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  “Yes, you’re right. He must have enjoyed giving the address to his probation officer, too,” Lebreton said.

  “Tell me about it. Like a rat who’s moved in to a grain store.”

  “Speaking of rats, where’s Merlot?”

  “Training up Ratafia for active police work.”

  “Is it having any effect?” Lebreton asked with surprise.

  “Well, the little critter certainly knows his Côtes-de-Rhône from his Beaujolais, that’s for sure. When it comes to cocaine and explosives, I think progress has been somewhat slower. But Ratafia is already managing to follow Merlot around without getting flattened, so his survival instincts are intact. Perhaps one day he will indeed serve his country! He’ll never be as useful as a dog, but then I suppose we all have our pet causes . . .”

  A man with a beard swanned down the corridor, his reflection appearing in a hundred mirrors. The two officers froze and followed his path, reflected ad infinitum. No – too thickset, hair too white. False alarm.

  “Damn, that was Santa Claus,” Rosière said, slapping her fist into her palm. “Or some hipster – those beardy ones are a dime a dozen on set nowadays.”

  The capitaine shook her head with a wry smile. Lebreton tapped the rim of his coffee cup with his fingernail.

  “Speaking of Santa, you don’t fancy coming for Christmas Eve dinner with my family, do you? It’ll be my first without Vincent and . . . it would be great to have a friend there.”

  Rosière looked away to disguise her relief. A great lump dislodged itself in her chest and vanished under the influence of companionship. She was well aware of how sensitive Louis-Baptiste was being in pretending that she would be doing him a favour, when it was her that needed comfort too. She reached out her bejewelled, multicoloured hand and squeezed Lebreton’s forearm:

  “Oh, thank you, dear Loulou, I’d be so, so happy to chaperone you. Really, thank you. We’ll need to go shopping.”

  *

  Évrard, an enormous Nikon hanging against her stomach, had melted into the crowd. The girls, just like the sales assistants in the surrounding boutiques, albeit more noisily, were keeping a keen eye out for the appearance of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. They did not react, therefore, when Évrard tensed up at the sight of a brown-haired man of average build, now without a beard or glasses.

  “I’ve got a visual. He’s going past the Canadian Embassy,” she said into her mobile, which was set up for a conference call.

  After a quick glance towards the embassy, Capestan replied to all mobile units.

  “O.K., Évrard, we’ll let him go ahead and the two of us will bring up the rear. Lebreton and Rosière, you come towards us but stay out of sight, in case he tries to take off. When we’re close enough, Évrard, we’ll nab him. My guess is he’ll run, in which case you guys in front can take him. If he manages to slip away from you, Lewitz and Saint-Lô, we’re counting on you. Warm up the engine.”

  The commissaire fell in next to Évrard and the two of them approached Ramier in tandem. Just as Lebreton and Rosière came into view and took up position, an enormous S.U.V. whistled past them and screeched to a halt right in line with Ramier. The armed robber, whose reflexes had not been dulled by captivity, took off remarkably rapidly for a man of his age. Six burly officers dressed in black and wedged into bulletproof vests erupted from the vehicle, only to stop in shock for a moment. This second was all it took for the girls to assume that the gleaming S.U.V. was holding their idols and that these men were their bodyguards. Straight away they clattered into the rapid response unit and pressed against the bodywork, sprawling themselves across the bonnet and plastering themselves onto the windscreen, sweeping Lebreton and Rosière along with them. There was no way past. Deafening the officers with their piercing screams, the teenage girls were flipping their phones into selfie mode and immortalising the livid expressions of the helpless B.R.I. While number 36 lit up Instagram, Kim and Kanye made the most of the diversion to reach their suite incognito.

  Capestan could not believe it. The second her squad was poised to arrest their lead suspect, Antigang appeared in their pimped-up wheels to try and pinch the guy from under their noses. Their cover was blown and Max Ramier would not be hurrying back to the Golden Triangle anytime soon. The commissaire was fuming until she spotted Lewitz and Saint-Lô pulling out in their Porsche and setting off down the avenue in the same direction as the runaway.

  *

  “Faster!” Saint-Lô bellowed as he caught sight of their fugitive flying down the pavement like a dart.

  Lewitz was being pigheaded and refusing to step on it, driving along with all the urgency of an arthritic granny. He had eased her into second and seemed to think that was sufficient. His boy-racer, petrol-head reputation today seemed entirely unfounded.

  “Forward!”

  “No, no, no, we don’t want to ruin it. It’s fine, we’ll get Ramier, it’s fine, it’s fine.”

  “Hell’s teeth!” Saint-Lô said, his hand twitching towards the driver.

  “No, don’t you touch the steering wheel! That’s mine!” Lewitz shouted, spitting cold fury.

  Saint-Lô stared at his colleague in astonishment. He had once had a similar attachment to Alezane, his first mare, and all of a sudden he understood: Lewitz was utterly petrified at the thought of destroying this car. He loved it. In giving him the most powerful engine of all, the team had put his car-killing curse into neutral. When the time came to give the vehicle back to the hire company, the brigadier would burst into tears.

  Meanwhile, Ramier had already made it to the Seine embankment. He seemed to be running towards the Eiffel Tower itself. They needed to start from scratch – the stakeout had descended into a downright fiasco.

  Merlot intended to make the most of this brief moment of calm to take a closer look at the Advent calendar that Rosière had been so gushy about, but a sharp squeak diverted him from his plan. He peered beyond his stomach at his feet. The cry had issued from Ratafia, whose tail he had just stepped on. Merlot leaned down perilously on his straight legs and scooped up the rat, allowing it to scamper into the sleeve of his jacket. When the rodent had snuggled up on his shoulder, Merlot flattened his head and body with a long, comforting caress.

  “There there, little Rata, it’s alright.”

  Once the rat had calmed down, the capitaine was able to return to the initial object of his attention, namely the Advent calendar presiding on the table. Merlot prodded open today’s window with a chubby index finger. Empty. Next one. Also empty. Boring into them with less and less patience, the capitaine reached the box for Christmas Eve, where he was met by a little tube of paper. Merlot unrolled it and read the note: Ha ha! Got you!

  So Rosière had had the temerity to assume he would steal the chocolates. Such little trust. Merlot was outraged.

  23

  “That’s why we have elite units – so that the nearest bunch of clowns don’t come crashing in and bungle the arrests! As we speak, Ramier should be behind bars, not out for a jog!”

  “Which would be the case if your knuckleheads hadn’t shown up all guns blazing. The only thing missing was the ‘Texas Ranger’ theme on some loudspeakers.”

  Appearances mattered, and Capestan was trying to look calm in her armchair. She was battling her desire to revolt and the pangs of indignation that pumped through her limbs with every sound uttered by Commandant Frost, the head of the B.R.I. With his scorpionfish face, chainsaw smile and sinkhole eyes, he oozed self-satisfaction. The man was entirely bereft of manners or evenhandedness. His every interjection hammered home the fact that they were the experts on the ground. No chance of an apology, then.

  The two of them had been summoned to Buron’s office, and Capestan was struggling to share the same air as him. Duperry, the Crim. divisionnaire, was there too and seemed to reserve a similar revulsion towards him, although this extended to both Lieutenant Diament (insignificant pawn) and Capestan (head of the official dregs squad). No-one here had the least
respect for anyone else, with the exception of Patron Saint Buron, who was leaning over his desk, arms wide apart, like Zeus on Mount Olympus. In such company, Capestan had no choice but to take the blows.

  “No,” Frost said, baring his fangs, “it’s just that the sight of officers with the right to bear arms – and a warrant from the public prosecutor – caught you off-guard, didn’t it? What were you banking on arresting him for, anyway, out there all alone? When you don’t have the wherewithal to act on a file, it’s best to hand it to those that do. Amateurs.”

  “Can I remind you that these ‘amateurs’ tracked down this file, while you ‘pros’ have spent a week patting yourselves on the back for putting an innocent man in custody.”

  “Ah, women. One look at this guy’s mug will tell how ‘innocent’ he is,” Frost said to Duperry and Buron.

  These two were clearly not about to bite on this bit of locker-room banter. Buron, for reasons that were perhaps more political than genuine, knew it was best to spurn such comments. He was playing the role of the table-tennis referee who would soon be confiscating the ball. As for Duperry, he just wasn’t listening. He was looking at his mobile with a barely veiled disdain, punctuating every lost quarter of an hour with a weary sigh. In the line-up of armchairs facing Buron’s desk, Duperry was in the furthest to the right, nearest the door. His impeccable suit, sky-blue shirt and Windsor-knotted tie contrasted with Frost’s scruffy clothes and unkempt white hair.

  At the very left was Diament. His upper body too broad to fit between the armrests, he had been obliged to sit at an angle and only seemed interested in following his boss, albeit a boss who made a show of ignoring him and, on the rare occasion he said anything at all, cut him short with a curt click of the tongue.

  Capestan ignored the deliberately sexist provocation, but after thirty minutes of enduring the scorn of this short-sighted windbag, her desire to lash out was starting to intensify. Not content with screwing up their inquiry, he was now trying to teach them a lesson.

  “Of course he’s guilty, just of a different crime. Now, if the B.R.I. have taken to plucking people at random and seeing which case they can link them to, like pairing up socks, then that’s your business. Ultimately, the fact is that your elite squad were miles wide of the mark. We may well be clowns, but you’ve hardly showered yourselves in glory either.”

  “That’ll do, Capestan,” Buron said calmly.

  Frost turned to the directeur with an air of satisfaction.

  “You are – ”

  “Same for you, Frost. Both your squads have behaved in an irresponsible manner. Your subterfuge and guesswork have let our main suspect in a triple-murder investigation get away. With a colleague of ours numbering among the victims, let me remind you. You have made a mockery of the Maison de Police. Luckily you’ve both obsessively kept things on the down-low, so this shambles hasn’t got out of control. But I didn’t summon you here to listen to you squabble. This is the Police Judiciaire, pull yourselves together. I expect you to work together in a way that befits this institution. No more childish turf wars. Duperry, you haven’t said a word. Is your department in charge now or not?”

  Duperry tore his eyes from the device and put it back in the inner pocket of his mouse-grey suit jacket. He offered the hint of an apology for the directeur’s benefit only:

  “We have another ongoing investigation, so I needed to check our progress . . .” he whispered confidentially before raising his voice for the others. “Indeed, our people are officially leading this triple-murder inquiry. However, out of respect for the late Commissaire Rufus and to honour the B.R.I.’s determination to solve this case, we do not want to encroach on their turf. Coordinating efforts can often be complicated, and as such we are placing our trust in any decisions made by the B.R.I., to whom we have delegated all investigative powers. We will only intervene at the very end, allowing them, it goes without saying,” he said, ramping up his unctuous tone, “full credit for its successful conclusion.”

  Then, turning to Buron with a look of concerted malice, he added:

  “If the conclusion is successful, of course.”

  Duperry was revelling in the opportunity to wash his hands of the failures that had bedevilled this inquiry from the start. Crim. had never been enamoured of the B.R.I. and had no intention now of blotting its immaculate copybook in such mediocre company. As for Capestan’s paltry Brigade des Innocents, the divisionnaire had quite simply omitted to mention them.

  Frost, who was sufficiently unsubtle a character to have only retained the words “honour” and “delegated”, nodded in Buron’s direction too. He was hell-bent on confirming the eviction of Capestan’s squad as explicitly as possible.

  “Right. I suppose we’ll come and collect all the paperwork . . .”

  Buron folded his glasses and sat back in his chair. He appeared to be giving this outcome serious consideration, which sent a shiver of anxiety and incredulity down Capestan’s spine. He would not dare. The directeur twisted the stem of his glasses between his thumb and forefinger, then addressed the commissaire directly:

  “You should have handed the Lyon file to Lieutenant Diament as soon as you got back. Same for your previous findings about Jacques Melonne. I shouldn’t have to repeat myself, Capestan.”

  The irritated commissaire resisted the urge to argue that this was the first time he had said anything of the sort, and that as it happened, he had specifically granted her permission to keep quiet about it. Capestan knew that her survival this far had Buron’s fingerprints all over it. He was a master of double standards. Now he was giving the two birds of prey circling over her head enough of a titbit to satisfy them, so she nodded.

  “Understood, Monsieur le Directeur.”

  “Good. In that case, the terms of your collaboration remain unchanged. However, you are not to obstruct any squads from number 36 – that’s an order.”

  One thing followed by its opposite. Communicating without giving anything away. The commissaire could read Buron like a book. Frost could not.

  “With respect, Monsieur le Directeur, you must be joking. I realise you were hoping the son’s girlfriend would bring something big to the table, but we’ve seen where that’s got us . . . There’s a conflict of interest; it’ll never work. And their risky decisions are threatening the success of our investigation.”

  Without raising his tone, Buron stared straight into Frost’s eyes to remind him who made the decisions. The directeur did not need to justify himself.

  “I’m in charge of ensuring that the Police Judiciaire uses the full range of talent and personnel at its disposal. I’m not asking for synergy, I’m asking for cordial relations. And I expect to be kept updated on a daily basis. Lieutenant Diament, I’m counting on you as well.”

  The lieutenant, surprised to be spoken to in a meeting where Frost had so far denied him any involvement whatsoever, stammered for a moment before recovering his natural impassiveness.

  “Affirmative, Monsieur le Directeur.”

  Before Frost had a chance to utter another word, and with Duperry having already extracted a buttock from his armchair, Buron called the meeting to a close by replacing his glasses and opening a fresh file.

  “Madame, messieurs, you may leave. Goodbye.”

  24

  Rosière, with the manuscript under her arm and Pilote at her heel, was heading straight for Capestan, who was drinking a cup of tea on the deserted, freezing terrace.

  “I’ve got some bad news for you, Anne.”

  Bad news. Capestan was taking a bashing from all sides: one of her colleagues, Orsini, was likely to be implicated in a triple-murder case; and their main suspect had taken off quicker than a bat out of hell. Now more bad news. Capestan was struggling to imagine what could possibly make things worse.

  Rosière chucked the manuscript onto a deckchair and took out one of her long, thin cigarettes. She sparked it up with her gold lighter and took a short drag before elaborating:

  “I
t’s about your father-in-law . . .”

  Ah. Anything involving her husband could possibly make things worse. Of course, there was another chink in the armour of this inquiry. What message would she have to deliver to Paul now? For a short while, her father-in-law had been cast as the man of the hour in this case. Was Rosière about to smear his newly polished name? “Bad news” hardly sounded like she was going to be buffing up his medals. When she was done with her dirty rag, nothing would be left shining. Capestan carried on swirling her tea, then eventually looked up at the capitaine, her way of saying: Go on, shoot, I’m listening.

  “O.K. So I’ve read and reread the manuscript. It’s coded. I began by switching round the places, jobs, names, ages and initials, then I went deeper by deconstructing the characters’ motivations. That way I managed to isolate the protagonists of the armed robbery. I cross-referenced each of them with the stuff from the file to flesh out their C.V.s and figure out their real-life stories. And it fitted. Alexis Velowski was not just a witness – he was an accomplice. I think he might have even been the brains behind the operation. But he hadn’t planned on it going tits-up, and he crumbled. Rufus was an accomplice too. In the text, the man who represents ‘justice’ needs money to kick-start his son’s trendy career. And the guy who plays the ‘patron’ in the story could correspond with the producer of your ex-husband’s trio.”