The Awkward Squad Read online

  “I’m going to see him,” she declared suddenly. “It’ll be harder for him to send me packing face-to-face.”

  “If you say so,” Torrez said, in a pessimistic mumble.

  Arriving at porte de la Chapelle, a part of Paris shorn of even a glimmer of charm, Capestan passed beneath the overpass to the Périphérique and pulled into the upper level of a run-down parking garage. She rang the old, unmarked button of the intercom and, after stating her name and rank, pushed open the steel door. The shooting range was on the top floor and the graffiti-covered elevator was out of order, so Capestan took the stairs, the rat-a-tat of the revolvers marking the way. On every floor, the doors were bricked up with cinder blocks, behind which she imagined the endless ranks of empty parking spaces in the darkness. This place really made you wish you had your weapon.

  At the top, she showed her ID card to the old man smiling at her through the grille. Above his counter, some surveillance cameras were relaying a grainy black-and-white picture. The elderly guard struggled to hide his surprise at seeing her again and murmured a few words that she couldn’t properly hear. In her uncertainty, she nodded and made her way toward the large, neon-lit room that served as a clubhouse.

  The place was pretty much deserted. No one was playing pool or foosball. The walls were covered in James Bond film posters, and a few plastic plants supplied the room’s only dashes of color. Two men were practicing in a gallery with a glass back, similar to your average squash court.

  The commissaire was ill at ease, physically feeling the absence of the Smith & Wesson at her waist. Like a champion freestyler at the edge of the pool without her swimsuit, she stood in the doorway and tried hard to keep her dignity as her eyes searched for Valincourt.

  He was sitting by himself at a table for four, with the case for his weapons resting on the chair next to him. He was drinking coffee from a plastic cup and reading a newspaper. Behind him, the large glass cabinet full of club medals and trophies seemed to honor his senior-ranking status. As he looked up and saw her, a brief grimace of disapproval contorted his distinguished features. With a reluctant motion of the hand, he invited her to come and join him, already anticipating the reason for her visit.

  As she walked up to him, Capestan was all smiles. This was an opportunity to glean some information, so best to approach it as delicately as possible. She quickly slid into the chair opposite Valincourt, turning her back to the room.

  “Good morning, Monsieur le Divisionnaire, and thank you for—”

  “Make it quick.”

  Determined not to be ruffled, Capestan nodded and cut to the chase:

  “As I explained to your assistant, we are reopening the Marie Sauzelle case. She was killed in 2005 in Issy-les-Moulineaux. It’s a while back, I know, but you worked on the case and I was wondering if you had any lingering impressions about it.”

  Valincourt searched about in his memory for a few moments.

  “Yes, Marie Sauzelle . . . There had been a spate of burglaries around the area at that time. First-time novices under the control of some big racketeer. The poor woman heard something, the guy panicked, and he killed her,” Valincourt said, shaking his head slowly. “At her age, she didn’t stand a chance.”

  He seemed genuinely sickened by it, wearing the characteristic expression of the police officer lost in his memories, painfully running through the long list of people he had never managed to arrest. In spite of his stiff appearance, the divisionnaire was displaying a certain sadness, and Capestan was surprised to detect a glimpse of the man behind the mask. She did not, however, lose her train of thought.

  “It’s strange, but for a first-timer, the guy didn’t leave a single trace . . .”

  “What do you expect me to say? It was a first-timer with gloves. Any idiot with a television and eyes knows that trick.”

  “True. And what about Marie Sauzelle—what sort of a woman was she?”

  “Well, when I met her, she was fairly dead,” Valincourt said curtly.

  Of course she was, Capestan thought. That was not what she had meant, and he knew it. The brief interview that the divisionnaire had agreed to was not about to turn into a conversation. Facts: nothing but the facts. Capestan got the message.

  “Yes, so I imagine. I was referring to the testimonies you must have collected at the time.”

  “The testimonies . . . Why would you want to investigate the character of the victim of a burglary?”

  That was the end of that. One way or another, the next few minutes would put the original brigade criminelle inquiry in the spotlight. Either the divisionnaire was aware of some inconsistencies and would rush to defend his squad; or he was convinced that their conclusions were well founded and would fight tooth and nail to protect his team. Double or quits.

  Subtle variations and phrasings of the same sentences whirled around Capestan’s head. She felt as if she were trying to dislodge a sea urchin without touching the needles. Eventually she took a discreet breath and went for it:

  “The thing is, in my mind, there are a few details that don’t fit with the burglary theory. The dead bolt, for example . . .”

  Valincourt’s eyes flashed with scorn, the sort reserved for the lowest of the low.

  “Hold on, hold on, Commissaire Capestan. Let me just make sure I’m hearing this right: are you insinuating that our inquiry was deficient?”

  Valincourt was digging in his heels. She needed to adjust her aim to avoid having their talk brought to a premature close.

  “No, not at all. I’m simply questioning—”

  “You’re simply questioning?” Valincourt cut her off, then proceeded to give her both barrels with a deadpan expression and chilling voice: “Listen, I understand that you need to keep busy down in your little rat-hole. And I appreciate that mediocre officers love nothing more than questioning the integrity of their predecessors. But your squad is a dead end, not a development scheme. So don’t waste my time with your ‘questioning.’ If you want to feed on our scraps, young lady, then be my guest. But at least have the decency not to come begging for our help.”

  “Young lady” . . . Why not “pretty little thing” while we’re at it, Capestan thought to herself. The master was really starting to pull rank, and she managed to resist the urge to kick back with an “old man.” She nodded in silence. Deep down, he was right. And she had run the risk of a snub by turning up uninvited.

  She had not hit upon any new information, and she had already been given her marching orders.

  The room was starting to fill up. An officer with an affectedly casual manner came over to greet Valincourt with great ceremony. He had a shaved head and a leather jacket and was carrying a gun case big enough to house an acoustic guitar—not that he looked the type to bash out a Dylan cover. He made a surprised face on spotting the commissaire, smiling out of the corner of his mouth, as did the next two colleagues. Capestan was fuming, but she still offered her hand out of politeness as she stood up.

  “I’ll leave you in peace, Monsieur le Divisionnaire,” she said. “Thank you for your time.”

  He shook her outstretched hand and smiled an artificial smile at her. He hesitated a moment, then said:

  “If you must look elsewhere, try the brother. But mind how you go with him: he was a nasty piece of work.”

  Capestan nodded, then made for the exit under the sneer of her colleagues, smarting from the blow to her pride. As she opened the door, she made out the unmistakable sound of a Beretta automatic pistol. A shiver of envy ran down her spine.

  15

  It was early afternoon, and Évrard and Merlot were sitting on a bench in parc Monceau, carrying out surveillance on a junkie. In reality, Merlot was brazenly attempting to school Évrard in the subtleties of chess. She listened to him patiently, all the while thinking that the good capitaine was too drunk to count to five. But the weather was mild and the park was pretty, so Évrard passed the time placing accumulator bets based on the alternating numbers of wheelchairs and
tracksuits, skirts, and trousers. There was nothing sociological about her people watching: just numbers and the voice of Merlot, her croupier, in the background.

  Opposite them, the junkie was scratching the inside of his arm distractedly and tapping his foot. He was getting impatient, wondering what the hell he was doing in a park in the snazzy eighth arrondissement. He glanced at them nervously, and for some reason their presence seemed to calm him. Évrard looked at the man next to her in his mustardy trousers through the corner of her eye, then at her own worn-out black Converse sneakers and wondered, once again, what she was doing with her life. Two wheelchairs, one pair of trousers, three tracksuits, one skirt.

  A man was striding down the central pathway. Évrard was on her guard. Nothing really marked him out from the crowd other than the fact he was a little more scruffy and pale than the others. And the fact that he was screaming “Asshole! Asshole! Asshole!” at the trees, the sky, and the passersby. Yet another person that Paris had forsaken. Évrard felt a sudden envy for his unbridled freedom, for the free fall that comes when you cut the final cord, the last restraint. She let the heady idea register, then breathed out to bring herself back to reality. The stakeout. Her job. Her chance to get back on track. Merlot was saying something.

  “And so I advance my rook, hazarding a guess at my impudent opponent’s response . . . Ah, ah: no diagonal. Do you not realize? In public, no less!”

  Évrard nodded in agreement, but her attention was back on the druggie under their surveillance. He was sitting bolt upright: must be someone coming. Bingo! A young man with a raver’s complexion and dressed in a blazer, skinny jeans, and a thin tie was sitting next to the junkie on the bench. They were pretending not to know each other despite having a conversation: it was a ridiculous sight. Right there, perched on a bench in the middle of the park with their vacant expressions, they suddenly shook hands. Notes passed between fingers and the crackle of tin foil around the bag of coke could be heard from where the officers were. They were dealing with first-rate cretins, and Évrard wondered how this moron had managed to avoid getting busted sooner. He left the bench and Évrard discreetly nudged Merlot’s elbow, startling him.

  “What on earth is wrong with you?”

  Well, this was what the morons were up against. Évrard jerked her chin in the dealer’s direction, and Merlot hauled himself up with great difficulty to start tailing him. When their target stopped to take off his aviators and check his smartphone, Merlot stopped in his tracks.

  “No need to follow him a step farther,” he said. “I know where he lives: Villa Scheffer in the sixteenth. He’s the Riverni boy.”

  “Riverni . . . Isn’t he a minister or something?”

  “Secretary of state.”

  “Not hard to see why the case was closed, then. This dealer didn’t strike me as a fast runner, let alone someone who might crawl through the net. So there we have it. Let’s call Capestan,” Évrard said.

  “Absolutely. There’s a café on the corner: they ought to have a telephone.”

  Évrard chose not to point out that she, along with the rest of the world, had a cell phone. Always best to indulge your colleagues. She went into Café Carnot and ordered a raspberry kir. Merlot was beaming: a highly satisfactory outcome, and all thanks to him.

  16

  Capestan managed to extract herself from the elevator dragging a dark-pink shopping cart filled to the brim with logs. She backed into the commissariat, pulling her cargo toward the fireplace. The room was thick with the strong smell of wax, and the parquet was gleaming like a horse chestnut fresh out of its shell. A broom wrapped in a wax-soaked cloth was leaning against the wall behind Lebreton’s chair. Capestan greeted the commandant first, then Rosière, who was squashing a teabag against the side of her mug as Pilou lay curled next to her blue stilettos. The three of them greeted her in return. Torrez and Orsini were no doubt both holed up in their respective offices. The commissaire unfolded the brass fire screen that she had slid down the side of the trolley and started stacking the logs to the right of the fireplace.

  “So?” Rosière said, plopping the teabag in the green leather wastebasket beside her desk. “How are things looking with the old lady?”

  “A bit blurry, for now. Tomorrow we’re off to Creuse to question the brother. How about your sailor?”

  “The wife’s convinced the shipbuilder from the Vendée did it, so we’re off to the seaside. But we have to wait till the day after tomorrow—we needed to make an appointment.”

  “Vacations all around,” Capestan said. “Are you taking the train? We’ve got the budget, if you want—”

  “No, we’ll take the car. I prefer it that way, and Louis-Baptiste doesn’t mind,” Rosière said, glancing at her partner, who nodded. The dog, intrigued, trotted up to the pile of logs and sniffed them, clearly intending to contribute a squirt of something inflammable.

  “No, Pilou! Buzz off!” Capestan shouted, pointing at Rosière’s desk.

  The dog’s face turned in the direction of her finger, but his paws didn’t move an inch.

  “The whole dog, please Pilou, not just the head,” Capestan insisted.

  The dog obliged, but only because he had been distracted by an unfamiliar face: Évrard was hanging her navy-blue windbreaker on the hook by the door.

  “Good morning, commissaire, we tracked down the dealer’s address,” she said. “Villa Scheffer in the sixteenth.”

  “Wonderful!” Capestan said to the lieutenant, bursting into a smile, a log in each hand. “Quick work, very efficient. The nation is forever indebted to you.”

  Évrard was visibly disappointed: the one time she received any praise for her work, she would have to dash their hopes.

  “Well, there’s no point getting too excited. He’s the son of the secretary of state for family and the elderly, Riverni. Which no doubt explains why the file was squirreled away at the bottom of a box. I guess we’re not allowed to apprehend him.”

  “Yes, yes, of course you can,” Capestan insisted with great optimism. “If he leaves his house carrying drugs, then bring him in.”

  Rays of sparkling autumn sunshine were spilling into the room, hitting the back wall and making it shimmer in their heat. This was no day for negative thinking.

  “Commissaire, I don’t mean to take issue with you, but if the file ended up here, then it means that two years ago an even bigger squad was told to back down. And they were fully operational. I don’t think they left it behind for our sake.”

  “Hey, we’re fully operational, too. I’m not saying we’ll succeed, I’m saying we’ll try. If no one stands in our way, we’ll push on.”

  That was how she wanted things to be. They already faced enough obstacles without having to invent their own. The least they could do was wait and see.

  Évrard’s big, innocent blue eyes were wide open, but she was still uncertain. She did not much care for a trip to the sixteenth to spend hours negotiating with the family lawyer, only to go home empty handed after a good dressing-down. Capestan could see where she was coming from—her own encounter with Valincourt had been far from pleasant—but her squad must not be resigned to its fate; they could not wallow in indifference. That was what the top brass wanted. If they started surrendering without even trying, then they may as well not bother getting out of bed in the morning.

  “We don’t even have a holding cell,” Évrard said, motioning around the apartment.

  Capestan laid down the logs she’d been holding, rubbed her hands together, and pulled a Swiss Army knife from her enormous bag. She walked straight over to the bathroom, unscrewed the latch, and fastened it to the door of one of the offices at the end.

  “There you go,” she said, closing the knife, “there’s your cell. That should work just fine for starters. Catch young Riverni red handed like the good police officers you are, and if there are any complications, play dumb and call me.”

  A smirk played across Lebreton’s lips, who had been listening all alo
ng. Évrard, still skeptical, nevertheless slipped off to telephone Merlot, who had stayed behind at Café Carnot “just in case.”

  Capestan had not expected an arrest to be in the cards so soon. She would have preferred to spend a bit more time getting her bearings before rushing headlong into the game, especially as it involved contravening the powers that be. But she wasn’t about to let her officers be sidelined. Admitting to them that their investigations were futile would hardly make for a motivational team talk. This squad had to be good for something. Good for what remained to be seen: she should find out in a couple of hours. The least she could do was keep a close eye on them when it came to crunch time. Her eyes met Lebreton’s again. The commandant tapped his pen on the edge of his desk and tilted his head to one side to show that, like her, he was looking forward to hearing the verdict. She gave him a quick smile and returned to her shopping cart.

  From the bottom of it, she lifted out a pair of antique-style andirons embellished with goddess figurines. She lined them up on either side of the fireplace, perfectly parallel, then rubbed her hands together again to get rid of the thin layer of rust they had left behind. Rosière came over to admire the installation.

  “Classy. I’m thinking a big mirror to go on top. Gold frame?”

  Rosière needed little encouragement in this department, but Capestan nodded her approval anyway. As a matter of principle, she always tried to reward good intentions.

  “Have you got one?” she said.

  “Of course. Let me make a quick call,” Rosière said loudly, grabbing the telephone on her desk.

  “We’ll need a crystal chandelier, too,” she added, the receiver clamped against her shoulder.