Through ice ages and warming periods, floods and wars and famine, people had lived here for forty thousand years. Bruno, who reminded himself that there were still many caves and paintings that he really ought to visit, felt deep in his heart that he understood why.

Down at the riverbank, he saw that the mad Englishwoman was watering her horse after her morning ride. As always, she was correctly dressed in gleaming black boots, cream jodhpurs and a black jacket. Her auburn hair flared out behind her neat black riding hat like the tail of a fox. Idly, he wondered why they called her mad. She always seemed perfectly sane to him, and appeared to make a good business of running her small guest house. She even spoke comprehensible French, which was more than could be said of most of the English who had settled here.

He looked further up the road that ran alongside the river, and saw several trucks bringing local farmers to the weekly market. It would soon be time for him to go on duty. He took out the one item of equipment that never left his side, his cell phone, and dialled the familiar number of the Hфtel de la Gare.

‘Any sign of them, Marie?’ he asked. ‘They hit the market at St Alvиre yesterday so they are in the region.’

‘Not last night, Bruno. Just the usual guys staying from the museum project and a Spanish truck driver,’ replied Marie, who ran the small hotel by the station.

‘But remember, after last time they were here and found nothing, I heard them talking about renting a car in Pйrigueux to put you off the scent. Bloody Gestapo!’

Bruno, whose loyalty was to his local community and its mayor rather than to the nominal laws of France, particularly when they were really laws of Brussels, played a constant cat-and-mouse game with the inspectors from the European Union who were charged with enforcing EU hygiene rules on the markets of France.