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the mask-making? Or twenty-four?
    On a shelf beside the bed, among a litter of yet more pottery shards and bits of Roman glass, he found the espadrille of a child of ten or twelve, the left foot, and with it, a small, cheap porcelain figure of the Christ at Galilee and a cross that had been fashioned by the village blacksmith out of horseshoe nails.
    Determined, he went over to the suitcases and opened them but found only that they were empty.
    Kohler stared at the flat box of dead rats that had been built into the floor of the hearse. The copper pipe from the wood-gas tank on the roof passed down and through the box before reaching the engine in front of the driver’s seat.
    â€˜It is a good invention, is it not?’ asked Dédou Fratani, his look so full of doubt and fear that the Gestapo’s detective had to laugh.
    â€˜I like it,’ breathed Kohler. Always the ingenuity of the French tickled his fancy. The rats gave the smell when the back door was opened for the inspections. ‘How do you find the Italians?’ he asked, still looking at those fuzzy little bodies with their maggots.
    â€˜Lazy. Timid and sticking together. You have seen it yourself, monsieur, at the last control, only the other day. Eight Greaseballs armed to the teeth and, on this side of the Zone Coastal, two German corporals with the single carbine.’
    â€˜We shoot better. Besides, it’s less mouths to feed and we tend to ask fewer and far better questions.’ Oh-oh, eh? Is that it, my fine? he asked himself.
    Mist had collected in Fratani’s dark eyes behind the rimless specs. The garde champêtre , who had not exactly been doing his duty, swallowed tightly. ‘Of course, Inspector, the questions, they are much better. That is why the Germans, they have let us pass so easily.’
    â€˜Not because of my badge?’ snorted Kohler. ‘My Gestapo shield that I thrust into their Würtemberg mugs though the bastards swore they were Austrians?’
    When no answer came, Kohler grinned and let him have it. ‘They were in on the fiddle, right?’
    Who could have known the detectives would sleep in the hearse and question the smell? ‘Yes … yes, the German corporals are in on it. Aren’t all your countrymen this way? The good ones, monsieur? The normal ones who are so far from home?’
    â€˜Two rounds of goat cheese, a metre and a half of that sausage and three bottles of your best rosé for my partner.’
    The shit! ‘Done.’ They shook hands. The Gestapo had been bought but for how long?
    â€˜Now start talking, my fine and keep it coming steadily, eh? First the water rights.’
    â€˜The water …?’ Ah no!
    Kohler helped himself to the last of Fratani’s cigarettes and tucked the empty packet back into the bastard’s pocket. ‘We wouldn’t want to litter the hillside with rubbish, would we?’
    â€˜Madame, she …’
    â€˜Madame Buemondi?’
    â€˜Yes … yes.’ Fratani tore his gaze away to search the hill-slope and the mas , the farmhouse then the village and lastly the ruins of the citadel on high.
    No one was in sight but that could well mean they were being watched and the Gestapo, he … he knew of this, had seen it all before and was grinning like a wolf!
    â€˜Madame Buemondi owns this land and leases it to both the Perettis and the Borels but only lets the Perettis draw water from her pond when needed.’
    â€˜In return for looking after the daughter?’
    â€˜Yes. That and the cottage she … she uses when she and …’ Again the village cop was forced to swallow tightly. ‘Pardon,’ he said. ‘The catch in the throat. The influenza perhaps.’
    Kohler wasn’t impressed.
    â€˜She used to come to visit us,’ confessed Fratani.
    â€˜When she came to barter for a little of what you bastards were flogging on the black markets of Nice and Grasse, eh, and