“Yann Guénan, the murdered sailor that Louis-Baptiste and I have been investigating for the last few weeks, knew plenty of people. Including some people who are of interest to us. He compiled a dossier the size of a brick, in which he noted down hundreds of names in his god-awful handwriting. Lebreton, the great commandant you see before you, the most thorough officer that ever lived, got busy and read the whole thing. And then, in the middle of the night, as the ocean swelled outside, one name suddenly jumped out . . .”
Lebreton raised his eyebrows, urging her to cut her long speech short. Rosière reluctantly came to the point:
“It was the name of Marie Sauzelle, the old lady strangled in Issy-les-Moulineaux. Our two cases are linked.”
“What?!?” came the team’s stupefied chorus, after which they sat stock-still, desperate to hear the rest. Rosière lapped up the rapt silence she had managed to provoke from her audience, then continued:
“She’s on the list of passengers that Yann visited, and one of the ones who testified. The two of them were in the same boat.”
Mind-blowing indeed, Capestan thought. The old lady and the sailor had gone to sea together, suffered the trauma of a shipwreck, then met up again afterward. Only to end up murdered. All of a sudden, the threads of this investigation had become interwoven.
“This changes everything,” the commissaire said, deep in thought.
“Everything,” Lebreton confirmed.
28
Capestan grabbed a piece of paper and, after checking there was nothing important on the back, started using it as a notepad. She had to note down as quickly as possible all the questions that emerged from this revelation. Inevitably her black ballpoint was yet again refusing to work, so—without even bothering to try her luck with the blue—she went for the green. Never any trouble with the greens and reds.
“Did Sauzelle and Guénan meet on the boat or did they know each other from before and take the trip together? Had André Sauzelle or Naulin ever seen the sailor before? If Marie Sauzelle is linked to the shipwreck, does that let Jallateau off the hook, or does it incriminate him further?”
Looking up for a second, Capestan realized that all the other officers were scrambling around with their stationery in search of a miracle pen. Only Orsini with his Montblanc and Lebreton with his smartphone were managing to keep up with the commissaire’s quick-fire dictation. Capestan sat up straight.
“We need a third board.”
Lewitz obliged, pulling on his jacket and offering to go to the store. The commissaire gave him her wallet and added dry-erase markers and fifty ballpoints to her order. Then she paused for a second and looked at her team. She needed to allocate roles.
“Capitaine Orsini, can I leave you to dig through the press archives for anything on the shipwreck? Might be worth trying online, but—”
“No, my guess is it’s too old to have been digitized. I’ll contact my pals instead.”
“Perfect.”
Capestan went to the corridor and found Torrez:
“Can you call André Sauzelle down in Marsac, and Naulin, too? Ask them if the name Guénan means anything to them. The brother never mentioned the shipwreck to us, but that’s to be expected—it was ten years before Marie’s death.”
Torrez scratched his beard, which sounded like a brand-new doormat.
“Yes, he won’t have put two and two together. I’ll see whether Marie mentioned anything in particular at the time.”
Lebreton was sitting on the sofa, his feet resting on a box of solved cases that he had repurposed as a footstool. Until that point, he and Rosière had only skimmed the surface of the Sauzelle case, so he was studying the blackboard to familiarize himself with all the various aspects. One of Torrez and Capestan’s problems was easy enough to resolve. Lebreton could have mentioned it out loud, but he was worried Capestan might see it as an attempt to undermine her in public. Being banished was already bad enough—the last thing they needed was to start lashing out at one another. Lebreton was observing his commander at the helm. She had a natural grace about her: gentle without being soft, firm without being hard. Authoritative, but empathetic, too. If she weren’t so hot headed, she could have been a topflight negotiator. But she was incapable of putting up with provocation. Whether it was inquiries, interrogations, or even darts, Capestan never played in defense—she was always on the attack. Lebreton tapped his knee with his thumb. He wavered. He would wait for the right moment.
The commissaire was now making her way over to Dax. As she passed the sofa, she glanced quizzically at Rosière, who was perched comfortably between two cushions with her dog snoozing at her feet. She held up her superfluous cell phone:
“Maëlle’s not answering. I’ll try her again later to see if she knew the old lady.”
Capestan nodded and continued over to the IT specialist. She wanted him to look into Jallateau’s activities at the time of Marie Sauzelle’s murder. The squad was about as likely to obtain a warrant as a toad was to win the Nobel Prize, so they were having to cut some administrative corners. On paper at least, Dax was the man for the job.
As she approached the lieutenant, Capestan realized he was drawing a Bart Simpson on Lewitz’s freshly erected board, and she started to have her doubts. By the time he had stuck his chewing gum on the cartoon character’s nose, she had given up hope entirely. She gave it a try all the same:
“Lieutenant, you used to be in cybercrim . . . Can you still get around firewalls, break through security, that sort of thing?”
Dax stood bolt upright and wrung his hands with pride.
“Muscle memory! What are we looking for?”
“Anything relating to Jallateau between April and August 2005: bank statements, telephone records, movements, his business, any henchmen . . . whatever you can find.”
Dax nodded vigorously several times and cracked his knuckles. He was getting ready for his big
