leather by years in the sun, stood next to him, smiling behind his incongruously pale blue mask. He wore a cloth cap and a threadbare blue jacket. �Ah, there�s not many of the old boats left,� he said. �I think they only keep them tied up along the bank for the tourists to take photographs. Most of them are full of water half the year and the wood�s just rotted.� He nodded further downriver. �They�ve got new ones now that actually float, though I wouldn�t want to risk falling into that water myself. Centuries of sewage in it.� He chuckled. �Find yourself just going through the motions.�

Enzo blenched.

When he got back to the hotel, he stood out in the street, where he still had a Wi-Fi signal, and called up a Google Earth image of the village on his phone, and tried to make sense of everywhere he had been in the last thirty minutes. Arriving, belatedly, at some kind of understanding of its layout.

He slipped his phone back in his pocket, and went in search of his car to drive across the river and over the flood plain towards the village of B�taille. He glimpsed the ch�teau on the hill, dominating the disparate collection of houses below it, and the red-brick church that stood on its eastern edge. And as he headed out of the village towards Vayrac, he spotted the double garage with its chequered doors and windows that Anny had described. He marvelled at the thought that the apartment above it had once, long ago, played host to some of the most priceless canvasses in the world. And a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa.

In a quiet Vayrac cul-de-sac, he parked outside the single-storey gendarmerie lying in semi-anonymity behind green metal gates, and told the duty officer across the intercom that he would like to talk to Capitaine Arnaud.

When, at length, they let him in, he sat waiting in reception until the capitaine was free. Time to reflect on exactly what he would tell the investigating officer. About what he had discovered to date. About the attack which had so nearly killed him the night before. But he could barely concentrate for a middle-aged woman loudly haranguing the duty officer at the bar. She wore mud-caked gum boots and filthy blue overalls, and looked like she might just have stepped off a farm. A tangle of grey hair, like fuse wire bursting from its sheath, was held in a clasp behind her head, and her cheeks glowed red with indignation.

�Well, just how far down your list of priorities am I?� she demanded, her mask dragged beneath her chin. �Or are you too busy hiding round street corners to catch law-abiding folk going five kilometres an hour over the speed limit?�

The duty officer recoiled a little and pulled his mask higher up his nose. He sighed patiently. �We�re doing our best, madame, but we�ve got a murder under investigation, and there�s been a spate of burglaries in the area. And last night there was a serious bust-up between locals and gitanes in a bar in town. A missing bicycle hardly qualifies as a pressing concern.�

�Of no concern at all, if you ask me. More than a week�s gone by, and no one�s even called by the house. That bike cost a small fortune. Money that me and my husband could ill afford. And the boy�s heartbroken. It was his sixteenth birthday present, you know.� She shook her head vigorously. �What kind of world do we live in where folk would steal a boy�s v�lo from his own door?� But she didn�t wait for the gendarme�s reply, and answered for herself. �One policed by a useless bunch like you.�

She turned and marched towards the door. When she reached it, she held it open to throw one final recrimination over her shoulder.

�Putain con!�

Which Enzo translated for himself as a boldly vulgar epithet, and wondered at her fearlessness. In France, gendarmes were not to be taken lightly. By way of mitigation, he smiled sympathetically at the duty officer whose loss of face prompted him glower back.

The door to Capitaine Arnaud�s office opened, and he gestured Enzo in, pulling up his mask as he rounded his desk and waving Enzo into a seat. �So sorry to keep you, Monsieur Macleod. It�s been a hectic few days.�

�You�ve made progress, then?�

�We have.� He sat back in his chair and smiled. �I think we�ve pretty much worked out what happened.�

Enzo sat forward, interested. �Oh? Tell me.�

�We conducted door-to-door interviews in the village and found an elderly lady who encountered Bauer early in the afternoon on the day of the murder. He approached her at a bus stop and asked for directions to Anny Lavigne�s house. Obviously establishing in advance where she lived. Then the proprietor of the Fenelon reported that Bauer had been seen in the bar of the hotel shortly before Narcisse left that evening. Although no one actually saw Bauer himself leave, he was not in the bar very shortly afterwards.�

�So you think he followed Narcisse to the house?�

�No. I think he knew where Narcisse was going, and took a different route. Immediately opposite the hotel, monsieur, a gate leads to the garden of a house belonging to a summer resident. A path leads up through that garden to the top of the hill, where another gate leads into an alleyway behind Madame Lavigne�s house. Steps lead up from there to the terrace at the side of it. Taking that route, Bauer could have got to the house before Narcisse and entered from the side terrace, since the door is never locked.�

Enzo thought about it, visualising the route from his exploration of the village that morning, and from the Google Earth image he had called up on his phone. He also remembered the gate opposite the hotel, the path up through the garden, and the night gate that Bauer would have used to access the side entrance to Anny�s house. �And what was his motive?�

�Bauer�s?�

�Yes. For killing Narcisse.�

Arnaud shrugged. �I have no idea. Is it so important to know why he killed him?�

�Not if you�re Chinese and don�t believe in motive. All you would need then is sufficient evidence to know that he did. But in this case you don�t have that. So motive is important. To understand why he would do it is crucial to establishing whether he did or not.�

�You think he didn�t?�

�I think there is sufficient doubt to make us look for another explanation.�

�What doubt?� Arnaud was genuinely puzzled. �We know he was there. He left bloody fingerprints all over the door, and in his hotel room before he disappeared.�

�Let�s come to that in a moment,� Enzo said. �Did you know that Bauer and Narcisse had met at Narcisse�s gallery in Paris two days before the murder?�

Arnaud paled, perhaps starting to suspect that his investigation might not have delved as deeply as it should. �No, I didn�t. We had someone talk to Narcisse�s people in Paris, and take possession of all his computers.� He shook his head. �But we didn�t find anything useful.�

Enzo said, �His prot�g� told me that his meeting with Bauer was brief and fractious. Bauer left in a temper, and an hour or so later Narcisse reserved his train tickets to Brive and a room at the Fenelon.�

�You�ve been to Paris?�

�And to Germany.� He saw Arnaud�s jaw drop behind his mask. �I�ve done quite a bit of research on Bauer. You already know, of course, that he had a conviction for assault. But that wasn�t the only fight he got into. He�s a young man, it seems, with a fearsome temper and a history of violence. Most recently against his girlfriend. Violence followed by shame and remorse. Which doesn�t appear, however, to have stopped him from doing it again.�

�So he had some kind of grudge against Narcisse and got to the house ahead of him to lie in wait and take his revenge.� Arnaud felt back on safer ground.

�Perhaps,� Enzo said. �But this was no temper-driven frenzied attack. It was one single deliberate slash of a knife.�

�And then he panicked and tried to get out of the house fast.�

�Slipping in the blood of his victim, and leaving messy handprints all over the door?� Enzo�s scepticism was patent.

Arnaud was defensive. �Which would be consistent with panic.�

Enzo shook his head slowly. �Why didn�t he leave the house the same way he entered it? By the door to the side terrace. That way he would have avoided having to pass the body and slip in the blood.�

Arnaud opened his mouth to suggest some plausible explanation, but none would come.

�And why did it take several minutes before his panic set in?�

Arnaud stared at him in silence for a very long moment. �How can you possibly know that?�

�Because the drops on the periphery of the blood spatter had partially dried before he slipped in them. That would have taken two, maybe three minutes. It makes no sense, capitaine. Premeditation is out of character for Bauer. He would have had to plan this. Be lying in wait for Narcisse and kill him in cold blood. Then, apparently, stand around for a few minutes before suddenly panicking and charging out of the house through the blood of his victim.�

Arnaud sat back. He could find no fault with Enzo�s logic. �So what do you think happened?�

Enzo sighed. �I don�t know. Yet.� He paused. �But someone is clearly worried that I�m going to figure it out.�

Arnaud frowned. �Who?�

�I don�t know that either. But someone nearly killed me last night.�

Now Arnaud sat forward, alarmed. �What?�

And Enzo related the whole sorry tale of the chase through the dark streets of Carennac which ended in the river. Arnaud listened with increasing incredulity. �And this teenager tried to kill you?�

�Not exactly. In fact, he ended up saving my life.�

�So why was he chasing you?�

�I haven�t the faintest idea.�

�What did he look like?�

Enzo shook his head. �I couldn�t really say. I wasn�t exactly making notes at the time.� He stood up, and Arnaud rose hastily to his feet.

�Monsieur, perhaps it was a mistake to involve you in this. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you.�

�I wouldn�t be too happy about it either.� Enzo turned towards the door then stopped. �Oh, by the way, those remains found in the park a couple of weeks ago...�

�What about them?�

�They belong to a Luftwaffe officer who was an art dealer in civilian life. His name was Karlheinz Wolff. Apparently he obtained looted art for Hermann G�ring, who asked him to acquire the Mona Lisa for his private collection.�

Arnaud blinked in astonishment. He waved an arm vaguely towards the door. �But... but the Mona Lisa was kept just a few kilometres away at Ch�teau de Montal, for most of the latter stages of the war.�

�Which explains why he was here.�

Enzo turned towards the door again, but stopped once more to give voice to an apparent afterthought. �One other thing. Hans Bauer is Wolff�s grandson.�

Georgette�s first year in her new home fell into a pleasant, if uneventful, routine. And for much of it, the war seemed a million miles away.

She was pleased with her house. An L-shaped stone dwelling that sat above a large cellar. A farmhouse kitchen, a bedroom, a large salon with an enormous chemin�e, all on the one level. The attic was, as yet, undeveloped. It sat next to a small park in the middle of the village of Carennac, and a terrace at the side of the house gave directly on to the park itself.

The owner of the house had died intestate, and the estate was in the temporary stewardship of the mairie, and so volunteered as accommodation for Georgette.

She was less pleased with the cycle to and from the Ch�teau de Montal. Although the route followed the meandering path of the River Dordogne through the silt flats of the flood plain, it took nearly fifty minutes. In spring and autumn it was an easy and pleasant commute, but in the searing heat of summer she would arrive at either end of her journey dripping with perspiration. And in the winter, temperatures could dip as low as minus ten or fifteen, and the road was often obscured by a freezing fog that followed the path of the river, and therefore the road.

Early on, she had taken the decision to set up a canvas camp bed in the Grande Salle du Rez-de-chauss�e, the largest room on the ground floor of the ch�teau, where the greatest number of the most important crated works were stacked, including the Mona Lisa. Although Ren� Huygue still insisted on keeping La Joconde in his quarters in the Chambre de Nine on the first floor, Georgette wrested her from his grasp each night to sleep with her in the grande salle, also known as the salle des gardes, among the crates. This vaulted chamber with its flagstone floor, and intricately carved stone chemin�e was cool and conducive to sleep in the summer, but like an icebox in the winter, even when a fire had been set in the hearth. And Georgette would often cycle home in the morning with leaden legs to catch some much-needed sleep and garner a little warmth from her bed during the hours of daylight.

Food seemed more plentiful in this part of south-west France, and the curators and all the guards at the ch�teau ate well. Duck and goose, lamb and limousin beef, and wonderful salads with cheese and g�siers, liberally sprinkled with walnuts from the trees that grew everywhere here. Neither was there any shortage of fruit. And there were several local red wines, a little unsophisticated but still quaffable.

It was easy to forget that the world was at war, and the outcome as yet far from certain. In all this time they had barely seen a single German soldier, and Georgette made frequent outings on her bike to explore a countryside rich in forest and fruit, tobacco and wheat, cliffs rising sheer from rivers and streams that in eons past had carved their way through a landscape of solid rock. There was a regular market in the nearby town of Saint-C�r�. She often went shopping for essential food and clothing in the medieval Place Mercadial, where merchants traded in the shadow of the Tours Saint-Laurent, an ancient fortification on a hilltop that dominated the town and the countryside for miles around.

She was unconcerned that she had neither seen nor heard anything of Lange in all this time. Although she missed him, his absence meant that there was no imminent threat from Karlheinz Wolff. Of Wolff himself, she had seen nothing since that day at B�taille. Both men had receded into a past that seemed much darker and more distant now, viewed from this privileged vantage point in the southern sun.

But by the spring of 1944, these months of comparative idyll were drawing to a close. Rumours of an imminent Allied invasion of Europe were circulating in the villages and marketplaces. The war was going badly for the Germans following defeat in North Africa the previous year, and there was bloody stalemate on the Eastern Front with Russia. The French Resistance, now collectively known as the Maquis, were more and more active in the area. Acts of sabotage on bridges and railway lines provoked savage reprisals from the Germans, and the mood of everyone at Montal had become febrile and tense.

It was one hot night towards the end of May that year that Georgette found herself in the salle des gardes unable to sleep. She lay awake on the unyielding canvas of her camp bed staring up at the vaulted ceiling. Moonlight flooded in through the windows that she had left unshuttered, laying its shadows among the silent crates. Outside, the screech of cicadas and the croaking of a thousand frogs filled the night air, a deafening cacophony in the sultry still of the small hours.

Finally she got up and slipped on her shoes to pad through the adjoining Salle Robert de Balsac, weaving her way among the stacks of crated paintings to the narrow door that led to the north turret. There they had established a small kitchen to prepare food for the staff. If she couldn�t sleep, then she might as well have a coffee. She placed the kettle on a tiny gas ring and wandered off through the salon to gaze through one of the windows on to the courtyard. Moonlight shimmered on the crushed white castine gravel. The ch�teau formed a right-angle on two sides of the square. The north-east side was bordered by a line of trees and a couple of stone benches, beyond which lay the ch�teau garden, given over now to growing vegetables. Between the trees on the south-east side, a gate opened on to a drive that turned around the slope of the hill, past outbuildings that provided accommodation for the guards, and down towards a road leading to the village of Saint-Jean-Lespinasse. Georgette could see the silhouette of one of the guards sitting on the wall by the gate, his cigarette glowing red in the dark.

It was only then that she became aware of the voices that seemed to drift in from the stairwell at the far end of the salon. The ch�teau�s main staircase was a broad sweep of well-worn stone that climbed through the levels of the building at the angle between the two wings. But here, at the end of the north wing, a narrow flight of wooden servants� stairs rose all the way up to the attic. The voices were coming from one of the upper levels. Hushed male voices. By the light of the moon that fell in through every window slit, Georgette tiptoed slowly up the stairs, cringing at every creak.

On the next landing the voices were louder, amplified by stone walls and tiled floors. She slipped through shadows cast by artworks stacked ceiling high in the Chambre R�gence and the Grand Salon d�honneur, to emerge into the first-floor hallway at the top of the staircase. A door led off into the Chambre Fenaille and the tower at the north-west corner. Flickering candlelight sent long shadows dancing through the open door to meet her. She recognised Ren� Huygue�s voice, and sneaked a peek into the one-time bedroom of what had probably been a lesser family member. A group of half a dozen men were grouped conspiratorially around a candle placed on the floor among the crates. They were being addressed by Huygue, but other voices raised themselves in disagreement, only to be shooshed sharply and told to keep the level down. These were rough-looking countrymen in boots and overalls, paysan jackets and cloth caps, but among them Georgette saw a face she recognised. Jean-Luc Percet, one of the ch�teau guards. A man in his forties, with a shock of unruly black hair shot through with wiry silver. A wit about the place. Always smiling, laughing, and cracking jokes.

She drew back into the hallway in case they saw her, and pressing her back against the wall, tried to follow the argument. It seemed they were discussing the blowing up of a railway junction near the town of Gramat, a few kilometres south of Montal. Georgette listened, heart pounding so loudly she was sure they would hear it echoing along the stone passages of the old ch�teau. The disagreement concerned the when, as well as the precise location. The Germans were using the line to send troops and munitions north, and the destruction of a junction south of the town would cause considerable disruption to their traffic. But it was well guarded and would be a risky venture.

Finally, agreement appeared to be reached, and Georgette prepared to retrace her footsteps quickly to hide herself among the crates in the Chambre R�gence. But no one was leaving. She summoned her courage to satisfy her curiosity and stole another glance into the Chambre Fenaille. The men were all clustered around an open door at the entrance to the north-west turret, a door Georgette knew had always been kept locked. Huygue stood in its lit entrance, handing out rifles and pistols, and rucksacks of what she could only imagine must be explosives.

She caught her breath and wheeled away. Huygue was keeping arms in the ch�teau and supplying the Maquis! It was madness. If the Germans chose to make an unannounced visit to inspect the premises, they would all be sent off to the labour camps. And God only knew what would become of the art they had tried so hard to protect from the ravages of war.

Enzo blinked, almost as though waking from a dream, or with the lights coming up at the end of a movie. The completion of the story had taken most of the day, and only now did his stomach growl its displeasure at missing lunch. Outside it had grown dark, earlier since the turning back of the clocks the week before, and the fire had all but gone out. The air in the room had turned chill, and it was only now that he noticed it. Moonlight flooded in through the stained glass, and Anny sat like an apparition in her rocking chair, looking at him expectantly.

He said, �And the one reason that Georgette had above all others for weeping over Lange... was you.�

Her smile was so distant it barely registered. �I was just two months old when the war ended and she made her pilgrimage to that bench on the hill. It was a month after his death that she discovered she was pregnant. I always loved my mother with a passion, monsieur. And never knew, of course, the man who had betrayed her. The man who was my father. I would have wished to have known him. Truly. If only to find that one redeeming feature, the reason that he did what he did.� He heard the tiniest break in her voice. �None of us would like to believe that their father was a monster.�

�And did your mother ever find it? That one redeeming feature. In retrospect, I mean.�

�I don�t believe so, monsieur. She never got over it, right up until the day she died. Although she spoke of him often, and sometimes with a fondness that I found hard to credit.�

�And the story you have told me is the story she told you.�

She smiled. �A story I heard so many times. Over and over, from my earliest recollection. Until it seemed to me, monsieur, that I had been there myself. Felt her pain, her love, her sense of betrayal, as if it were mine.� She turned her gaze to the floor where the door opened into the hall towards the kitchen. �If you look carefully, you can still see where the blood of my father stained the flagstones. In a way, he�s always been here. My mother acquired this house from the mairie, with money inherited from her mother. I was born here, grew up here, have never known any other home.�

�Your mother married, didn�t she?�

�Yes. A doctor. Albert Lavigne. The only father I ever knew. My mother gave birth to my half-sister a few years later, but Albert died before Claire even reached her teens, and my mother was alone again. And remained so for the rest of her life.�

�That�s sad.� Enzo grieved for Georgette, too. After everything that had happened to her, she had surely deserved some happiness. �But she always had you.�

The sadness now in Anny�s smile was almost painful. �She did. Although I was never quite able to shake off the feeling that somehow she saw Lange every time she looked at me. The sins of the father, and all that. Claire never carried that taint. Sadly, she passed before I did, so on my death I will leave the house to her daughter, Elodie, and it will remain within the family.�

�And the Mona Lisa?�

Sharp eyes flickered towards Enzo. �Back in the Louvre where she belongs.�

Enzo scratched his chin thoughtfully. �You know, it occurs to me that the reason both Narcisse and Bauer came here to seek you out was the belief that somehow you still possessed the Mona Lisa forgery. Passed on to you by your mother. After all, given its provenance, and the role it played in history, it must be worth a small fortune. Not to mention the story that goes with it. A bestseller if ever I heard one.� He paused. �And, then, there is always the possibility that it wasn�t, after all, the original that was returned to the Louvre at the end of the war.�

Anny laughed. �You are letting your imagination run away with you, monsieur. Truth be told, there is actually no evidence whatsoever that such a forgery ever existed. It could just as easily have been a fanciful fabrication of my mother�s. A story to entertain. Or confuse.�

�Confuse who?�

She shrugged and smiled. �Anyone who heard it.�

�Well, I think that two men certainly heard it. Though not from you. Or your mother. And it�s why one of them is dead, and the other missing.�

Her smile faded, but it was clear to Enzo that she was going to say nothing further on the matter. He eased himself stiffly out of his armchair, and felt every ache and pain inflicted on him by the events of the night before. He said, �I have a notion that I might just know where that missing man is. And if��� he caught and corrected himself � �when I find him, perhaps finally the truth will come out.�

It was very nearly a full moon. A hunter�s moon. And since it was the second one of the month, a blue moon also. Tomorrow, on a Halloween when the streets would be deserted, and children confined to their homes by the lockdown, it would reach fulfilment. But Enzo found it hard to believe that it could cast any more light than it did tonight. The causses, as he drove south on the narrow D20, shimmered in what seemed like daylight. Red rocky soil turned over for the coming winter, drystone walls glowing silver at the roadside, trees stripped of leaves casting deep, dark shadows. For the first time, Enzo realised why they called it a hunter�s moon. It was the last full moon of autumn, when night hunters could go out to stock the larder for the lean months ahead.

But Enzo did not have the luxury of waiting for tomorrow�s full moon to go in search of his man. From midnight tonight the lockdown would kick in and it would no longer be legal for him to be out and about.

Turning off at the tiny village of Miers to head cross-country, it took him another fifteen minutes to reach the junction where the road doubled back towards the Gouffre de Padirac.

The Gouffre de Padirac was a tourist construct a couple of kilometres from the village of Padirac itself. No one lived there. Bars and caf�s, restaurants and hotels, bordered a long road lined by trees that led gently downhill to a sprawling white and red-brick building on the very edge of this huge black fissure in the earth. Beyond it, the Auberge du Gouffre cast long shadows in the moonlight, and a small park stretched away across the valley floor towards wooded countryside in the west. In summer, thousands of tourists would queue here for hours below long covered walkways to hand over their euros and enter the building, gaining access to the stairs and lifts that would take them deep into the bowels of the earth. But as Enzo cruised slowly down the hill, the place was utterly deserted. Shutters drawn. Not a single light in the windows of the three-storey Padirac Hotel. The ghosts of summer long gone, a bleak and desolate winter in prospect.

At the foot of the hill Enzo parked his car and stepped out into an eery silence. Street lights seemed superfluous in the phosphorescent light of the moon. He consulted a crude little map in the trifold advertising the g�te available for summer let. And followed a path along the far side of the park to where a gravel track cut away through long grass. A house sat up on the slope in the shade of several large oak trees.

He hardly needed his torch to find his way up to it, acorns and beech nuts breaking open underfoot. It was built into the side of the hill, a shallow Roman-tiled roof above a bungalow with cellar and terrace out front, a short flight of steps leading to the main door. All of its windows looked securely shuttered. A carport adjoining the left side of the house languished in deep shadow. Enzo shone his torch into the darkness and saw a racing bike leaning against the wall. And his heart began to beat just a little faster.

He made his way through the long grass to the far side of the property and climbed up to the back of it. A rear door opened on to an overgrown garden where fruit trees offered scented summer shade and escape from the sun. To the left of the door, shutters on a window stood almost imperceptibly ajar. Enzo directed the beam of his torch at them and saw splintered wood where they had been forced open.

He doused the light of the torch and tucked it into his belt before reaching up to swing them fully open. A pane of glass in the window beyond had been smashed, and as he stepped closer he heard it crunching beneath his feet. He looked around and spotted a white plastic table and two chairs beneath the nearest tree, green-streaked and discoloured by damp. He fetched one of the chairs to place beneath the window, and standing on it, pulled himself up on to the ledge. From here he could reach through the broken pane to release the clasp on the other side and push the window open. The house breathed warm air and the smell of stale cooking into his face. And something else that he couldn�t quite identify. Soap. Or perfume. Or, perhaps, aftershave. Carefully he grasped the window frame at each side and dropped silently into the dark.

He crouched for a moment, letting his eyes accustom themselves to the change in light, and listened intently for the slightest sound. But the silence was more profound than the dark, and he slowly stood up to take the torch from his belt.

It was perfectly possible that Bauer was long gone. That he had been here, Enzo was in no doubt. The bike in the carport was witness to that. But there was also a chance that he was still there. That he had heard Enzo climbing in through the window, perhaps seen his torchlight as he approached the house.

That torchlight now revealed him to be in a small bedroom. The bed was neatly made and had not been slept in. Enzo wondered about calling out. But if Bauer were here, and perhaps asleep, he didn�t want to alert him to his presence. He opened the door very gently and peered out into a narrow hallway that transected the house, gable to gable. Glazed double doors halfway along it gave on to a large front room. Enzo moved cautiously over the tiled floor and into the lounge. A wood-burning stove stood in a fireplace at one end, a dining table at the other. A sofa and armchairs were gathered around French windows that in summer would open on to the terrace and a view of the park, and the red and white entrance to the gouffre at the far side of it.

The table was strewn with documents and maps, and a pile of black leather-bound notebooks, all picked out in sharp relief by Enzo�s torch. There were several mugs containing the coagulated remains of half-drunk milky coffee. And something about the smell of this room told him that someone had been in it very recently.

Enzo crossed to the table and flicked one-handed through the pages of one of the notebooks, training his torch on it with the other. Faded ink and what he realised was neat German script. Nothing he could read. He played the light of his torch across the tabletop until it settled on the printout of an article from what he recognised as the local newspaper of the south-west, La D�p�che du Midi.

He picked it up and scanned it quickly. A dead tree brought down during a storm in the village of Carennac... the remains of a body... a German air force officer... a bullet hole in the cranium. Then Enzo froze. The park is overlooked by the house that once belonged to Georgette Pignal, famous for being tasked by de Gaulle during WW2 with keeping the Mona Lisa out of German hands. The house is still lived in by her daughter Anny.

So this is what had brought Bauer to Carennac. But more than just the belief that the remains found in the park were those of his grandfather, he must have known, somehow, about the copy of the Mona Lisa. Must have thought that, even if she didn�t have it herself, Anny must know where it is. Enzo laid the article back on the table and found himself thinking the same thing himself. It couldn�t simply have disappeared.

He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye too late. A figure took shape, materialising from the dark, to club him to the ground with a fist like iron. The force with which he hit the floor knocked all the breath from Enzo�s lungs, and his torch went skidding away across the floor, casting crazily dancing shadows around the walls. Until it smashed against the stove, plunging the room into darkness.

His assailant stepped quickly over his body and ran through the hall. As he pulled himself groggily to his knees, Enzo was aware of the front door opening and he called out, �Bauer! For God�s sake, Bauer. I�m here to help you.� But he heard the man�s feet clattering away down the steps and off into the night.

Wearily he staggered to his feet and raised a hand to his cheek. He felt blood, and a swelling coming up already beneath his skin. He hurried through the hall and out into the moonlight washing across the terrace, and saw the figure of Bauer running down the hill towards the park. Had there been hunters about, they could have fixed him easily in their sights.

Enzo sighed. �I�m too fucking old for this,� he breathed at the night, and started down the steps after him.

He reached the park as Bauer got to the other side of it and ran up steps towards the entrance to the gouffre. Enzo stopped and bellowed across the park, �Bauer, stop! I know you didn�t kill Narcisse.�

Bauer stopped at the top of the steps and looked back, hesitating, clearly in a quandary. He could not have helped but hear what Enzo had shouted. And it was only in that moment that Enzo realised he had been calling after him in English. He started jogging across the path on shaking legs, breath tearing raggedly at his throat.

But as he reached the steps, Bauer appeared to have second thoughts, and turned, sprinting across the road and vanishing among the shadows of the building opposite. By the time Enzo had climbed the steps there was no sign of him. He walked across the road, moonlight casting his shadow in stark silhouette on the tarmac, and glanced towards the Auberge, then up the hill towards the Padirac Hotel. Nothing moved. A dozen steps took him up to the main entrance. Two doors, grilles drawn over glass for the season. Both leading into a darkened entrance hall where the billeterie sold tickets, and a passageway led off to the lift and the stairs.

He went around the front of the building to where an adjoining caf� would do brisk business during the summer, and placed his hands on the railing that separated the building from the gouffre itself.

The full light of the moon picked out a grey-painted metal staircase that doubled back on itself, zigzagging all the way down into deep shadow below. Right next to it, the cage of the elevator that would make return to the surface easier on the way back. Both were affixed to layers of rock that were like great slabs of petrified sediment piled one upon the other and vanishing into the darkness of this vast hole in the ground. It looked almost as if some alien deity had drilled down into the earth with a giant Archimedes screw. Trees and bushes clung stubbornly to its perimeter, metal webbing stretched across the face of the cliff opposite to prevent rock falls.

Enzo�s attention was drawn by the clatter and rattle of metal rising up through the night, and to his astonishment he saw Bauer employing the webbing to climb down and drop on to the staircase below. The whole structure shook with the weight of his body as he dropped the last three metres. Enzo leaned over the railing and shouted again, �Bauer, I�m here to help you.� He saw Bauer�s upturned face caught ghostly by the moon, before he vanished into shadow.

Enzo could only think that there must be another way out of the gouffre, an exit that Bauer believed would provide him with a clean getaway. And there was no way that Enzo was going after him. He dug out his phone and found Arnaud�s number at the gendarmerie in Vayrac. As it rang he checked the time. Just after eight o�clock. But the ringing went quickly to an answering service. Enzo cursed under his breath. There was never a gendarme around when you needed one. He started to leave a message.

�Hello, this is Enzo Macleod calling for Capitaine Arnaud. I�ve found Bauer. He�s at the Gouffre de Padirac, and the idiot�s just climbed down into the hole.�

He was interrupted by a sudden clatter of metal, and a bloodcurdling scream that echoed all around the vastness of the gouffre.

�Shit!� he said. �Something�s happened to him.� And he hung up. Then shouted into the darkness below, �Are you alright?�

It was a long moment before Bauer�s voice came feebly back from the darkness. His English only very lightly accented. �I think I�ve broken my leg. It�s bleeding like hell.�

�Jesus Christ.� Enzo looked around as if somehow help might suddenly emerge from the shadows, but the street simmered in silent indifference, pools of light beneath the street lamps outshone by the moon. He looked at the webbing that Bauer had climbed down and wondered if he could do it, too. There had been a time, certainly, when he wouldn�t have doubted it. But now...

He sighed and climbed over the railing to pick his way through the growth around the edge of the hole. It seemed like a horribly long way down. Seventy-five metres, he recalled from the leaflet. Nearly 250 feet. And he couldn�t even see the bottom of it. He felt giddy just looking over the edge.

�Hold on,� he shouted. �I�m coming down.� And he began his descent of the metal webbing. Hand- and footholds were easy to find, but the metal quickly cut into his palms. He tried to take most of the weight on his feet and felt his legs trembling as he moved one foot down below the other.

It was with huge relief that he finally reached the tin roof of a shelter above the stairs, and stood there, still shaking, and gasping to recover his breath and his courage. He glanced up, amazed at just how far down he had climbed. Then, without looking at the drop beyond the staircase, knelt down and lowered himself over the edge, finally letting go to fall the final few metres, as Bauer had done, clattering heavily on the grille of the nearest landing. The whole structure shuddered, and he crouched down to steady himself.

Looking up he saw the lip of the hole above cast a huge circular shadow around the opposite arc of the wall. He shouted, �Bauer?�

�Down here,� Bauer�s voice rose faintly out of the dark. And Enzo started off down the stairs, reaching the next landing, to double back and head down to the next. Now he moved into the shadow cast by the rim of the gouffre, profoundly dark after the blinding dazzle of the moon. And just as he had back at the house, Bauer emerged from the gloom to smash a fist into Enzo�s face.

This time as he went down, Enzo tasted blood in his mouth and thought he might have lost a tooth.

�You fuck!� Bauer bellowed at him, and Enzo could feel hot breath in his face. �Leave me the fuck alone. We�re both down here now, so you can�t tell anyone where I am. And you�ll never get out on your own.� Then he was off, leaping two at a time down the stairs and into the depths of the gouffre.

Enzo lay on the metal grille spitting blood and cursing his stupidity. But Bauer was right. Because of his own idiotic gullibility, here he was, down in the hole, and knew there was no way he could climb back out.

Slowly he sat up and ran the back of his hand over his lips, feeling blood smear wet on his skin. He fumbled for his phone, turned on his torch app, and directed its beam down into the hole below. Vaguely, in the semi-darkness, he could see stairways leading to a criss-cross of paths and covered walkways at the very bottom of the chasm. And he saw the tiny figure of Bauer sprinting away towards an opening at the far side of the hole, where more stairs vanished into obscurity.

He tried to call Arnaud again, but this far down there was no longer any signal, and he sat for several minutes feeling sorry for himself, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, wondering if he was going to die in this damned hole. He shook his head. A stupid thought. There must be another way out.

Slowly he pulled himself upright, spat blood into the gouffre and started off down the stairs once more. The clatter of his feet on rattling metal reverberated all around him. He turned off the light on his phone to preserve its battery, and let his eyes accustom themselves to the gloom as he descended into the deepest part of the hole.

When finally he got to the bottom of it, he looked back up, and saw the rim of the gouffre sharply delineated against the starlit sky. An almost perfect circle. But there was no point in looking back. He had to go on. Turning, he stumbled along a path that ran past a strange white glowing statue, like a phantom sent to haunt him. Then down concrete steps set into the rock, to the entrance of a cave that cut deep down into the sedimentary layers. All light beyond it was extinguished by the night.

Now he needed the light of his phone again, and started off down steep flights of steps that dog-legged into darkness and took him deeper and deeper underground.

Tunnels hewn out of sandstone over millions of years by the flow of underground rivers dripped condensation like rain on to his head, until eventually the stairs came to an end, and a narrow passage led off through a fissure in the rock face. After nearly sub-zero temperatures above ground it felt warm down here, but the darkness was profound, and his phone light barely penetrated it.

The walls closed in around him, this great crack in the rock vanishing into tenebrosity overhead as he walked steadily forward, playing the light from his phone on the well-worn path in front of him. He could hear the sound of running water, though he could not see it. And then suddenly the cave opened up around him, and light reflected back at him from black water.

Shiny metal rails, designed to divide tourists into lines, led through a turnstile to where half a dozen long, narrow punts bobbed in concrete docks. One of the slots was empty. Bauer must have taken a boat. Enzo baulked at the thought of setting off after him in a flimsy punt, in the dark. Who knew how deep the water was or what kind of current might rob him of control. He shone his phone around the walls of the cave in the docking area, and saw a stout cable descending from high above to a metal box fixed to the rock at the far side of the dock. He walked gingerly across slick concrete to pull open the box and shine his light on a large power switch. Of course! The caves would have to be lit for the tourists. He threw the switch, and coloured lights concealed overhead transformed the space around him, lighting the passage of the underground river ahead. Waterfalls of rock seemed to pour down from the heavens, stalactites like liquid spears frozen in time. Weird and wonderful formations, coloured green and red and blue by the lights.

Enzo stood gazing at it in wonder before his eyes fell on the long poles stacked in one corner, and he supposed that the water couldn�t be too deep if these could be used to propel the punts along the river. He snatched one, and sent the nearest punt rocking crazily beneath him as he stepped on to the nearer end of it. He held the pole horizontally to regain his balance, and when the punt finally stopped dipping he moved forward to better distribute his weight before pushing off.

The vessel cut a silent swathe through the black water, walls encroaching as he steered it from one side to the other, avoiding rock that jutted into the river, bumping from time to time against it and pushing himself free with the pole. Calcium salts deposited by dripping water hung in cascading columns and the smooth swish of water against the punt now filled the air, along with the sound of myriad drips like rainfall.

He lost track of how long it took before the narrow underground river opened out into another cave, and a docking area containing just one boat. The one that Bauer had taken. When Enzo docked he stopped and listened intently. But he could hear nothing, and supposed that Bauer by this time must be long gone.

The passage leading away from the dock lay in darkness, until Enzo found another junction box on the wall and threw a switch to illuminate the way ahead. Bauer had done this entire trip in the dark, probably by the light of a phone, and somewhere up ahead, perhaps, he was now spooked by this sudden explosion of light.

For Enzo there was no alternative but to press on, and hope that there might be a way out somewhere in his future. The taste of blood was still strong in his mouth, but it had dried on his lips and crusted on the back of his hand. The pain had reduced itself to a dull ache, but his whole body hurt, and he found it increasingly difficult to put one leg in front of the other.

He stumbled on for several minutes, until this narrow passageway opened out into a vast underground cave, a lake lit turquoise from beneath its still waters and reflecting light from soaring walls that vanished into a mist of obscurity.

It was a dead end. From the far side of the lake, water flowed into another river that completely filled the path it had carved for itself through the rock. Off to the right, a metal staircase set into the stone climbed away into the crevice above, rising steeply and curving away out of sight. It had to be the way out.

Enzo trekked across a rock floor worn smooth by a million tourist feet, climbing past a series of illuminated billboards, up and up into the roof of the cave. It seemed endless. His legs were shaking, muscles burning. Then, to his dismay, he saw that the walkway ahead looped around a rock formation like giant cauliflowers, before descending again into darkness. He glanced back the way he had come and was astonished at how high he had climbed. Beyond the rail of the walkway, smooth rock fell away in a torrent, like a frozen waterfall, to the floor of the cave thirty or forty metres below. He became uncomfortably aware of just how flimsy this walkway felt. Ahead he could see other walkways spanning clefts in the rock. Like some kind of impossible Escherian staircase from which there was no escape. Calcium salts shaped by hundreds of thousands of years of erosion tumbled from the walls around him like clusters of giant coloured jellyfish.

A sound from above made him look up. In time to see the dark shadow of Bauer dropping on to him from a ledge overhead. The two men crashed against the railing, and their combined weight tipped them over to tumble on to a narrow shelf of wet rock and begin to slide towards the drop. Enzo grasped at the rail with desperate fingers and clung on. Bauer slithered past him, before coming to an abrupt halt against an outcrop of rock like a growth of malignant mushrooms overhanging the lip of the chasm.

Both men lay gasping on the edge of the precipice glaring at each other.

�What the hell do you want from me!� Bauer�s voice echoed off into the darkness above them.

Enzo risked a glance down, and felt his stomach turn. It would be a long fall that could only end in death, and it seemed to him that he was only holding on by a thread. �I�m trying to help you, for God�s sake, man!�

But Bauer was unmoved. He swung himself up to grab the rail of the walkway, and pulled himself back along the ledge to where Enzo lay helpless beneath him. He crouched down and grabbed the Scotsman by the collar. �What�s to stop me from just throwing you over the edge? No one will ever know that you didn�t just fall.�

Enzo was fighting for the breath to speak. �You�ll know. And then you�ll regret it. Just like you always do. But I won�t be around to forgive you, like Lise. And you�ll have to live with your conscience for the rest of your life.�

Bauer frowned in confusion. �How do you know about my Lise?�

�I know a lot about you, Hans. I know that you have a temper, and you do things when you�re angry that you regret later. And I know that you�re not a bad person, not really. You don�t have that evil gene you�ve been so obsessed by. You resort quickly to violence, yes, but it�s hardly your fault if you inherited that from Wolff.�

Bauer�s face reflected an image of himself that he had not expected to be confronted by here, by this man, in this place. Enzo felt the German�s grip on his collar relax.

�I came down here because I thought you were hurt. Is this really how you�re going to reward me?� Enzo pushed his luck. �I don�t believe you have it in you to kill me. Whatever you inherited from your grandfather, it wasn�t the capacity to kill. And I know you didn�t kill Narcisse. Someone just wanted to make it look that way.�

Bauer slumped down to sit cross-legged on the ledge of rock. All his anger and fear seemed to leave him. Enzo saw him go limp. �How do you know I didn�t kill him.�

�Because I used to be one of the best in the business at reading a crime scene, Hans.� And Enzo told him about the dry blood spatter, and how it would have made no sense for him to exit in panic several minutes after the event. �If you�d had it in you to kill someone in cold blood, you wouldn�t have panicked at all, and you�d have gone back out the way you came in. Through the side door.�

�How can you possibly know all this? About me, about what happened that night?�

�Because I went to Germany, Hans. I spoke to Lise. I obtained DNA from the remains found in the park in Carennac and linked them to you through familial matching. Karlheinz Wolff was your grandfather, just as you thought. Lise told me you have his diaries. Is that where you learned about the copy they�d made of the Mona Lisa?�

He nodded, staring vacantly down at his hands. �I knew it would be worth a fortune, if only I could get my hands on it. But I also knew that I needed help. Which is why I went to see Narcisse in Paris.� His face reflected his remembered anger. �He laughed at the whole idea. More or less threw me out. Then the bastard came down here to try to get it for himself.�

�So what happened that night, Hans? The night of the murder.�

Bauer looked up, fire in his eyes again. �When I arrived at the hotel in Carennac, I realised that Narcisse had already checked in. I made sure he didn�t know I was there, and I was in the park next to the house that afternoon when I saw him go to Madame Lavigne�s door.�

It took Enzo a moment to realise he meant Anny.

�I watched him go in, then come out again about fifteen minutes later. I waited until he had gone and then went and banged on her door myself. I was angry, and I suppose I must have shouted at her. I told her I was Wolff�s grandson, and that I knew about the Mona Lisa forgery because he had written about it in his diaries. And I demanded to know what Narcisse had wanted with her.� He frowned, remembering the moment. �She was so... how can I describe it? Calm. There was this strange little smile on her face. She said that Narcisse had come with the same ridiculous story, and that she had sent him packing.�

�Did you believe her?�

�No. I said I wasn�t leaving until she told me what had happened to the painting. She wouldn�t let me in. She said she wasn�t admitting to anything, but that if I came back to the house at eight o�clock that night she would reveal the truth to me then.�

�And you accepted that?�

�I didn�t know what else I could do.� He drew a long breath. �I was sitting in the bar at the Fenelon shortly before seven-thirty that night, hardly able to contain myself until eight, when I saw Narcisse heading out. And I was sure, then, that she had done some kind of a deal with him. So when he�d gone I slipped across the road and into the garden of the house opposite. There�s a path that climbs the hill through the garden to another gate that opens on to a little alleyway behind Madame Lavigne�s house. It was pitch-dark there, and from the shadows I could see along to the street at the end of the house where the steps go up to her front door. I got there just before Narcisse, and saw him pass through the light. Heard his footsteps on the stairs.�

He rubbed his face with both hands, in some distress at the recollection.

�I hung about for some minutes. I didn�t know what to do. Should I go and bang on the door and confront them? Should I wait until eight? But I knew I couldn�t, so I was about to go knocking on her front door, when the side door suddenly opened. I saw Madame Lavigne hurry out into the moonlight and down the steps to the alley. I thought for certain she would see me, and I froze on the spot. But I was still deep in shadow, and she went straight past me. Heading off along a path that appeared to lead back up to the main Alvignac road.�

From his eyes Enzo knew that he saw nothing now but the scene being replayed in his mind by memory.

�For several minutes I just stood there. I knew that Narcisse had not left the house, and I couldn�t understand why. And where was Madame Lavigne going when she was supposed to be meeting me at eight? Finally I decided to go into the house and confront Narcisse. I went up the steps to the side terrace and into the house. It was very dark, and I couldn�t find a light switch that worked. I called out, but there was no reply. I kind of felt my way through from the big room into the kitchen. There was a little light there, coming through the windows from the street. But I didn�t see Narcisse on the floor until I fell over him. And yes, I panicked. There was blood everywhere, and all over me. I couldn�t get out of there fast enough. And even as I ran off down the street, covered in his blood, I knew exactly how it was going to look.�

�Just as Madame Lavigne had hoped it would,� Enzo said. �Though she could never have imagined that you�d manage to get yourself covered in the man�s blood. That was a piece of luck she hadn�t counted on.�

Bauer nodded, still reliving the moment. �I got up to my room without anyone seeing me, and showered myself clean. I had one change of clothes with me, so I changed and packed and got out of there. I took a leaflet I�d been looking at earlier in the day. A house for let at the Gouffre de Padirac. I knew it would be empty, and that I could probably reach it by foot in a couple of hours. Country roads in the dark. I could do it without being seen.�

�Then you saw a bike in a barn as you got to the top of the hill.�

Bauer nodded, and looked at Enzo curiously. It seemed as if this man knew everything about him, everything that had happened that night, without having to be told. �That made it a lot easier. The Gouffre de Padirac is deserted at this time of year. No one lives here, so it was easy to break into the g�te. The last renters had left some food in the fridge, and the owners hadn�t cleared the place out for the winter yet. So I was safe there, and could survive. At least for a few days.�

Enzo shook his head. �But why? What was the point? You were going to have to give yourself up sometime, surely?�

�Not until they�d figured out that I didn�t kill Narcisse. I was sure they would have to. Because I didn�t. But all the reports on the internet said they were still looking for me. Then you showed up, and I got spooked.�

Enzo gathered his strength to pull himself back to his feet, holding on to the railing for dear life, and offered a hand to help Bauer to his. �Well, I know you didn�t do it. And between us we can prove it.�

Bauer nodded and reached for Enzo�s hand as he stood. But on the slick rock his feet slipped suddenly from under him and he grabbed at Enzo in desperation. Their fingers touched, but then he retracted his hand involuntarily, windmilling his arms to try to keep his balance. He glanced over his shoulder at the drop. Which was fatal. And before he fell he looked back at Enzo, eyes black with fear, projecting a hopeless appeal for help. But Enzo was powerless to respond and could only watch in dismay as the young German tipped backwards over the edge to fall in the strangest silence, broken only by the sound of his body shattering on the floor of the cave when he reached it nearly a hundred feet below. The echo of his death reverberated around this ancient underground chamber, transformed in the blink of an eye into Hans Bauer�s gateway to eternity.

It was nearly eleven by the time Enzo found himself standing on the covered landing outside Anny�s door, raising the wrought-iron knocker to rap three times. The sound of it rang out across the small square and the park, where the moon cast deep shadows over what had been intended as the last resting place of Karlheinz Wolff. Enzo glanced back down the stairs at the sound of feet shuffling in the darkness of the alley that ran back to the night gate from where Bauer had seen Anny emerge on to the terrace the night of the murder.

The door opened and the old lady stood wraithlike in the moonlight. Fully dressed, but shrunken somehow.

He said, �I hope you weren�t in bed.�

She gave him a weary smile. �Of course not. I�ve been expecting you.� She turned and walked back through the kitchen towards the grand salon, and Enzo followed, shutting the door behind him.

Anny eased herself down into her habitual rocker by the dying embers of the fire and watched as he sat in the armchair from where he had listened to the story of her mother, and Paul Lange, and Wolff. And the Mona Lisa. She gave him a curious look. Her pupils were dilated, and her eyes seemed black.

�You�ve been in the wars, monsieur.� Her voice was slurred.

Enzo raised fingers to his bruised and battered face. A reflex response. He�d had time to wash and change. But his face, he knew, was still a mess. �You should see the other guy,� he said grimly. But neither of them smiled. He took his phone from his pocket and set it to record, then reached across to place it on a side table. �I�m going to record our conversation. Unless you have any objection?�

She shrugged, but said nothing.

�You killed him, Anny, didn�t you? Narcisse.�

But still she held her peace. Fixing him with those unnaturally dark eyes.

�You made an appointment for him to come at seven-thirty. You threw the switch on the d�joncteur so that the house would be in darkness. You slashed his throat with a kitchen knife and left him lying on your kitchen floor. You knew that Bauer would arrive half an hour later. The door was unlocked. You figured there was a very good chance that he would come in, and in the dark stumble across Narcisse. You probably didn�t imagine he would slip and fall in the blood, but that only helped to serve your narrative. The fact that he then ran just embedded police suspicions that it was he who had killed Narcisse.�

She closed her eyes and said in a small voice, �That was very calculating of me.�

�It was.�

She opened them again, but they seemed glazed now. �I have an alibi.�

He shook his head. �Bauer suspected you were doing some kind of deal with Narcisse, and came up the back way from the hotel. He was in the alley outside when you emerged from the side entrance and took the path up to the main road.� He sighed. �I don�t expect your friend will hold out for very much longer. Unless, of course, she was in on it.�

Anny snorted. �Of course not! Stupid woman. When we set off in her car, I �remembered� at the top of the road that I had left my phone in the house. I got Marie-Christine to stop by the Auberge du Vieux Quercy rather than drive the whole way round again, and took the path from there back to the house. Told her I would only be a minute. Which is all it took.�

�You could very easily have bumped into Bauer on your return to the house. He must already have been halfway up the hill by then.�

�On such slender threads do the fate of all things hang, Monsieur Macleod. Timing is everything.�

�So you killed Narcisse and went off for a nice dinner with your friend in Vayrac.�

�That makes me sound very cold.�

Enzo nodded. �Yes, it does. A little like your father, perhaps?� She flinched, and he sat staring at her for a long moment. �Do I have to do all the work here?�

�It�s your job, isn�t it?�

�It might be if someone was paying me.� He paused. �So when you got back to the house and you and Marie-Christine �discovered� the body, you told her not to mention that you had gone back for your phone, in case the police thought you might have done it. But she must have had her doubts.�

�I pay for her daughter�s education at university in Paris, monsieur. She wouldn�t have wanted to lose my patronage.� She sighed then. �But, of course, she was always the weak link.� She cast a resentful look at Enzo. �And then there was you. Sniffing around. Relentlessly. Forensically.� The breath she drew seemed to tremble in her throat. �I�m too old to go to prison.�

�Maybe you should have thought of that before you took a man�s life.� Enzo was unable to find any sympathy for her. �Where is she?� he said.

She looked surprised. �Who?�

�The Mona Lisa. The copy.�

�There is no copy.�

�Then why did you kill Narcisse?�

She closed her eyes again, and her breathing seemed shallow. Feeble. And as if finally giving in she said, �My mother lost the man she loved, my father, to save the Mona Lisa. I could never have allowed her to fall into the hands of a trader in stolen Nazi art.� Her head tipped forward, her chin settling on her breast and Enzo became suddenly alarmed. He leapt up and crossed to her chair.

�Madame, are you alright?� He knelt down and lifted her chin and her eyes flickered open for the briefest of moments.

�A healthy overdose, monsieur, of those nice pink pills the doctor prescribed to help me sleep.�

Enzo stood up and hurried to the door. From the outside landing he shouted into the dark. �Capitaine, capitaine! Quickly.�

Arnaud and two of his men emerged from the shadows and ran up the steps to follow Enzo back into the house.

�She�s taken an overdose,� Enzo said. �We need an ambulance fast.�

Arnaud barked into his walkie-talkie and they tried to rouse her. But her eyes remained stubbornly shut, before she raised her head, and with her final breath whispered, �Too late, monsieur. Too late. For everything.�

The troughs at the cemetery gates were filled with dead flowers. Yet more still lay on the graves where they had been placed by relatives at Toussaint.

The burial had been delayed because of the need for a post-mortem, and Enzo had timed his drive up for the signing of his final statement at the Vayrac gendarmerie to coincide with Anny�s funeral. It was being held that morning at the tiny Cimiti�re Columbarium above the village of B�taille, and it meant he would have permission to travel, in spite of the pandemic lockdown. He wanted to be there.

It was a stunning day, a clear blue sky stretching west above the river valley, the cliffs on either side of the flood plain glowing almost pink in the late morning sunshine. And it was warm. A welcome respite after the rain and cold of October. And at the very least, from here Anny would have a privileged view of the world for eternity.

Although Covid restrictions still allowed up to thirty people at a funeral, there were only a handful of vehicles next to the hearse in the car park. Enzo pulled in beside them and got stiffly out of the car. Injuries healed more slowly with age, and he still carried the scars and bore the pain of recent encounters.

He looked up the path from the gate and saw a tiny crowd of mourners assembled around the family tomb near the top of the hill. They stood socially distanced and wearing masks, and Enzo could barely hear the mumbled eulogy of a priest who, in all likelihood, had never even known Anny Lavigne. Tombs and headstones climbed in serried rows, one above the other, over the crest of the hill. A couple of tall pine trees stood sentinel at the gates opposite, and gazing over the village below, Enzo thought he could actually see the apartment above the double garage where Mona Lisa�s double had spent the final years of the war.

The priest and the mourners turned to make their way down the hill after the closing of the tomb, and Enzo moved back out into the car park. A few disinterested glances were directed his way before the family group from the photograph in Anny�s bedroom came through the gates.

Elodie, he thought, was in her late thirties or early forties. A handsome woman, and he wondered if there was any of Georgette in her. She had auburn hair pulled back in a sombre bun and wore a dark coat that fell below her knees. Her husband was tall and balding, and looked uncomfortable in his funeral suit. Their teenage son eyed Enzo cautiously from behind his mask.

Elodie stopped and looked at him, frowning. �You�re the man who caught my aunt.�

Enzo inclined his head. �I�m sorry, madame.�

�So am I.�

But if he had expected to feel the heat of her wrath, he was surprised when she looked at him with nothing but sadness in her eyes.

�I can�t imagine what she was thinking. To have done such a thing.�

Enzo�s gaze strayed towards her son. A boy of seventeen or eighteen. Tall, like his father, with a thatch of thick black hair, cropped at either side and gelled back across the crown. He flushed and cast his eyes towards the ground.

His mother did not miss the moment. �What?� she said, glancing from Enzo to her son and back again.

Enzo said, �Tell him to pull down the mask.�

�Why?�

�Just tell him.�

Elodie glared uncomprehendingly at Enzo then turned to the boy. �Do what he says.�

�Mu-um...� he protested.

�Just do it, Franck.�

Reluctantly Franck pulled his blue surgical mask down below his chin and stared defiantly at Enzo.

Enzo said, �You damned near killed me!�

�I saved your life.�

Enzo was incensed. �Only after you�d put it in danger.�

Elodie was alarmed now. �Wait! What�s all this about?� And when neither of them responded she turned to the boy. �Franck? Tell me.�

Franck pursed petulant lips. �It was Great-Aunt Anny�s idea. It was supposed to be a joke.�

�It was no joke,� Enzo said. �It was supposed to scare me off. To make me think you were Bauer. And it very nearly got rid of me for good.�

�I pulled you out of the river, didn�t I?�

Elodie looked to her husband for help, but saw only incomprehension in his face and she turned back to Enzo. �Will you please explain?�

But Enzo just shook his head. �Franck will do that later, no doubt. Just be grateful I haven�t shopped him to the gendarmes.� Pause. �I�d like a word if I may, madame.� He glanced towards her husband and son. �In private.�

Elodie sighed her frustration, hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

She and Enzo walked slowly away across the car park as the two men in her life returned to their car. �What is it, Monsieur Macleod?�

�I understand you�re going to inherit your aunt�s house.�

She nodded. �Yes.�

�And what else?�

She stopped to frown at him. �I�m not sure what business that is of yours.�

Enzo said, �I can make it my business if I choose to make it official.�

She exhaled theatrically. �My aunt was quite well off, but I wouldn�t describe her as wealthy.�

�I think you know I�m not talking about money.�

She held his eye briefly before hers flickered away.

�I assume you know the full story of your grandmother? How she happened to be here, how she came to acquire the house.�

�Of course. I�ve heard all those stories since I was knee-high. I could recite them backwards.�

�Then you know what I�m talking about.�

This time she met his gaze full on and said boldly, �I know nothing about that painting, monsieur.�

Enzo nodded. �Well, maybe that�s just as well, then. After all, if Georgette had already made the switch and hidden the original before her confrontation with Lange, who knows which one went back to the Louvre.�

She pulled a face that reflected her scepticism. �They would have known,� she said. Then, as a doubtful afterthought, �Surely?�

Enzo raised a solitary eyebrow. �You would think.� He paused. �But, then, maybe they wouldn�t have wanted the world to know that they had commissioned a forgery and somehow lost the original.�

It was clear from her face that this was the first time that such a thought had ever crossed her mind. She searched for some response, but no words came.

Enzo said, �Well, who knows?� He smiled. �Every tale has its time, and its place. And all stories of human endeavour, of frailty and betrayal, will pass eventually into history. Out of mind. And out of memory.� He exhaled deeply, as if shedding some invisible burden. �I wish you a very good day, madame.�

And he turned to walk briskly back to his car.

I would like to offer my grateful thanks to those who gave so generously of their time and expertise during my researches for The Night Gate. In particular I�d like to express my gratitude to Dr Steven C. Campman, M.D., Medical Examiner, San Diego, California; Mike Baxter, former Head of Forensic Science Services at the Police Forensic Science Laboratory, Dundee, Scotland; Madeleine J. Hinkes, PhD, D-ABFA (American Board of Forensic Anthropology); Charles Berberich for his insights into genealogical research in Germany; the Gouffre de Padirac for facilitating my private tour of the caves; and my wife Janice Hally for taking on the role of research assistant in delving into conditions and events in wartime France.

Many of the characters described in the book are real � Jacques Jaujard, Rose Valland, Ren� Huygue, Sturmbannf�hrer Christian Tyschen. And many of the events actually occurred � the evacuation of artworks from the Louvre during WW2 to various ch�teaux around France; the burning of paintings by the Nazis (although I took a small liberty with the timing and precise location); the shooting of Maquis fighters in Saint-C�r�, and the prevention of a massacre of that town�s civilians by the intervention of brave Berthe Nasinec; the installation of a radio transmitter by resistance fighters in the Tours Saint-Laurent; the extraordinary courage of Rose Valland in cataloguing stolen Nazi art and tracking it down, post-war, to return to its rightful owners; the presence of the huge, rolled canvasses from the Louvre in an apartment above a double garage in the Lotois village of B�taille.

As for the existence of a Mona Lisa forgery, I leave my readers to decide if that is truth, or a fictitious construct of the author.