But at each stall where they sold home-made cheese and patй, or ducks and chickens that had been slaughtered on some battered old stump in the farmyard with the family axe rather than in a white-tiled abattoir by people in white coats and hairnets, Bruno delivered his warning. He helped the older women to pack up, piling the fresh-plucked chickens into cavernous cloth bags to take to the nearby office of Patrick’s driving school for safe keeping. The richer farmers who could afford mobile cold cabinets were always ready to let Tante Marie and Grande-mиre Colette put some of their less legal cheeses alongside their own. In the market, everyone was in on the secret.

Bruno’s cell phone rang. ‘The bastards are here,’ said Jeanne, in what she must have thought was a whisper. ‘They parked in front of the bank and Marie-Hйlиne recognised them from the photo I gave to Ivan. She saw it when she stopped for her petit cafй. She’s sure it’s them.’

‘Did she see their car?’ Bruno asked.

‘A silver Renault Laguna, quite new.’ Jeanne read out the number. Interesting, thought Bruno. It was a number for the Departement of the Corrиze. They would have taken the train to Brive and picked up the car there, outside the Dordogne.

They must have realised that the local spy network was watching for them. Bruno walked out of the pedestrian zone and onto the main square by the old stone bridge, where the inspectors would have to come past him before they reached the market. He phoned his fellow municipal police chiefs in the other villages with markets that week and gave them the car and its number. His duty was done, or rather half his duty. He had protected his friends from the inspectors; now he had to protect them from themselves.