Capestan sat down and filled him in on the developments before explaining the plan of action: a couple of officers staking out the bicycle; some of the others busily looking into the Squirrel and the boat; and the last few doing tag teams to keep an eye on Buron (who, incidentally, had dropped a strong hint about a certain siren for Lieutenant Torrez).
“At last!” he exclaimed, as if collecting a long-overdue distinction.
They chatted for a bit longer about life at the Commissariat des Innocents. The wallpaper was up, they had hung some curtains to make the living room feel cozier and had brought in a few cooking utensils. Évrard was insisting they needed to wrap the shrubs against the winter, Dax had torn up the parquet floor after catching his foot on a nail, and Merlot had broken the photocopier by sitting on it. Lewitz was putting the finishing touches on their new-look kitchen, which protruded a bit into the bay window but was otherwise fine. That morning, Orsini had made a joke. The team was so stunned they forgot to laugh. He was a good sport about it, acknowledging that it wasn’t the first time he had had that effect.
Torrez gave a running commentary, including a promise to donate a dessert set they no longer needed in their kitchen at home. The conversation gradually petered out and a peaceful silence fell on the room. Like police officers at a stakeout, the two of them let their thoughts drift around the room, neither of them wanting to disturb the other. Then Torrez cleared his throat and Capestan knew he was about to ask the question he had not dared to ask until now.
“The guy you . . . What happened?”
Capestan sank back in her chair. She was not really in the mood for discussing that episode from her past.
“As stories go, it’s not a barrel of laughs. Are you sure?”
Torrez looked down, not wanting to push her. The commissaire could tell that he now considered her a proper partner, and that he wouldn’t mind keeping it hazy if need be. He could handle the uncertainty. But the man had just body-checked a bus for her—they were beyond hiding from their pasts. She sighed, folded her arms, and prepared to answer the lieutenant’s questions.
“Three years ago, I was with the BRB.”
“The antigang squad?” Torrez said in amazement.
This squad was legendary, the high point of any career. Yet now she had been relegated. The lieutenant tried to fathom such a fall from grace.
“Yup, antigang,” Capestan replied with a hint of nostalgia. “I was doing well there. Then one day I was reassigned to the brigade de protection de mineurs at quai des Gesvres. Big pay raise—I couldn’t say no.”
“But you should have?”
“Yes,” she said, unfolding her arms.
Children, kidnappings, distressed families, abuse . . . Always the most poignant and tragic events. And it was relentless. Every evening, Capestan was confronted by her own powerlessness, by the feeling that she was buried in the battlefield. She barely lasted a year before having to admit to herself that she was not up to it. She had never been calm by instinct; she could not keep her emotions at arm’s length. On her previous postings, she could always recover between one ghastly case and the next. Not there; not once. Her ability to detach vanished in the space of a few months. She had drained her reserves of cool-headedness; now it was only hot, ready to boil over for the smallest reason. She put in a transfer request. Buron refused, saying she had to do another year. So she stayed.
“A brother and a sister, aged twelve and eight, had disappeared,” Capestan started. “We prayed they had run away, but obviously we feared it was a nutjob. The search wasn’t going anywhere—we were floundering. Weeks went by, then months.”
Months. The thought devastated her all over again.
“They had been kidnapped. Eventually we found a lead and tracked the guy down to some godforsaken place near Melun. While my colleagues searched the house, I went to check the hut around the back. I smashed the padlock. The two children were in there, emaciated and black with grime. At first I stood there in the doorway, knocked senseless. They stayed there holding each other on a straw mattress on the ground. Next to them was an old man, also showing signs of malnourishment. But he was dead, had been for a day, maybe more. When I arrived, the kids didn’t make a sound—silent as the grave. Eventually I tried to reassure them, then I heard a sound behind me. The man was standing there in the doorway. The sun was behind him, so I could make out his profile perfectly, but I couldn’t discern his facial features or what he had in his hands. There was a pad of paper in one of them, for sure, but in the other I couldn’t tell if it was a pen or a knife. When he saw me he didn’t try to flee. Quite the opposite—he asked me what I was doing on his property. I saw the little girl’s hand grasp the earth next to me. I stood up and positioned myself between the man and the children so they wouldn’t see. And then I shot him.”
“Sexual abuse?”
“Not sexual, no. He was a megalomaniac. He’d been studying the Great Famine from the time of the Ancien Régime. The bastard wanted to get to the truth. He was carrying out a clinical study of the effects of hunger on the most vulnerable segments of society: children and the elderly. Not on thirty-year-old rugby players, of course. In his view, science justified making sacrifices, like doctors who run tests on monkeys.”
Capestan couldn’t help thinking that, in her current state, she would not be averse to putting a bullet in those doctors, either. Torrez smoothed out his sheet with his hand. The father in him approved of the shot; the policeman wanted her
