‘Not yet, you haven’t.’ Claude gave Rocco another inspection, eyes dwelling on the heavy shoes, the broad shoulders and the angular, powerful face topped by a scrub of black hair. ‘Stick around, though, and you might.’

‘They don’t like the police?’

‘They don’t like anyone. Comes of living in a rural shithole, ignored by everyone, including our esteemed general.’ He spoke with quiet cynicism, but if he was worried about causing offence, he didn’t show it.

Rocco shrugged. Charles de Gaulle, soldier and current president of the Fifth Republic, lauded and loathed in fairly equal measures, was a man he rarely thought about. ‘I think he’s got other things on his mind at the moment.’

‘The Algerian thing?’ Claude nodded sombrely. ‘That’s all done and dusted, bar the shouting. Up to them, now.’ As if sensing Rocco’s lack of interest in the political desires of the once French-held North African territory, now just a year on from independence, he nodded at a tall, skeletal character standing to one side. ‘Monsieur Thierry over there,’ he said, returning to the matter in hand, ‘looks after the churchyard. It’s his way of getting a free pass into Heaven. He found the bomb while returfing. Looks a big bugger.’

Rocco had seen bigger in Indochina, but scrubbed that mental picture. Best not go there; barely ten years ago, it was still too recent to forget and offered only dark shadows waiting to greet him.

Besides, it didn’t look much like any bomb he’d ever seen.

‘Who’s the expert?’ Bush-hat was now bending and sniffing noisily at the object like a terrier inspecting a rat hole, dribbling cigarette ash all over it. Small and brown as a nut, the man looked as hard as the soil he was standing on, as much a product of the land as the crops in the fields.

‘Didier Marthe. He’s a scrap man. Anything worth selling, he’ll break it down and flog it. He spends all day hitting things with a big hammer.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘I think the vibration affected him over the years.’