“Good morning, lieutenant. I’m Commissaire Anne Capestan, head of the squad.”
“Yes. Hello. Where’s my desk?” he said with a vague attempt at politeness.
“Wherever you like. First come, first served . . .”
“Can I take the tour, then?”
“Go ahead.”
She watched as he headed straight to the room at the back.
Torrez was five feet seven of solid muscle. If the black cat thing was true, then he fell into the puma category. Compact and thickset. Before washing up here, he had worked at the third brigade territoriale of the second arrondissement. Perhaps he’ll have some good local restaurant tips, Capestan thought. In the distance, she saw him open the last door at the end of the corridor, nod, and turn to her.
“I’ll take this one,” he called out.
He closed the door behind him, and that was the end of that.
Little matter: at least now they were two.
A telephone rang and Capestan looked around the room for it, scrambling around the various devices that were almost as eclectic as the furniture. Eventually she picked up a gray handset that was lying on the floor by the window. Buron’s voice greeted her from the other end of the line:
“Capestan, morning. Just calling to let you know you have another recruit. You’ll know her when she arrives—wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
The chief seemed to be enjoying himself. At least one of them was having fun. After hanging up, Capestan switched the gray handset for an antique Bakelite job, dropping it on a zinc-top desk that she hoped would be serviceable after a wipe. She also scooped up a large lamp with a cream shade and a scuffed cherrywood base that had been lurking next to the photocopier, then took some wipes out of her bag along with a six-inch golden Eiffel Tower. It came from a souvenir vendor on the embankment: a present to herself on the day of her posting in the capital. She added her big red-leather planner and a black Bic ballpoint, and there it was—her office. Her desk was lined up at an angle between the window and the fireplace. Forty of them in the apartment was going to be a squeeze, but they would get by.
Capestan went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. It was a vast room equipped with a lopsided fridge, an old gas stove, and a low pine cabinet, the sort you would usually only expect to see in a chalet kitchenette. The cabinet was empty: not a glass in sight. Capestan wondered for a moment if there was even any water. She headed toward the French windows, which opened onto a terrace where some yellowing ivy was climbing a plastic trellis, cracking the building’s brickwork.
In a corner, a sizable terra-cotta pot contained a heap of dried-out compost, but there was no sign of a plant. The sky was blue, and she paused for a moment to listen to the bustle of Paris below.
When she came back into the living room, Lebreton, the former IGS commandant, had arrived and was busy settling in behind the black melamine desk. His tall frame was bent double as he tried to open one of the boxes of files with an Opinel folding pocket knife. He was going about his task with customary calmness. Lebreton was as unswayable in his actions as he was in his opinions. Capestan could not help recalling the relentless, rigorous nature of his questioning. If the disciplinary panel had followed his recommendations, she would never have been reinstated. In Lebreton’s eyes, she was an animal; as far as she was concerned, he was an obsessive nitpicker.
“Good morning, commissaire,” he said, barely looking up before resuming his attentions to the cardboard box.
“Good morning, commandant,” Capestan said.
A deafening silence fell over the room.
Now they were three.
Capestan went to fetch a box of her own.
Each with their own stack of cardboard boxes, Capestan and Lebreton spent the next two hours going through files with a fine-tooth comb. Every box was a veritable treasure chest of burglaries, ATM scams, smash-and-grab thefts, or the selling of counterfeit goods, and Capestan was seriously beginning to question the magnitude of their mission.
Their reading was suddenly interrupted by a ringing voice. They froze, pencils suspended in midair, as an almost spherical woman of around fifty appeared in the doorway. Her diamanté-encrusted cell phone was taking an absolute pounding.
“Well, you can go to hell, dickhead!” she screamed, her face bright red. “I write what I want! And do you want to know why? Because I’m not going to let some pint-size, pen-pushing stuffed suit tell me which way to piss!”
Capestan and Lebreton stared at her in amazement.
The fury smiled at them cordially, then turned away before erupting again:
“Lawyer or no lawyer, I don’t give a damn. If you want to throw me under the bus, then fine. I’ve got nothing to lose. But if you want my advice, that wouldn’t be your best move. Remember, if I want your prick of a lawyer to get piles in the next episode, he’ll get piles in the next episode. That moron can make his own bed.”
She hung up abruptly.
“Good morning,” said the woman. “Capitaine Eva Rosière.”
“Hello,” Capestan replied, shaking the outstretched hand and introducing herself, still a little wide eyed at her entrance.
Eva Rosière. Buron’s surprise, no doubt. She had spent years working at police headquarters at 36, quai des Orfèvres before discovering her true calling as a writer. Much to everyone’s surprise, in under five years her detective novels had sold millions of copies and been translated into ten languages. Like any self-respecting police officer,
