“Do you regret it?” he said after a while.
That old question. Three lives ruined versus one dead son of a bitch? Capestan was too respectful of math to have any regrets. But she also knew that made her seem like a sociopath.
“I’m undecided,” she lied.
Torrez appeared to take it as a yes.
“Was it a knife?” he asked.
“What?”
“Was he holding a knife?”
“It was a pen.”
“And did your colleagues cover for you?”
“Even better,” she replied. “My boss did. Buron was first on the scene. His version of events was categorical: self-defense. If Buron said so . . .”
If it had not been for him, she would not only have been dismissed—she would have ended up in jail. His word had saved her, and his invoice had just arrived.
Was that what this was? Was he making her pay? Had he set up the squad with Capestan, his debtor, in charge so that she would find him a nice scapegoat? She could feel the threat lurking beneath the surface: Buron was expecting her to protect him; otherwise their pact was off. Was she supposed to rig the investigations, hide the evidence, and ultimately betray the victims? This was out of the question.
But betraying Buron was not something she could do lightly.
Capestan’s mind was in disarray from the chief’s machinations. Could her mentor really do something so cynical? Capestan refused to believe it. She refused with such certainty, in fact, that she obliterated the thought entirely. She needed to analyze the facts, to recover her ability to examine each aspect with complete objectivity.
As for Torrez, he was still caught up with the commissaire’s debt:
“If Buron got you off the hook, I don’t see why he would have assigned you to this squad. You made a big mistake, but it was isolated.”
Isolated. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In the months leading up to the incident, she had already let off a few stray bullets into the kneecaps of certain thugs. She had been involved in a couple of questionable hit-and-runs, which would never have fooled Buron at police HQ, let alone Lebreton at the IGS. The truth was, the shot she fired in that hut had brought her dark spiral to a close. Capestan had earned her dismissal twenty times over.
The sound of heels clicking down the corridor was followed by a knock on Torrez’s door. He told whoever it was to come in, and after a few seconds of hesitation, Rosière poked her head around the door, then flung it wide open. Lebreton followed her into the room. They greeted Torrez with outstretched palms, displaying a blend of caution and camaraderie. Lebreton then tugged at his shirt cuff before slinking off to lean against the wall opposite the bed. Rosière stayed by his side, furiously fiddling with her saint medallions.
“How are things going with the passenger list?” Capestan wanted to know, still by the bedside of the semi-mummified lieutenant.
“So far, so good. The company’s based in Miami. They’re sending it to Évrard so we should have it in two or three days.”
“Perfect. How about the tailing?”
“That’s been a bit more problematic,” Lebreton admitted, shifting his weight to the other leg.
“In what way?”
“Buron’s a canny policeman. It’s hard to follow him without being spotted, especially because he knows most of us. At a distance, out in the street, we can stay undercover—”
“The old boy’s not a fucking gazelle,” Rosière cut in with a chuckle. “He’s not going to leave us in the dust.”
Various sounds were creeping into the room from the corridor: a cart rolling past, trays being cleared, and the singsong voices of the nurses doing their rounds.
“The trouble is we can’t stake him out at number 36,” Lebreton continued. “What with the cameras and the windows that look out on the embankment, it’s impossible to go unnoticed. Cars can’t park, tourists just walk straight past. I wondered if we should forget about direct surveillance and post teams on the side roads leading up to the building, but there’s not enough of us—”
“Or we focus on his out-of-office movements and drop number 36 completely. But then that’s hardly a tail,” said Rosière, who was wearing a dazzling white-vinyl raincoat.
No, if they were going to keep Buron under surveillance, then they certainly were not going to skip around his work-related activity. But number 36 was hard to pin down—they needed to find a solution.
“What about some binoculars on the opposite bank?” Capestan suggested.
Lebreton dismissed the idea with a shake of the head.
“Visible from the floors higher up, plus very suspect. We thought about renting an apartment . . .”
“. . . but cheap studios with views of the Seine are hard to come by,” Rosière chimed in. “And the well-to-do aren’t really the sort to lend you a window for a couple of euros . . .”
“We could try and requisition one . . . ,” Capestan ventured.
“. . . but they’d complain to high heaven,” Rosière said, joining the commissaire with a sardonic grin.
The capitaine was getting hot in her shiny raincoat, especially because Torrez had cranked up the radiators. She flapped both sides to try and get some ventilation before shrugging it off and folding it over her arm.
“There’s construction going on at the moment, isn’t there?”
“Affirmative,” the commandant said. “Some scaffolding up to the top floor and part of the roof. But we can’t just plunk ourselves there, not even in construction gear. We’re talking about spying on the police judiciaire, not some bunch of ruffians. The construction company would never agree to it. And I’ve checked, there isn’t room for a construction trailer at street level. Trust me, it’s impossible: there’s no way to plant someone on the sly at number 36.”
“We’ve run dry,” Rosière agreed.
Torrez turned the remote control over in his fingers, running his nail across the rubber buttons. The commissaire racked her memory of quai des Orfèvres and the surrounding area, picturing the massive barred windows, the entrance, the walkway above the Seine’s embankment, the horse chestnuts, the handful of parking spaces beyond the automatic barrier. Nowhere to hide.
