“Listen, if you want to do any detective work from 8:00 a.m. to midday, then 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., then you need to come with me, your commissaire.”
Capestan was also keen to avoid a showdown, but she needed a teammate who would work properly, and Torrez was the only one available. Whether he liked it or not, he would have to get used to it.
Torrez sized her up for a second; then a resigned expression swept across his features. Reluctantly he got moving, stooping down to pick up his sheepskin jacket.
“It’s never me who ends up in the hospital,” he warned her gloomily on his way past.
Staring at the lieutenant’s back, she replied in the same tone:
“Well, I’m happy to try my luck and see if I survive the week.”
Key West Island, South Florida
January 18, 1991
Alexandre was swilling a glass packed with ice and rum on the wooden deck of his house, an elaborate white colonial-style construction. The condensation was making the glass slip between his fingers. Next to him, Rosa was sipping a fresh lemonade. She was eight months pregnant. The two of them were enjoying the gentle rhythm of their swing seat, the soft clack of their flyscreen door, and the scent coming off the bougainvillea. But Rosa, who was usually so active, was starting to get bored of her quilted cushion: she wanted to go for a little walk, just around the corner.
A new museum had recently opened and she thought it would be fun to take a look. The “Treasure Gallery” was exhibiting a modest selection of the booty that the famous Mel Fisher had recovered from the wreckages of two Spanish galleons. Alexandre was a diver himself, but the idea of paying to massage the ego of a guy flaunting his four-hundred-million-dollar fortune did not appeal to him in the slightest. But Rosa, the most sparkling treasure of all, insisted.
Alexandre never tired of looking at her. Rosa, the Cuban who had become a daughter of Florida like the thousands of others who had fled Castro. It was not so much her beauty that dazzled him, but rather the almost imperceptible quality of her movements, the flow of her gestures. Alexandre’s stomach tightened at the sight of them, aware that they were the perfect foil to his own movements, his own gestures. There was an intensity to Rosa’s eyes, a mixture of authority and melancholy that sent him into disarray. And she was expecting his child, something that would bind them together for centuries to come. So if she wanted to brave the sweaty, unwashed tourist hordes to get ripped off by Mel Fisher, then fine—he would go with her.
7
“Goddamn piece-of-shit handbag,” Rosière grumbled as she looked for her mobile.
She put her monogrammed Vuitton down on the pavement and started bailing out items angrily, eventually finding her phone and flicking through her contacts until she reached Lebreton’s number.
“Hi, it’s Eva. Yes, I’m going to be in later than usual. My dog’s decided to fuck with me this morning, I’ve been dragging him around the block for half an hour now and he’s refusing to take a piss. No, we’ll be fine without the vet, thanks. I know him, he’s perfectly fine, he’s just doing it to piss me off because he can tell I need to leave. Isn’t that right, Pilou?” she said, addressing the dog. “Sometimes you think Maman’s going to walk you to fucking Mont-Saint-Michel, don’t you?”
Looking up at her with his delighted little face and eager paws, Pilote—Pilou to his friends—did indeed seem to think that Maman had nothing better to do than take him to Normandy and back.
“I’ve looked into our sailor,” Lebreton said down the line.
“Aha.”
Rosière was trying to gee Pilou into action with sharp, jerking motions of the leash, but to no avail: he would just sniff, sniff, then nothing.
“Tell me, Louis-Baptiste, would it be too much of a pain to come and meet me at home instead of at the commissariat? That way I can drag this tyrant around a little longer, and you can tell me all about our sailor boy over a coffee . . .”
“Whereabouts are you?”
“My place is on rue de Seine, number 27.”
“No problem. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“It looks like an apartment building from the outside,” she said, unable to help herself, “but it’s a whole house actually. So just buzz when you’re downstairs.”
The previous evening, Eva Rosière had dropped in on the set of Laura Flames. She could not resist, even though she knew she had no reason to be there and her ego always took a bit of a hammering. Every time, she expected them to step back from their cameras and roll out the red carpet for her. She was ever hopeful that the actors, grateful for all those punch lines, might flash her a smile, or that the director, delighted to be working on such original action sequences, might greet her with a ceremonious handshake. But no, it never happened. After six triumphant seasons, and thanks to an ironclad contract negotiated by a fearsome agent, Rosière was rich. But on set, yesterday, as ever, the producer had met her with a tight-lipped smile, ushering her away as though he were returning a batty old woman to her bedroom. Deference—that was for the actresses. Scriptwriters just had to deliver the goods without making a fuss, sitting by themselves at their keyboard.
Rosière had to admit that she was crippled with loneliness, a problem that would never be solved by writing. She had not seen the abyss approaching. Back in the glory days when she was starting out as a novelist, she had managed to juggle being a mother and a policewoman, and her social life had still bubbled along. Success had taken hold of her, and with it the grip of money. Her parents were no longer around, and she had
