“You’re making it sound as though I should be calling my lawyer.”
Lebreton turned to Orsini and Rosière behind him, who had been scribbling away in their notebooks nonstop, punctuating the interview with satisfied nods.
“Note down that, during a courtesy call, Divisionnaire Valincourt requested a lawyer to be present.”
Lebreton looked back at the divisionnaire before politely asking:
“Would you like to contact your lawyer?”
Valincourt batted the question away with a look of disgust, and Lebreton stared at him for a moment, his smile gone. Bad luck, links, premeditation . . . He let the divisionnaire fully digest the implications of the previous half-hour’s exchanges.
The greasy smell of reheated panini wafted in from the street through the half-open windows. From around the Fontaine des Innocents came the sound of mooing boys and chirruping girls; the local teenage fauna were patrolling Les Halles as the Indian summer finally drew to its close. The commandant looked Valincourt up and down. He was a paragon of self-denial, authority in motion. A slight feverishness in his movements was the only evidence that his armor had been breached. He waited for the gap to widen a little before delivering his closing speech:
“Yann Guénan was a proper job. Professional. But with Marie Sauzelle, you acted hastily. The muted TV, the dead bolt, flowers despite the fact she hated them: everything pointed toward a visitor, not a burglar. You didn’t know her well enough for your presence to fade into the furnishings. You removed the mail so no one would find the invitation to the reunion, without leaving a single other envelope behind. Maybe pity clouded your judgment, too. The cat, for example. Why take the cat? So that it wouldn’t alert the neighbors? Capestan thinks you’re an animal lover: that the cat’s death wasn’t justifiable, and that you only killed out of necessity. But I’m not so sure.”
With that final sentence, Lebreton made out as though the question of the divisionnaire’s temperament was still in the balance, whereas the question of murder was already absolutely settled. He tightened his grip one more notch:
“We’ve taken a sample of cat hair from your son’s sweater. Forensics are checking for a match as we speak.”
The divisionnaire’s lips parted in a faint grimace, and the commandant made a prearranged signal to Orsini, who went off to find Capestan. Valincourt was all hers now.
Capestan had thought long and hard about the motive. Only one theory held water: Valincourt had murdered Marie Sauzelle, Yann Guénan, and his wife, Maëlle Guénan, because the three of them knew something that Valincourt wanted to keep hidden. She just needed to find out what.
But whatever the original error, to go to such lengths Valincourt must have wanted to shield it from someone very important. His son, of course. Gabriel was the key to finding the truth.
As she emerged from the corridor that led to Gabriel, Capestan signaled to the squad to slip away. She walked up to Valincourt with a deadpan expression and took hold of the chair that Lebreton had just vacated. Before she had even sat down, she started speaking in a sharp tone.
“Your son’s not in great shape, Monsieur le Divisionnaire. And mercifully for him, he still hasn’t read this,” she said, throwing the sailor’s journal onto the desk.
Valincourt had gone to Maëlle Guénan’s house to silence her before Gabriel got there, but also to look for any compromising documents, as was obvious from the forced filing cabinet. The journal contained nothing incriminating, but Valincourt did not know that. He had a nasty story to cover up, the sort that seems written on every wall and in every book the moment you stand accused. The divisionnaire clearly felt plenty of remorse. He had saved the cat. He had fixed Marie’s hair. This was a man with a conscience: that was where she had to hit him.
“Do you recognize this notebook? You killed a forty-three-year-old woman to secure it. In doing so, you made her son an orphan. First his father, then his mother.”
Capestan woke up the buzzing computer, turned the screen toward Valincourt, and placed the keyboard in front of him. He recoiled at the movement, then reached out to touch one of the keys before choosing to ignore it. But the temptation to type up a confession had left its mark. Capestan rammed home the advantage.
“You screwed up, Valincourt, and I can see you haven’t cut any corners to cover that up,” she said, resting her hand on the journal. “Now, you know that my colleagues are civilized people. But you also know that I am capable of anything. I’m going to give this notebook to Gabriel. He’ll suffer the shock and he’ll have nothing to dull the pain. And if you insist on refusing to surrender, you will leave your son with the moral obligation to denounce you.”
Capestan would never have stooped so low, but she knew how to make the most of her reputation, which had in no small part been upheld by big shots like the one in front of her.
Valincourt swallowed hard. Was she bluffing or not? His grip was weakening fast. He was witnessing the prosecution’s closing statement before he had had any time to analyze the situation. Having first pushed the image of his son into the foreground, Capestan was now advancing at breakneck speed. So long as his emotions had the upper hand, the need to justify his actions would inevitably follow.
“You’re really not sparing him anything,” Capestan said, withdrawing the journal.
She stood up. Valincourt glanced at the journal and sighed. His shoulders slumped a little and his face seemed to slacken with an immense fatigue. He was coming to terms with his surrender.
“That’s not true,” he said calmly. “I did spare him, in fact . . .”
“Prove it by signing a confession. And talk to him in person, without shirking behind a third party. Or worse, the press.”
Capestan was hammering it home, eager to
