It was still dark, but he knew the large, rear garden would look comfortingly unchanged, unaffected by his memories or dreams. A cold dawn would soon be breaking over the apple orchard to his right and filling the garden — as yet untouched by any tentative thoughts Rocco might have harboured at horticulture — with a thin, watery glow. Too late for gardening now, anyway, he told himself. The ground was beginning to harden and nothing was growing. Leave it until spring. And until he bought a spade.

He dropped the curtains back and yawned. It was too late to go back to sleep now. He had to be in Amiens at half eight for the weekly briefing he’d so far managed to avoid more times than not. A phone call yesterday from Commissaire Francois Massin, his immediate superior, had scotched any chance of avoiding another one.

He went through to the kitchen to make coffee. Found he was out of water. He deliberated for a second before taking a large stone jug to the pump outside. If Mme Denis spotted him, she would probably throw a fit. But right now he was beyond caring. Doubtless it would give the crones who formed the rest of her gang something to talk about over the back of the daily bread van. And the village priest, an ascetic sourpuss with no visible love for humanity, would enjoy another reason for scowling at the policeman who never attended a single mass.

He primed the hand pump, his only source of fresh water until the pipes currently being laid in the road outside were connected to the house. It was no doubt a job for Delsaire, the local plumber, if his landlord agreed to the cost. The jug filled, he took a deep breath and pushed his head beneath the last gush of water. It was brutally cold, sending a shower of sparks through his brain and adding to the fingers of cold tingling across his skin.