“And we are not a bunch of clowns . . .”
“Precisely.”
With her left thumb, Capestan traced the path of the scar running down her other index finger, a delicate reminder of a tumble she took while roller-skating, the first of many lessons in prudence she had failed to learn from.
“Let’s be smart about this, though,” she said, lowering her voice but keeping all her determination. “Our future depends on our ability to indict the Riverni boy. If this kid goes before a judge, we’re back in the game.”
“Very good, then. Very good,” Rosière said, her fingers lingering on the medallions around her neck. She was glad to discover that there was still another chance at a lucky break.
18
Évrard and Merlot had stayed put in Riverni’s neighborhood, waiting for the telephone calls to go up and down the hierarchical hill before making a decision. After her talk with Buron, Capestan had called them on-site and instructed them to wait for eventual reinforcements. Évrard told her that there was a small enclosure in the center of the Villa and that they had seen the boy hide his stash beneath a flagstone in a metal box. So they knew where to search if and when they got permission. The officers had rung the bell anyway to ask a few routine questions, taking care not to give their game away. This had not gone down well with the little braggart, and it looked as if things were about to take a turn. Merlot had intervened with great authority, confronting the young man without a grain of hesitation, despite being a foot shorter and thirty years older. Within seconds, the young lion had run off to kick up a fuss with Papa.
Évrard had been greatly impressed by this sudden show of strength from Merlot, whom she had written off as a fully certified buffoon. She felt a fresh wave of confidence in her partner, and along with wanting to nab their irritating dealer, that made two solid reasons to wait for Fomenko’s cavalry.
Unfortunately, Rosière came back empty handed in the late afternoon. Fomenko had seemed to give it some thought before saying that he “couldn’t be bothered with that kind of bullshit”: the boy was so small-fry that that there simply wasn’t any point bringing him into custody. The divisionnaire was damned if he was going to fill out endless piles of paperwork for a little brat who (flicker of a smile) would walk free in fifteen minutes. Not to mention the boy’s father, who would block any attempt to advance the case for the next ten years. “If we were talking Escobar at the height of his powers, then maybe, but this dumb prick? We’re better off dropping it,” Fomenko had said. Rosière had been happy to see an old friend—and even happier to swipe a bag of Moroccan weed on her way out—but she was also deeply sorry that her diplomatic mission had failed. She hated to be the bearer of bad news.
“Okay,” Capestan said. “Thanks for trying anyway, capitaine.”
Ultimately, today had been quite a lesson. Fomenko had turned down her appeal outright, a little more courteously than Valincourt had, but just as firmly. In summary, Buron was blocking any official action and the gods of number 36 were refusing active collaboration. The squad was on its own. Completely alone. She could either hang around on the sidelines or she could force the issue. After all, she still had one secret weapon.
Capestan set off down the corridor and knocked on the first door on the right. The walls of the office were already adorned with posters from the most prestigious productions at the Opéra de Paris. A gentle aroma of mandarin was emanating from an essential oil diffuser, and the soft trill of France Musique played over the radio. On a tall smoked-glass table sat a large stack of law books, including an ancient Dalloz. Capitaine Orsini was scribbling away in a notebook. Orsini: the velvet-gloved snitch; the police judiciaire’s very own lie detector. Capestan’s trump card. He looked up at her, all ears.
“Capitaine Orsini? May I ask you to lend a hand with an investigation? We have a team in position at Villa Scheffer in the sixteenth. They’ll bring you up to speed.”
Sitting on a chair beside his daughters’ bunk bed, his feet tucked in to his polka-dot slippers, Torrez was reading Clementine Does Hip-Hop in his fine baritone. His daughters, deep in concentration, were each twisting a strand of black hair, one of them staring at the ceiling, the other at the bottom of her sister’s mattress.
After a knowing pause designed to build the tension, Torrez turned the page. The simple drawing depicted a dance studio with a television and a DVD player.
The DVD player. It was still in Marie Sauzelle’s living room. Burglars wouldn’t bother with that sort of thing anymore, but back in 2005 . . . The murderer had trashed the place in a hurry. Was this an oversight, or were they on the hunt for a burglar without a swag bag?
19
Gabriel was in his bedroom gazing at the photograph of his mother. This picture in its old black-plastic frame was the only one left of her in the whole apartment. One by one, the others had deserted the walls and then the shelves. Not that there had ever been an awful lot: they simply didn’t have that many.
Gabriel had drawn dozens of portraits of her from this photograph. Most of his attempts—charcoals, watercolors, even cartoons—had stemmed from this picture. He had made prints of sixteen of them, all the same size, which were now pinned above his chest of drawers in four rows of four. Each one had a very slight variation in her features, making it look as if his mother was aging.
He heard a knock, and suddenly his father’s silhouette filled the door frame. In the days since Gabriel had announced his engagement, his father’s face had occasionally twitched into a smile, but it was clear
