During a brief respite, Capestan turned to Évrard:
“That case about the parc Monceau dealer that you were talking about just now . . . is it a murder?”
“No, it’s all to do with badly cut coke. It just seems strange that they never wrapped it up despite having all the info they needed. Parc Monceau is full of kids—a dealer’s going to do some damage.”
“Absolutely. Can I leave you to take a look with Merlot?”
It meant a blow for Évrard’s sense of smell, but it came down to simple arithmetic. The young lieutenant shrugged resignedly. She knew all about the tyranny of numbers.
Key West Island, South Florida
January 19, 1991
Reaching through the gaps in the bulletproof glass, Alexandre picked up the gold ingot. It was both heavier and softer than he had previously imagined it would be. This was the museum’s big attraction, its main marketing hook. As you came in you had to hand over your ticket in exchange for a little oval sticker that was patted authoritatively onto your chest, with black lettering on a gold background that read I LIFTED A GOLD BAR. Never let anyone say that a trip here is futile.
Alexandre felt the delicate touch of Rosa’s palm on the bare skin of his forearm.
“I don’t feel so well . . . ,” she whispered, the same way she did when she wanted breakfast in bed.
“If it’s because you want me to steal that emerald for you, then my answer is no,” Alexandre joked. “There are cameras all over the place.”
“No. No. It’s my water, I think . . . ,” she said, gripping his arm more tightly.
Gasping for breath, she took hold of Alexandre’s hand and slid to the floor, where she lay down. Water. What water?
“Are you going to give birth here? Now?”
“Yes, I think so, yes.”
“We’re in a museum, you can’t give birth here . . .”
Sweat was forming on his wife’s dark forehead and she smiled. She wasn’t going to give in: she was absolutely serious that this was to be the place, right in the middle of the display cases of the Mel Fisher Museum, where she would bring her son into the world.
13
Outside, a thin mist was obscuring the stars in the gray night. Only the blue neon sign on the hotel opposite illuminated the room. Sitting on his sofa, his bare feet on the drab parquet floor, Louis-Baptiste Lebreton was smoking with all the lights off. He could have stayed like that for hours, with the red standby signal on his television as his only witness, a static contrast to the flickering ember of his Dunhill. His bass guitar, a Rickenbacker 4001, was hanging on the wall so as not to wake the neighbors. The glass-fronted poster for Bowie’s Hammersmith Odeon show cast the occasional reflection, which Lebreton would follow for an hour, sometimes two, before going to sleep. He woke up, then he smoked. Most of the time, he waited until 6:00 a.m.—that was when normal people got up. Add in a shower and a coffee, and soon it would be 7:00 a.m. That was an acceptable time to set about the day. Lebreton never left a single task unattended: life had dealt him more time than tasks. He stubbed out his cigarette and sat back on the sofa to wait.
In three hours, he would pay Maëlle Guénan a visit. He was not that interested in the inquiry, and certainly not in the godforsaken squad, but this was the way of the world, so on he would go, if only to stay in the frame. At least Rosière was funny. As for Capestan, he was not expecting anything there.
Seven o’clock. In the chest of drawers, Vincent’s T-shirts were still stacked in an immaculate pile. Lebreton had ironed the ones that were drying on the rack before the accident, then folded them up in the drawer. Maëlle Guénan’s husband had been dead for twenty years. After all that time, surely the pain was enveloped beneath several thick layers of film. One layer per year, maybe. Or maybe not. Lebreton did not know; he only hoped.
As for him, eight months later and he still had the impression that he was sleeping under a shroud, that he was showering in a mausoleum. Each room, each item of furniture, each creak of the floor evoked the exact same feeling as a year before, when he looked forward to opening the door and everything in the apartment seemed useful. Nowadays, its contents were just souvenirs; Lebreton could neither bear to stay nor leave. In this place, every action carried a subtitle. He wandered into the kitchen to have breakfast, which he ate standing up to avoid sitting at the table alone.
They had lived together for twelve years. Throughout those twelve years, Vincent had sliced his bread over the sink to avoid making a mess, and each morning Louis-Baptiste had come through and run the tap to chase away the soaked crumbs. Even now, whenever Lebreton approached the sink, he did so hunched up and overcome with nausea. In the fridge door was the last in a long series of empty jars of cornichons, which Vincent insisted on keeping until Providence intervened to throw them out. Lebreton had never touched anything, and the jar had stayed put, full of vinegar, its green plastic contraption still hanging in the middle. Louis-Baptiste, who never ate cookies, kept three packages of Saint-Michel galettes in his cupboard, one of which was half-empty. On the bookcase in the living room, the first volume of The Farseer Trilogy had been shelved the wrong way up. Volume two was sitting on Vincent’s bedside table, dog eared. The table actually belonged to Louis-Baptiste, who had been given it by his family, but he liked to call it “Vincent’s bedside table.” It was on Vincent’s side of the bed. Lebreton hadn’t changed the sheets
