‘Then I realized he was clever, but…but, you know, a killer, truly brutal. And the strength, this famous tall guy, the jentilak, it was…tainted, it was married to a pure cruelty. But the sex was good, at first. That’s the truth and I’m sorry. He used to tie me up. I bit him. He cut me once, on the scalp, with a knife. We had a sex game, with a knife. I came when he did it.’

She was staring straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the horizon of hills. ‘Then I began to feel sick. Quite soon. With the sex, the taint of violence. And he was seriously troubled, mentally, emotionally, every way. Pathologically. Whenever we had really passionate sex, he always fell into this deep, deep sleep, almost comatose. What is that about? I don’t know.’

Now she looked at him. ‘So there it is. That was the only way I knew…to give us a chance. He was surely going to kill you. Maybe me too. So I let him fuck me, as I thought that might save us. Sorry. You can stop the car now if you want and leave me here. I can hitch.’

Her face was a picture of resisted tears. David felt the anger abating, it was replaced with a voyeuristic sympathy, a shared and unseeing terror of what she must have been through. So she had done it to save them; it was rape. A kind of rape. Maybe not rape. But she had saved his life.

‘You don’t have to talk about it any more,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to talk about it ever again.’ And he meant it. But she shook her head, her mouth trembling, as she surveyed the rolling Gascon dales, green and mellow, through the car window.

‘I want to talk about it. I knew as soon as he walked in the cave he would want to do…something like that. The same hungry smile. He liked sex in the open, the risk of being caught, being seen by others. We did it in the witch’s cave before. That’s how I knew where we were. He was always ravenously sexual, like he was starved.’

‘I’m so sorry, Amy.’

‘Don’t be. It wasn’t rape. It was just disgusting. I did love him once and I can never forgive myself for that. But he was going to kill you. He was probably going to torture you. And so.’

‘Is he…’ David didn’t know how to phrase it. ‘Is he ill? I mean he’s obviously a bastard but it feels like more than that.’

‘Who knows. Psychotic maybe. The facial tic always made me wonder. And the sleep and the inexorable libido…He used to want sex five or six times a day. Anywhere. With lots of…’ She grimaced, and continued: ‘Like I said. Tying up. Biting. Cutting. And worse. You know.’

‘OK…’

He reached out for her hand; he touched it, blindly, his eyes on the curving hilly road. He said nothing for a few kilometres.

Then he gave voice to obvious question, the same question as before.

‘Can we go to the police now?’

‘No.’

‘I knew you’d say that.’

Her smile was polite.

‘Sure. But it’s true. No police. That’s one thing José taught me. When the Basques are involved, don’t trust the police anywhere, on either side.’ She gave him another bleak and tight-lipped smile. ‘You know there are five police forces in the Basque Country? All dangerous. Some are killers for Spain. Some are infiltrated by ETA…We might walk straight back into danger.’

‘Yes, but we’re in France.’

‘Same difference. Let’s just…get away. Think about it.’

He subsided. She was maybe right; he suspected she was wrong; but after the last few hours, he didn’t want to question her or press her any further than he needed to.

They drove, the sun was warm, they drove.

David and Amy swapped seats, Amy taking his directions. He had a firm idea where they should go: further north and east, into Gascony, away from Spain. Towards the next towns marked on the map. Savin. Campan. Luz Saint Sauveur.

He knew where they were going, because he was more determined than ever to discover the truth about the churches and the map and his grandfather. The savagery and horror of the last days had only made him more purposeful. And he was, to his own surprise, excited by this velocity, this targeting, this rationale for everything. His life, at last, had a satisfying if difficult goal, his existence was speedy and directed, after a decade of anomie and apathy; it was like being on a very fast train after driving aimlessly on a beach.

Did Amy know where they were going? Probably, possibly, who could say. She seemed to fool him and beguile him at the same time. She was like a deep blue rockpool, full of deceptively clear water. When she spoke she was honest and candid and he thought he could see everything: see to the bottom, the rock. But when he dived in, he realized the truth. He could drown in the cold plunging blues, her depths were unsounded.

So they drove.

But this was big empty country, and the little French roads were slow and full of tractors and farmers’ trucks. For several hours they trundled through yawning little villages and forgotten Basque hamlets, past farmyards advertising Fromage d’Iraty on homemade placards. In the hypnotic, mid-afternoon sunshine, David found himself wearily dreaming, again, this time remembering his childhood. Playing touch rugby in the summer with his father – he remembered his father’s bright happy smile; the pungent aroma of the leather rugby ball, rough against David’s hand. A big family dog cantering across the lawn. Happiness. And then the sadness.

At length they stopped at a vast Carrefour hypermarket on the main Mauleon road where they ate a lonely croque monsieur and salade verte in the sterile cafe; where they bought clothes and toothpaste, staring silently at each other across the supermarket aisle as they did so. They were refugees, hiding out. And they couldn’t even trust the police?

At last they ascended to the little town of Mauleon Lecharre, lying alongside a pretty river and surrounded by the green Pyrenean hills.

David steered them straight to the medieval core of the town, and parked. He stretched himself, aching horribly after the long drive, after the terrors of the cave and the forest. The town was quiet and couples were wandering the twilit, cobbled streets. Amy and David joined the promenade: they walked to the riverside, and stared at the waters from the bridge. Swallows were curling about in the softening dusk of early autumn. David yawned.

‘I’m exhausted.’

‘Me too.’

They left the car where it was and walked to the nearest hotel, a pretty but modest two star near the main town square, with a fifty-something French manageress. The woman’s fingernails were so long and over-varnished they looked like purple talons.

‘Bonsoir! J’ai deux chambres…mais très petites…’

‘That’s fine,’ said David. Trying not to look at her claws.

The elevator was the smallest in Gascony. David slept, but fitfully. He dreamed all the way through the night.

He dreamed the house was burning.

Voices were calling from inside the fire, asking David to help – but he couldn’t do anything. He was standing in the garden staring at the fiercely burning house, at the flames licking up the walls, and then he saw a charred and blackened face at the window. It was his mother. She was inside the burning house and she was tapping the glass, trying to touch her son, and she was saying it’s not your fault, David, it’s not your fault and suddenly church bells were ringing out wildly and David -

Woke up.

Sweating.

It wasn’t church bells.

Sweating.

It was the hotel phone. Coughing away the phlegm of the bad dream, he groggily reached for the phone.

‘David? Hello?’

It was nine a.m. It was Amy.

Showered and dressed, he went downstairs. When Amy came down to join him for breakfast, on the al fresco hotel terrace perched above the river, she looked at him inquiringly.

He immediately confessed.

‘Bad dreams. I keep thinking about my parents’ death. Baffling dreams.’

‘Not surprising, maybe…’