SURFACE

Also by Olivier Norek in English translation

The Capitaine Coste novels:

The Lost and the Damned
Turf Wars
Breaking Point
—
Between Two Worlds
The Winter Warriors

Contents

Prologue

Part 1: Deep in the Head

Part 2: Deep in the Countryside

Part 3: Deep in the Storm

Part 4: Deep in the Heart

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

To Babeth, Yann, Corinne, Jamy and Stéphane
Broken. Rebuilt. Alive
For Amandine, the water girl

Prologue

Driven at breakneck speed along the streets of Paris, the two men being tossed about in the back of the vehicle struggled desperately to get hold of the weapon.

Blood everywhere. Far too much blood. And the face. God, that face! A massacre . . . Severed veins that no longer led anywhere, endlessly spilling red. And the right cheek, almost completely torn off, laying bare a grimace of suffering.

“For God’s sake, I don’t want to be hit by a stray bullet!” the driver shouted. “Grab the gun!”

Straight through a red light. The saloon speeding on their right couldn’t stop in time, and smashed part of their wing in an excruciating screech of tyres.

They tugged at the fingers as hard as they could. Tearing at them. Useless. The hand was clamped on the pistol grip. At every bend or bump the finger clenching the trigger threatened to send a round in who knew what direction.

“Impossible, the fingers are like steel!”

Behind the wheel, the driver glanced from the traffic in front to the chaotic scene being played out behind him. Trying to avoid an accident. Hoping to avoid a bullet in the back.

“She’s paralysed with shock. Dislocate her thumb!”

The first man seized the barrel of the gun to steady it. The other yanked the thumb back as hard as he could, until it dislocated.

The weapon clattered to the floor.

Engulfed in this storm of pain and terror, she had not taken her eyes off the two men. Paralysed but conscious. Her left eye stared straight at them. The other was blinded by blood.

Calm was restored; the three paramedics concentrated on their mission.

Saving a police officer.

PART ONE

Deep in the Head

1

Sixteen minutes earlier

05.59 hours. The plainclothes police team hunkered outside the door to flat 22 on the poorly lit second floor of a rundown tower block in the Paris suburbs. The permitted time for entry into a property is 06.00. One minute early, and a procedural error would ruin their investigation. The Drug Squad team had brought their pump-action guns and tasers with them. The door-breaker was clamped to both sides of the door, ready to smash it to smithereens. The 60 seconds ticked by at a slowness the very opposite of the nervous excitement the officers were feeling. The only sound in the intense silence came from their impatient movements, their weapons brushing against their clothes.

They checked their gun clips. Tightened the straps on their bulletproof vests. Ran through in their heads the details of the raid and the floor plan of the flat they had been given the evening before, printed from the property register. Corridor. Living room. Bedroom on the left. Kitchen on the right. Bathroom at the far end. Four windows. No dog, according to the caretaker.

05.59. The weeks leading up to this moment had kept the police on edge. Sohan was a piece of shit who cut his coke with heroin: one sniff and you were an addict. He was a heavily armed dealer, a gang leader with the blood of his many rivals on his hands. Sohan had to be taken down. A service to the public. Cleaning up shit like refuse collectors.

05.59. In one minute, all hell would break loose. A rush of violence and adrenaline. Sohan would not go quietly. They all knew it.

05.59. The eye of the storm. An indecent calm.

Capitaine Noémie Chastain was in the lead. As always. Team leader isn’t just a title.

05.59 and 58 seconds. She drew her pistol. Hands moist with sweat.

06.00. The door-breaker applied ten bars of pressure. First the door split gently, then – suddenly – shattered. Beyond it, a corridor as dark as a ravine or a nightmare. Leaping inside the flat, Noémie’s fingers groped along the wall, feeling for a light switch that she flipped on. The bulb lit up, then immediately exploded. The filaments shone for a brief moment before darkness returned. She ran towards the bedroom. The mini-torch on the end of her gun picked out the apartment’s contours. The corridor was so narrow only one person at a time could run along it. Galvanised by the presence of her team behind her, feeling invincible thanks to Adriel’s hand on her shoulder – Adriel, her lieutenant, her right-hand man, altogether her man for the past two years – she plunged on.

She kicked open the bedroom door. A blinding flash. Noémie saw nothing more, not even the stark-naked dealer kneeling on his bed who’d just shot her in the face at point-blank range with his sawn-off shotgun.

A burning sensation, the acrid smell of gunpowder. In her eyes, nose, mouth, the back of her throat.

Noémie’s body was flung backwards. She crashed against the bedroom wall, then slumped to the floor like a disjointed rag doll. For several seconds she didn’t feel a thing. Then she howled with pain. She felt her face. Nothing but raw flesh. Sticky wetness. Her brain protected her with a complete blackout, but not before her hand closed like a vice round the grip of her pistol. She had no knowledge of what happened next. Adriel had already fired two shots. One to the left shoulder, the second to the right. Then Sohan’s arrest. Above the uproar, the team’s new recruit was almost sobbing into his walkie-talkie: “Officer down! Officer down!”, his voice matching the terror that gripped him. He had just realised that it wasn’t only in the movies that police officers died.

Kneeling beside her, Adriel raised her head a little to take her in his arms.

“Noémie! Noémie, for Chrissake! Stay with me!”

2

The trolley crashed through the double doors on the long corridors of the Percy Army Training Hospital, throwing them open like a sudden gust of wind. Almost at a run alongside the patient, the head nurse gave her report to the duty medic.

“It’s a police officer.”

“Suicide?” the doctor said, used to this kind of thing.

“No. A raid in the early hours. Shotgun wound. To the jaw, eye, nose and scalp.”

She had looked only once at Noémie’s face, and refused to do so again. With the speed and the jumbled images of corridors, strips of neon lighting and all the blood, the doctor couldn’t get a clear idea of what he was looking at. He relied on the nurse’s description.

“Get the team together! I need an anaesthetist, an opthalmo, traumato, a maxillofacial surgeon, twice as many nurses and a free operating theatre.”

—

All of Noémie’s team were in the waiting room; no-one had the heart to tell them it was a non-smoking area.

Adriel had buried his face in his hands but looked up whenever he heard a door open or close. The team’s newcomer, Jonathan, was chain-smoking as he spoke to his wife on his mobile, in a survivor’s conversation he meant to be reassuring. “I’m fine.” “Let me talk to the kids.” “I’m fine.” Chloé was weeping silently, wiping her tears on the sleeve of her sweatshirt with the slogan “U.P.D. UNICORN POLICE DEPARTMENT” on it.

The morning sped by. Then the whole day, until the sun dropped to the horizon.

Other police departments filed through. Colleagues, friends. Local ones, some from further away. Numbers in the waiting room varied from four to 30, all of them feeling the strain.

The Percy hospital surgeons, specialists in mangled faces, soldiers wounded in the field, and police as a sideline, were obliged to work in relays. Sometimes from fatigue, at other times to change specialists, for a rescue operation that lasted seven and a half hours.

3

Post-op meeting Percy Army Hospital, Paris

“At 06.37 by emergency ambulance,” the surgeon answered the hospital director’s question.

“Carry on!”

The surgeon began to brief the other members of the hospital staff on his busy morning. As they sat round a table that almost filled the glassed-in room, he outlined the details:

“Ballistic wound to the face. Given saline solution and painkillers. Intubation by paramedics on the way here. Vital signs checked when in resuscitation room. Scanned for injuries, but no M.R.I. due to presence of shotgun pellets. Too dangerous.”

“Where are the pellets?”

“Almost everywhere. Tongue, chin, jaw, forehead and right cheek, which was all but severed by the blast. We’ve put in stitches, and it’s a job well done, but there’ll always be an ugly circular scar of about 20 centimetres.”

“It’s a long time since we’ve had such an exciting multi-disciplinary operation,” the hospital director purred. “Let’s take a closer look.”

The surgeon used the remote to switch on the wall screen, then showed a series of X-rays and scans.

“Skull intact, but the skin on the right-hand side of the scalp was partially burned. I’ve no idea if or how the hair will regrow. We shaved it all off for the operation, so we’ll soon see.”

“Ear and auditive canal?”

“Tympanum seriously irritated. There could be a temporary hypoacusis, but I’m not sure.”

“What about the eye?”

“Subconjunctival haemorrhaging stemmed. She’ll have periorbital bruising for several weeks. A black eye filled with blood, but nothing crucial as regards vision.”

“Nose?”

“Broken by the blast. Operated.”

“Jaw?”

“Fracture of the ascending ramus of right mandible. We had to screw in three steel plates. There’s no way she’ll be able to speak any time soon. Fed intravenously for eight to ten days, then blended food and iced water for three weeks.”

“She certainly had a lucky escape.”

“Yes. Five centimetres to the left and her whole face would have been blown off. Even so, it’s not a pretty sight. In addition to the 60 stitches to restore her right cheek, every pellet will leave its mark. Well, anyway, the surgery has been a success.”

All those present turned towards the hospital’s psychiatrist.

“This will make a change from your soldiers, Melchior,” the director observed.

“Not really,” the shrink replied drily. “Wounded in action. A police officer on the beat. No different from my soldiers. If no-one has any objection, I’d like to supervise the case.”

Four days earlier, Melchior had returned from accompanying French troops of Task Force Wagram in Iraq’s Euphrates Valley. Since resuming his post at the Percy Hospital, he had been restlessly twiddling his thumbs in his office, finding it hard to readjust. The Noémie Chastain case had roused him from his lethargy. A well-worn 50-something, taller than the rest by a head topped with thick, brushed-back white hair, he spoke with natural authority.

“I propose to take charge of her immediately, in parallel with the follow-up care and rehabilitation. The sooner I get to talk to her, the better I’ll be able to assess the psychological damage. This is several patients in one. An officer who risks never rejoining her force. A woman who risks thinking she’ll no longer be attractive. An adult who has to discover a stranger’s face and live with it. And a little girl who must be scared to death. She needs to be prepared before she can be repaired. But not lied to. When can I see her?”

“The time it takes for a scan of the back of her eye to make sure there’s no remaining extraneous matter. That and maxillofacial retraining, if you want her to talk to you,” the surgeon said.

“As of now, I don’t need her to talk to me. I’ve got lots to say to her,” Melchior said, snapping shut his notebook.

4

When she opened her eyes, the bright neon lights seared her retinas like a gunshot. Her brain took her back to the previous episode; Sohan shot her a second time. Her body arched, her heart began to race and the E.C.G. went wild. The alarms on all the machines round her went off, followed by the noise of rushing nurses.

As they passed by, all the police stood up.

Once the light in her room was switched off, Noémie calmed down, closed her eyes and plunged back into a chemical sleep, brought on by what was left of the anaesthetic.

“You can’t see her yet,” a nurse told Adriel. “She’s doing well, but she needs time.”

—

It was the middle of the night when Noémie woke a second time. In the semi-darkness she felt less anxious. She touched the rough blanket, then the softer sheet. Through the half-open window she could make out the black sky, and then the contours of the room, blurry from her blood-filled eye. Raising her right hand, she saw the splint on her thumb and remembered the paramedics and their terrified shouts as they raced to the hospital. She felt her face with her intact hand but could not detect any skin. The whole right side was covered with dressings and bandages. But she tried to smile, because for a moment she had thought she would never open her eyes again. She felt alive, astonishingly alive, the pain relieved for the time being thanks to the morphine injected into the vein in her arm.

A few metres from her, in the waiting room, Chloé was sleeping on Jonathan’s shoulder. Overcome with fatigue, his head was lolling backwards. Adriel was the only one awake: anxious, loving. The nurse signalled to him.

“She’s woken up. I have to tell the doctors, but you’ve got a minute.”

For hours, he had gone over what he was going to say to Noémie. To reassure her. To show her he was there and that he loved her. He went into her room, sat on the chair by the bed, laid his head on her stomach, and burst into tears. She stroked his hair gently, to comfort him, to tell him she was still there, and that she loved him too.

The door opened to reveal Chloé and Jonathan, who came no further. What they could see from the threshold was quite enough.

5

He came into the room as breezily as if he was in his own home.

“Good morning, soldier. I’m Melchior. Have the doctors told you about me?”

Noémie studied him briefly, then nodded. The shrink laid an iPad with a blank screen on the bed.

“We’re going to have fun. Since you can’t respond yet, we’re going to reverse the usual psychiatric rules. Today I’ll be the one doing the talking. And you’ll see, I’m terribly talkative. That’s what my wife used to say, anyway.”

He sat next to her and opened his notebook.

“Do you have any family?”

Noémie picked up the tablet and typed:

“Mother. London.”

“She doesn’t appear on your insurance file as one of the people to alert if you have an accident. In fact, nobody is written there.”

“Ten years,” Noémie wrote.

The shrink leaned over to read what she had written.

“Ten years . . . What? Since you last saw each other?”

Noémie nodded.

“What about the nice young man who’s haunting the corridors like a ghost? What’s his name?”

“Adriel.”

“So you’re not completely alone. That’s good. Crucial, even. I’m going to be honest with you: your face has been severely damaged. We’ll know more in 24 hours when the nurses remove the bandages. But before then I’d like you to do a little preparatory exercise. A kind of projection. I’m going to name the damaged parts and you have to imagine what they look like now.”

Noémie raised her eyes. One a very pale green, like a young, fresh leaf. The other still blackened with blood. Melchior continued gently:

“Your hair has been shaved off, as you must have felt with your fingers. Your right cheek was almost completely torn off and has been stitched up. Your broken nose has been reset. Still somewhat swollen and bruised but mended. The surgeons have removed fifteen shotgun pellets from various parts of your face. Each of them, from chin to forehead, will leave a star like a tiny crater, but that will fade over the years.”

Noémie typed furiously on the iPad.

“When do I get out?”

Melchior found this amusing.

“A brave soldier! I was right about you,” he said, putting down his notebook. “Furthermore, you have a fractured jaw and a dislocated thumb. That’s it for the physical side of things. But psychologically, it’s quite different. Don’t fool yourself, repairing your body is not a huge problem. But to repair invisible damage is more hit and miss, and therefore less predictable. I calculate you’ll be able to leave here in a month. But we’ll still have a good many sessions after that. We’re going to become close, you and I.”

6

Percy Army Hospital Fourth morning

The nurse gave Melchior all the time he needed to reassure the patient. Noémie had spent 72 hours longing for this moment, but now she wanted to postpone it.

“Are you ready?” Melchior said.

Noémie shook her head vigorously. No.

“Alright, we’ll leave things as they are. Who knows? Bandages might be fashionable this summer.”

The periorbital bruising had slightly diminished, and the black around her pupil had been replaced by a scarlet that was not much more prepossessing. And yet, behind her momentary panic, Melchior could detect her impatience.

“Shall we put it off until tomorrow?”

Noémie gently took hold of his hand, like a little girl hanging on to her big brother. Although it was uncommon in a psychiatric setting, Melchior accepted the physical contact, and squeezed her hand to reassure her that he was not going anywhere.

With the softest of movements, the nurse began unwinding the bandage, laying bare Noémie’s shaven head. Then she removed the dressings one by one. First the big one on her cheek, then the one on her jaw, and finally the dressing on her forehead. All that was left was the T-shaped plaster cast on the rebuilt bridge of her nose.

Noémie’s breathing accelerated as she felt the cool morning air on the areas of skin newly exposed to it. She raised a hand to her face without really daring to touch it. She wanted to see before she touched, and before she saw for herself, it was Melchior she looked at. Hell is always in other people’s gaze. As if they are judging us. The gaze that examines us, holds us back, causes us pain, that makes us love or hate ourselves. But in the psychiatrist’s gaze she saw nothing more than an unbearable professional kindness.

She sat up in bed, tentatively lowered her bare feet to the cold lino floor, and stood up. The metre between her and the wall mirror seemed to stretch out endlessly. When, finally, she came face to face with herself, she could not recognise a thing. Nobody. The dreadful bloody eye that she had so frequently seen on battered women, perched above a plaster cast usually found on boxers flattened by their opponents, the jaw swollen from the three steel plates and twelve screws that held them in, the semicircular scar on her jaw that looked as if a dog had chewed it, and the myriad pellet holes all down the right side of her face, like the paper roll for a barrel organ – all that would have been intolerable had it been Noémie’s reflection. But it was not her.

She blinked once.

On the other side of the mirror, the strange woman blinked as well.

She had prepared herself to see her face, however bad it was, but this was not her face any more. She could not identify with the flayed anatomical figure staring back at her.

“I’m looking at my dead self.”

Holding her breath, she stood rooted to the spot, unable to believe it. At last she raised her fingers to the impressive scar. It was a still-swollen semicircle, stitches poking out, that began near her ear, ran down the cheekbone as far as her nose, then past the corner of her lips and along her jaw as far as her throat.

She turned her head instinctively until she could see only her intact profile. A tear slid down her past self. She turned to see the right side. The woman she used to be vanished, replaced by an unknown, disfigured monster.

All of a sudden the walls fell away; a chasm appeared and pulled her into it. Melchior caught her just before she fainted.

—

Back in bed, the sheet deliberately pulled up to hide what she could not accept or reveal, even to someone like Melchior, Noémie did not utter a word. Beaten, lost, unable to confront reality.

“Your scar is a crescent moon shape. In a few years it’ll be no more than a slight hollow.”

The sheet was pulled higher.

“Did you know that the constellation of Capricorn has fifteen especially bright stars? The same as on your face.”

Noémie picked up the iPad and tapped furiously: STOP.

She took her time to vent anger she was unable to hold in any longer.

“Images meant to reassure me! Moon instead of scar. Stars for pellet holes. I’m not a five-year-old. It won’t work. I won’t have it. Fuck you and your ‘constellation of Capricorn’.”

Melchior gave a sad smile. Noémie typed an embarrassed Sorry.

“Don’t apologise. You have the right to insult the entire planet. But instead, tell me what I can do for you.”

“I want to go home. To hide. Find my cat again. Let me go home. I beg you.”

“Soon, Noémie, soon. Let’s not rush things. And may I remind you that you have a visit this afternoon. You’re not obliged to do anything, you’re the one who fixes the timetable. You decide. Adriel can just as easily wait.”

Noémie shuddered. Adriel! No way! Not now. Not the way she looked. Not with this shredded face.

“I know the idea frightens you, but seeing somebody you know will be as beneficial as any session with me. Adriel can be strong enough for two if you find it impossible. Don’t look at yourself in the mirror but in his eyes.”

“What if he can’t bear it?”

“Then you’ll know. It’s essential to know who you can count on. If need be, we can look for support elsewhere. But please don’t underestimate him beforehand.”

Before leaving the room, Melchior told the nurses to contact him as soon as anyone came to visit. If it was Noémie’s boyfriend, he needed to be prepared as well.

7

The fortuitous combination of a change of guard and a patient with acute respiratory problems allowed Adriel to walk down the hospital corridor without meeting a soul, and to knock on the door to Noémie’s room before anybody had time to warn him what he was about to experience.

Back at the Drug Squad, Chloé and Jonathan had understood without him having to say it that he wanted to see Noémie on his own for the first time.

Pushing open the door, he gazed for a moment at the drowsy Noémie. From the threshold he could see only her left profile, but when she stirred in a bad dream and turned over in bed, his heart clenched. At that moment she opened her eyes and quickly hid as best she could. Being caught unawares like that made her feel she was being violated, assaulted, her intimacy threatened. How could she present to Adriel a face that wasn’t hers, one she would never accept? And even though they disappeared almost at once, his shock and an almost imperceptible movement of rejection engraved themselves on Noémie’s mind.

She lay still, one hand on her face as if to shield an incongruous nudity, and allowed her man to come over and sit beside her. He took her hand and softly invited her to uncover her wounds.

“Don’t underestimate him,” Melchior had said.

Was Adriel coming to terms with it? Was he forcing himself, just a little? There was no sign of it. This time he didn’t react but studied the scars one by one. Noémie was filled with shame, as if they were self-inflicted. She found every second she was being examined excruciating. She would have liked time to come to a halt and for ten years to go by so that the scars from this accident could fade and only a few traces be left, just as after a war the bullet holes in the walls of a liberated town are gradually forgotten. She would have liked the window to blow open and a gust of wind to carry Adriel off to another country.

But the window remained shut, and time passed even more slowly than usual. The screws in her jaw only allowed her to make a ridiculous murmuring sound, and she didn’t want to add an incomprehensible babble of words to her repugnant physical appearance. Since Adriel was as silent as she was, she would have given anything to die in that moment.

Then a smile. The smile that had seduced her when they first met. A smile that said “I’ll let you rest. I’ll come back at the end of my shift.” But above all, a kiss as soft as a baby’s skin brushing her lips.

“Don’t underestimate him,” Melchior had said. “He can be strong enough for two if you find it impossible.”

—

In the hospital corridor, Adriel’s silhouette was profiled against the rising sun. Halfway to the lifts, he suddenly stopped. Leaning back against the wall, he immediately cast off the cloak of decorum that lay so heavily on him. He burst into tears and began to drum against the wall. Then to punch it, time and again, oblivious to the pain and the cuts he was opening in his skin with every blow.

That face. Sorry. That face . . . He couldn’t do it.

When he came on duty, Melchior passed a young man overwhelmed by grief. But also struggling with countless other emotions. Denial. The coming abandonment. The flight he was preparing.

Melchior immediately recognised Adriel, the boyfriend who had been haunting the hospital corridors since the accident.

Had he accepted it?

Had he simply pretended to?

8

Percy Army Hospital Twenty-eighth morning

Chloé and Jonathan had been to visit her several times during these four weeks. Loaded down with magazines, smuggled cigarettes and once, one evening, with the nurses’ complicit agreement, a spiced rum that had done the trick. Her two former colleagues always managed to find a plausible excuse to explain Adriel’s absence. A complicated investigation. A police sting to set up on an estate. An informer to be brought to heel. But Noémie had long since got the message, probably ever since that kiss on the lips. The one she had seen as love, before realising it was no more than a farewell.

The plaster cast had come off her nose. She was able to move the thumb on her right hand again, and, following long rehabilitation sessions, she could now pronounce words properly without her voice making her want to laugh, stay silent forever, or weep. All that was left was the minefield of her face. Still unbearable.

In twenty-eight days her hair had regrown a centimetre or more. She had gone from the skinhead look to the chemo one. What was by now obvious was that the gunshot had sufficiently damaged her scalp and so scrambled her genetic codes that anything was possible. The hair on her right temple had grown back silver in colour. Eventually she’d have what would be seen as an attempt to be chic: a white streak like a brushstroke in her auburn head of hair.

She finished packing, picked up a couple of things from the shower room and sat waiting patiently on her bed, swinging her legs like an impatient child. Inside the room, every one of her movements was calculated to the millimetre to avoid the area in front of the mirror. She could have simply removed it, turned it round or smashed it, but it represented the looks she was going to get in the future, those of the people she came across once she left hospital. Out there, she could lower her head, turn her face, hide a little, but she would not be able to ask passersby to walk staring up at the sky, or poke out everyone’s eyes. A shame. She would have to get used to it.

When he entered her room and saw her ready to leave, Melchior’s heart skipped a beat. Well . . . “ready” was saying a lot. Noémie was wholly unaware of what she was going to confront. To him it felt as if he was abandoning a young autistic child outside a school gate. But since Noémie would never be truly ready, today was as good a day as any to approve her release from hospital.

“Here’s your iPad back,” she said by way of greeting. “I don’t need it any more, and I’ve watched all the films on it. There were only black-and-white French ones. I’ll have to take you to the cinema, loads of interesting things have happened since the ’70s.”

Melchior had become accustomed to this kind of response. Mockery, vulgarity, banalities, as if the patient was not involved. In fact, it was defensive language that might seem like gobbledegook but could also conceal profound trauma.

Although Noémie appeared calm on the surface, she was the very opposite underneath. Melchior decided to remind her once more about the attitude to adopt towards any future behavioural changes.

“Make sure you listen to yourself and try to analyse your reactions. If they’re different from what they were in the past, the accident could be the reason. Then you’ll need to fight them.”

“What, for example?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. I prefer to let them arise rather than provoke them. Sometimes it’s enough to evoke a problem to bring it on. Our brain is so clever at making us ill.”

“Well, I’m a police officer and I don’t like surprises. Be more precise, and don’t leave anything out.”

“As you wish, Noémie,” the psychiatrist conceded.

He massaged his temples, wondering where to start, as there were so many possible side effects.

“Watch out for a certain aggressiveness. Sometimes for spurious reasons. On the other hand, a surprising passivity over serious matters. Similarly: anxiety, irritability, inability to deal with frustration, and also refusing yourself any pleasure.”

“So I’ve become a real ray of sunshine. I shouldn’t stay single for long, then.”

“Yes, that too. A protective, caustic sense of humour,” Melchior said. “These are feints, the psyche defending itself. Even the structures of your personality will be modified. Just as you may not recognise your face, you also risk being taken aback by your reactions, as if you were someone else. But all that is just the new you, plus a large dose of the person you’ve always been.”

“It seems to me as if my life began here in hospital. I can’t even remember who I was before I had this raw meat for a face.”

Melchior bridled at the violence of this image. Self-disgust was high on the list of post-op reactions, but he refrained from mentioning it.

“Quite. Let’s talk about your recollections and your memory . . . The near-death experience was traumatising, and your brain has reacted like a good soldier: it has protected and shielded you, and attempted to delete some perturbing facts. But what it is trying to conceal is too powerful: it’s like trying to keep a wild animal in a cardboard cage. Sooner or later things are bound to escape. Intrusive thoughts, flashbacks caused by a mere sound or smell. Before, during and after the gunshot there was what we call mnesic hypercaptation.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Noémie said sarcastically.

“Sorry. Put more simply, we all remember exactly what we were doing when 9/11 occurred. Our memory captured the moment and sealed it in forever. But it also took in random information. The room we were in, the people with us, the clothes we were wearing, the colour of the sky or the smell of the food we were cooking. It’s these random memories that come to the surface and open the way for a traumatic memory.”

“Right, in other words I can’t control anything any more, is that it?”

“Exactly, not a lot. Not to begin with, at least. And staying with questions of memory, there are risks of hypermnesia, such as remembering the smallest details of a moment during the day. But also the opposite: a coding problem in your short-term memory can lead to you forgetting everything about the last five minutes or five hours.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on being very sociable over the coming days. Staying in bed suits me fine.”

“Night-time won’t be any easier,” Melchior said. “You could have recurring nightmares, relive the incident, wake up in the middle of the night or find it hard to get to sleep. If you’re lucky, you could even have all that in a single night,” he joked, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “But I’ve prescribed some antidepressants for you – you can collect them on the way out. They’re no more than a support, don’t get habituated to them: that can happen very quickly.”

“And you’ve written all that nonsense in your report?” Noémie said nervously.

“You’re already thinking of going back?” the shrink guessed.

“I’ve only ever been a police officer. I wouldn’t know what else to do. Besides, it’s a job that takes over everything.”

Melchior raised an eyebrow, not following her. Noémie explained.

‘Well, a fat guy is a fat guy. But a fat guy in a uniform is a policeman. All you see is his function. Do you remember the officer who received your last complaint? Of course not, you’ve forgotten him. You only saw what he represented.”

“So you think people will forget who you are, concealed beneath your bulletproof vest?”

“Correct. Hidden behind a function, a position, an authority, a power, a gun, I’m no longer a woman, still less a disfigured one. I’m quite simply a police officer. That’s why I’m worried about your report.”

The evening before last, in the calm of his Paris apartment, his computer giving off the only light in the room, the psychiatrist had begun by writing the name of his patient: Noémie Chastain. Then he had drunk an Armagnac, smoked a cigarette, and recommenced the task a couple of times before abandoning the almost completely blank page.

“My report will only mention an obligatory convalescence at home for 30 days,” Melchior improvised. “If I deprive you of your profession, I’m afraid I may do more harm than good. The rest is for you to sort out with your superiors. However, I expect you to have one therapy session a week.”

“With you?”

“Now you’re making me angry. With me, of course.”

Noémie looked distinctly relieved; Melchior felt a faint stab of pride.

“And that’s it? Have you finished? I feel like Little Red Riding Hood being coached by her mother before setting out through the forest. You want me to stay a few more days, do you? You’re not falling in love are you, Melchior?”

“I’d feel bad keeping you away from your cat any longer. By the way, you’ve never told me its name.”

“I’ve no idea,” she told him.

9

Noémie was sitting in the hospital lobby, a Faraday shield still protecting her from the bombardments of the outside world. Melchior sat next to her. The label on her bag still had on it her name and address, reminders of her last trip with Adriel: Bali, Indonesia. The blue woven bracelet she had brought back as a souvenir she had taken off her wrist a few days earlier.

Upset at the thought of how this pleasant reminder had been ruined by her boyfriend’s attitude, she tore off the label. All that was left on the bag was a fragment that showed a small part of her identity, her first name cut in two: No.

Noémie had died from that gunshot in the Paris suburbs. Now it was No who was staring at the crowd of the living through the hospital window.

“In case you’re afraid of the street and the metro, I’ve called you a cab,” Melchior reassured her.

She hesitated. About leaving. About taking him in her arms.

“I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done for me, doctor.”

“We’ve only just begun our work, soldier.”

—

Paris unfolded before her eyes: tumultuous, teeming. Even though she knew all of its streets by heart, she felt a stranger in this city. Intimidated and disoriented the way one is on leaving an airport, confronted by an unknown capital, an unknown country.

The driver dropped her outside a four-storey building in a calm neighbourhood. Not once during the journey had he cast a glance at his passenger in the rear-view mirror.

Noémie was glad of his indifference.

In the entrance, she greeted her black-and-white cat, fixed for- ever under the entry phone. A couple of years earlier, a street artist had spray-painted it there. None of the residents had protested, and no-one had covered it over with white paint.

A tomcat that left no balls of fur on the sofa, no foul-smelling litter, no selfish meows for food. The perfect cat. Her cat.

As her front door clicked shut behind her, she discovered the studio exactly as she had left it 28 mornings earlier, when she had not for a moment imagined how long it would take her to return. A few bits of clothing left on the floor, a sink half full of crockery and a withered fig plant. A single-person apartment she had been on the point of leaving before the accident, to move in with Adriel. Now all that remained of him was a T-shirt on the unmade bed.

She was hesitating between putting it in the washing machine and throwing it away when the doorbell rang. Even before she opened the door, Noémie knew it was her neighbour Madame Mersier. She never announced her arrival with a single buzz but left her knobbly finger pressing on the bell as if she had fallen asleep. A nosey old woman.

“Where have you been all this time?” the 88-year-old granny said in a quavering voice.

“I took a shotgun blast in the face. I’ve spent a month in the repair shop.”

The half-blind octogenarian pricked up her ears.

“What’s that you said?”

“I said I was away on holiday. ON HOLIDAY!” Noémie shouted, before closing the door in her face.

Left on her own again, she regretted the fact that the world wasn’t made up only of indifferent taxi drivers or half-blind and deaf old women.

She began to tidy up the studio but misjudged the corner between living room and bathroom, where a full-length mirror waited in ambush. She came face to face with herself. Wounds and stitches. Scars and that damned constellation of Capricorn. Suddenly her desire to tidy and clean the apartment seemed ridiculous.

She opened a can of beer and took an antidepressant, doing exactly the opposite of what Melchior had recommended. In fifteen minutes, she would take a second sachet so as to be completely out of it and be able to bear with dignity, flat out on her sofa and wrapped in a duvet, the first afternoon of this shitty new life.

10

Office of the director-general of the police judiciaire, Paris

On the top floor of Bastion, which since 2017 had replaced 36 quai des Orfèvres as the police headquarters, the director-general of the police judiciaire had summoned the commissaire of the four Drug Squad teams. This included Noémie Chastain’s, now led by Adriel. Sitting next to him was the force’s psychological support officer. Invited for the first time so high in the building, he was taking his time to admire the director’s office, surrounded by an iron and wood terrace. This was dotted with tubs of tough-looking bushes and overlooked Paris’ least picturesque views. Concrete and tower blocks, everything grey and filled with thick smoke from car exhausts, just a few metres from the capital’s ring road.

“Chastain wants to take back the reins of her team,” the head of the Drug Squad groups announced uneasily.

“Has she already been out of hospital for 30 days?” said the director-general, surprised.

“No, only 27. But whether it’s 27 or 42, it makes no difference. Apparently, it’s impossible to look at her.”

“That’s not what worries me. It’ll take a dog that gets a kick up the backside quite a while before it lets itself be stroked again. An officer who finds herself in an operation that goes horribly wrong will have doubts about her firearm and her own team. But you’re right to mention her appearance, because we’re the ones who’ll see her face, not her. It’ll be a constant reminder of the danger of our profession and of the fact that a team was unable to protect their officer. Her wounds will instil fear and a sense of guilt. And that’s not good, not good at all.”

“I’m delighted we see things the same way. So it’s agreed, we find her a quiet little group in the Finance Section, or in administration, but she’s not to set foot in the Drug Squad again.”

“What about the Serious Crime Unit? Don’t forget she served six years there as well.”

“It’s not a matter of how long she served. They’ll only repeat the same story. Nobody wants her, we have to get rid of her.”

The psychologist finally stopped looking at the terrace and joined the conversation.

“And how do you propose to do that? Have you also read the report by Melchior, the chief psychiatrist?”

“Look,” the director of the police judiciaire retorted, “you’re the police shrink, aren’t you? Your conclusions will carry as much weight as his.”

“But he’s a leading light in rehabilitative psychiatry for wounded soldiers. Personally, I wouldn’t contradict him. How would that make me look? If he says she’s ready to come back, I won’t say anything different.”

The silence that fell on the office reflected the general uneasiness.

“Don’t you have any means of blocking it?” the psychologist said.

“None. Not unless she fails her firearms test. But this is Capitaine Chastain we’re talking about. I can’t imagine that she’d miss even one shot at the target.”

“Not to mention the 25 kilos of pure cocaine we found in the dealer Sohan Bizien’s flat. Cut and resold by the gram, that’s almost nine million euros. Do you realise we’re talking about a National Police heroine?”

The director-general lowered his head and gave in.

“We’ll wait the stipulated 30 days, give her a medical and put her on the firing range. Then we’ll see.”

—

When Noémie received the phone call at six o’clock that same evening, she tried to control her excitement so that her voice did not betray her.

“Even though your official return is in three days’ time,” her boss said, making one last effort, “you can always take longer.”

“No. Believe me, I’m ready.”

Noémie was sitting cross-legged on her sofa, her hair now a boyish crew cut. She was surrounded by a month’s worth of greasy takeaway food containers; the curtains were drawn, the ashtray was full, there were empty bottles all around her, and the television was on in the background. Having worn throughout all that time only three T-shirts that reeked of sleep and a lack of fresh air, Noémie looked like an unclean hermit in a state of deep depression.

“Right, I’m good and ready.”

11

Three days later

“It’s only a first day back,” she told herself as she rinsed her mouth over the washbasin, her stomach churning from stress.

Entering the bathroom, she believed naively at first in the magic powers of make-up, just as some adolescents smother their faces in foundation to cover up their acne. To apply thick layers of powder and cream on her circular scar and the pellet impacts was more like replastering the facade of an old building than beauty care. In the end she chose to wipe it all off with soap and water.

She put on a black three-quarter-length coat over a straight-leg pair of trousers and a tight-fitting midnight-blue pullover, then picked up her backpack, put a cap on her head, and plunged into the outside world as if making a parachute jump.

By some extraordinary coincidence, the capital was completely empty. From her street to the avenue, from the avenue to the metro, not a living soul. Two million Parisians whisked away, kidnapped, vanished. That was what she decided, anyway, as she made the journey, head down, eyes fixed on the pavement, trying to make herself invisible.

She let the muscle memory of her old habits guide her along the corridors of the metro. She brushed past a few anonymous silhouettes, bumped into a hasty, repugnant suit and tie, and climbed aboard a carriage. After five stations she changed at Miromesnil, went down more tunnels, got into another carriage, emerged into the fresh air, walked along, greeted her cat, pressed the entry code, climbed three floors and found herself outside her own front door.

Resisting a panic attack, she recalled Melchior’s warnings. Brain fog, confusion, scrambled memory codes. “All that’s normal,” she lied to herself. In time, everything would settle down. So she repeated the journey, this time paying a little more attention and without retracing her steps.

—

Arriving at the Bastion headquarters, keeping her head down was no longer an option. Hiding would prove only one thing: that she wasn’t ready. Today she had to be surer of herself than ever, but with the added disadvantage of clammy hands, weak knees and a patched-up face she forced on everyone.

Noémie greeted the receptionist, leaving her open-mouthed several seconds after she had passed, and reached the double row of lifts. She let herself be taken up to the fourth floor, her breathing accelerating with every metre. Murphy’s Law would have meant Adriel was waiting when the lift doors opened, but that didn’t happen. She started down the long corridor leading to her office.

Violent deaths, bloody crime scenes, not forgetting autopsies of cadavers of all ages and states: their daily routine means police officers are hard to shock. And yet, in all those who passed her, kindly wishing her a good return to work, she noticed the same slight recoil. A fraction of a fraction of a second, but enough for Noémie, on the lookout for any reaction, to be able to spot it. An almost imperceptible movement which, put into words, would have been: “I was warned, but even so . . .”

She pushed open the door with her name on it.

Drug Squad: Chastain Group.

Without hesitation, Chloé threw herself into Noémie’s arms. She was wearing the same pink sweatshirt with the slogan “UNICORN POLICE DEPARTMENT” as on the day of the drama, probably to exorcise it. It had lain abandoned at the back of her wardrobe for the past two months. Two sisters could not have been more affectionate.

“I’m so happy, so so happy!” Chloé repeated over and over, punctuating each exclamation with noisy kisses. “I’ve missed you every day.”

Jonathan preferred to extend his hand, but his frequent visits to the hospital and his pleasure at seeing his officer on her feet and ready to work transformed this routine greeting into a sincere tribute. One that was sincerely shared.

Then it was Adriel’s turn. Shifty-eyed, like a dog that has spilled the contents of a dustbin all over an apartment. Whereas with all the others Noémie had tried to present her left profile, with him she felt the need to make him face the worst she had to offer, and got a twinge of pleasure from it.

“Here. Take a good look at what you can’t look at any more. What you can’t stand. What I am today.”

Confronted by this man who had abandoned her without telling her, simply because she had become No rather than Noémie, she had to decide which she would be: victim or fighter.

Noémie could have accepted that he found it impossible. No-one is obliged to love a monster. But at the very least she deserved that he be honest about it and not cruelly ignore her for 60 days, just when she most needed him.

She saw her colleagues were wearing bulletproof vests, their weapons already in their holsters.

“Were you leaving?”

“Yes,” Adriel confirmed a little too hastily. “Surveillance in the suburbs with a group from the Seine-Saint-Denis police judiciaire. But they’re expecting you at the firing range. Obligatory firearms test. You’re only to return as group leader tomorrow. Orders from the commissaire.”

He was in a hurry to get out of the room, but Noémie chose to stay where she was, blocking the door.

“How about you? Won’t you say you missed me?”

“Yes, yes of course,” Adriel stammered. “We all missed you, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

—

In the lift down to the car park, Adriel remained sombre and withdrawn.

“You’re such a prick,” Chloé whispered for him to hear.

Silence. Cables creaking.

“I second that,” Jonathan said.

—

Back in the Drug Squad office, the brave No, the woman who had faced with an exaggerated swagger the man she perhaps still loved a little, burst into tears, unable to control the spasms shaking her heart.

12

Bastion police judiciaire Firing range

“O.K.,” the instructor said. “Get into position. Weapon secure. Load a fifteen-bullet clip and stand five metres from the target. Aim and fire five times.”

Ten minutes earlier Noémie had clicked open the case containing her special police-issue Sig-Hauer. She stared at her firearm as if it was a big metal scorpion about to sting her. She tried to conceal the slight tremble in her hand, concentrated, and played out the rest of the scene almost like a sleepwalker.

“Shooter ready?”

Frozen, Noémie held the pistol up in front of her and pointed at the paper target, but said nothing.

“Noémie?”

No sound came from the gun or the person holding it. Then the trembling began again, more violently this time, incapacitating her. Before the pistol could fall from Noémie’s hands, the instructor ended the session.

“O.K., Noémie. Don’t move, I’m going to recover your weapon.”

He put his hand on hers as cautiously as if he was deactivating a mine.

“Loosen your fingers. That’s right. Gently does it.”

Her hand freed, Noémie could finally fill her lungs with air. Without a word, the instructor removed the clip and made the firearm secure, ejecting the bullet from the chamber. He did this so automatically he had time to consider the situation.

“I know what being an officer with no weapon is like,” he conceded. “It’s as bad as being castrated. I’ve been there once as well, after a bout of depression. But my job also involves your safety and that of your team.”

“You’re going to fail me?” Noémie said anxiously.

“If I do, I’ll have to mention the shaking. That’ll mean you won’t be able to work in the field and you’ll have to have a series of conversations with the police shrink. You’ve been shot at; all you need is time. To feel the weapon is yours again. Certainly not to see a shrink who knows nothing about your line of work.”

Noémie raised a quizzical eyebrow, inviting him to come up with a solution.

“We’re going to make a deal, you and me. Come back tomorrow, the day after, or as many days as you need for your Sig to fit snugly in your paw. And meanwhile I’ll approve you, provided you stay in your office. No going into action until you hit the target in the head at least five times and as accurately as the guy who redesigned your mug.”

The instructor could never have imagined how good he made Noémie feel by putting his foot in it so clumsily. He had talked to her without any special regard or condescension, just as if he was speaking to anyone. She was anyone. A normal person.

—

On his return from the operation in Saint-Denis, Adriel paid a visit to the firing range. In a neutral manner, he enquired about the group leader’s results. The instructor, believing every member of a team was there to support the others, was oblivious of the trap and told him everything.

“We made a deal. She’ll explain. You’re so lucky to be working with her.”

“Right,” Adriel agreed. “So lucky.”

13

Noémie spent almost an hour in front of her bathroom mirror, face turned to the right so that she saw only the profile she could accept. A regressive illusion to console herself. So what: she was so pretty like that . . .

Her mobile buzzed on the kitchen table, jolting her out of her reverie. At the other end of the line the director-general said he wanted to see her.

In an hour at Bastion.

No further information.

On her way there, she got a laconic text message from Melchior: “Good morning, soldier. First session tomorrow morning?”

She answered him in the lift going up to the top floor, then presented herself to the secretary before knocking on her boss’ door.

“We all really appreciate you here,” the director-general said, gesturing for her to sit down.

This was purely rhetorical, so Noémie made no reply, waiting to see what would come next.

“However, my job isn’t to appreciate people, it’s to put them to work,” he went on. “And it’s clear you’re not completely recovered yet. Your firearms test seems to have been less than reassuring. Worrying, in fact.”

As he said this, his fingers drummed on a document lying in the middle of his desk. Noémie glanced at it and was perturbed by what she saw. The director-general still had not raised his eyes to her. She wondered how long he would manage to keep that up.

Ever since her return, the director had been afraid she would undermine the morale of the troops, reminding them how vulnerable they all were, sucking their courage like a vampire. And the report he had received that morning had been a gift from the gods.

“I think you need rest. The countryside.”

“The countryside?” Noémie repeated, raising her voice without realising it. “You can take my firearm away for a while but not sideline me.”

Sensing he was stepping into a minefield, the director softened his tone.

“Who said we’re doing that? Look, I’m simply talking about a period of convalescence. But one with a purpose. Do you know Decazeville?”

Noémie felt like stuffing his Decazeville down his throat, wherever this stupid village might be.

“I’ve been speaking with H.R., and we need someone we can trust down there, for a month-long mission.”

“What can anyone do in a month?” Noémie said in astonishment.

“Close down a police station. You won’t do any investigating; go out and about as little as possible, and you won’t put yourself and above all your colleagues in any danger. Go there, see how they work, assess the level of criminal activity, then tell us whether or not their station should be shut down. Our budget is tight, and since there’s also a gendarmerie post there, the Interior Ministry wants them to take over. So, is it the quietest village in France, or are they the most incompetent police force in the country? It’ll be your job to tell us.”

“And after that?”

“After that? You come home, good as new, ready to take over your group again.”

His lie didn’t particularly bother him. He was convinced that in a month he could find a way to get rid of her in some office job as far away from him as possible.

“And if I refuse?”

“Why would you? I’m offering you the solution to a problem that could give rise to a great many others. You can choose to go and complain to your union, become a piece of grit in the Bastion machine, start a lengthy complaints procedure. All that will take you at least a year and create a lot of enemies. And the others will steer clear of you so as not to get into trouble by contagion. So? A year of battles? A month of chlorophyll and oxygen? Which is it to be?”

Furious, Noémie stood up and snatched the report off the desk. At the foot of the page she saw a signature she would have recognised among thousands – Adriel’s. She left the room, slamming the director-general’s door more loudly than anyone had ever done before.

—

Her anger only increased as she approached her office, and when she flung open the door, ready to explode, she wasn’t in the least deterred by the presence of people not from her group. One of them introduced himself to her, extending his hand cordially.

“Hi there. Capitaine Ronan Scaglia of Seine-Saint-Denis police judiciaire. We’re collaborating with your lieutenant on a case of—”

Noémie cut him short.

“Later. All of you out. Group meeting.”

The Seine-Saint-Denis police knew what a dressing-down was when they saw one, and also knew it was a private matter. They left the room without having to be asked twice.

Left on her own with her group, Noémie flung the report in Adriel’s face. Chloé and Jonathan lowered their heads and gritted their teeth, obviously aware of what was going on, and obviously disagreeing with the decision taken.

“Why?” Noémie shouted. “Because you can’t end it with someone who’s ill? You’d think less of yourself, is that it? Or simply because you don’t have the balls?”

“It’s only temporary,” Adriel excused himself.

“Temporary my ass, you bastard! You know what’s going to happen? As soon as I get back, they’re going to stuff me in a cupboard. You’re simply giving them time to think up a proper excuse, so I won’t escape. Shit, I’d love to smash your face in!”

Adriel knew she would. He also knew she was in such a rage she’d have the advantage.

For the second time that day, she slammed the door, leaving behind a shattered team. Shamefaced, Adriel tried his best to regain control.

“O.K., call the Seine-Saint-Denis guys back. And there’s no point going over what just happened.”

“Don’t worry, boss,” Chloé retorted, her voice dripping with phoney respect. “We don’t want your cowardice to rub off on us. Bastard!”

14

She spent the whole night briefly falling asleep then waking in panic. Whenever she did manage to sleep, it was always the same dream.

A long, steeply descending tunnel, blacker than ink. Unable to go back, she feels strong hands pushing her on into the dark. Step by step into the invisible. Then in the distance a reassuring meow: her painted cat come to life.

His paws aren’t resting on the ground. He’s floating in mid-air, amber eyes shining, piercing the darkness with their dazzling brightness, as strong as two beams lighting up the path she doesn’t dare take. She wants to retreat, but the cat growls, leaps and claws her face.

—

In the morning, she put on a loose-fitting pair of white linen trousers and a baggy T-shirt, then called Melchior. While the laptop open on her bed searched for the connection, she pulled the sheets up over her legs, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. The psychiatrist appeared on the screen.

She told him about her first day back, not least the many disappointments. And since Melchior wanted only the best for her, he did not dwell on what they meant.

“I can understand your frustration, but I really don’t see this as bad news. Your colleagues know Noémie rather than this No, as you call yourself now. Perhaps it’ll be easier to find yourself again among people you don’t know? Playing devil’s advocate, I’d say your presence itself, even more than your wounds, obliges your team to relive that traumatising event, that brush with death, that unforgettable disruption. They could benefit from a breather. And so could you.”

The thought that her wounds had now become public property saddened Noémie. Melchior tried to reassure her.

“Something insidious has infiltrated itself following that accident, like a stowaway, an intruder in your flat. Once you’ve accepted the fact that this stranger is now part of you, you’ll be close to being a whole person again. But that’ll take time; at the moment your mind is still in turmoil.”

She told him about the cat with luminous eyes.

“That’s interesting. Studying dreams is a doorway into your unconscious. In dreams, the characters you create are often only a variant of yourself. This cat trying to show you the way out of the tunnel is you trying to escape yourself. Freud speaks of dreams as the fulfilment of repressed desires. In fact, I think you’ve already accepted this job. There’s a struggle going on in your deepest psyche. It’s known as defusing. I think the calm of the countryside would be more appropriate for such a battle than a frantic city. Also, there’s no danger in this mission, and I must say I find that reassuring.”

“They can’t for an instant imagine what kind of officer they’re about to find themselves with. I insult almost everyone, when I don’t go straight for the jugular. I haven’t spared anyone, from my boss to Adriel.”

Melchior had a mental image of his patient, hand grenade with the pin out, in the director-general’s office. He enjoyed the thought.

“If you continually tell a child that he or she is behaving badly, they’ll carry on doing it. Tell them they’re an idiot, and they’ll become one. Simply because we don’t like to disappoint. These men you’re so angry with – your commissaire and Adriel – are precisely the ones who reflect your broken image back to you. They can’t accept you physically, so you drive the point home by becoming loud and violent. You verbalise their repugnance, reinforcing what they think. You try to be as shocking as your face is, so as not to disappoint.”

Melchior adjusted his screen to make it brighter.

“Do you mind not hiding yourself? I can only see half your face.”

Noémie turned to face him full on, as embarrassed as if she were taking off her clothes. Melchior studied her closely.

“I’d be happy to tell you there’s nothing repugnant in what I see, but you’re not ready to hear that.”

A slight smile appeared on Noémie’s lips, then just as quickly vanished . . .

“As far as your nights go, if you want them to be calmer, I can prescribe Loxapine for you, but that risks blocking your dreams. It would be better to listen to what they’re trying to tell us. Let’s be patient, and see where we are when you get to . . . Sorry, where are they sending you exactly?”

“Decazeville, in the Aveyron.”

“The Aveyron? Ah, you don’t say.”

15

Chloé dumped Noémie’s two travel bags in the boot and leaned back against the car. Four floors up in the building opposite her, No was getting ready to leave her flat. She comforted herself with the thought she’d be back in a month. Would she have changed? Would she really be feeling better?

She scribbled a message to herself in lipstick on her bathroom mirror: “So? Do you love yourself?” She would know the answer in 30 days. She put the lipstick away in her make-up bag, hesitated, then left the bag open on the washbasin. Two turns of the key and one last look back, and then she rang ten or more times on her neighbour’s door before the old hag eventually heard her.

“Hello Madame Mersier, I just wanted to tell you that you won’t be seeing me for some time. I’ve jotted down my mobile number, I’m leaving you the keys to my letter box, and some stamped envelopes. If you could redirect any post, that would be great. I’ll send you my address when I know what it is.”

“My pleasure, young Julie,” the old woman assured her.

Noémie was leaving very little behind. There was a distinct possibility her mail would end up in Norway, but that was a risk she had to take as she didn’t know anyone else in the building.

Noémie tossed her holdall onto the back seat of the car and got in beside Chloé.

“Which station?”

“Austerlitz.”

Noémie cast a last glance at the beige front wall. Perched there as usual, her cat had been watching her departure.

“Well anyway, I know you’re going to follow me,” she told him.

PART TWO

Deep in the Countryside

16

Viviez-Decazeville railway station The Aveyron

Only two other people got off. After seven hours, Noémie finally left the local train that had taken a thousand detours to stop at villages whose names she had never heard of and which she would probably never remember. The fact is that between Laroque-Bouillac, Boisse-Penchot and Lacapelle-Marival, you needed a good memory or to have broken down there.

No more Parisian skyscrapers: now there were woods and fields dotted with farmhouses. No more wide avenues, instead winding roads sometimes turning into dirt tracks that led to isolated houses. Straw bales, tractors, horses. Paris had definitively disappeared. And yet the stop at Viviez-Decazeville did not have the bucolic appearance of the previous halts.

She found herself alone outside the station in a car park drenched in sunlight. Opposite her was a deserted restaurant imaginatively named “The Station”. Behind her, ragged hills covered in low, scabrous vegetation, exhausted by more than a century of heavy metal pollution from a zinc factory, and beneath them hundreds of metres of grey, corrugated-iron warehouses. Not far off, an abandoned building stretching a thousand square metres or more, a maze of rusty iron pipes and a tangle of old conveyor belts, immobile since the sixties.

A pleasant voice came from behind her.

“You shouldn’t dwell on what you can see, Capitaine.”

It was only when Noémie turned towards him that the young local lieutenant sent to welcome her discovered his new officer’s face.

“That’s precisely what I was going to say to you.”

It would be wrong to suggest that he did not recoil as others had. And yet he seemed to overcome it without any visible effort.

“What I meant was that there are prettier sights when you get to know the region a little. In fact, you only have to get away from the station. It depresses even me.”

He held out his hand.

“Lieutenant Romain Valant. Good morning, ma’am.”

“Capitaine Noémie Chastain.”

He must have been barely 35, with tousled fair hair and the look of a really kind kid. He was smiling, as if good humour came naturally to him.

“I’ve got an uncle who was caught in a fire-damp explosion deep in a mine at Aubin. He was only 20 at the time. Frankly, you don’t compare.”

“O.K., take a good look once and for all. That should satisfy your curiosity, and then we can move on.”

She felt she was being a bit curt and regretted this stiff first contact, but apparently it would take a lot more to put a dent in Lieutenant Valant’s cheery attitude. He replied with disconcerting openness:

“Well, if you’re offering, that’s what I’ll do.”

Noémie felt ill at ease confronted by this stranger examining her scar by scar, still smiling broadly, as if there was nothing serious about it.

“Yes, as I thought, you don’t come anywhere near my uncle.”

He immediately changed the subject, like someone turning the page of a magazine.

“I’ll take you to your house. Well, if you like it, it’ll be yours. We could also find something else. It’s nine kilometres from here, in Avalone. It’s a pretty village. Wait, I’ll carry your things.”

Lieutenant Valant stowed Noémie’s bags in the back of his people carrier, next to a baby seat. Although he was containing his excitement, he looked like a kettle about to boil. The question Noémie asked allowed him to let off some steam.

“Can you bring me up to speed? I didn’t really have time to go into things before I left.”

Valant did not need to be asked twice.

“Oh, it’ll be different for you, you’ll see. The Decazeville headquarters covers the five communes around it: Aubin, Cransac, Firmi, Viviez and Avalone, where you’ll be living. In total, an area roughly the size of Paris, but with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants, compared to more than two million in the capital. Which means there’s lots of room. We make a hundred arrests per year, whereas the smallest district in Seine-Saint-Denis runs up more than 1,500. Which means we have lots of time. There are 48 police officers to patrol all that. Which means there are loads of us. The last homicide was five years ago. Yes, it’ll be different for you.”

The lieutenant had no way of knowing that he had just confirmed the Interior Ministry’s doubts about the viability of his police station. And the touching naivety with which he had declared most of what Noémie had come there to discover confirmed that no-one knew about her mission. It gave her no pleasure to realise she was going to spend the coming weeks deceiving all those around her. She must not let herself get attached to them.

“What about ranking officers?”

“We don’t have a commissaire, it’s a commandant who’s in charge. So between him, me and you, that makes three of us. But we’ve never had anyone with your experience – six years in the Serious Crime Squad and eight with the drug people. I must admit we’re more than proud to see you in our station. We thought we were on the way out, but instead we’ve been sent reinforcements, and not just anyone. That’s a really good sign, and it’s reassured everyone.”

“You seem to know everything about me,” Noémie said, feeling increasingly uneasy.

“That’s right. I knew about your face too, it’s done the rounds. But, as I told you—”

“Yes, yes, your uncle, the mine and all that,” she cut him short.

Valant guffawed, openly laughing at himself. Just when Noémie would have preferred to have met a real moron.

The vehicle turned off the main road, wound its way along narrower ones lined with oak trees, and eventually arrived at the top of a hill near the entrance to the village of Avalone. Noémie took it all in at a glance.

A calm lake with, on its banks, a series of small plots containing houses separated by low moss-covered walls, each with its own vegetable patch or orchard. In front of the houses, a main street no more than 100 metres long, starting with the town hall and ending with the church. The law of men and law of God kept properly apart.

“What do you think of it?” Valant said proudly, aware of the impression he had made.

A city-dweller through and through, Noémie would never have imagined she would be destined to live in a postcard. Something inside her relaxed gently, like a weight being lifted. One knot among a thousand others still to be untied, but a start all the same.

She would have liked to smile, but nothing appeared on her face.

The people carrier rolled gently down the slope along the main street and central square before turning onto a made-up dirt road that bordered a wood of sweet chestnuts. After a sharp bend, a stone and wood house appeared, with big sliding doors looking out onto a lawn that ended in a small pontoon. Beyond the pontoon was the lake. This was oblong and flat as a mill pond, with a tiny beach of pebbles and brown sand that gave it an air of calm, unspoilt nature.

It was a truly sublime spot. And to top everything off, Noémie had part of the lake to herself. Another knot loosened inside her.

“As I said, if this doesn’t suit you, there’s a room to rent next to the church.”

“What about the rent here?” Noémie asked anxiously, never having been able to afford anything bigger than 50 square metres in Paris.

“You can discuss that with the owner. That’s my father. And there’s no rush.”

“Tell me, Valant, does he have a lot of properties like this?”

Romain ran his hand through his unkempt hair, for the first time somewhat disconcerted.

“Pierre Valant has the biggest agri-business in the region. He’s also the mayor of Avalone. So he does own a lot of land. And if you say the name Valant, it usually refers to him. If it’s me you want, use my first name, Romain, otherwise I may not turn round when you call.”

“O.K., thank him from me.”

“I’ll let you do that.”

Noémie suspected a long-standing animosity between the two men. She stored the information away in the corner of her brain labelled “investigator”. A weakness, however small, can always prove useful to someone plotting something. At that instant she felt ashamed of herself in front of such a welcoming young policeman.

“Well, to judge from your luggage, you haven’t brought much with you. Come on, we’ll open up the house and air it. I’ll show you where the bed linen and towels are, the WiFi code and how the boiler works. It’s a bit temperamental, but it works. Then I’ll let you settle in.”

“Aren’t we going to pass by the police station?”

“A new house, a new village, a new post and new colleagues: you want to do everything at once? You know, here you’ll have to learn to change down a gear or two. It’s crazy how Parisians find it so hard to take things slowly.”

Noémie looked at the lake, and then in through the sliding doors at the main living room. All the furniture was covered in white dust sheets, looking like little ghosts she would have to disturb. She concluded that her new lieutenant was quite right.

“There’s a garage behind the house. The keys are in the car. You can see about that with my father as well. I did some shopping for you, just the basics to get you started. It’s all in the kitchen cupboards. I’ll call for you tomorrow at 09.00, to show you the way to Decazeville police station.”

“At 08.00, if that’s alright with you. I’d like to look at all the logs and the daybook so I have a clear idea before I meet the team.”

This one’s not going to slow down any time soon, Romain told himself as he mentally organised his timetable for the following day. His kid, school, all the rest.

—

Before even touching her luggage, Noémie allowed herself to sit on the pontoon, feet dangling in the cool water, and contemplate the lake for a long while. Surprised by the sudden onset of night, she took a sweater from her holdall and piled the rest of her clothes into the back of the bedroom wardrobe. Set on an old, uneven parquet floor and facing a window that looked out over the forest, the big bed opened wide its arms. Having made it up, she stretched out on it, thought about dinner and a hundred other things, then fell asleep on top of the bedclothes.

Towards midnight she was jolted awake by a piercing animal cry, a doleful lament. She listened hard but heard nothing more. She slipped under the sheets and turned back and forth in search of a sleep that toyed with her until sunrise.

Noémie had hoped she was leaving sleepless nights behind in Paris, but they had pursued her here.

17

At six in the morning and after two bowls of coffee, Noémie walked round the house to the garage. It was not so much a garage as a wooden lean-to, its wall covered in rampant tendrils of ivy. She went in and pushed aside a giant spider’s web blocking the light switch. The dusty bulb gave off a feeble glow that just about allowed her to make out the silhouette of a vehicle under a tarpaulin. She tugged it off, to discover a 4×4 Land Rover, its wheels thick with mud, but seemingly in good shape. The kind of vehicle a forester might have, impossible to destroy and impossible to park in town.

As promised, the keys were in the ignition. The engine started as if it had been waiting for her. She tested the wipers and then the headlights, which immediately flooded the lean-to with light. Through the windscreen she saw a box of toys on a metal shelf, with a silver sheriff’s badge pinned to it. She got out of the Land Rover to take a closer look. Some plastic toy soldiers, a number of old racing cars. Beneath all this clutter she found a black-and-white photograph in a wooden frame. Sitting on a tree trunk, a man maybe in his forties, a shotgun slung over his shoulder, accompanied by a young boy smiling broadly, fists on hips, the sheriff’s star pinned to his shirt, proud to be with the person who to all appearances was his father. Despite the childish features, it was obviously Romain smiling at her. Noémie carefully put everything back in the box and returned it to the shelf, slightly uneasy at having poked her nose into her new lieutenant’s private life.

*

Romain arrived with a police officer’s punctuality, that is to say ten minutes before the agreed time. He parked his vehicle while his new capitaine finished sorting out the house, busying herself in the living room. He tapped politely on the half-open sliding doors.

“So? How was your first evening in the country? I hope the silence didn’t disturb you too much. Did you sleep well?”

Noémie threw the last dust sheet onto the old brown leather sofa.

“That’s a question you’d best not ask me. Lately my nights have been like a burglar on the prowl.”

With that she picked up the 4×4 keys from the table and slipped on her coat. She was impatient to start her day, to forget the woman she did not want to be and at last become a police officer again. With the rising sun, Noémie’s bristling hair took on copper tints, and for the first time Romain noticed the silver streak at her right temple.

“We’ll pass by Firmi first of all, if you don’t mind,” he announced.

Noémie couldn’t withhold an exasperated sigh.

“I can see you’re making a great effort, and I promise you I appreciate it, but I’ll have all the time in the world to visit our six communes. What I want right now is to get started in my post.”

“O.K., I get it,” Romain said with a smile. “What if I added a dead body? Would that interest you more?”

“Ah, now you’re appealing to my emotions.”

—

A patrol car was already there, parked opposite a tall, rickety little house sticking up on a hilltop like a twisted nail. Built from an old three-storey dovecote, all its rooms – hallway, living room, kitchen and bedroom – had been fitted on top of one another like a toy Lego building.

Romain tapped on the car bonnet, waking one of the officers and startling the other one, immersed in his smartphone. The two men scrambled out of the car and he introduced them.

“Capitaine Chastain, may I present Brigadier Bousquet, a refugee from the Marseille Drug Squad. He’s been here for six years.”

The man in question, still only half awake, had middle-aged spread and an affable nature confirmed by his limp handshake.

“And this is Gardien de la Paix Soulignac. A local boy, born and raised in Decazeville. He knows almost all the families in our communes. To us he’s known as ‘Bambi’.”

“Good morning, ma’am. Welcome.”

Were it not for the visible weapon at his belt, Soulignac would never have been taken for a police officer, hardly even for an adult. His nickname could not have been more appropriate: he gave the impression of having only just been weaned.

“Together with me,” Valant said, “this is our whole investigative team.”

He had warned them the evening before. About how strict their new leader was bound to be, but also about her face. And if they followed his instructions to the letter, they perhaps went a bit too far. Bousquet stared straight at her, afraid he might look in the wrong direction and be unable to tear himself away. For his part, Bambi was inspecting the tip of his shoes as if this was the first time he had noticed them. They were poor actors but were making a real effort.

“Let’s go in,” Noémie said. “Do you have gloves?”

“That really won’t be necessary,” Bousquet claimed. “Bambi and I have tracked down the murderer. It’s the fuses.”

Undeterred by the smell and the first flies, Noémie knelt next to the spiral staircase connecting the three floors and inspected the dead body closely. Chin resting on the left shoulder, mouth half open, dried yellowish froth on the lips . . . His hands were gripping the control on the stairlift, stuck between two floors. The near centenarian’s by now glassy stare was on the entrance hall telephone, which was lying on a lace mat on a low table two metres from him. The signs of his anguish and frustration were still evident on his face.

How useless you must feel, in body and mind, when you know you’re going to die so stupidly. Noémie reflected on the days and nights he must have waited all alone, hoping someone would pay him a visit. By the time the postman called, it was too late. Almost accustomed to this kind of macabre discovery, he had contacted the police.

Behind Noémie, the rest of her team watched her at work with great curiosity. Bousquet repeated his conclusions:

“No doubt about it, the fuses must have blown. Without electricity, he got stuck on the stairlift. Shall we call the fire service?”

“Them and others. Any neighbours who could have spotted a prowler?”

“None less than five kilometres away. The Crozes family,” Bambi said. “They’re the bakers in Firmi.”

“O.K., tell them to come in for an interview this afternoon. Call the forensic people to take fingerprints on the electricity meter and the stairlift motor. Make a note of the serial number and get in touch with the manufacturer for them to send their expert. And contact a member of his family to come and see that there’s nothing missing from the house. I’ll check the exterior for signs of a break-in, and we’ll seal off the house with tape.”

Bambi and Bousquet exchanged glances, taken aback by a long list of tasks they considered pointless. They turned to Lieutenant Valant, not yet sure who exactly was in charge now. With a sad nod of the head, Romain confirmed the orders. Left on his own with Noémie, he nonetheless tried to restrain her.

“Capitaine, you know it’s almost certainly an accident, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Do you think I see murders everywhere? I’m doing the absolute minimum and trying to avoid any future problems for us, that’s all.”

Noémie inspected the windows one after another, then went to the back of the house to search for footprints in the soft soil. When she had been all round the building, she found herself a metre away from Bousquet, who was facing away from her, talking on his mobile. Bambi was beyond him, sitting on the bonnet of the patrol car. Obviously waiting for someone to answer, Bousquet put his hand over the microphone and called out gleefully:

“Shit, Bambi, have you seen what she looks like? A face like that must make kids burst into tears. I wouldn’t touch her with a bargepole.”

He was about to laugh, but when he saw his young colleague’s eyes widen, the laugh got stuck in his throat. Bousquet turned round and felt a complete cretin when he saw Noémie. She did not deign to show him how angry she was, simply saying with a hint of scorn:

“You wait here for the fire brigade and forensics. I’ll see you at the station.”

The two men straightened up with a contrite “Yes, ma’am.”

Her jaw clenched, Noémie climbed into the people carrier and sat slumped in the passenger seat. She quickly forced down the lump in her throat. There was no real difference between knowing it and hearing it. Bousquet had only said out loud what everyone thought. She would have to get used to it. Her lieutenant came to join her but did not start the engine.

“Capitaine?”

“Yes?”

“You’re in my car. Your Land Rover is behind.”

She saw the imposing outline in the rear-view mirror.

What if her boss was right? What if she wasn’t ready . . .?

—

Exactly 24 hours after arriving at the train station and first setting foot in the Aveyron, Noémie was finally introduced to Decazeville police headquarters. A low red-brick building with three steps at its entrance. A peaceful spot only disrupted by the adjacent school at break times. All around, however, were discernible signs of social decay. To the left, an abandoned hotel with broken windows, though it maintained traces of a glorious past. To the right, a cinema, its glass doors covered in newspaper, announced the times for “Lethal Weapon 2”, which dated its closure more accurately than any autopsy. Romain could see Noémie was disappointed.

“I know what you’re saying to yourself. But it’s the opposite. Our communes aren’t dying, they’re waking up. They just have to be given time. There are lots of projects for the valley, but my father could explain that better than me.”

“Why so?”

“Because he’s the mayor of Avalone,” Romain reminded her.

“Yes, I’m sorry, I’d forgotten that.”

“Focus, Noémie, focus!” she scolded herself as she climbed to the top floor of the police station.

Lieutenant Valant knocked on the commandant’s door to introduce the new arrival. He remained in the doorway while Noémie entered. She found her boss standing at the window, staring into the distance. He didn’t bother to turn round, either to impress her or simply to demonstrate that a female police officer from Paris did not impress him one atom. He continued the conversation he had apparently begun before she came in.

“You know they’ve installed themselves two streets from here? Right next to us. I can see them from the window, with their swanky new cars.”

“Who?”

“The gendarmes, damn it! But they’ll get a shock when they hear. A new officer will prove the ministry still believes in us. I’d like to see their faces.”

He finally turned round and took his time looking Noémie up and down.

“Yup. He certainly didn’t miss, did he? But this isn’t a model agency, so it’ll be fine. I imagine that’s why you’re here. Some kind of convalescence? To get away from it all?”

“Something like that,” Noémie conceded.

His attitude had not offended her, because there was no appropriate one. Everybody reacted in their own way, better or worse, with more or less class, with surprise, discomfort, or downright disgust. Half her face had trodden on a mine: it was her problem and no-one else’s. She could hardly ask everyone she met to win an Oscar.

“If you haven’t already been told, I’m Commandant Roze. Given your rank, you ought to be my assistant, but I can run the shop perfectly well without you. So, officially, you’re to collaborate with me in running the station. Unofficially, from now on you’re in charge of the investigative team. You’ll have more fun there than following around an elderly gendarme who has one eye on retirement, trying to leave the place as decent as when he first found it. Besides, with you on my heels I’d feel as if I was being followed by an undertaker measuring my coffin. So I’ll leave the investigations to you and keep the uniforms in line. Agreed?”

Noémie preferred to lay her cards on the table.

“I failed my firearms test.”

“I know,” Roze said with a shrug.

“I can’t operate in the field.”

“I know that too.”

“Apparently I could be putting my colleagues at risk.”

“That’s what your superiors seem to think: I’m aware of that as well. But I’m not a total idiot. The Paris Bastion would never send me a completely fit officer. I suspected there was a hidden twist.”

“Hidden? Not really. I’d say it was rather . . . visible.”

Roze appreciated her ability to laugh at herself. However, he was confusing what he took as acceptance with a simple defence mechanism.

“At the risk of spoiling your hopes about your new post, the last murder in the region was five years ago, and the last person to draw a gun did so four years ago. If there’s a good place for you to recover, it’s here. With us. Let the region take its time. As for your firearm, you’re a big girl, so let’s say you’re the one who’ll decide the moment to carry one again.”

Roze’s reassuring paternal attitude gave Noémie the pleasing sensation of being a child again, with an adult telling her: “From now on I’ll look after everything, you can close your eyes.” But just like a father, Roze also took arbitrary decisions.

“Regarding Lebel, I’ve cancelled everything. There really was no point.”

“Lebel?”

“The old man stuck between two floors you saw this morning. You’ve called for far too many judicial procedures. Lebel is a former architect. Never knew how to do anything else, and he never knew how to do that well. That lopsided dovecote he lived in was his last creation. He has no family to persecute him or any money to be fought over, still less any enemies to fear. So there was no reason for him to be attacked. No need for stairlift experts or to look for fingerprints to be able to put it down to a stupid accident.”

Noémie was about to question this, but suddenly backtracked, telling herself it was best not to put her new boss’ back up on her first day. Roze settled into his chair, and Noémie realised he was trying to find the words not to make things worse.

“Listen, in Paris you’re experts in everything scientific. Fingerprints, C.C.T.V., phone tapping, G.P.S. tracking, drones, D.N.A., ballistic tests. You’re not so much a police force as a laboratory. And all that because you know nothing about those who commit the crimes or their victims. So you have to look somewhere else. Here, we start with the people, because we know them. When we arrest someone, it’s often a neighbour, sometimes even a cousin or an uncle, but almost always somebody close to the victim. We know their habits, their friends and family, their secrets, car, address, their childhood sweetheart, what quarrel they have with which family, and why. I can promise you that nobody fused the electricity in Lebel’s hovel in order to trap him on the stairs.”

Despite the obvious good sense of Roze’s explanation, Noémie wasn’t giving up so easily.

“I thought you were looking after the uniforms, and I was doing the investigations?”

A half smile appeared on Roze’s lips. Chastain was obstinate and meticulous – in other words a pain in the ass – and he already liked her.

“Alright, let’s say you start tomorrow. I’ve heard that Romain’s father is treating you well. Enjoy his house, or visit the other five communes. It’s important to know your patch. Tell yourself you’re working, if that makes you feel less guilty.”

And since everybody seemed to want her to play the tourist, Noémie accepted the inevitable and turned on her heel.

On her way to the Land Rover in the police car park she met a guilty-looking Bousquet and Bambi. The baby policeman rushed inside, while Bousquet squirmed miserably, trying to make up for what he had said.

“Listen, about just now . . . About my remarks . . .”

Noémie refused to let him finish and risk finding she had to accept his clumsy apology.

“Let’s get things straight, Brigadier. I’m not that bothered you’re a complete prick. Just so long as you’re a good police officer. You’ve already well and truly ticked the ‘big prick’ box. Congratulations. Let’s see if in the future you can do the same for the second one.”

She left him standing there, staggering from the uppercut she had just dealt him.

18

Decazeville, Aubin, Cransac, Firmi and Viviez. It took her less than half an hour to visit them all, before she drove back towards Avalone, the last of the six communes. She went around the lake, realising it was much bigger than she had been able to see from her private pontoon.

It stretched between two valleys before disappearing into the woods. The road climbed steeply, leaving the lake further and further below her, in a vertiginous drop. Turning a bend, she came across a stand of trees. In front of her was the top of a vast concrete wall that began 113 metres lower down.

Avalone dam.

It cut the lake in two, like someone rudely interrupting a conversation. On one side, millions of cubic metres of water poured into the dam’s inner workings, before being pushed out on the other side into a placid river which Noémie’s G.P.S. informed her was called “La Sentinelle”.

She realised that Avalone lake was in fact man-made, a gigantic construction site to produce electricity. She got out of her car and cautiously approached the top of the dam, then leaned over the guardrail, her hands on the cold metal, peering out into the void. Far below, the pine trees looked like balcony plants. She felt giddy, and tried to control the sensation, until the buzz of her mobile made her jump and take two steps back.

“Madame Mersier, is everything alright?”

Her almost blind neighbour, 600 kilometres away, had managed, heavens knows how, to dial her number.

“I’ve lost the keys to your letter box, my dear.”

“That’s great. I’ve no wish for news from Paris.”

“So I shouldn’t tell you about your fellow?”

Adriel. He had a spare key to her flat. Shit.

“Tell me anyway,” Noémie said glumly.

“It was just after you left. I followed him to your door. He seemed upset.”

“Did he take anything with him?”

“No. I think it was you he had come to see. You shouldn’t abandon boys like that. When they’re left on their own, they get up to no good. Anyway, he seemed very nice.”

Noémie was not violent by nature, but at that moment she wished she had Adriel in front of her, to see how many Asian hornets she could ram down his throat.

“Yes, he’s a very nice boy. But if he turns up again, take the keys from him and put them with the letter box ones.”

“But I’ve lost them.”

“Exactly.”

19

The night was filled with animals.

First, her cat. Huge, his head filling the entire police station entrance, an eye behind each window, tail poking out of the gutted roof and slashing the lowest clouds, claws planted in the corridors, purring loudly enough to rattle the windowpanes.

Then Noémie woke up, nerves jangling. The same piercing howl, sharp enough to shatter a glass. Noémie was sure it wasn’t human. She stood by the sliding doors in her cotton underwear, listening intently, trying to see into the darkness. But as on the previous night, there was only a single cry . . . if there really had been one.

Her night was ruined. Not worth insisting. Laid end to end, the stolen minutes of sleep would not amount to three hours in total. She would have to be satisfied with that.

She let the sun rise, put her coffee down in front of the laptop, and when Melchior finally appeared, she swiftly described the last 48 hours.

Obviously, it was the dream that most interested him.

“I get the sense you’ve disturbed them somewhat. Look at the image you have of yourself, taking up the entire police station and even smashing through the roof. Whose ceiling have you smashed? Your team’s or your boss’?”

“To be honest, both. I’m sarcastic, aggressive and pretty stubborn.”

“Were you like that before?”

“Probably, but not as much. I’m bored to death. This isn’t a village, it’s a hole with a postcode. I don’t think I’ve smiled once since I got here.”

“That’s a shame. It lights up your face.”

“It’s fine in the wings.”

The shrink’s face fell.

“You’re entirely mistaken. Have you ever thought about what the human face is for? Have you grasped that it reflects all your emotions? It shows sadness, joy, our fears, questions, pain as well as enjoyment. It speaks even before words do. It can express 21 emotions in total, 21 different messages you’re conveying to someone else.”

“More than that, if you count the micro-expressions every good officer looks out for in an interview,” Noémie added.

“Perfect, you know the subject well. So, to continue: a person born blind is incapable of these communicative gestures. Quite simply because they’ve never had any visual social interaction. Our facial expressions are of no use to us personally, they’re simply messages we’re sending for anybody who wants to receive them. The face is one of the rare parts of the body you can’t see without a mirror, but above all, it’s the first thing you look at. It’s exclusively there for the other. It’s also the only part of the body that employs all five senses. It’s wholly open to the world. And you want to leave it in the wings?”

“Let’s say it has stage fright, like a young actress who doesn’t know her part.”

Melchior burst out laughing.

“That’s a quaint metaphor. So you’re waiting until you find yourself pretty again to show yourself? Do you really think beauty means acceptance? Do you know how many suicides there are in the world of fashion models? You’d be surprised. Some people are sublime and yet they’re miserable; others are totally ordinary and yet are totally fulfilled. We should all consider ourselves marvellous. We ought to love ourselves without waiting for others to do so. I’m sure you know that we use hardly a grain of our brain’s capacity?”

“About ten per cent., tops.”

“Exactly. But the saddest fact is that we are only ‘ourselves’ in around 30 per cent. of it. Some ten, others 40, but never completely. We drag our wounds, secrets, our complexes with us, and all that prevents us from being whole, from being marvellous. There are almost eight billion people on earth and God, if you accept the notion, has given each and every one of us a different face, as different as our D.N.A. Bravo to him for making such an effort, but the conclusion is that you have one face among eight billion others: it’s yours, you won’t be able to change it. So either you step centre stage or you’re stuck.”

Taken aback, Noémie sat up on the old leather couch.

“Do you think you could go a bit more gently in the next sessions?”

“If you give me a smile, it’s a deal.”

“We’ll see.”

She ended the call.

20

The first week dragged by as slowly as a drifting continent. Several cases of damage to private property, a combine harvester driven off but found again within the hour thanks to the size of it. A result for Bousquet, formerly of the Drug Squad, who uncovered an entire field of cannabis but unfortunately not the owner; two or three drunks left to sober up in the cells; and boredom insidiously weighing Noémie down as the days crawled by. She could not get rid of the feeling she was stuck in slow motion, so that when she heard the words “missing person” out in the corridor she sprang from her seat like a jack-in-a-box. She caught up with Romain Valant as he was taking down the information from a patrol uniform, and grilled him.

“What kind of victim? How long since they disappeared? Are you thinking of organising a search? Do you have sniffer dogs?”

Valant had reached the point where he could almost have wished for some drama to satisfy his capitaine’s appetite. A serial killer straight out of a novel, ecological terrorists, even a meteorite falling on the village square. Anything.

“Sorry, Capitaine, but it’s only Madame Saulnier. Ninety years old if a day. She goes missing once a week, so there’s nothing untoward here. We’ll find her at one of her regular haunts. The old cinema or the Decazeville media library, the shores of Lake Avalone or the Puy de Wolf at Firmi.”

“Is there a link between them?”

“We’re still trying to work that out . . . I suggest we start with them before we bring in the heavy artillery. But of course it’s up to you.”

Noémie’s shoulders slumped as low as those of a child whose birthday has been cancelled.

“No, that’s fine,” she conceded. “We’ll do as you say. Get the teams together.”

Bambi and Bousquet were allotted the cinema, the media library and the lake, while Noémie and Valant made for the Puy de Wolf.

“Do you want to drive?” he said.

“I’d prefer not to.”

It was only when he was in the driver’s seat that Romain realised this meant that when the capitaine was in the passenger seat she offered him her only bearable profile.

After 20 long minutes, they arrived at their destination. No siren or blue lights, respecting traffic coming in from the right, red lights and speed restrictions. All this was torture for Capitaine Chastain. They parked beside a stretch of water at the foot of the Puy de Wolf. Taking out his binoculars, Valant surveyed the summit, then spoke into his radio.

“O.K., I see her,” he told the other team.

“Right at the top?” Bambi said.

“Yeah. Right at the top.”

“Enjoy the climb then.”

The Puy de Wolf was not very high, and nobody could call it a mountain, but it was steep enough to present a challenge. Earthcoloured tufts of coarse grass and sharp rocks of jade-green toxic serpentinite scattered like some ghastly mineral acne all over the 490-metre climb. Violent, inhospitable nature creating a rugged landscape that instantly appealed to Noémie. At the summit, a spectral white silhouette that appeared to be dancing.

“Christ, she must be fit!” Chastain gasped, out of breath only halfway up.

“Saulnier? She’s as tough as old boots.”

“Do we know what brings her here?”

“Here or elsewhere, I’m not sure she really knows where she is, still less what she comes here to do.”

When they reached her, the old woman approached Romain to greet him. As she did so, she passed dangerously close to a crevice formed by two huge boulders that were now spliced together, sunk several metres into the ground.

“Little Romain!” she greeted Valant. “Sad boy. What are you doing here?”

He reached her swiftly and took her hand to avoid the risk of any inadvertent fall. In her senility, Madame Saulnier’s confidence had grown, doubtless with a childlike belief that she was indestructible.

“I was out for a walk with my friend here,” Valant continued, “and when we saw you, we wondered whether we might take the opportunity and return with you. We have a car.”

“And you’re in your nightgown,” Noémie said.

As if realising it for the first time, the old woman looked down at the thin floral-patterned gown she was wearing.

“Let’s go,” was her brief reply.

The strange assortment of lieutenant, senile old woman and freak set off down the Puy de Wolf, leaving behind the crevice Madame Saulnier had strayed so close to. At the bottom, hidden by a gorse bush, was a small, decaying wooden cross, obscured like a dark secret.

21

Romain Valant took the clip from his pistol, ejected the bullet from the chamber and put everything away in his wardrobe safe. With an inquisitive little girl in the house, he didn’t want to run any risks. He remembered the chilling incident that had taken place not so long ago, and not so far away. A Christmas, a family, a child, a rifle. He saw in the same room a decorated tree, fairy lights mingling with the fire service’s revolving blue ones, one of the paramedics trying to revive a child. To no avail. And the next day, wrapped presents that would never be opened. Gun-owners run three times more risk than others of killing someone, he reminded himself, or of being killed themselves. He closed the safe and reset the security code.

He crossed the living room and ruffled his daughter’s hair. She was sitting in front of the hearth, socks close to the flames, lost in an adventure novel so thick her small hands struggled to keep it upright.

Aminata came out of the kitchen carrying a steaming dish that she put on the table. A different menu every night without even having to cook: the advantage of being a waitress at the Auberge du Fort, the restaurant in Aubin, one of the neighbouring communes. Romain took her hand and kissed it. His white skin on his wife’s black one had, ten years earlier, led to the birth of Lily, a caramelcoloured child with lavender-blue eyes. His marriage had, however, brought about friction between him and his father, who didn’t like the mixture of colours. Even Lily’s arrival had not changed anything. Since that time, Pierre Valant had not set foot in their home and sighed openly whenever Romain mentioned his family. As a result, the two had as little to do with one another as possible. The words “father” and “son” had almost disappeared from their vocabularies. Pierre saw his son as a policeman; Romain thought of his father as the mayor of Avalone. The rest was nothing but memories.

Gone, the hunting parties. The sheriff’s star, pinned to a cardboard box. And the family home near the lake suffered far too much from the absence of the deceased Madame Valant, whose only memento was an identical framed photograph in the two men’s houses.

“So? Is she softening?” Aminata wanted to know.

“More like she’s becoming resigned to it.”

“Is she adapting to the countryside?”

“And how!” he scoffed. “She still thinks she’s in the city. She double-locks the lakeside house, locks the doors of the car if she is to be a few metres from it, and is ready to embark on a crusade at the slightest incident. I feel as if I’m working with a stick of dynamite on a long fuse. I know she’s going to explode, it’s only the ‘when’ I don’t yet know. But strangely, that’s not what worries me.”

Lily abandoned her adventures to come and sit at the table, unable to resist the delicious smell filling the living room. The dish of potato purée with melted fresh cheese and a touch of garlic was served with a thick, juicy sausage. Outside, tree branches scraped against the tiled roof as if they too wanted to enjoy the evening.

“I get the impression she has absences,” Romain continued. “Lapses. She doesn’t take everything in. I sometimes think she loses control. I think even her aggressiveness is too much for her.”

“So it’s up to you to support her. Don’t let anybody but you become aware of her weaknesses. Protect her. That’s what a lieutenant does, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s what a lieutenant does. So I’m to be the patch on her puncture, am I?”

“She must suffer a lot,” Aminata said sadly.

“I don’t think so. She doesn’t show it, anyway.”

“She must suffer in her heart, you idiot.”

Lily burst out laughing at her father’s crestfallen face. Once she had polished off her small mountain of purée, she suggested what seemed obvious:

“Invite her here. She’s all on her own in that house.”

“I’ll think about it,” said a slightly embarrassed Romain.

“Is she pretty?” the little one said.

“You know what she’s like; I’ve told you.”

“So what? When I fell off my bike and grazed my cheek, you told me I was still pretty.”

“Alright,” her father conceded. “She’s as pretty as if she had had ten bike accidents.”

“So you’ll invite her?”

“Eat, or I’ll eat you.”

“Like the ogre of Malbouche? The one who eats children without even chewing them?”

“Exactly like him, mademoiselle.”

—

Noémie was finishing her bowl of tea on the edge of the chestnut wood, sitting on a twisted, mossy, low tree trunk. Wrapped in a woollen cardigan, she was trying to follow Melchior’s advice and stimulate positive thoughts, at the same time attempting to forget her face and the secret reasons for her being there, and the distress she was soon going to cause by closing the police station. Behind her, the windows of the house glinted in the setting sun.

Somewhere from among the trees she heard a noise of leaves being trodden on, and branches pushed back to clear a way. She dropped her feet to the ground, legs slightly bent, ready to flee a wolf, a bear, the beast of Gévaudan or any other Parisian fantasy. But it was nothing more than a mongrel dog poking his nose out. A mutt crossed and recrossed for generations, with black fur and white belly. He began to pace up and down in front of her, not coming any closer, staying at the edge of the wood. Noémie’s body relaxed and she sat back on the trunk.

“Hello there. Are you the one making all the noise at night?”

The dog edged closer to her centimetre by centimetre, so that she was able to see him better. A dislocated jaw meant his tongue lolled to one side. His left eye was swollen and constantly weeping. His gait, out of kilter from a damaged leg, was a kind of swaying limp.

“You’re a bruiser, aren’t you?”

She could hear his rasping breath and by now could almost touch him.

“Anyway, you’re in a sorry state. We could be friends.”

Noémie finally put her hand on the dog’s flank and stroked him gently. In her mind she was searching through her cupboards for something to offer this evening visitor when there was a powerful whistle in the distance. The dog’s ears pricked up, its body suddenly stiffened. Then he raced off as fast as his bad leg allowed, and was soon swallowed up by the trees.

“Glad to make your acquaintance.”

22

Noémie only knew of her landlord through his son, and if Romain had never said anything bad about him, his silences and the sour look in his eyes spoke volumes. And so, when Pierre Valant himself came to visit her in the house by the lake, she was surprised by how friendly he was.

In his long dark-green overcoat he blended in with the surroundings as if he didn’t want to disturb them. Noémie immediately saw the likeness to Romain in his eyes.

“These first ten days may have seemed a bit long to you,” he admitted, “but you need them to get into our rhythm. Soon, without you even noticing it, a month will have passed, then a year, and you’ll no longer be able to contemplate living elsewhere. You’ll even ask yourself how you could have lived in Paris for so long, in those apartments the size of rabbit hutches.”

Seeing the question of housing had been raised, Noémie quickly turned to serious matters: some practical things that had been left too long in the air.

“About the rent . . .” she began.

He settled the matter instantly.

“As for the rent, let’s say all I ask is that you look after the place. Does that suit you?”

“I’d really like to accept, but unfortunately one can’t offer anything to a police officer before it becomes dubious. There’s a fine line between generosity and bribery. If one day I have to arrest you, it would worry me.”

Valant had bridled a moment before grasping the capitaine’s humour, as chilly as her attitude. A block of ice impossible to make smile. And so they agreed on a price that was so derisory it was virtually a gift. But Valant assured her that the rent on a Paris studio was as much as a house anywhere else in France. Noémie then had to put up with the speech repeated a hundred times by “his honour the mayor”, a man sincerely committed to, and proud of, his village.

“The Avalone dam brought us a lot of jobs, but that was 25 years ago. Since then, our communes have languished again. It’s Mecanic Vallée*that’s given us the chance to breathe once more. Even the Chinese are interested. Not counting the English, who fall in love with our region and buy houses as if this was Monopoly. Two new shops have already opened on our main street. The world is discovering us,” he boasted, “and we’re ready to welcome it. As long as the people come from the right part of the globe, if you follow me.”

This last remark meant Pierre Valant instantly lost all his charm for Noémie. She politely cut short their conversation, inventing a meeting with Commandant Roze at the police station.

—

Nevertheless, 20 days later, Noémie had to admit that Pierre Valant had been right about one thing at least: the month had passed without her realising it. She had been lulled by a soothing natural environment and a daily routine with none of the booby traps of police hierarchy. Her boredom had given way to a lethargic daily round and, although criminality did its best to exist, Decazeville police station worked in slow motion – which put its future in doubt.

She had, however, scrupulously avoided becoming attached, despite Romain’s repeated invitations, Bambi’s kindness and the efforts poor Bousquet made every day to make up for the huge blunder he had committed at their first meeting. Even Commandant Roze had given up trying to find ways to make her feel more at home.

But the verdict was clear, and its consequences: the price of her return to Paris.

And so she sat at her computer, staring at a blank page with an unambiguous title: “Report on the activities of Decazeville police station, its six communes, and the transfer to the gendarmerie”.

The maimed dog howled in the distance. She would abandon him too the day her treachery came to light.

She was there to destroy, not to repair.

The night was insufferable. Physically and morally. She travelled several kilometres without moving from her bed, got up time and again, and in the bathroom mirror called herself a “real bitch” together with other compliments.

By early morning she had recovered. A ray of sunshine crept across the living room and lit up her empty bags in front of the sliding doors. Determined to leave the Aveyron once and for all, she uploaded her report to a U.S.B. stick.

—

It was a little before seven when Romain knocked on her door. He looked drawn, and his sunny disposition, which Noémie thought was unshakeable, had vanished into thin air.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” he said, seeing her if not exactly fresh, at least wide awake.

“It’s not by choice. But what are you doing here at this time of day, with that look on your face?”

“We think we’ve found a dead body.”

“You think? There’s rarely any doubt in these cases. They’re either dead or alive.”

“Definitely dead.”

“Another stairlift accident?”

“I’d have preferred that.”

Noémie slipped the U.S.B. into her jeans pocket and climbed into his people carrier.

She could sort that out later in the day.

Above all, she was going to return to her rightful place as team leader in the Drug Squad in Paris.

A hitch, this was nothing more than a tiresome hitch.

“Where was the body found?”

“In a plastic barrel. Floating on the surface of the lake.”

_________

Similar to Silicon Valley for computing, Mecanic Vallée has so far brought together 213 companies and 13,000 employees to promote French know-how in the aeronautics and automobile industries.

PART THREE

Deep in the Storm

23

The fisherman who made the discovery was throwing up his breakfast, audibly but out of sight behind a tree. On the sandy shore, the police team was waiting for Chastain to arrive. A security cordon had been thrown around a red barrel about 80 centimetres high with a capacity of some 200 litres. Its big lid had been removed. Even though the barrel was in the fresh air, the nauseous stench coming from it sickened them all. Bousquet handed Noémie a pair of latex gloves. She took a deep breath before cautiously taking a look inside the barrel.

In it were bones, organic matter in a sticky liquid, a toothless skull and a few tufts of brown hair. A skeleton and a barrelful of mush.

“Where was it found?”

“Somewhere over there.” Bambi pointed. “Floating in the middle of the lake, 50 metres from the shore.”

“That’s not exactly pinpointing it, is it?” Chastain grumbled.

“Sorry, Fabre attached it to his boat to bring it to land without knowing what it was. Until he opened it.”

“Fabre?”

“The fisherman behind the pines practising his scales,” Romain explained.

Deciding it was best to be blunt, Noémie called Valant over.

“You’ve got a kid. What age would fit in there?”

“Between eight and ten years, I’d say. Twelve, if it was rammed in.”

“And there are no outstanding reports of unexplained disappearances,” Bambi added.

Confused, Noémie knelt down next to the barrel.

“Given the state of the body, I reckon it was before your time. No flesh, no muscles, teeth missing and only threads of hair remaining. Dead for several years. A long while before you joined the force.”

She stood up, snapped off her gloves, and followed the protocols.

“From now on, don’t touch a thing. Call the undertakers, screw the lid back on and tell them to use straps to lift it. It’d be crazy if it all flooded out in their van. They’ll have to separate contents from container as soon as they get to the Forensic Institute at . . .”

“Montpellier,” Valant said.

“Right . . . Montpellier. I’ll make a report for the public prosecutor at . . .”

“Rodez.”

“It’d be just my luck if I couldn’t hand this on to the police judiciaire in . . . Rodez? Montpellier?”

“No, Toulouse.”

“Fine, that’s simple, then.”

There was a hint of disappointment in Lieutenant Valant’s voice when he said: “I thought you’d have wanted to keep the case.”

His regret came not only from her wish to hand on a criminal case, but also from the image Romain had created for himself of this renowned police capitaine, desperate, he thought, to have a serious investigation in which to immerse herself.

“Well then, you’ve misjudged me,” she said.

Nothing more than a stupid hitch.

Whatever happened, she was out of there that same day.

Bambi and Bousquet remained at the lake to wait for the undertakers, while Chastain was driven back to the police station. When her car disappeared round a bend, Bambi finally allowed himself to think out loud, staring over the water.

“It’s the old village releasing its ghosts. Nothing good will come of it.”

“Don’t start with your country legends,” Bousquet snapped. “People will take you for a yokel.”

24

Back in the investigative team’s office, Noémie launched the video conference with the public prosecutor. As Decazeville was almost 40 kilometres from the High Court in Rodez, this was the best way to talk to them.

She summarised the situation: the barrel, the body, how long ago the incident most likely occurred, and her group’s lack of capacity, doing her best to convince the prosecutor that handing the case over to the police judiciaire in Toulouse was the only solution.

“Toulouse? Impossible,” the prosecutor said. “They’re so overwhelmed I’ve already sent them reinforcements from Montpellier. Settlings of account, rapes and massive drug trafficking: the city risks going under. The same can’t be said of your men. Who could ask for a better alignment of the stars? You’ve got a single case and an entire team at your disposal. As you know, a police judiciaire officer isn’t any better than a local station officer.”

“This is probably a murder or an attempt to conceal an accident. The local police shouldn’t have to deal with something like that,” Chastain argued.

“Even down here, your exploits in Paris are well known, Capitaine. And you have all my admiration and respect, I can assure you. Use your authority of fifteen years with the police judiciaire; that should be sufficient to get you through the first stages. I’ll see what I can do if things appear to be getting out of hand. Will that do?”

“Are you asking me?”

“I’m proposing an agreement.”

In a rage, Noémie slammed the door shut before making her next call. She knew the Bastion number by heart, of course, and, thanks to the nationwide sharing of files, the boss must already have heard something about the case.

“Chastain!”

“We said 30 days,” she cut in.

Yet that had not been long enough. The director-general had found lots of cupboards where he could hide his troublesome officer, but no convincing reason for doing so. Nothing, absolutely nothing, justified her being sidelined. Except perhaps a crushing failure, a clear demonstration of her inability to operate in the field.

“It’s only a matter of a few days,” he reassured her. “The aim is to prove the police station is useless. Your clodhopping locals are not going to solve this case. Especially a cold case like this one, if the state of the corpse is anything to go by. Take on the investigation, make a complete hash of it, have it transferred to Toulouse, or even to the gendarmes. As you know, your position here awaits you. You need to trust us.”

And so the little body crammed into a barrel and forgotten for years became the key to the director-general’s plan to rid himself legitimately of Chastain. All she had to do was fail.

When Noémie left the office to go and see Commandant Roze, she found the rest of the team there, waiting to hear the decision.

“We’re keeping the case for now,” she told them.

Delighted by the news, Bousquet gave Bambi a high five.

“I knew you wouldn’t let them talk you out of it!”

“Well done, Capitaine,” the baby police officer said.

Romain alone understood that they were the only ones welcoming the news. Noémie studiously avoided looking at him.

“How long for the forensic report?”

“The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow at 10.00.”

“Good. Bousquet, you interview the fisherman. Bambi, check all the cases of involuntary disappearance in the six communes over the past five years. Valant, if any D.N.A. samples were taken in those cases, warn the lab we’re soon going to need a series of comparisons with the body just found. And I want a report back every hour.”

She turned to Roze.

“I know you’re not going to like this, but I also want a copy of our investigation sent to the gendarmes. Purely for information. I imagine you don’t often collaborate, but it would be a shame to miss something because two forces are at war with one another.”

“But if they get a lead, they’re bound to want to take over the case!” Roze exclaimed, twisting on his chair as if it was electrified.

“That’s a risk we’ll have to take. What’s important here is the victim, isn’t it?”

Roze gave in. Valant was still trying to work out what was really important for his officer. After a month working together, he still knew nothing about her and what really motivated her.

—

‘Will you permit me to be frank?”

“You’ve never pulled your punches before.”

Noémie had returned to the house by the lake in the early evening. She started by viciously kicking her bags and smoking cigarette after cigarette as avidly as a condemned prisoner. Then she got in touch with Melchior. But the psychiatrist was not one to sugar-coat the pill or mollycoddle his patients.

“What do you want exactly, Capitaine? Paris has betrayed you. Don’t you feel ridiculous chasing after them? Who are you so keen to get back to? Adriel? In the same office, all day long? You told me you wanted to be a police officer, nothing but a police officer. You’ve been given a team that is happy to work with you, a case that in normal circumstances you would have fought to have. And yet you’re still angry all the time. Unless it’s fear. Fear of not being what you once were. The director-general thinks you’re going to fail. Is that what you want to show him? Are you still so desperate not to disappoint him? It’s only your face that’s been harmed. The rest works perfectly.”

“But if I stay here, they’ll have won.”

“If you make a success of this case, they’ll have lost. No-one will be able to refuse you a triumphant return. Take a deep breath, calm down, and we’ll see where we are tomorrow, if you like. Take a sleeping pill, O.K.?”

Deep breaths. Calm down. She paced round and round her living room, then up and down it, without any extra benefit. Fists clenched, red ants crawling all over her heart. Calm down. That was easy to say. She was about to boil over, ready to smash everything in the house.

Then the maimed dog howled. Once too often. And at the wrong moment.

She took a coat and ran to the fallen tree trunk where she had first seen the creature. Using the torch on her mobile, she plunged into the trees, and eventually came to a stone house on the far side of the wood.

Another cry of pain.

Jumping over the low wall round a vegetable plot, she crossed the yard and pounded on the front door.

“Police!” she shouted, then kicked the door as hard as she could.

The dog stopped howling. The sound of footsteps, then the door opened.

A man in his fifties appeared, wearing a thick shirt and corduroy trousers, obviously surprised at having a visitor so late at night. He opened his mouth but didn’t have time to say a word. Noémie pointed threateningly at him and allowed her anger to spill out.

“Listen to me, you inbred piece of shit. If I ever hear this dog howl again, I’ll come and personally tear off your balls and hang them on your rear-view mirror, then set fire to your car.”

The lopsided dog limped over and brushed himself against his master’s leg, dumbly faithful. There was blood on his muzzle and he was having difficulty breathing. The man reached for something behind the door, and when Noémie looked at him again, he was brandishing a shotgun, pointing it straight at her.

She instantly found herself transported to the flat in the Paris suburb, Adriel and her team behind her. The gunshot. Her face in shreds, like a torn piece of paper being burned. Paralysed.

The dog sensed the danger she was in. Not knowing what to do, he took a step towards Noémie, only to be sent flying to the far end of the room by a kick from his owner.

Without a word, the man stepped back and gently closed the door. Noémie collapsed, in the centre of the yard, the centre of the night, the centre of a storm of emotions. She was beaten, yet again.

Then slowly, like mercury rising, her fists closed. She got to her feet resolutely.

Yes. She was frightened. Of everything. Of staying here. Of going back to Paris. Of handling her gun. Of this investigation. Of confronting all those who thought she was worthless now. Of disappointing those who wanted to believe in her. Of not being able to love again. Of not being loved again. Yes, she was frightened. A fear that was real, like a dark monster hiding in her shadow. Omnipresent, lurking, feeding off her.

As she made her way back, a heavy rain began to fall, drenching her all the way home.

When for a second time that night the man felt his house shake from increasingly violent thumps on the door, he promised himself he would calm this new neighbour of his down once and for all. The moment he opened the door, Noémie drew her gun from the holster and pointed it straight at his face. But her voice was not as firm as she had hoped: she was close to tears.

“Go on. Get your gun. Give me that pleasure.”

The sight of this woman soaked to the skin, shaking like a leaf, her finger on the trigger but visibly more frightened than he was, persuaded the stranger not to move a muscle. But there was cruelty in his eyes, repressed hatred. The dog limped towards Noémie, looking back guiltily at his master, hesitating until she grasped his collar.

“If you follow me, if you try anything at all, I’ll shoot you on the spot.”

The longer she stayed there, the heavier the pistol became in her hands. Any moment now and she would have a panic attack. She backed away from the door and disappeared into the night.

25

When she opened her eyes, the first thing Noémie saw was the damp, crooked muzzle of the dog, who had installed himself on her duvet. Rubbing her eyes, she tried to remember, like rediscovering a lover after a drunken night.

“I’ve woken up with worse,” she reminded herself.

Just managing to avoid being licked, she pushed him off affectionately.

At first she considered calling him Adriel but immediately thought better of it: there was no way she wanted to pronounce that name several times a day. Since his face had something abstract about it, she settled on Picasso, promising herself that she would find something better in the future. Without realising it, she had just confirmed the possibility of there being a future.

She was becoming responsible for someone. Melchior would have suggested this was one way of accepting her destiny. And she would have rejected the idea, out of habit.

She pushed Picasso off the bed with her foot.

“I hope you enjoyed the bedroom, because this is your last time in here. As my father used to say, a dog’s place is out of doors.”

—

Bousquet and Bambi were waiting for her in the police station car park, and they did not look happy.

“A problem? Another case?” Noémie said.

“Nothing really serious. A complaint over death threats and a stolen dog. Something about balls and a rear-view mirror. I didn’t understand it all, but from the message it sounds like you.”

“Monsieur Vidal,” explained Bambi, the region’s foremost genealogist. “A former Foreign Legion soldier. It could have turned out worse. We know he’s not exactly kind to his animals, but it would be good all the same if it was nothing to do with you.”

This was the moment for Picasso to show his head in the back of the Land Rover. With his lolling tongue and crooked jaw, he and Noémie looked like a matching pair.

“Oh, shit,” Bousquet muttered. “Now what are we supposed to do, Capitaine?”

“Start by calling a vet, then we’ll see. I’m off to the autopsy, we’re already late.”

With Romain driving the unmarked car, they began the journey in silence. The young lieutenant was still asking himself the same questions about her, while for her part Noémie had been thinking hard.

“I’ve got a dog.”

“So I hear.”

The car left Decazeville and swung onto the main road to Montpellier.

“Apart from that, shouldn’t the weapon you threatened your neighbour with be in a safe at the station?” Romain said.

“Stop fussing. I’ll stow it there tomorrow, I promise. And we’re late,” she reminded him.

“You want the blue light and siren? Would that make you happy?”

“Pretty much.”

The speedometer whizzed round and Valant, skilful despite their speed, picked his way through the traffic.

“You seem different.”

“Different?”

“Interested. Involved. Present.”

“You choose.”

“Present, then.”

—

Part of the university hospital, Montpellier’s Forensic Institute had none of the old-fashioned charm of the one in Paris, built in stone and lapped by the River Seine. This one was a gigantic building renovated the previous year, with a white exterior and endless corridors, like all modern hospitals.

As spotless as operating theatres and provided with all the latest equipment, the autopsy rooms made the Paris mortuary look like a cabinet of curiosities or a country doctor’s surgery.

On the stainless-steel table lay the remains of the child’s skeleton discovered the previous day. The organic fluids covering it had already been washed and placed in big waste bins labelled “Bio-hazard – Biological risk”. To Chastain’s surprise, on the wall hung a giant screen enabling the direct retransmission of autopsies. She had never seen anything like it before.

“Can this also be done by video?”

“Would you have preferred that?” Romain said.

“It avoids having to put up with the smells,” the forensic pathologist admitted, entering the room and extending his hand. “But in my experience, investigators are good Doubting Thomases and like to see things for themselves.”

He had the rotund body of a man who has said no to sport and yes repeatedly to everything else. He studied Noémie as if she was a new specimen, trying to establish a cause for each scar. She finally ran out of patience.

“What you’re looking for is on the slab,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Capitaine,” he said, turning to what was left of the body.

He pulled on a pair of latex gloves, lowered his protective visor, and pressed the remote to start the video recording of the session.

“Subject registered as ‘X’. Bone maturity not reached, so am unable to certify sex. Aged between eight and twelve. Discovered underwater in a hermetically sealed plastic barrel. The barrel has been sent for analysis, and we should soon know its previous use. I can see a clear fracture of the spinal column, caused by violent bending, as if it were simply folded in two. That must have taken a great deal of strength; in fact, it would be almost impossible with bare hands. Anyway, that is your cause of death.”

“Do you have any idea of when?”

“In this state? Somewhere between several years and quite a few.”

“Could you be any less precise?” Noémie complained.

“I’m a pathologist, not a clairvoyant.”

“What about the D.N.A.?”

“I need only osteoblast and the cancellous bone tissue, and it should be feasible.”

He picked up a surgical drill, searched among the bones for which would be best, then paused and turned to Chastain.

“Ballistic wound,” he announced, as if the expression had been on the tip of his tongue all this time.

“The kid or me?”

“You’re that officer from Paris, aren’t you? And already back at work? Why, I have a nurse on sick leave for a head cold!”

“I’d have done the same. Colds can be a real nuisance.”

26

The discovery of a child’s body caused an earthquake in the six communes. By the time they arrived back at the police station, Pierre Valant was already talking to Commandant Roze.

“Shit, there’s the mayor,” Romain said as he parked.

“This has happened in his commune, so it’s normal your father’s come to find out what’s going on.”

“Right. I’ll leave him to you. I’m staying out of it.”

When Noémie caught up with the other two men, she didn’t even have time to greet them before the mayor began to bombard her with questions.

“Do we know who the kid is?”

“Not yet.”

“Is it a murder?”

“Probably.”

“And just as we’re in the midst of negotiations with the Chinese about their investment in Mecanic Vallée. It’s a catastrophe.”

“You’re right. I’ll shout at the family once we know who it is.”

“Keep your sarcasm for those with a thin skin. You know nothing of the efforts I’m making on behalf of Avalone. You know how superstitious the Chinese are. Any bad omen and they roll into a ball like hedgehogs. But we should have expected it! I told the town council as much! By welcoming just anyone here, it was bound to happen. Since the start of the year, 26 Syrian families have been integrated, and when I say integrated, I know what I mean. This fits with their uncivilised customs. Do you intend to investigate in that direction?”

“Not really, no,” Noémie said even-handedly, despite the images going through her mind of the scene of furious villagers pursuing the monster in the black-and-white film of “Frankenstein”. “First of all, I’d like to know when he or she died, and also who it is, before I start any raids. But I promise you, if there’s any suspicion they’re involved, I’ll save a pitchfork and a torch for you.”

Nobody in living memory had ever spoken to the mayor like that. Romain was delighted to see his father standing open-mouthed on the police station doorstep like any ordinary over-curious citizen. After apologising profusely to Pierre Valant, Roze caught up with members of the investigative team in their office, hard at work. He tried to calm things down.

“O.K., I’m not saying he was altogether right about the Syrians. But Saint-Charles has already made this front-page news, and the mayor’s concerns will be quickly shared by all the villages. There’s never been a child murder here.”

Noémie only had to lean towards Bambi for him to fill in the gaps.

“Saint-Charles. First name Hugues. The La Dépêche journalist covering the six communes,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry to contradict you, sir,” Bambi added out loud, “but there was that child murder in 2000, at Flavin. The guy who killed his ex’s family out of jealousy. There was a five-week-old baby involved, it died of burns.”

“As I said,” Roze defended himself. “Nineteen years ago, and 40 kilometres away. No, it doesn’t make sense!”

Bousquet laid a slim file on the desk and pushed it towards Chastain.

“As requested, we went back five years. Two reported cases of missing children. One accidental death in a barn. The other found safe and sound a week later. A runaway.”

“And I still say it’s the phantoms of the old village,” Bambi insisted.

“You think we’re all idiots,” Bousquet retorted.

“What do you mean? They have phantoms at the opera in Paris, don’t they?”

“Yes, but phantoms go round with sheets over their heads saying ‘Boo!’, not in plastic barrels.”

Noémie had only picked up on one thing from this exchange.

“What do you mean by ‘the old village’?”

“Avalone has not always been where it is now,” Roze explained. “Twenty-five years ago, in 1994, the plans for the new electricity dam didn’t bother about small details. They called for the River Sentinelle to be dammed to create a lake. That meant flooding the valley where the old village of Avalone stood. So its twin was built a few kilometres away, the inhabitants were moved, and we let the old houses be swallowed up by the water. We carried on living in the same way and kept the same name, Avalone. It was no more traumatising than moving house.”

Noémie found it hard to conceal her astonishment.

“You mean there’s an underwater village just opposite where I’m staying?”

“Yes, what’s left of it. And the legends that go with it. At the slightest unexplained event, the phantoms of our ancestors come floating to the surface. That doesn’t change much in our investigation, does it?”

“A kid’s dead body that no-one is claiming, and a village stuck in time a quarter of a century ago. Either the body was thrown into the lake recently, or it dates from more than 25 years in the past. So yes, it does change the entire investigation.”

She sent Bousquet back to the archives.

“Collect all cases of missing people for the last 30 years. Stay within the radius of our communes; we can widen the search later if necessary.”

“What about the Syrian lead?” Bambi asked.

“Put it with the phantom one, they can keep each other warm.”

Chastain left the room to make her report to the prosecutor’s office, but Romain soon caught up with her.

“The kid isn’t entirely wrong, you know.”

“About the Syrians?”

“No, about the phantoms. If we go back as far as you’re asking, you’re going to rake up one that people talked about for most of my childhood.”

“I’m listening.”

“The transition between the two Avalones wasn’t without its problems. While the transfer was going on, three children disappeared.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“It was 25 years ago. I didn’t search that far back in my mind. Do you remember all the things that happened 25 years ago? In any case, we need to be very careful before we say anything definite.”

“It’ll stay within the police station, if that’s what worries you.”

“That won’t be enough. Bambi’s mother works at the Decazeville media library and is the official supplier of gossip and tittle-tattle. If something happens one morning, Bambi tells her the details over lunch at midday, and by two o’clock in the afternoon everybody knows. You need to understand that the families of those three children still live in the village. Imagine the shock they’ll get if they learn we’re reopening the case. Especially as it quickly became a case of kidnapping. Which, by the way, means there can’t be any connection.”

“Jesus,” Noémie groaned. “Are you going to tell me the whole story, for fuck’s sake?”

Accustomed by now to this kind of language, Romain was not in the slightest upset.

“His name was Fortin. A seasonal worker who ran away without explanation one morning, in the middle of the harvest. That same day, three kids vanished. It may have been a coincidence, but Fortin was well known to the police. A former armed robber and jailbird.”

“Armed robbery and kidnapping are different categories.”

“People don’t care. You wanted to know what phantom you were going to waken, I’m simply giving you the name: Fortin.”

“There was never any further news of the children or Fortin?”

“None.”

“O.K. We can’t leave anything out. We’ll restrict our search to the last 30 years, and you find the file for me in the archives. Hand it to me discreetly, and I’ll take a look at it this evening in a calm moment.”

“Or alternatively you can come and get it from my place this evening. My wife would really like to meet you. And this is the third time I’ve invited you.”

“Is she worried? Have you told her that, physically at least, I’m no threat?”

“Oh, come on. Just one glass and you can leave. That’s what colleagues do, isn’t it? Afterwards, she’ll move on, and above all it will stop her ‘mysterious Capitaine Chastain from Paris’ comments.”

“That’s what she says?”

“Yes, running the words together, as if it was your name.”

Noémie capitulated. “Well, if I can save your marriage . . .”

She was already imagining herself being put under the microscope to help Madame Valant overcome any possible jealousy when her mobile began vibrating in her pocket. The forensic pathologist had news.

“In spite of his experience,” he told her, “you’ve made my assistant turn white. Once the bones and the tufts of hair were removed, it must have been hell poking about in that organic soup.”

“And what did you find in hell?”

“Only the metallic objects that have withstood the gastric juices and the passage of time. So we have . . .”

He pushed his glasses up his nose and screwed up his eyes to read the report.

“Twenty metal rings, probably the eyelets from a pair of shoes. A belt buckle. Amalgam that looks like a dental filling and a ten-centime coin.”

“Nothing particularly interesting, then.”

“What if I told you that one of those objects allows me to give you a fairly precise date?”

Rising to the challenge, Chastain mulled this over. Not for long.

“Shit, the ten centimes! You mean they’re francs.”

“Bravo. I was afraid you might disappoint me. Yes, ten centimes of a franc. And we adopted the euro in 2001.”

“So unless the kid was a numismatist, we have a corpse from at latest 2001, that is, eighteen years ago. That’s going to narrow down the period of our investigation a lot. Anything else?”

“The analysis of the barrel’s contents. Propylene glycol. Normal to find that in your region: it’s a food supplement for dairy cows and ewes.”

Noémie relayed this information to Romain, and the two of them raced down to the basement archives. On their way along the mildewed corridor they passed the holding cells, the cubicle for photographing anyone arrested and the changing rooms, until they finally reached a windowless room where Bambi was installed. Scattered all round him were open files and sheets of paper, as if autumn had already arrived.

“I’ve found fourteen missing person cases over the past 30 years. Number one, a young girl, was found in Rodez two days later at her boyfriend’s. Number two was found in Spain. Number three . . .”

“We couldn’t care less about the ones who were found, Bambi. It’s the cases still pending that interest us, especially the ones before we started using euros. Ten centimes of a franc were found in the victim’s pocket.”

“Francs?” the baby police officer said, astonished. “That goes back as far as the fifties.”

“No, 2001, you nitwit,” Noémie teased him.

“Well anyway, 2001 or the fourteenth century, I’ve got nothing. No child has disappeared in that time. The Aveyron doesn’t have an Estelle Mouzin, a Marion Wagon or Aurore Pinçon. The only case that could fit, especially with those dates, is this one.”

He struggled to lift three files on which the name FORTIN was written in red.

“But I know you’re going to tell me that’s nothing to do with it, because it’s a kidnapping.”

Noémie and Romain exchanged a disgruntled look. So much for being discreet: Bambi had been as smart as them and was on the same track.

“I guess we put that aside and widen the search to the whole region?”

“No, we’ll work with what we’ve got, without leaving anything out. In this kind of investigation we have to go over every millimetre. In the Fortin case, did the police get the kids’ D.N.A.?”

“I’ve no wish to seem like a nitwit again, but the national D.N.A. database was set up in 1998. That means there’s a gap of four years, because the kidnapping took place in 1994.”

“The automated database yes,” Romain corrected him, “but records were kept fifteen years earlier, especially in cases of disappearance.”

Bambi turned the pages of the thick file, ran his finger along every line, and found the answer.

“You’re right. I’ve got the summary report of the samples taken during the investigation. Fortin slept in one of the outbuildings on Valant’s farm. His D.N.A. was discovered in several places and collected. And two samples were taken in each of the three disappeared children’s bedrooms. One from their toothbrushes, the other from their underclothes.”

“Perfect. Call the lab and tell them to compare the D.N.A. of child X in the Montpellier Forensic Institute with that of the three kids. They should have that in their archives. It’s only to compare, so we ought to have the results by tomorrow. As long as there are no hitches, because it’s our only lead.”

“So we’re going to do it, are we? We’re really going to reopen the cold case?” Bambi asked.

“What you’re going to do above all,” Romain said, “is keep your trap shut. I don’t want to inflame things in our communes without reason. As of now we’re just checking and confirming, got it?”

“Fine, keep your hair on.”

Noémie took the same long corridor to return upstairs. As she passed in front of the holding cells, she heard barking. Looking inside the first one, she saw Bousquet holding out a water dish. Opposite him was her lopsided Picasso.

“You need to go and see Valant,” she told the brigadier, “there’s news about our investigation.”

Bousquet pushed the dish towards the frightened dog, who was backed up against the cell wall. Picasso must start from the conviction that he was about to suffer, and any movement that wasn’t a slap or kick confused him. When he saw Noémie, he finally came over and quickly lapped up half the contents of the dish.

“Hasn’t the vet been?”

“Yes, an hour back.”

“I can’t see any big difference.”

“The back leg was broken too long ago. The bone has calcified. It would have to be broken again and reset. The vet said that would be a lot of trouble without gaining much, seeing it doesn’t hurt him.”

“And his jaw?”

“The same. Calcified. Nothing to be done. He’s going to keep |the same ugly mug. You’ll just have to get used to it,” Bousquet joked, before realising his blunder. “Oh shit, Capitaine, even when I don’t mean to, I put my foot in it.”

For the first time in three months, Chastain burst out laughing. Such an unrestrained laugh that Romain and Bambi poked their heads out of the archives, more surprised than if it had been a cry of pain.

She left them all there, mouths agape.

“A miracle,” Romain chortled.

“I knew she was human,” Bambi said.

27

Using a length of rope, Noémie tied her lopsided new friend to one of the posts on the pergola protecting the decking that ran several metres along the front of the Valant house. Similar to the open-air cafés on the banks of the River Marne, strings of coloured paper lanterns hung from the wooden frame, as welcoming as a friendly “good evening”. She knelt beside Picasso.

“Don’t move. Don’t bark. Don’t leave,” she ordered him, tapping his crooked mouth at each command.

When he opened the front door, it was in this stern school ma’am attitude that Romain found her.

“You can bring him in if you like.”

“No, thanks. Dogs live out of doors.”

“What if it rains?”

“Stop shitting me, Valant. I’ve never had a pet, so I’m improvising.”

“About that: I’ve got a ten-year-old daughter, so you’re going to leave that kind of vocabulary out here with the dog, right?”

“I’ll do my best.”

She told herself it would only be for half an hour at most.

But as soon as they stepped inside the house, the captivating aroma of a meal simmering on the stove enfolded her like a trap. And that was precisely what it was: a trap.

“Yes, I’m sorry. I know I mentioned just one glass, but she changed that to a whole dinner. I’ll leave it to you to tell her you can’t stay.”

Before Noémie could reply, Aminata rushed to the door, arms outstretched as if she were being reunited with a childhood friend.

“The mysterious Capitaine Noémie Chastain from Paris! I’m so glad to meet you,” she said, immediately abandoning the formal way of addressing her.

Chastain tried to place her on a world map. Somalia? Ethiopia? She had less difficulty classifying her looks. Aminata had such a simple, perfect beauty it was disturbing – a princess to die for, out of love or jealousy. Her skin was so profoundly black that Noémie could understand a little better the antipathy between Romain and his father, with his quick, thoughtless racism. He must have seen the arrival of this African woman in his son’s heart as an insult and a threat to the Valant family’s genetic inheritance. Meanwhile, talking of genetic inheritance, the perfect union of these two beings poked the tip of her nose out from where she was still half hiding behind her mother’s knees.

“This is Lily, and I have to tell you she’s been uncontrollable since she heard she was going to see you.”

Throughout the meal, Noémie was inundated with questions, mostly about her previous cases. Lily hung on her every word, and since the questions varied from the most complicated to the most horrific, Noémie had to choose carefully what she said, so as not to fill the little girl’s nights with bad dreams.

Above all, Noémie realised that not at any moment had she noticed Aminata staring at her wounds, or been aware of any intrigued pause while she studied her face. Valant’s wife was completely oblivious to Noémie’s physical appearance: it was as if her scars had somehow melted away on the threshold of the house.

Only Lily, sitting to her right, cast her timid sidelong glances, like a mouse keeping an eye on a cat from its hole in the wall.

“You should take a good look, little one, or you’ll miss your mouth with your fork,” Noémie said, turning towards her with a kindly half smile.

Lily’s eyes opened wide. Against all expectation, she extended her fingers towards the still livid red scars. Unsure of their guest’s reaction, Aminata and Romain held their breath.

“If you touch me . . .”

Lily’s hand hung in mid-air.

“If you touch me, you’ll be the first.”

Lily stroked Noémie’s scars with her fingertips, then caught hold of the streak of silver hair.

“You’re beautiful.”

“You’re little.”

“No, you are beautiful,” Aminata confirmed, gently lowering her daughter’s hand.

Noémie’s eyes grew moist.

A hell of a trap.

—

Romain placed two cups of steaming coffee on the slab of oak that served as a side table out on the decking.

“Did you manage to put her to bed?” Noémie asked.

“She’s a bit over-excited, but the story of the ogre of Malbouche should sort that out.”

“You’ll have to tell it to me then, Romain,” Noémie said.

“So we’re friends rather than colleagues now, are we?”

“What about this ogre?” she said, evading his question.

“Yes, sorry. The Malbouche ogre. It was in the nineteenth century in the Causse Noir region, 100 kilometres from here.”

Romain handed her a cup and a metal canister containing sugar cubes. Picasso had come to sit between her legs and seemed settled, eyes half closed. The way Valant told the story suggested it was Lily’s favourite: he wasn’t improvising but telling it for the umpteenth time.

“A man by the name of Jean Grin, apparently more or less a giant, lived as a recluse in a hovel with a collapsed roof next to the Malbouche ravine. A hunter, he wore the skins of the beasts he had killed, so that people always wondered whether he was human or animal. Unfortunately for him, in 1899 three kids were snatched and eaten. No doubt a wolf was to blame, because almost two thousand of them had been spotted at that time in Aveyron. Too bad for Jean Grin. It was enough for him to become the ogre of Malbouche, the fiend who eats children without even chewing. An expedition was launched to punish him; Grin was captured and burned alive by the villagers in a white-hot oven. Others, though, say that he was seen 20 years later at his daughter’s wedding. Legends enjoy their areas of mystery.”

“So when, a century or more later, three more children disappear, Fortin becomes Jean Grin, and the legend is perpetuated?”

“Something like that.”

“And Atlantis?”

“You mean the old drowned village of Avalone? It’s far from being unique, let alone a modern legend. Electric barrages have to dam rivers and canalise their flow to produce energy. And since people have always settled on riverbanks to benefit from the food resources in the water, some villages simply find themselves in the wrong place and are destined to be flooded. That was the case with Essertoux, Antibes, Sarrans, Salles-sur-Verdon, Dramont, Guerlédan, Sainte-Marie-du-Caisson and many others I forget.”

Romain’s house was built on a rise at the end of a winding track, like the dot in a question mark. Nestling in the hills in front of them they could see five of the six communes they policed. Five little islands of light created by lit houses and street lamps.

“Do you see how calm everything is here?” Valant said. “If ever we reopen this case, we’ll only need to sit back and watch the temperature rise until it catches fire.”

“We’re not responsible for the collateral damage an investigation causes.”

“Perhaps not in big cities, because the police don’t have a face. In the countryside, it’s not so obvious.”

Noémie had skimmed the case file and couldn’t get the names of the victims out of her mind.

“Alex Dorin, Cyril Casteran and Elsa Saulnier,” she thought out loud. “Did you know those kids?”

“There used to be two schools for the six communes, so half the 30-year-olds from here were their classmates. But if I hadn’t seen the photographs in the file, I wouldn’t have remembered them.”

“Was Elsa Saulnier the daughter of the old mountaineer we went to collect on the Puy Whatsit?”

“The Puy de Wolf, yes. But she wasn’t her real daughter. The Saulniers were foster parents. We’d need to check the file.”

Aminata appeared with a dusty bottle without a label.

“O.K. Shall we move on to more serious matters?”

She cast her eye on the spectacle of the lit villages. Without turning her head, she spoke to Noémie.

“Has Romain told you we own this house?”

“No, he hasn’t mentioned that.”

“It’s in both our names,” Aminata said proudly. “I own a piece of France. I’m not a foreigner any more.”

She filled three glasses to the brim with whatever the anonymous bottle contained.

28

The next morning, as Noémie was driving to the police station, she received a text message from Romain. She asked her smartphone to read it aloud. The staccato metal voice allowed her to keep her eyes on the road.

“Come in by the back door, I’ll explain when you get here.”

She parked discreetly and entered the police station. She walked along the corridor with the cells, then climbed the stairs. As she passed Commandant Roze’s office, she saw him towering over Bambi, who sat there like a punished schoolboy, head down. She found Bousquet and Valant standing in front of one of the big landing windows.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“Not yet. But there soon could be.”

Noémie took a look outside. In the car park were two separate groups of people, about ten in each. Some were walking up and down smoking; others were looking at their mobiles; the rest were simply staring in their direction.

“Shall I tell you who they are, Noémie?” Romain said.

Noémie nodded. Bousquet was astonished at the familiar way they addressed one another.

“On the left is the Dorin clan. They’re farmers, the second largest proprietors after my father. Serge, little Alex’s father, and Bruno, the youngest. He’s a bad lot.”

“Meaning?”

“Bruno Dorin has a record as long as your arm. He spent his youth in and out of our cells. Burglary, drugs, brawls, petty larceny. A real bad lot, I promise you.”

“Got it. Carry on.”

“On the right is the Casteran family. Little Cyril’s parents. The father was caretaker of the old cemetery in Avalone; the mother a homecare nurse. Both of them now retired. The two families have obviously heard of the matching of D.N.A. samples between their kids and the body found floating on the lake.”

“Is that thanks to Bambi?”

“I’m not sure if we can really blame him. His mother is a formidable lie and secret detector. He must have gone home in a state, and she tortured him until he spilled the beans. Roze is lecturing him in his office now.”

“There’s one family missing,” Noémie said. “Elsa’s.”

“For that, Madame Saulnier would have to find her way here without ending up on top of the Puy de Wolf or in the middle of the lake,” Romain said. “Besides, she’s convinced Elsa still lives with her. She spends her days at the window waiting for her to get back from school. For now it’s just the Dorins and the Casterans, and I promise you, that’s quite enough.”

“Are they going to stay out there?”

“I reckon they’ll only leave once we get a call from the lab.”

“So let’s hurry things along.”

—

With all the samples to hand, a D.N.A. match can be done in a few minutes, and the lab had kept its promise. The results were ready for Chastain, at the other end of the telephone line.

“It’s positive,” the lab technician told her.

“With which one?”

“Dorin, Alex. Does that help with your investigation?”

“As all positive results do, I suppose. Will you email me your report?”

Noémie found her team standing together at the window.

“I swear I didn’t mean to say anything about the D.N.A. matches or the Fortin affair. But you don’t know what my mother’s like, she’d make a Trappist monk squeal.”

“It makes no difference if they found out yesterday or today, given the results,” Chastain excused him. “You’ve simply saved us a home visit.”

“So it’s one of the three disappeared kids?” Romain said.

“Yes. Little Alex Dorin. The farmer’s son.”

“Shit. Now what do we do?”

“The same as with every death announcement. Quickly and clearly.”

Seeing the troubled expressions on her colleagues’ faces, Noémie realised she would have to be the one to announce the bad news. It fell to her to shatter a family. Once she had made her mind up, she would destroy their lives. So she allowed herself a coffee to postpone the groans and tears. Some years earlier she had crossed paths with a policeman who had given her a gift. A simple sentence: “They’re not your loved ones, it’s not your grief.” Unfortunately, though, reality is never as simple as that. Besides, Noémie investigated the way you play chess, always planning one or two moves ahead, and if Fortin, the ogre of Malbouche, had kidnapped three kids, there was no reason for only one of them to be beneath the waters of the old Avalone. Since one had appeared, perhaps somewhere beneath the surface two more had been waiting patiently for 25 long years.

When she went out onto the front steps of the police station, the 20 or so people gathered outside immediately fell silent. Noémie could imagine precisely what the Dorin and Casteran clans were saying to themselves at that moment: “Let it not be any of us, or let it be the other family.”

Both families had rebuilt their lives on the ruins of a drama; if it were up to them, what would they have chosen? No doubt they’d have preferred to believe their children had gone missing, kidnapped by Fortin – that would have left them just enough oxygen to breathe. With difficulty, like someone dying or choking, but breathing all the same. Now fresh questions were surfacing, and there were no answers.

“I’m Capitaine Chastain, head of the investigation,” she told them in a firm, resolute voice. “In order for us to continue our work, I’m going to ask you to disperse and go home. Everyone apart from Monsieur Dorin.”

Like a rifle bullet, the verdict had grazed one family and struck the other right in the heart. Casteran just managed to contain his wife’s emotion, while Dorin stood stoically for a moment before bursting into tears when his younger son Bruno fell into his arms.

Noémie turned on her heel and went to join her brave colleagues cowering in the police station doorway.

“Valant, carry out a rapid interview with Serge Dorin for me. Notify him officially of the discovery of the body, then let him go. Tell him as little as possible. Promise we’ll keep him up to date with everything. The families and their close friends are only getting in the way, so we need to reassure them without revealing anything.”

“Understood, Noémie.”

Chastain jumped when she heard him say her complete name. Images of her departure from hospital came to mind, when she had partially ripped off the identity label on her bags and “Noémie” was torn in half.

“Capitaine. Or Chastain. Or No. Not Noémie, if you don’t mind.”

—

Chastain called the public prosecutor in Rodez to inform him of a case which, with the best will in the world, was becoming far too important for the Decazeville police.

“Do you know why there isn’t a police group dedicated to cold cases, Capitaine?”

Her silence was an invitation for the prosecutor to continue.

“Quite simply because success rates are close to zero, and because this kind of investigation can drag on forever. There’s a reason they’re known as ‘cold cases’. If the case has been archived, it’s because other people have come up with nothing. Opening it again, even if you consider yourself the best investigator in the world, is like stirring up mud in a swamp. You won’t see much that’s new. In other words, all the forces I ask to take this on will find the best excuses they can to not do so.”

“You could oblige them to, give orders.”

“And watch them drag their feet, and let it fester? I don’t know how much good that would do. You’re going to have to interview the families caught up in this drama all over again. You’ll have to delve into their memories, and that process of introspection will be more effective if they’re dealing with people they’re acquainted with, and who know the whole story. So yet again, your team is the best placed to continue.”

Noémie sank a little further into her chair. What she was about to propose to the prosecutor risked him hitting the roof.

“You’re aware that everyone here became convinced that those three kids were snatched by someone called Fortin. That means they were a long way from Avalone. Finding the corpse in the lake by the village raises the possibility that the two others are there as well.”

“Now you’re worrying me, Capitaine.”

“Why? Do you see any solution other than draining the lake?”

“You can’t be serious!” the prosecutor groaned, already imagining the media getting hold of such a newsworthy story.

“But we’re not going to get far with snorkelling, are we?”

Perhaps by an association of ideas, the prosecutor immediately came up with a different suggestion.

“No, you’re right. Not you. But I authorise you to call on the Paris River Police. They’re a national force that travels around France when necessary. I’m sure they don’t know Avalone. Ask them to carry out a sonar search. After that we can consider more drastic measures, if your theory proves correct.”

Chastain had nothing to say to this unexpected twist. The prosecutor ended their conversation before she could think of a retort.

29

Even before the church bell struck noon, all the talk in the six communes was of Alex Dorin. The police had to act as swiftly as possible to get to the heart of the matter. The first, most urgent task was to know absolutely everything about the case. Chastain loaded all the files into the photocopier, oblivious to threats of paper jams or imminent explosion. She made four copies: Roze, Bousquet, Bambi and Romain Valant needed to know the affair inside out.

She sent off the request to the Paris River Police, who replied positively 40 minutes later. On the telephone, the steady voice of a Lieutenant Massey promised his team would be on site within 24 hours. He also persuaded her to spell out the name “Avalone”, which he had never heard of before.

Noémie slid into her Land Rover to go over everything in the peace and quiet of her house. A fire, her dog, coffee and concentration.

Picasso jumped down from the Land Rover as soon as she opened the door. He took a step, raised his muzzle to the breeze, froze on the spot, then limped to hide behind one of the wheels, tail and ears lowered, trying to make himself as small as possible. As if he wanted to disappear completely.

Waiting for her by the sliding doors, looking grim and with his hands in his pockets, was her neighbour Vidal, the ex-legionnaire. Noémie thought of her pistol, hidden beneath the pullovers in the bottom of her bedroom wardrobe. She pushed back her coat and put a hand on her hip, as if her weapon was there. Vidal held out his two hands to show he wasn’t going to attack her.

“Do you intend giving me my dog back?”

Noémie forced herself not to let her voice tremble. Short sentences could perhaps help.

“It’s not on the cards.”

“I’d better get another one then.”

“To mistreat like this one? What’s your fucking problem?”

“I was brought up being thrashed. I thrashed my wife. Why should I change for a stupid mutt?”

“No idea. And I couldn’t give a damn. Now get out of here before I put a bullet in your backside.”

Vidal took a good look at this disfigured woman, brave even if she was terrified. From his time in the Legion, he could recognise a soldier when he saw one, however crushed. He growled in a way that sounded almost like surrender.

“I’ll be back,” he threatened. “I never attack a person who’s unarmed.”

Heart thudding, Noémie took her hand from her hip, and watched as Vidal strode off calmly into the wood.

“Picasso! Heel, boy,” she ordered the dog.

—

She had unclipped and separated all the case files, keeping only the hundred or so most important statements and the photographs. Now they were spread on the floor around her, not so much organised as in a complete mess.

For several hours she had read, taken notes and sometimes simply stared at the evidence assembled in this 25-year-old case, allowing her unconscious to put red flags where necessary.

So tired her eyelids were drooping, she nevertheless managed to keep her appointment with Melchior. She brought him up to date on her personal situation, and since that was inevitably linked to her work, the disappeared children of Avalone quickly became part of their conversation. Her doubts and fears as well.

“My, it’s amazing you can be so ignorant about yourself,” the psychiatrist pointed out.

“Go easy, doc, I’ve had an exhausting day.”

“Alright, but even so . . . Don’t you get the impression you’re in a game especially created for you? A charming village on one side, the other side still raw from a wound – a village underwater that awakens horrible memories. Everything contrasting, like a photographic negative, or old-fashioned slides. This case is getting to resemble you more and more. I’d even go so far as to say it represents your recovery in so many different ways it’s surprising you refuse to see it.”

“Don’t underestimate me. That’s all I do see, and that’s what terrifies me. The village and I have the same scars.”

“So what are you going to do? Run away again? Give up? Or return to being the outstanding police officer you’ve always been?”

“Flatterer . . . I bet you say the same thing to all the officers who’ve had half their mug shot away and find themselves in the back of beyond struggling with a case in black and white. Anyway, it’s too late. I rarely go into reverse, especially when I’m up to my elbow in the machinery.”

“Good girl,” Melchior told her.

30

The coffee pot was filled, croissants were on the table, and the office clock showed 08.30. After her session with Melchior, Noémie had paced up and down her living room. Picasso had watched her curiously, and ended up doing the same. Eventually she had decided to end the night at the police station. As dawn gently woke the countryside, the fruits of her lack of sleep were pinned all over the four walls of the office, now plastered with interviews, statements and photographs.

When the whole team had arrived and entered their office, decorated like a museum with investigations carried out in the previous century, Noémie announced an overall review. The three policemen sat down quietly, not daring even to pick at the delicacies.

“Twenty-five years ago,” she began, “Avalone was disappearing under the waves with the construction of an electric barrage. Work for everyone on the site, and a project to reconstruct the villagers’ homes almost identically. Everything run by Global Water Energy, the construction company in charge of the project and its subsequent use. And in the midst of all this turmoil, three children disappear. Cyril Casteran, Elsa Saulnier and the recently rediscovered Alex Dorin. The prime suspect is a man by the name of Fortin, a seasonal worker employed on the farm of Pierre Valant, our beloved mayor.”

“He owned a third of the land in Avalone, so he had a one in three chance of employing him,” Romain defended him. “It could have been someone else.”

“No-one is accusing him,” Chastain reassured Romain. “We’re just establishing the facts. To continue: the same day as the triple disappearance, Fortin goes missing, and Valant discovers that one of his commercial vehicles has been stolen. A Ford Transit van, registration number . . .”

She searched on the walls for the rest of the information, as she hadn’t yet got the entire puzzle in her mind.

“Registration number whatever, because anyway the van was found a few days later, burnt out, in an abandoned barnyard 300 kilometres from here. I’ll spare you all the searches, the helicopter flights over the region, the sniffer dogs, the 400 or so interviews and the thousands of sightings by amateur detectives who apparently saw them in Paris, or on the island of La Réunion, or in a cinema. In the end Fortin, thanks to his record as an armed robber, became the perfect perpetrator, and the disappearances became kidnappings.”

“Finding the body of one of the three children doesn’t mean Fortin didn’t kidnap the other two,” Bousquet objected. “Everyone wants them to have been abducted, but all three of them could have been killed here, still by Fortin.”

“That’s true. And we’ll never know until we’ve taken a look ourselves. Which is why the River Police are coming, rather than the lake being drained.”

“That was a good move.”

“Believe me, if the kid had been found on a mountain slope, I’d have demanded they bore into it like a piece of gruyère.”

She turned to the baby police officer who was watching all this from a distance, as if on his television screen.

“Bambi, what can you tell me about the three families?”

“As it happens,” he said, his face lighting up, “I was talking about it with my mum yesterday.”

“Stop all this ‘mum’ business,” Bousquet ribbed him. “It doesn’t sound serious. Get her to sit the police entrance exam if you like, but stop dragging her into our investigations.”

The youngster blushed, and Bousquet tousled his hair. This served to relax the atmosphere, and soon the coffee was poured and the croissants devoured. His mouth still half full, Bambi went on:

“Casteran family. As you know, the father, André, was the caretaker at the old Avalone cemetery, and the mother, Juliette, was a visiting nurse. Both of them are retired now, though some families refuse to change carer and still call on Madame Casteran from time to time. Juliette has never stopped believing Cyril will return. When we called it a kidnapping, she insisted he had simply run away. She’s a member of the A.F.C.V., the Association for Child Victims. She calls them regularly. Calls them or harasses them. At any rate, she’s never given up, and is convinced her son is still alive somewhere.”

“I once went inside their house after a reported break-in,” Romain added. “You can hardly see the wallpaper because of all the photographs of Cyril on the walls. A hope more painful than grief fills every cranny. It leaves no room for anything else.”

“Parents still living in hope,” Noémie sighed. “They’re the worst, without wishing to offend anyone. Endless calls to the A.F.C.V. to talk to people who don’t even pretend they still believe in it. They could be the hardest to manage.”

Bambi turned the pages of a ridiculous notebook that had one of Harry Potter’s coats of arms on the cover.

“Saulnier family. I don’t need to describe Madame Saulnier, you’ve already rescued her from one of her expeditions to the top of the Puy de Wolf. The Saulniers were never able to have children, but in 1987 they became foster parents. Social services entrusted Elsa to them when she was three, and the judge subsequently agreed they could adopt her. In a stupid accident some years later, the husband fell down the stairs, leaving Madame Saulnier a widow. From then on, she dedicated herself to bringing up Elsa. After what was thought to be a kidnapping, she let herself go, so that now she’s become the old woman we have to rescue from here and there in her dressing gown. Her brain disconnected in 1994; she hasn’t been able to take in anything since then. Whereas Juliette Casteran thinks her son is living a new life somewhere else, Saulnier is convinced Elsa never left the village.”

In spite of appearances, the youngster had a useful police instinct and a valuable ability to summarise.

“And finally, the Dorin family. The second biggest farmer in Avalone. Now only Serge and his younger son, Bruno. The mother, Jeanne Dorin, committed suicide after Alex disappeared.”

“How did she do it?”

“Hanged herself in the barn, in among the cows and horses. The Dorin family never spoke about Alex after that. Nor about her. They turned in on themselves and cut themselves off from most of the village.”

“Good. Thank Mum for us,” Noémie teased him.

Roze interrupted the meeting, poking his head round the door.

“There’s a boat outside trying to park in our car park.”

31

In Avalone town hall, Pierre Valant was still furious. He had mistreated the morning newspaper so badly he had to buy another copy. The front-page headline easily explained his rage. Obviously with the byline of the local correspondent, Hugues Saint-Charles.

THE CURSE OF AVALONE

Who now remembers the old Avalone, before it was deliberately flooded? A dying village, a helpless witness to everything coming to an end, like a little old man sitting on a bench watching the world slip through his fingers. The exodus of its young people, its creeping impoverishment and the iron shutters coming down on shops that closed one after another. Its school, constantly fighting to stay open for 20 or so pupils, all in the same class. No children, no future: the inevitable consequence. Sometimes one has to start again from zero to improve things. But in Avalone, it’s the entire village that disappeared underwater with the promise of renewal. Global Water Energy had hesitated for a long while between three construction sites before finally choosing the village of Avalone, thanks to the determination of a young mayor, Pierre Valant, aged only 30 back then and galvanised by his first term in office. The work lasted three years, and as it was coming to an end, three children disappeared. Cyril, Alex and Elsa. Instead of moving on, time stood still, frozen by this drama. The first curse.

The dam definitely created jobs and breathed new life into Avalone but, once it was built, only a hundred or so people were needed to run it, and the village has once more found itself on the downward slope of “somnolence” as our dear mayor likes to call it.

Twenty-five years later, in this new Avalone, just as the Chinese are about to invest billions of euros of investment in Mecanic Vallée, a second curse strikes the village. A second one, or the first again? Because the corpse of little Alex Dorin has resurfaced after such a long time, and with it memories thought deeply buried.

A recent arrival, Capitaine Chastain, formerly of the mythical Paris Crime Squad, has taken on this complex investigation. She is the one who has the difficult task of discovering exactly what happened here, a quarter of a century ago.

Every conversation in the village is haunted by the phantoms of Elsa and Cyril, as if Avalone has been refused the right to rest in peace.

“Is everything alright, your honour?” his secretary enquired timidly, interrupting the mayor’s reading.

“Are you joking? No, everything isn’t alright! In the ’80s, something like this would merit three small articles and a radio news item. Nowadays, with social media and 24-hour news channels, it’ll be a national headline. The media will make a meal of it, with a thousand different reports until something worse catches their attention.”

The newspaper flew through the air towards the wastepaper bin. And missed.

“Get Commandant Roze for me. I want to know what happens in my commune before the newspapers. If it’s not too much to ask.”

—

Noémie went down to the car park and approached the brand-new Ford Ranger with its insignia “National Police – River Brigade” on the doors and bonnet. Coupled behind it was a five-metre Zodiac dinghy, its protective cover being removed to reveal the name: ARÈS in silver capitals on the black plastic. Another man got out of the vehicle, his face tanned from too much sun, and the hands of a bear trainer that engulfed Noémie’s when they greeted one another.

“Capitaine Massey?”

“No, I’m his assistant. Brigadier Lanson.”

Noémie glanced towards the man who had now climbed on board the dinghy and was busy checking equipment she would not even have been able to name.

“No, not him either,” Lanson said. “He’s in charge of the sonar. By the way, you can call him Sonar, it’s simpler. Otherwise, he’s Lieutenant Radivojevic, but that would tie your tongue in knots.”

Perched up on the dinghy, Sonar waved a greeting, then gave Lanson the finger.

“What about Massey?”

“He’s already at the lake. Sniffing it out. Familiarising himself. This is a police operation like any other, we need to get to know the lie of the land before we go into action. Apart from that, have you found us a hotel?”

“Yes, a few kilometres from here. The Hôtel du Parc, in Cransac. Your keys are at reception. I’ve only been here a month, so I don’t know the region, but apparently you’ll be fine there.”

Sonar jumped down as agilely as a grasshopper. His physique was similarly sleek, but he wore a pair of round glasses that made him look more like a science teacher.

“So there’s a village under the water?” he said eagerly.

“That’s right. Is this the first time you’re dealing with one?”

“It would be for almost everybody,” he admitted. “We need a map of the old village to help our search. And the size, shape and composition of the barrel the kid was found in.”

“We’re right at the start of our investigation,” Chastain explained, “and we can’t be sure the two others are also at the bottom of the lake, or even in similar containers.”

“I hope they are,” Sonar continued. “Because if those kids have been in the water for 25 years without any covering, we won’t be able to do anything. Even if they’re reduced to skeletons, the porosity of their bones means we won’t receive any data, and my sonar will be useless.”

As he finished removing the tarpaulin, two small canary-yellow cases appeared in the rear of the dinghy, one as long as a rifle case, the other as broad and tall as a military attaché case.

“I’ll get everything you need sent to your hotel this afternoon. Will you be able to dive as early as tomorrow morning?” Noémie said.

“Yes, if the sonar detects something. Then, depending on how dangerous it is, we have a choice of two divers. One human, the other a robot. The human is Capitaine Massey; he’s the person who’ll decide.”

—

When asked by this young man with the sharp Parisian accent, the grandpa on his fishing boat had agreed to leave his hooks and lines aside for a moment and head for the centre of the lake. The youngster was wearing a wetsuit with the “Police” insignia on it to protect against the freezing temperatures in deep water – at 40 metres down, it could be as low as four degrees. Between his legs was a plastic backpack as thick as a tyre that was obviously heavy and full. He was scrutinising the dark water like someone reading a book, judging the meaning of every wave or ripple.

“Here will be perfect,” the stranger said.

“That’s not such a good idea,” the grandpa warned him.

Paying no attention, his passenger checked the knife strapped to his calf, put on his diving mask, then the backpack, first on one shoulder, then the other. He tightened the straps, filled his lungs with air, and flipped over backwards into the water. This is always the most violent part, entering a different element, going from air to liquid. The rest is simply a dance. Gestures slowed by density, weightless in an aquatic flight. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, weighing nothing, as if in a dream of absolute freedom. His backpack took him down towards the bottom. He straightened his legs, crossed his arms on his chest, and let himself fall slowly, head first, without trying to speed things up. Paying maximum attention, he could even hear the sound of his heart beating. The hypnotic rhythm of his own body accompanied him until his fingers touched earth mixed with sand. He checked the depth gauge on his wrist and memorised the information. Opening his backpack, he took out one by one the six big stones that had been his ballast.

The water around the boat was perfectly smooth for several minutes until a few bubbles burst on the surface, indicating something was happening beneath. Massey finally came up out of his long free dive and the grandpa breathed a sigh of relief.

“I was afraid the village phantoms had got you,” he greeted him, stretching out his hand.

“It’s because of them that I’m here.”

Now Massey knew where to find them. Exactly 36 metres down. He had hoped it would be less. At those depths, everything became more complicated.

—

When he reached the Hôtel du Parc, Capitaine Hugo Massey found Lanson and Sonar enjoying its restaurant’s sunny terrace. The map of the old village was spread across one table, with three bottles of chilled beer holding down the corners. Opposite them, several foals were galloping in an enclosure, raising clouds of dry red earth.

“Thirty-six metres,” Massey told them.

“If it’s a free dive you can surface directly, but with oxygen cylinders it’s impossible. You’ll have to respect the decompression stops to avoid any dangerous situations.”

“There shouldn’t be any,” Massey objected.

“There never should.” Massey uncapped his beer and clinked bottles with his two teammates.

“To Amandine,”* he toasted, with a touch of sadness.

“To Amandine,” the others chorused.

They paused for a silent prayer, or perhaps only a moment of reflection, then went back to work.

“An entire village is hanging on our every word,” Lanson continued. “Chastain, the capitaine of the local police is asking if we can start at 07.00 tomorrow, to avoid too big a crowd.”

“That’s sensible. Sonar, do you know what you’re looking for?”

“Yeah,” he said, pulling out one of the photographs taken when the boy’s body was discovered. “A barrel like this one. Maybe two.”

Massey took his time studying it.

“Great. Apart from that, what’s she like?” he said, with a hint of mischief.

“Chastain?”

Sonar and Lanson exchanged amused looks.

“That depends.”

“What do you mean, that depends? Is she pretty or not? It’s a simple question.”

“Well no, it’s not that simple,” said an embarrassed Sonar. “It depends. That’s all we can say.”

_________

A River Police diver (1981–2018) who died during a dive. A small wooden boat in her honour has been erected next to the headquarters boat on the banks of the Seine.

32

This time it wasn’t Bambi’s fault. It was as if the whole village had spent the night camped out in the open by the lakeside so as not to miss the River Police in action. And they weren’t the only ones. On one of the rocks that bordered the woods, Hugues Saint-Charles, camera slung around his neck, was busy talking into his dictaphone, describing every move the police made. Behind him, a T.V. camera from the local France 3 channel was also filming the event.

Lanson reversed until the trailer wheels were in the water. The dinghy was unloaded and launched just as Noémie and Romain came on the scene. Seeing so many people, Chastain had the unpleasant feeling of being late to her own party. Romain parked the car and exchanged a look with his father, already in the front row and almost beside himself to see so much activity in his usually peaceful commune.

Despite seeing her arrive, Sonar did not come to meet the capitaine, but pointed his chin towards Massey, the only member of the team she had yet to meet. Massey already had his feet in the water, and was staring at the lake as though respectfully defying it. When he at last turned to her, Noémie understood at once that the remainder of her investigation was going to be even more complicated. She instinctively turned her head a third to her right. Massey saw her and strode confidently towards her. The closer he got, the further Noémie turned away, so that by the time he was in front of her it appeared she was ignoring him.

“Good morning. I’m Hugo Massey,” he introduced himself. “We spoke on the telephone.”

Noémie was thrown by her instant sense of bewilderment. This was definitely not the moment. Massey had a strange beauty that did him more harm than good, and Noémie felt ashamed of her own appearance. Not only that, but miserable, and awkward, knocked off balance, wounded, and seduced, but above all ashamed.

“Capitaine Chastain,” she replied, with about as much warmth as the voice on the G.P.S.

Even though he did not understand straight away what was going on, Massey was sensitive enough to realise that the look he gave her ravaged face seemed to scald her, and that this elusive young woman wanted only one thing: for him to get out of her sight. Still hesitating between leaving and doing his duty by explaining to her what he and his team were about to do, he stood there a few moments longer. Noémie decided to simplify things, abandoning her ladylike pirouetting. She turned to face Hugo.

“O.K.? Are you going to get on with it, or do you need a lifebuoy? You’ve got two kids to find, and as far as I know, they’re not on dry land.”

“Yes, we’ll get on with it,” he said, also knocked off balance, by her aggression. “But we’d like you to be on the boat too. So we have a police officer to direct us and to tell us a bit more about the case. That would save time.”

“Of course,” Noémie replied. “That’s normal.”

She turned to Romain, deflecting the arrow.

“Valant, on the boat! Thanks. I’ll be in the car,” she said, turning on her heel.

Astonished, the two men climbed on board the Zodiac without a word. Massey sat on one of the Zodiac’s sides, next to Valant.

“Sorry about that,” Romain whispered. “I don’t know what’s got into her. She’s often unpredictable, but never like that. I apologise on her behalf.”

“Don’t worry. I think I’ve just realised something. Does your capitaine come from Paris? Used to work with the Drug Squad?”

“That’s right,” Romain said.

“Then I know who she is. And don’t ever apologise for her.”

—

The dinghy slowly left the shore, then Lanson accelerated and in less than ten seconds they were 50 or so metres from the bank.

“According to our only witness, the barrel was found around here,” Valant said.

Lanson nodded, tossed the anchor overboard, and the craft stabilised.

“We got in touch with the people who direct operations for the dam,” Massey went on, “and they say they haven’t had to release water to control the level for several weeks. So there shouldn’t have been much current. If this is where the barrel was found, it won’t have drifted far from where it surfaced. Where are we exactly?”

Sonar took a video monitor from its hermetically sealed case, switched it on, and used a finger to open the software user interface.

“I downloaded the map of the old village. I only have to make a copy and I’ll know to within a metre where we are, and, most importantly, what we are above.”

The software processed the data and came up with the result: latitude 44 degrees 31 minutes and 44 seconds and one hundredth north; longitude 2 degrees, 14 minutes, 54 seconds and 9 hundredths.

“According to the map, that means we’re above rue Alary. Between even numbers 2, 4 and 6, odd numbers 1, 3 and 5. From the map, I’m not sure about number 6, which seems to be three times bigger than the others. It must be something different. The map has it marked as ‘Avalone C.C.’: does that ring any bells for you?”

Holding on to the ropes attached to the sides of the inflatable, Valant made his way unsteadily to the monitor.

“C.C. stands for ‘Community Centre’. It’s a kind of meeting place and storage space. Each commune has one. If it’s like the one in Aubin, my village, there are bedrooms for official visitors and a meeting room, and also somewhere to put tables, chairs and parasols for village fêtes, tins of paint for renovating public buildings, supplies of diesel oil, cleaning products and so on. Not everybody has a big farm, but they do at least have a garden, sometimes even farm animals. If there are wholesale purchases of grain or seeds, the barrels are also stocked there, for everyone to draw on.”

“And they could contain propylene glycol?” Massey wanted to know.

“I see you’ve already read the files,” Romain said appreciatively. “Yes, propylene glycol is an animal food additive.”

Massey turned towards Sonar and nodded, handing things over to him. Sonar opened the long canary-yellow bag, uncovering a sonar probe of the same colour. About a metre long, it was shaped like a missile, with a round tip to aid hydrodynamics and three stabilising fins at the rear. On the shaft its nickname was painted in black: Centurion.

“That’s a bit macho, isn’t it?” Romain said.

“O.K., but what do you expect? We’re not going to call the probes Popcorn or Lollipop, are we? They’re not little ponies,” Lanson laughed.

The video monitor was aligned to the sonar, which was attached to a metal wire and slipped into the water. It dropped to a depth of six metres, ready to map out the underwater Avalone.

Romain was disappointed by the images that appeared on the screen. He had expected something clearer, not simply orange blotches and dark rectangles.

“The five rectangles you see are the rooms,” Sonar explained. “This one is the community centre. Look, the roof seems to have partially collapsed. If that’s where the barrel was, it probably came up through the roof, thanks to the air still left inside it.”

“Can you make out anything else?” Romain said.

“Under the rubble? No way. Think of the sonar as a bat: the sound waves bounce off stone, but they can’t see through it. I’m afraid this is where my job ends for now. We’ll have to use the R.O.V.”

Lanson pointed to the other, bigger case.

“That’s the Remote Operated Vehicle. Or more precisely, Obs R.O.V., for ‘observation’. Basically, it’s a remote-controlled robot with articulated metal arms that can push aside anything that gets in its way. It’s used for oceanographic exploration, but also to repair underwater structures on oil platforms, or to enter shipwrecks. This one’s brand new. We were sent it especially for the 2024 Olympics, in case of any underwater terrorist attack in the Paris canals or the Seine. To be honest, we’ve tested it, but this is the first time we’re using it for real.”

“And we’re running a big risk,” Massey said. “It won’t be able to move the stones of the walls, and if there’s another collapse and it stays down there, we won’t be supplied with another one. I prefer to go and have a look first.”

“If you dive into the house, that counts as cave exploring, and you know you’re not authorised for that,” Lanson objected. “I know you, you’re not going to remain on the threshold, you’ll want to go in. So it’s a no.”

“I outrank you.”

“Not when you’re being stupid.”

With that, Lanson ended the discussion. He turned towards Sonar.

“Bring Centurion back up and get out the robot.”

*

When the second yellow case was opened, Romain saw the R.O.V. Mounted on two 80-centimetre-long floats was a thick plastic dome that contained a rotating camera giving a 360-degree view of its surroundings. On top of the dome, a mini-searchlight, and on either side, two articulated arms ending in powerful pincers. At the rear were two multidirectional propellers that made the R.O.V. neutrally buoyant.

“Does this have a nickname as well?” Valant wondered.

“Not yet. But we’ll baptise it Popcorn in honour of Avalone.”

Lanson unrolled a 100-metre-long cable that tethered the robot to the monitor.

The R.O.V. was laid on the water, where its floats partially filled. The little plastic dome gradually sank. Ten metres. Twenty metres. Thirty-five metres. It came to a halt 50 centimetres from the lakebed.

On the dinghy, Lanson switched the videocam on, and an image appeared on the screen.

The old Avalone was there, right in front of their eyes.

Popcorn’s searchlight came on and the darkness was replaced by an extraordinary aquatic landscape. A street paved with sand and pebbles, lined with tall, algae-covered houses. A school of tiny, curious, silvery fish darted round the robot’s dome, then disappeared through a door knocked off its hinges, only to reappear through a broken windowpane in what had once been a kitchen.

Lanson activated the propellers very slowly to avoid throwing up a cloud of mud. Like a brave little soldier, Popcorn made its way through this forgotten Atlantis by the light of its torch, almost as if it were going to steal something. It went past houses that had not seen a visitor in 25 long years of sleep, and played at being a tourist until it reached 6 rue Alary. Then the mapping system was switched on, taking a photograph every three seconds. Once the R.O.V. was back up on the surface, the River Police would be able to make a three-dimensional plan of the buildings, and of their interiors if the R.O.V. could find a way in.

The propellers whirred, and Popcorn rose up above the community centre. On the surface of the lake, Lanson followed the images of the collapsed roof, the robot’s way blocked by a thick wooden beam and some broken floorboards, jagged spears pointing upwards. In places, there was enough room to permit something the size of a barrel to pass through, but although Popcorn was no taller, it was considerably wider, and to let it enter that way was too risky.

“We’re sure to find a hole in a wall or a broken window somewhere,” Massey suggested.

“OK, I’ll switch to burglar mode.”

The R.O.V. dropped to the bottom again and took up position in front of the house, its searchlight directed at the facade. The collapsing roof had fallen on one of the load-bearing walls, making it, too, partially crumble, and there was a gap that allowed a way in. Lanson moved the joystick slightly to position the R.O.V. directly in front of the opening in the wall, then pushed forward to send the robot a good metre inside, enough to give them an all-round view of the entrance to the community centre. Manoeuvring centimetre by centimetre demanded the precision of a surgeon.

The R.O.V.’s luminous beam could scarcely penetrate the swirling sediment but sent back images of a living room with a fireplace, armchairs and a couch separated by a coffee table. Probably the meeting room. At the back, a window gave on to pitch-black water. A pair of curtains was still hanging from it, like two sleeping phantoms. A décor that in other circumstances would have been banal here made it look like a haunted house. At the far end of the room Lanson could glimpse a corridor. He gently accelerated the propellers to steer into it.

A silent visitor, Popcorn went past a plastic banner hanging on the wall announcing the village fête for 1993, the year before Avalone was flooded. Following the corridor, the robot came to the storage room Valant had mentioned. A jumble of objects, school desks and chairs, wooden crates, tall vases and pots of all shapes and sizes, more furniture and rows of metal racks, all of them covered in green slime.

Above the robot, a spectral light filtered down through the ruined roof. The video camera picked out the collapsed beam: its lower end had crashed through a double trapdoor that covered a basement room.

“To hide a secret, a cellar is always a good idea,” Lanson murmured. “Let’s take a look.”

He adjusted the controls, and the robot hovered above the opening. The image it transmitted 36 metres up above led to silence.

Crushed by the beam was a red barrel.

“Is that what you’re looking for?” Lanson said.

“Partly,” Romain sighed, still taken aback by the discovery. “Can you get into the cellar?”

“Unfortunately not, it’s too narrow an opening. This is where Popcorn has to stop. Sorry.”

The robot went into reverse along the corridor and back into the living room. As it was passing the pair of curtains, it went too close and one of them wrapped itself around the left propeller. Lanson moved Popcorn backwards and forwards, but to no avail. The robot was stuck fast.

“O.K., stay calm,” Lanson told himself. “We’ll try to detach it.”

One of the articulated arms rose, turned back on itself, and passed over the top of the dome to reach the curtain. Its pincer opened ten centimetres, then snapped shut on the material. It pulled gently, then more firmly, but nothing happened. After all those years, the curtain was still solidly attached to its rail. Lanson pressed a button and the arm turned into scissors that quickly cut through the thick fabric. But now one of the propellers had the piece of curtain wrapped round it, putting it out of action, and this made manoeuvring the R.O.V. extremely difficult.

Obeying instructions from the dinghy, Popcorn moved backwards, banged into the chimney piece and began spinning round and round like a dog trying to bite its own tail. The only functioning propeller kept pushing it in one direction, making it almost impossible to control. But Lanson was so dexterous that, by nudging it along delicately, he managed to guide it back into the entrance hall. Unfortunately, although the corridors were wide enough for this, his skills as a pilot were of no use when it came to the little hole in the wall through which the R.O.V. had entered. It was like threading a needle with one hand.

“Shit, they’re going to kill us in Paris for this,” Lanson muttered, like a kid who has just landed the family car in a ditch.

“Stop the robot,” Massey told him. “Empty all the air out of the floats, and let it sink to the bottom. It’s right by the entrance to the building, so I’ve only got two metres of cave-diving to do to recover it.”

“And for that, Hugo, you need our chiefs’ permission. I won’t let you do it otherwise. I swear I’ll empty your oxygen cylinders right here!”

“That’s almost a declaration of love.”

“Almost.”

—

The Zodiac sped back to the shore, where Commandant Roze had already set up a security cordon to prevent the crew being deluged with questions as soon as they stepped ashore.

Chastain was waiting for them on the sandy bank. Romain gave a brief nod to tell her the search had brought results. Jumping out of the boat, Massey pulled it up onto the shore, then attached it to the trailer. Noémie forced herself to look straight at him, hands stuffed in her coat pockets.

“Our robot escaped us,” Massey said. “We’re going to have to go back down to recover it. But we did find one of your barrels in the community centre basement. The same size and colour.”

“Just one?”

“There was only one that we could see. As I said, we lost control of the R.O.V.”

“Do you think you can go back down?”

“For the robot? Of course. It’s easy enough to reach. The cellar, though, is like a cave dive, and for that I’ll have to have permission from my superiors.”

“Which you’ll never get,” Lanson cut in.

Noémie turned to peer at the curious onlookers. Almost a third of the population of Avalone must have been gathered there.

“It’s going to be complicated keeping our discovery from them,” Hugo said.

“I can handle it. Nothing here stays a secret for long. But finding only one barrel is worse. It means they’re going to have to ask themselves a dreadful question.”

“Which is?”

“Who is in it? Cyril or Elsa?”

33

River Police headquarters boat Quais de Seine, Paris

On the second floor of the headquarters boat, Commandant Bergeron was playing nervously with her Eiffel Tower snow globe, trying hard to resist throwing it at the wall. Behind her, a huge cinema poster for “Titanic” perfectly symbolised the catastrophe she had just been presented with in a phone call.

“Do you know how much this is going to cost?”

“I can only imagine, ma’am,” Massey admitted. “But as I said, there’s a chance I can recover the R.O.V. without getting into too much danger. It’s only two metres from the entrance.”

“A cave dive? Is that what you’re proposing? I’ve got a real urge to see you drown, Hugo, but it’s no more than an urge. You’re still more important in my eyes than a robot. Write your reports, spend a day getting some sun in the Aveyron, and return to base.”

—

Hugo knocked on the door of the investigation team’s room. Noémie was immersed in the patchwork of photographs, press articles and extracts from statements that covered the wall.

Even though it had not been a complete success, the River Police’s intervention had reinforced the theory that all the villagers feared. The children had never left the village, and Fortin had been a useful lightning rod for a drama that had in fact taken place in the heart of Avalone.

“Am I disturbing you?” Massey said.

“In view of what you’ve lost today, I think I can spare you five minutes.”

“I’m not so sure we’ve lost everything. There may be a solution.”

“Your colleagues don’t seem to think so,” Noémie said.

“My colleagues are not me, and I’m the only diver. Besides, I’ve got the go-ahead to recover the R.O.V.”

Noémie sat at her desk, and Hugo came over to perch on the edge, a little too close for her comfort. From where he was sitting, none of her scars could escape him.

“I don’t follow,” Noémie said. “You’re going to risk your life for a robot? I could just about understand if it was for a victim, but this is idiotic.”

“I couldn’t give a damn about the robot. That’s not why I’m going down there.”

Noémie’s face softened a little, and she allowed herself to drop her guard.

“So why are you doing the dive, Capitaine Massey?”

“Since when has a police officer not wanted to see an investigation through? There are three families who have stopped living since the first body was discovered, and you want to tell them we’re dropping things because there are risks? I have to get into that cellar; I have to know if the two kids are down there; and I need to try to get them out if at all possible. It’s them I’m diving for. And to impress you a bit, if it works.”

Noémie lowered her head, afraid she might blush like an embarrassed adolescent.

“And you’ve got permission for that too?”

Hugo could not answer that without lying. Instead, he asked her another question.

“Why have you ended up here?”

“I’m being hidden.”

“After what happened in Paris, you ought to have been promoted.”

“Don’t worry on my account. As soon as I wrap up this investigation it’s back to the Drug Squad in Paris.”

“Does your team here know that?”

“No. Just as yours doesn’t know you’re going to dive into the house without permission, whatever you claim. Now we know each other’s secret. That’s the best guarantee we won’t hurt one another.”

Noémie cast a glance at the underwater photographs the R.O.V. had taken. The collapsed roof and the tiny hole that had offered a way in would soon be added to the room’s crowded walls.

“Are you really sure about this dive?”

“When you use a battering ram to break down a door at six in the morning, you’ve no idea what you’ll find, have you? So what gives you the right to be braver than me?”

“Courage is a virtue, recklessness a weakness.”

“Then you’ll just have to keep an eye on everything from the boat tomorrow, won’t you?”

34

Midnight Avalone and elsewhere

Under the duvet, by the light of her pocket torch, Lily was turning the last pages of Never-Ending Story, a novel she had read twice already, and which would be the reason for her crumpled face the next morning.

In the adjacent bedroom, Aminata had fallen asleep in her husband’s arms. Noémie’s insomnia, like a contagious virus, had been adopted by Romain, who was recalling the day he had met his new capitaine at the station. Back then no-one could have anticipated the storm she brought with her, as if she had carried it in her luggage.

At the Hôtel du Parc, Sonar had packed up, called back to Paris. A young girl had jumped from the Pont des Arts and not resurfaced. It was up to him to find her. The rescue operation for Popcorn had been planned in detail, so when morning came Sonar would leave his two colleagues to carry out one last dive.

Madame Saulnier had seen Elsa pass in front of her window and was waiting for her to go by again. She was sitting on a swing chair in her garden, like an elderly heiress on the Côte d’Azur but in the moonlight.

Pierre Valant, whose roles as mayor and farmer meant that he worked eighteen hours a day, was still with the vet in his cowshed, the only building lit amidst the many hectares of his fields. On a hay bale covered in blood and amniotic fluid, Zora, one of his most prized cows, had just given birth to a calf, which she was now rejecting with hefty kicks of her hoofs. Impossible to put the calf on her udder: she would have bitten it badly. Valant leaned back against the rail of an empty stall, a huge feeding bottle in his lined hand, the newborn between his crossed legs, attempting to make up for the lack of motherly love. For the moment, the calf seemed satisfied with this, even if he sought his mother’s warmth with his doleful eyes and her smell with his wet, baby-pink muzzle, aware something was not right.

Juliette Casteran had never believed in God, but in her thirty-fifth year in 1994, he came to her when her son was kidnapped. André Casteran decided that this sudden religious devotion was better than antidepressants and had let icons and other pious images sprout on the walls. These and the myriad photographs of little Cyril had transformed their house into a mortuary chapel. Unwilling to live in a mausoleum, André generally left home at dawn and only returned at nightfall, more often than not seriously inebriated – alcohol, divine beliefs and medicines all representing the same refusal to accept reality. That evening, swaying and aggressive, terrified at the discovery of a possible new corpse which could be that of their son, he had torn the photographs from the wall before collapsing fully clothed onto the bed. Juliette had collected the dog-eared, torn souvenirs strewn across the floor, stuck them together, and begun to pin them up again. Everything had to be just so for the moment Cyril returned.

Serge Dorin, hands flat on his living room table, could not bring himself to click on his four-coloured biro. Next to it lay the open death certificate form. The first three questions were the hardest: Family Name, First Name, Age.

Dorin. Alex. Ten. Impossible for Serge to write them.

“What’s that?” his son Bruno said as he passed by.

“Something I’ll do in the morning, son,” the old man said, closing the form.

Picasso had lain down next to Noémie, head on her lap, more at peace than in a long while. Engrossed in a dream of freedom, he began to run into empty space before settling again. So as not to burn herself, Chastain pulled down the sleeves of her pullover to pick up the bowl of tea on the coffee table. Then for the third time she scrolled through the latest texts, most of them from her old team. Every other day, Chloé sent her a friendly message to which she could not reply. Rebuilding herself while looking backwards was impossible. “I haven’t forgotten you. I need more time,” Noémie forced herself to write. She refused to make any effort for the other messages. Adriel blamed himself. Adriel wanted to apologise. Adriel cursed himself. Just a second chance, he begged. Ten or more declined calls had not deterred him; he persisted. Noémie switched off her mobile to make him disappear.

Popcorn, meanwhile, was dozing in the darkness, waiting to be rescued.

35

Arès had been launched again, and the onboard G.P.S. directed them towards the centre of the lake, above the community centre. Massey and Lanson had not exchanged a word, both concentrating on the task at hand.

On the shore, Romain had increased the number of uniforms. They were struggling to contain a crowd that was twice yesterday’s, since the news had spread of the possible discovery of a second body. Some were satisfying a macabre curiosity, like those people who post morbid videos on the internet. Others were there to support André Casteran, whose wife had not come with him, convinced as she was that their son could not be dead. Romain watched the dinghy speed away with Noémie on board.

Massey, wearing his wetsuit, was letting the water of the lake trickle through his fingers, as if he were stroking it, communicating with it, taming it. Chastain watched him, so engrossed that everything around him seemed to have vanished. As Lanson moved to drop anchor, he passed his teammate and laid a hand on his shoulder. Without turning, Massey laid his own hand on top of it for an instant. Their friendship had no need of superfluous words.

Lanson checked that the valve on the diving tank was fully open, and Hugo breathed twice into the regulator to make sure the air was flowing properly. He adjusted the seven-kilo belt, sat with his back to the lake, winked at Noémie, then lowered his mask and did a backward flip into the water.

No sooner had he disappeared than Noémie was overcome with a panic attack. The GoPro action camera attached to Massey’s chest sent the first images back to the monitor, so that she could see the murky shadows he was diving through. She leaped up and joined Lanson.

“He’s going to do it,” she said, breathing heavily. “He won’t stop at freeing your robot. He’s going to go into the house himself.”

Lanson’s eyes were still fixed on the images.

“Of course he is,” he said coolly. “Do you think he can lie to me? I’ve known him for so long I could tell you what he intends to do before he does it. Besides, he took a guide line and a lift bag with him, so it’s obvious what he’s up to.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me?”

“The guide line is to help him find his way back. The lift bag is an inflatable air reservoir you can fill with the oxygen in the diving cylinders to bring heavy loads up to the surface.”

“Such as a barrel?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what he intends to do. But first of all he’ll have to get it out of the building.”

Noémie glanced at the surface of the lake, calm once more after Hugo’s dive.

“Can he do it?”

“Of course he can.”

“But you’re worried?”

“Reasonably.”

The loss of luminosity annuls certain colours. At five metres down, red disappeared. At seven, it was the turn of yellow. Hugo switched on his head light to restore the range of colours, like fixing an old television set. Then he let himself drift down the remaining 29 metres, pulled by his weight belt.

The village appeared silhouetted in the distance, then became more and more clear as Hugo reached the level of the collapsed roof. He clung to the gutter that ran along the wall until he was above the community centre. He pointed his light and soon discovered the cavity that had allowed Popcorn to enter.

Kicking his fins, he came to one of the building’s windows and smashed the pane with the hilt of his knife. A shower of glass drifted down in slow motion. Hugo scraped the frame to avoid being cut by any remaining shard. Grasping the sill with both hands, he pushed himself inside.

The little sleeping dome of the R.O.V. was waiting patiently for him. It took Massey many attempts to unsnag the material blocking the propeller, but he finally gave the thumbs-up to the GoPro camera to tell Lanson that he could reawaken Popcorn. Its light came on and with two gentle movements of the controls, Lanson checked that the propellers were working. Like freeing a fish from a net, Hugo laid it down next to the narrow opening, and with a little push allowed it to glide out of the building. He tied his silver guide line there to be able to find the way out in case his light failed or a cloud of mud and sediment blotted out his view.

Old buildings are alive. Whether underwater or not, at night they speak, they creak, they chafe, contract or expand. Underwater the sound is felt rather than heard. The waves they create are no more than dull, muted vibrations that die away almost as soon as they are born. If the stones in the walls had a message for Hugo, to alert or warn him, he was ready to listen. So now he simply sat in one of the armchairs in this aquatic meeting room, closed his eyes, breathed as gently as possible, and paid close attention. The house’s silence invited him to carry on.

A quick glance at the depth gauge: 36 metres. He had been diving for eleven minutes.

He tied another knot in the guide line around the arm of the chair.

He swam towards the corridor leading to the storeroom, and in front of him saw the images projected on the monitor the previous day. The huge beam starting from the roof and plunging like a stake into the floor, revealing the double trapdoor and the cellar entrance. It was no surprise that the red barrel was there, but seeing it for real and knowing what it could contain was nevertheless a shock.

Before moving the barrel and risking upsetting the equilibrium of his surroundings, Hugo wanted to check if there was a second one down in the basement. He raised the left-hand side of the trapdoor to give himself more room. Another knot in the guide line, then he went in head first. He found himself in the cellar, a large room that had once been a coal store. Even by the light of his powerful torch, it was still all black, from floor to walls. Black and empty. He could imagine Noémie’s disappointment, 40 metres above him.

Hugo swam back up to the level of the red barrel blocked by the beam. As in a game of pick-up sticks, he went over the possible consequences if he dislodged it. His legs still in the cellar and the rest of his body above the trapdoor, he pulled gently on the barrel, then pushed it, but to no avail. He tried with more force, even attempting to get under it and lever it with his knife. Again without success. He had reluctantly to accept that it was beyond him. He crossed his arms in front of the camera to signal he was on his way back to the surface.

Despite the bad news, up on the dinghy Noémie and Lanson could breathe more easily. The capitaine would have to find another solution. They had tried everything, even the most reckless.

Massey checked his depth gauge once again. It showed 38 metres – the extra two because of the height of the cellar. He had been underwater for nineteen minutes. Despite his second oxygen tank, it was time to resurface and leave this dangerous environment. As he groped along the beam to get out of the basement, he felt something tugging, as if an invisible hand was holding him back. He came to a halt at once and checked every bit of his equipment to see if anything was caught in it. What he could not see behind his back was the long wooden splinter that stuck up out of the smashed trapdoor. It had lodged between one of his oxygen tanks and the regulator. Reassured, he pushed upwards with his legs, and the hose came free from the tank in a rush of a million bubbles. He was engulfed by a frothing mass of compressed air.

He had to take stock, not surrender to panic, and act as though this was no more than a simple training exercise. A few seconds were enough. Hugo spat out the mouthpiece and caught the one for the back-up cylinder. Stress made his breathing accelerate, so that he used up the air in this second tank too quickly. In a flash, the slashed hose released more than a cubic metre of compressed air. It spread to the whole house, raising a huge dark cloud of 25 years of mineral and vegetable deposits.

The equivalent of 1,000 litres of air rushed into every free space between the floorboards and the blocks of stone. The whole building began to vibrate. He grasped the silvery line that had, knot after knot, marked his route, and was about to emerge from the cellar when the house, with a dull thud of grinding stone, gave one last cry of anger and the top end of the beam fell, crushing his legs.

Up on Arès¸ Lanson clenched his fists. Noémie did not even dare to breathe.

The beam ought to have smashed Massey’s knees, but instead it only immobilised him. He was saved by the red plastic barrel, which took most of the weight. It was made of thick plastic, but even so it split with the pressure. The gash in its side allowed part of a skull to appear. Two big empty eye sockets gazed at him; for Hugo it was like looking into a mirror.

He had found the second one. He was going to die there with him or her, but he had found the dead child. For one instant, diver and child stared at each other.

“Your lift bag, for fuck’s sake, use the bag!” Lanson shouted up on the surface.

Lost, in shock and confused despite his years of experience, Hugo found it hard to regain reality. Gasping for breath, he was using up all his air, leaving himself no more than 20 minutes to find a solution.

He slipped his hand down to his thigh, opened the wetsuit pocket and took out the lift bag. He tied the straps round the beam but then paused.

He had one tank of air left, now only half full. If he used it to fill the bag, he would have to resurface in a free dive . . .

“An almost impossible free dive,” Lanson said, as if their two brains were working in tandem. “He has to lift the beam, get out of the building and climb almost 40 metres, breathing out air as he climbs so as not to tear his lungs apart. And such exertion cuts our free dive capacity by half.”

For his part, there was no point Hugo repeating all this in his mind, because something else was impossible: breathing out regularly was not the only thing he had to do. He had also to climb more slowly than at fifteen metres a minute to prevent the nitrogen in his blood starting to boil and getting trapped in his brain or spinal cord. He would never have enough air.

Unless, that is, Lanson was thinking exactly the same as him.

That was the only way Massey could come out of this alive. He would leave the building and start an emergency climb. The rest was in his friend’s hands.

Taking a deep breath, Hugo removed the mouthpiece and jammed it into the lift bag’s nozzle. After a few seconds it was almost inflated. The beam gave an animal-like groan. As the bag became a huge underwater air balloon, Hugo checked on his gauge how much air was left. He had hoped to be able to take a few lungfuls to at least get out of the house, but the lift bag was sucking up all that was left. As the bag inflated, the beam was raised no more than a centimetre. Just enough. Hugo pulled his legs and pushed with his arms and with one last effort succeeded in freeing himself. Casting a final involuntary glance at the red barrel, he clung onto the guide line and paddled his fins as fast as he could. First the storeroom, then the meeting room, at last the hole in the wall. He was out of the house.

He had been free diving for two minutes.

It would take him another minute and a half to climb 36 metres, all the while breathing out air in a controlled stream.

In the past he had remained submerged without moving in a swimming pool for almost four minutes, but now the stress, the exertion and the need to constantly let out air made it nothing like a training exercise, and risked leaving him close to blacking out. He repeated the signal for the end of his dive in front of the camera, hoping Lanson would understand. Closing his eyes, he kicked the fins as rapidly as he could towards the surface.

On the Zodiac, Lanson had made the same calculations and understood Massey could not avoid an emergency climb, without any decompression stops. He would reach the fresh air, but his body would not be able to bear it.

“I have less than three minutes to take him back to the bottom,” he said out loud to himself. “After that he’ll get the bends.”

He seized an oxygen cylinder and slipped into the water. Then he took hold of the anchor chain and waited. In the middle of the lake, every second that passed was torture. Lanson glanced all around him, on the lookout for the slightest ripple, the tiniest wave. Several air bubbles caught his attention, and then Hugo appeared in a rush of air.

Eyes rolled up, gasping for oxygen, arms flailing in all directions as if he were still trying to swim. Lanson grasped his shoulders and shouted at him.

“You have to go back down, Hugo. It’s your only chance!”

Like someone drunk and befuddled, Massey could only agree. Lanson pushed the regulator into his mouth.

“Five minutes at eighteen metres down, ten minutes at six, and 38 minutes at three. Don’t worry, I’m coming with you.”

Lanson took a firm hold on Massey and, following the anchor chain, dragged him underwater again. They stopped at eighteen metres, and Lanson attached Hugo to a link in the chain so that he would not immediately head upwards. The two men stayed face to face for 30 seconds in the silent inky black water. As his blood gradually expelled the nitrogen, Massey began to breathe more regularly. Lanson reached the limit of diving without oxygen and had to return to the surface.

“Is he O.K.?” asked an ashen-faced Noémie.

“Give me 50 minutes to be sure,” Lanson said, panting. “Pass me an oxygen cylinder. Quickly!”

She did as he asked and watched him disappear again. For the next 50 minutes she could only await the verdict, angry that she could not help in any way.

It was Lanson who reappeared first, clutching the side of the Zodiac. A few seconds later Massey surfaced, disoriented but alive. Noémie held out her hand to him above the water.

36

Noémie had abandoned all thoughts of protocol and was addressing the public prosecutor as if she were scolding a child.

“I almost lost a man!” she shouted. “And simply to avoid making waves? Well done, now you’re going to be hit by a tsunami!”

“Capitaine Chastain . . .”

“What am I to tell the families? That we found a second kid but that he’s going to stay with the fishes because you don’t have the guts to drain that damn lake?”

“Capitaine Chastain . . .”

“And what will the press make of it? That we can’t do it because it’s too complicated? Too expensive?”

“Capitaine Chastain . . .”

“Yes, ‘Capitaine Chastain’ what . . .? I can’t believe it!”

“I just wanted to tell you that you have a green light. Draining the lake will begin tomorrow morning. The préfet and lots of people above my pay grade have made it clear we’re to help your investigation in every way we can, and to give you carte blanche.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said a chastened Noémie, adding: “You could have said so sooner.”

The prosecutor did not respond, aware of everything the capitaine had been through.

“The lake at Annecy was drained in six weeks, and the one at Sarrans in four. I looked them up. Avalone lake is only half that size. I think that within a fortnight you should see the first roofs appearing. Your investigation will just have to wait.”

“That’s not how I see it. That will give me just enough time. The evidence may be under the water, but the information I need is in people’s memories. It’s my turn to dive into them.”

“Ah, now you mention it, how is your diver?”

“Still dizzy and exhausted. He’s being given pure oxygen in his hotel room, monitored by his colleague. He’ll go to sleep for twelve hours and then he should be alright.”

“Good, I’m really relieved. So, what do you need? Equipment? More officers? Things being as they are, I can get a police judiciaire team to come as reinforcements, if you like.”

“No! No police judiciaire. This is my case.”

The prosecutor noted her change in attitude and could not help but point it out.

“What’s happened in the last three days, Capitaine?”

“I’ve become a police officer again.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

—

Noémie parked her Land Rover outside the Hôtel du Parc. She opened the rear door to let Picasso out; she didn’t have the heart to deprive him of an outing. The dog jumped down and immediately set off on the path to the horse paddock. The dog-sitting question resolved, Noémie headed to the hotel entrance.

She asked a pretty young receptionist for the River Police room numbers, and after climbing a floor, knocked softly on Hugo’s door. When there was no reply, she opened it out of a sense of professional duty. Just to make sure he was alright, she promised herself. All she found was an unmade bed and an oxygen cylinder propped up against the bedside table. She was about to leave the room when the bathroom door opened wide.

Wearing only a towel round his waist, Hugo came out in a cloud of steam, as startled as she was. They stared at one another with embarrassment, which soon wore off.

“Do you think you could put on a T-shirt?”

“Sorry, I thought it was the girl at reception,” Hugo teased her.

“How do you feel?”

“Alive,” he said, pulling on a sweater over his bare chest. “Very much so, in fact.”

“I know the feeling. Well, so the effects didn’t last too long.”

She instinctively turned her face to show him her left profile. She was reacting like a silly schoolgirl again: she could have slapped herself.

“I’d have liked to help you more,” he said, sitting on the broad bed.

“You confirmed there was a second body down there, and now, thanks to you, the prosecutor is having the lake drained.”

“So that’s the end of my mission. Another twelve hours of rest, then a day to finish my diving reports, and after that all you’ll need do is order me to leave,” he said, leaning over towards her.

He could easily have stayed at the bottom of the lake. He had been insanely lucky. He should have drowned. Every breath he took was tempting fate, and he had had to resurface without oxygen. Alive. Surviving. Avid for every second offered him. Free of fears and barriers. With no time to lose, ever again. He took hold of Noémie’s wrist and pulled her to him, slowly enough for her to free herself if she wanted to.

“I see you’re still in post-traumatic shock,” she said, but she did not resist. “You’re going to do something stupid, and you’ll regret it.”

She put a knee on the bed, and her hand on his chest. She could feel his heart beating. She seemed to hesitate, but Hugo ignored this and drew her even closer, then pressed his lips to hers. A first kiss, a furtive first contact. A second kiss, longer and firmer. Noémie’s defences crumbled: she relaxed with a shudder, arched her back and strained against him. The next kiss would have been endless, if Hugo, carried away by the moment, hadn’t thoughtlessly raised his hand to her ruined cheek. A violent shock of shame and self-disgust made her draw back.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologised.

Noémie struggled with a mixture of desire and revulsion.

“It’s only you who thinks you are—”

She stopped him. “Don’t say it, please. I know very well what I am. I know what you see. And you can’t want that.”

Distressed for himself and hurt on her account, Hugo watched her leave in silence. When the door closed, he let himself fall back on the bed. He couldn’t help Noémie on the journey she still had to make.

37

Serge Dorin took out a grey suit he had last worn three years earlier for the wedding of a distant cousin he did not particularly like anyway. Today’s ceremony was very different. All that remained of Alex’s body had been returned to him in a small black wooden box. He told himself it would not take up much room in a coffin that itself was not very large.

He went to help his son Bruno, who was in the bathroom with his fingers in a twist trying to do up his tie. Bruno could feel his father’s breath on his face.

“Are you going to talk to him?” Bruno said.

“Not today.”

“You do know he lied to you, don’t you?”

“We can’t be sure.”

“You don’t need to be sure to talk to him. It’s you who has blood on your hands, not him.”

“Don’t ever say that!” Serge exploded. “And besides, I’ll be able to see in his eyes if he’s told me the truth.”

He adjusted his son’s collar and straightened the knot.

“There. That looks fine now, son.”

—

Bambi parked the car with the National Police insignia on the side in front of the sliding doors of Noémie’s house. Picasso growled for form’s sake, then spun around him like a rogue satellite. Noémie whistled to him to free the baby policeman.

“Morning, Capitaine. Romain is already there. I thought it might be easier for you not to arrive on your own. Among all those strangers.”

“That’s kind of you, thanks. My, but you look handsome!”

Bambi smiled sadly.

“I’ll just drop you, Capitaine. I have to get back to the station while the burial is on. Almost everyone wants to be there, so I’m the duty officer.”

He studied her in her black outfit, a straight pair of trousers and fitted jacket.

“So you brought the right clothes,” he said, amazed.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not one for bright colours.”

“So you don’t stand out?” he asked innocently.

“That’s right. So I don’t stand out.”

—

Avalone cemetery nestled between two hills, as if it did not want to show itself to anyone who wasn’t coming there to say a prayer. The avenues of tombs could be seen only from the train windows as it passed over the bridge between the hills. Also dressed for the occasion, Romain was waiting for them by the big wrought-iron gates. Next to him, Aminata looked splendid and dignified in her midnight-blue dress. Letting go of her hand, Lily ran towards Noémie and wrapped her small arms round her waist, pressing her head against her stomach.

“I know this isn’t a day for being happy,” she said as though whispering a secret, “but I’m glad to see you, No.”

With that she turned to Bambi and addressed him confidently. “It’s alright, I’ll look after her.”

As the two of them walked down the gravel path, Noémie leaned down to the little girl.

“Are people here already?”

“Not just people. Everybody.”

“What do you mean?”

She soon saw what Lily meant. Within minutes Noémie was surrounded by the entire village. More than 600 solemn-looking men and women were there, gazing intently at the hole dug in the ground. One face turned in her direction, then a second. This attracted another ten, and before long the whole of Avalone was staring at Noémie. Some were seeing this famous police officer from Paris with her car-crash face for the first time and made no secret of studying her the way they might estimate the price of a second-hand car. And she had said she didn’t like to stand out . . .

She wasn’t the star attraction for long. The crowd suddenly parted to allow the pall-bearers through. There were only two of them, all that were needed to carry the small pine coffin with gilded handles.

Seeing them, Noémie realised that a large part of the village had for years remained suspended in time. The older ones, for whom time had stood still because of the macabre event, had wanted to be there, and to be accompanied by their families, so that they could all turn the page on a drama that had tormented them for 25 years.

Serge Dorin seemed barely present. He did not look at the bearers or exchange so much as a glance with anyone.

Bruno, the youngest member of the Dorin family, gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as if, 25 years on, there was still some injustice to be put right. He had been only eight when his big brother disappeared. He had grown up with an absence that had not only taken up the entire home and all his parents’ thoughts but had eventually driven his mother to suicide. He could vividly remember the day he had opened the barn door and fallen to his knees in the straw when he saw his mother’s body hanging from a beam. Sometimes at night he found himself hating his brother. Back then he was a child; now he was a 33-year-old adult.

The older Dorin was not a sociable sort. Far from it. Surly, roughly hewn, he had not thought of organising a reception after the burial; he had no wish to see anyone. He tossed a handful of earth onto his son’s remains, then left the cemetery, Bruno shadowing him.

Serge slowed as he passed Noémie and her team, but the words stuck in his throat. A few metres on, however, when he came to the mayor, he whispered in his ear:

“Did you lie to me, Pierre?”

Taken aback, Valant had no idea what to reply.

“My boy,” Serge continued. “In the lake. I don’t understand. What was he doing there?”

“Let’s talk about it some other time,” the mayor said.

Red-faced, Bruno butted in.

“Some other time? Why? If you’ve got something to say to us, it’s now! Are you worried people who voted for you might hear, your honour?”

“Be quiet, son!” Serge Dorin told him. “Be quiet!”

Bruno was about to protest again, but a look from his father towards the new police capitaine, who was drawing closer to them as she left the cemetery, persuaded him to remain silent.

Noémie simply nodded at them, and the three men returned the greeting. Distance had prevented her hearing what their heated conversation was about, but their gestures and attitudes had given the Dorin clan and the mayor away. Animosity. Another scrap of information for Chastain. Something to file in her memory, if there was room.

She joined Bousquet and Valant at the cemetery gates. Without knowing it, she was asking herself the same questions as Serge Dorin.

“Three kids people thought had been kidnapped and taken far from here, and two bodies discovered in the lake. We’re sure Alex Dorin was one. As for the second, we’ll know once the lake is drained whether it’s Elsa Saulnier or Cyril Casteran. But I’m con vinced that everything happened in the old village of Avalone, and that Fortin was never anything more than a distraction. The third child is there somewhere.”

“Except, there could be two cases,” Romain argued. “There’s nothing to disprove that two of the children were killed here and the third was snatched by Fortin.”

“So a kidnapping and two murders took place in the same night? That’s a very big coincidence for such a small place,” Bousquet objected.

“I still come back to Fortin,” Romain said. “He could be both: murderer and kidnapper.”

“And I come back to Avalone,” Noémie said. “Everything happened here, in 1994. So, unless you want to take time out after the burial, I suggest you return to the station and take a leap 25 years back in time. Since we know nothing and still don’t have any leads, I want a complete picture of the village as it was then, and what was going on there. A complete X-ray or, rather, an autopsy. I want everything put up on the wall, even the most trivial and anecdotal detail. And I want the office door locked at all times to both the public and our colleagues.”

“Is there somebody you suspect?” a puzzled Romain said.

“If I don’t have a suspect, then I’m suspicious of everyone. Bambi, Bousquet, you, Commandant Roze and myself will be the only ones who have a key and can enter the room. And I’ll leave it to you to teach our baby officer here a lesson about the concept of being circumspect and not divulging information about an ongoing case.”

“It’d be simpler just to gag him,” Bousquet said with a laugh, “but that could be seen as child abuse.”

As she left the cemetery, Noémie came to a halt. Something didn’t fit. She turned and surveyed the avenues of flower-covered graves.

Yes. Something did not fit. Like an anachronism or an extra in the crowd smiling at the film camera. Or a tie clashing with a suit. A detail nagged at her, but what was it? Mentally she placed a little red flag on the cemetery, telling herself she would be back.

When she got into the car Romain was driving, Noémie hesitated at first to mention the altercation she had barely heard, but she soon couldn’t resist mentioning it.

“Is there any reason why the Dorin family would quarrel with your father on the day of Alex’s burial?”

“Oh yes, a thousand reasons. The same goes for everyone else. Given his foul character, it would make more sense to ask who he hasn’t quarrelled with.”

Clearly, talking to the son about the father was a terrible idea.

38

They had all been given their task. Bambi had been dispatched to the La Dépêche offices in the main street of Decazeville. Bousquet was playing music as loudly as he could on his earphones while he searched the internet, trying to find a needle in a cyber-haystack. In the police station basement, Romain sifted through the files from 25 years ago, while Noémie collected it all together.

Late in the afternoon, Bambi returned with armfuls of photocopies of press cuttings. Everything he brought back was immediately pinned on the wall with the rest.

“Did Saint-Charles cause any problems?” Chastain asked him.

“On the contrary. He even spent the day working with me, to speed things up.”

“It’s in his interest,” the capitaine acknowledged. “If we can solve this case, he’ll have his scoop. He’s part of our ecosystem now.”

Closing the last, almost empty box of drawing pins, she studied the end wall of their office. It was covered with a jigsaw puzzle of all kinds of information. News stories, incident reports, articles, photographs, statements, interviews and complaints covering the five years prior to the triple disappearance. If the events had taken place in Avalone, the evidence had to date from the day of the crime and the weeks, months and years leading up to it. So it was probably staring straight at them.

The faces of the three children occupied the centre of the wall, the origin of their investigation’s expanding universe. Around them whirled the scattered information gathered here and there; some of it, correctly fitted in and joined up, had to create a mechanism that would lead to the truth. It was simply a question of clockmaking, logic and luck, in as yet uncertain proportions.

Obviously pride of place went to the very first newspaper article about the disappearance of Alex, Cyril and Elsa. The villagers’ shock. The initial theories. The first suspicions. Commandant Roze, at the time a young lieutenant, gave the journalist the standard reassuring speech, concluding that all available elements of his police force had been called upon to find out what had happened to the children.

“Lieutenant Roze?” Noémie read. “So he’s spent his entire career here, in the same police station? That’s crazy.”

“I’d be happy to do the same,” Bambi admitted. “Not everyone is so keen on big cities and crowded metros.”

Noémie was assailed by unwelcome memories of the smell, squalor and promiscuity of transport in Paris. The capital seemed so far away.

She focused once more on the case and the interviews with the parents, friends and others. The Casteran, Dorin and Saulnier families had been obliged to answer questions that seemed surreal when applied to children. “Do you know if they have any enemies?” “Are they addicted to anything?” “Do you know if they keep bad company?” “Did they receive any threats of death or violence in the preceding days?” Noémie could only imagine the stress and incomprehension on the part of these fathers and mothers as their tormented hearts came up against the judicial machinery.

“So what do we know about these children?” she asked them all.

“There’s not much to say about ten-year-olds. They were kids, just kids. But the interviews with the different families all agree on one point: Alex, Cyril and Elsa were an inseparable trio. Cyril and Alex were best friends. Alex and Elsa were madly in love, but since love at that age means no more than holding hands, it didn’t upset their little band.”

After these interviews came an article on how Global Water Energy had won the contract to build the hydroelectric dam and flood the valley. Another report was based on the arrival in the village of ecological activists, and their vain attempt to set up a kind of defence zone to oppose Global and protect the wildlife threatened by the huge construction site. There was a photograph of them, wearing identical T-shirts with a picture of the purple heron under threat of extinction in the region, the emblem of their struggle.

Taking a step to one side, Chastain found herself facing another aspect of the investigation, devoted to the prime suspect. The photograph of Fortin showed a man with bushy eyebrows and a broad forehead. If back then a film producer had held a casting for villains in a film noir, Fortin would have got the part without even opening his mouth. He was perfect, with his lantern jaw and hostile gaze. He had been called “monster”, “kidnapper”, “ogre”. The word “paedophile” also appeared, although there was no evidence of this, it was simply to boost circulation without any thought for the parents, who, seeing that word, would conjure up excruciating scenarios.

There was also a photograph of the van stolen from Pierre Valant that had been found burnt out and which everybody had concluded must have been used by Fortin to make good his escape.

High up on the wall were photograph after photograph and article after article covering the different stages of Avalone’s renaissance. The flooding of the valley and, at the same time, just a few kilometres away, the emergence of a village that was an almost identical twin. On the same part of the wall, a short paragraph described a holiday camp for the children of Avalone, beneath the headline “Holidays to Forget”.

To forget the three disappeared children? Or to forget their village was about to be drowned, Noémie wondered.

“Imagine what they lived through,” Romain said. “You see your life and all your memories slowly disappearing under the water, while on the far side of the valley a place is being built for you that looks just like your home, but it isn’t really. Like a film set, fake and unreal. Or like an episode of “The Twilight Zone”.

“You were there, though. Don’t you recall any of it?” Bambi asked in surprise.

“No, not really. I was only ten. All I remember are hikes with my father around what was to become Avalone lake. Then there was the big children’s camp. Holidays to forget, as the article says. Global paid for a fortnight in the mountains for all the village children. As a way of making the transition easier. It was quite a good idea, but no-one in Global had imagined what those two weeks would be like. Three kids had disappeared, and when we left there were only adults in the village. As if all the parents had to suffer. In the end, though, when we came back, the move had been completed. The waters had erased everything; I had a new bedroom a bit larger than the one before, in a house that was also a bit larger. Global was generous: a win-win situation.”

Noémie then concentrated on the part of the wall given over to the victims, especially the Dorin family. The police report, together with a photograph of the mother’s body hanging from a beam, gave details of the search carried out in the barn. How Madame Dorin’s body had been found, what she was wearing, the lack of any farewell letter, as well as the jewellery she had wanted to show off one last time.

“All those trinkets,” Noémie exclaimed. “It’s a lot. A bit too much in fact.”

“Almost vulgar for people who were never ostentatious,” Valant agreed.

“Perhaps she wanted to look beautiful when she met her son again. That makes sense, doesn’t it?” Bambi objected.

Taking another sideways step, Noémie was now looking at the photograph of Madame Dorin. A nice blue dress with a pattern of intertwined lines. Hair well groomed. Plus all her jewellery. Two gold necklaces. A pair of earrings with black mother-of-pearl droplets. Six rings, only two of them with stones. And a rather masculine-looking chain-link bracelet.

A moment’s unease . . . She forced herself to reread the statement of restitution signed by Serge Dorin.

All the jewellery was listed.

Apart from one item.

“The chain bracelet’s missing,” she said.

The three men came over.

“There, in the report, there’s a list of her jewellery. But in the photograph she’s wearing a chain bracelet. It doesn’t appear anywhere in the report. And it doesn’t fit with the rest.”

“Thick links and a big disc,” Bousquet noted. “Looks masculine.”

“A woman wearing a boy’s chain bracelet isn’t that suspicious, but the fact that it’s the only piece of jewellery not included in the report could be more interesting.”

“A slip – by the gendarme drawing up the list? Theft by one of the police on the spot?”

“Think about it,” Noémie said. “She had two sons. If it belongs to Bruno, the younger one, why was she wearing it? More interestingly, if it was Alex’s, explain to me how it was found on her, when her boy had disappeared and should in theory have been wearing it?”

Confronted with this surprising detail, the others remained silent.

“Hey, it’s a real question I’m asking you. I expect you to react, dammit. That’s how I worked with the Serious Crime Squad. Every single branch of the tree of hypotheses is examined, down to the tiniest leaf. It’s not me telling you that, it’s a saying of my boss at Bastion.”

“So, first hypothesis,” Bambi suggested. “One of the boys doesn’t like wearing it, and she doesn’t like leaving it in her jewellery box.”

“That’s possible.”

“Second hypothesis, it belongs to one of the men in her family. Her husband, father or an ancestor.”

“That makes sense.”

“Third hypothesis: it’s hers, despite the design you find masculine.”

“That’s possible too.”

“Well then?”

Noémie leaned so close to the photograph her nose almost touched it.

“Then we send the photograph to the forensic imaging unit of the police judiciaire in . . .”

“Still Toulouse,” Romain confirmed.

“Yes, Toulouse, and we ask if they can read the name on it. As long as we don’t know whose it was, we won’t be able to explain why it got lost along the way.”

“Is this a lead?” Bambi wanted to know.

“No, it’s simply a grey area.”

Noémie took three steps back to get an overall view of what was still a confused and confusing patchwork.

“O.K. Everything is there. Or nearly everything. That’s as good as it gets for now. We have to read and reread again and again, and if there’s one piece not right or missing, it will stand out at some point or other. Even novelists when they’re blocked let a night go by so that their unconscious can point them in the right direction. I’m not saying we do nothing, only that a pause can help to let things settle.”

Bambi’s attention was drawn to his buzzing mobile. As he read the message, his lips pursed.

“Is Mum worried?” Bousquet chuckled.

“No. Mum is advising us to switch on B.F.M.”

“We should have known,” Noémie lamented. “I expected them here sooner.”

Bambi pressed the remote, and a discreet television set in the corner of the room came on. The journalist was in the middle of her report.

“This is A.D.M.I.L., the agency for the draining, maintenance and inspection of lakes that will supervise the operation. Here with me is Monsieur Boscus, in charge of hydroelectric power stations, who has confirmed the exceptional nature of this drainage, since this is a judicial request rather than a technical one.”

The journalist held her microphone out to Monsieur Boscus, who tried not to sound too sensationalist.

“In fact, whether the drainage is requested by the judiciary or becomes necessary for maintenance purposes, it’s the same routine. We’ll open the sluices gradually to empty Avalone lake. The rate of emptying the water will never exceed 30 cubic metres a second, to avoid the River Sentinelle bursting its banks. Even so, we expect the water in the lake to lower by five centimetres an hour. At the same time, we’ll employ a system of infrasonic vibrations known as a sonic ‘fender pile’ to push the fish in the same direction. Biological safeguarding is at the very heart of our concerns.”

At this he reddened, suddenly realising he seemed to care more about the pike in the lake than the search for the body of a dead child. He tried to make amends, but the journalist took back her microphone and the cameraman focused on her. The A.D.M.I.L. representative was no longer on screen, and Bambi switched off the television.

“Time to go home, gentlemen,” Chastain decreed. “I want to see you here on the bridge at 08.00 tomorrow. And no-one is to talk to the journalists. Or to Bambi’s mum.”

39

Exhausted, Noémie shed everything without thinking. The keys missed the table; her coat missed the sofa. She boiled water and was about to decide between camomile and liquorice when she realised she had not heard any yelps or been welcomed.

From the kitchen window she saw the sun dip to the surface of the lake, about to drown in it. At the end of her pontoon, sitting there as if he was at home, stroking her dog, enjoying her view, a silhouette that was all too familiar. She recognised him even from behind.

She rushed out with so much contained anger that Picasso lowered his tail and took advantage of the open door to sneak inside. As he brushed against her, Noémie gave him a black look.

“As for you, tell me when you’re going to do something useful.”

Crossing the lawn, she hesitated over whether to push the intruder straight into the water.

“What the hell are you doing here, Adriel? How did you find me?”

“I asked around.”

“I know hardly anyone here.”

“But everyone knows you. I’ve had more difficult cases than trying to find the Parisian police officer in Avalone.”

“Great, you’re a champ. But, for the second time, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“Your little lagoon is very pretty,” he said, dodging the question.

The lake was being drained quite quickly. Already the top of the old church’s bell tower was thrusting its cross towards the surface. A simple stone cross emerging from the water.

“It’s not a lagoon, it’s a lake. Or rather, it’s no longer a lake, it’s a cemetery.”

“Yes, I saw it on T.V. I saw you as well. Everyone back at the office in Paris is following the case, even if no-one talks about it.”

“Listen, it’s been really nice seeing you again, but now you need to get out of here before I do you an injury.”

Adriel ignored this and approached her as tentatively as a lion tamer not entirely sure of how his creature will react.

“I came to apologise, O.K.? I was a complete fool. I was abysmal.”

“What the fuck do I care about your remorse, Adriel? You can’t imagine how much I loathe you at this very moment. So tell me where you left your car and I’ll take you back there.”

“I came by train. And there aren’t any more until tomorrow morning.”

Noémie could feel the trap snapping shut on her. It was not possible to ask any member of her team to put up her ex-boyfriend without giving some kind of explanation. The Hôtel du Parc was not an option, because Hugo was there. And from often having contemplated slipping away from Avalone like a thief in the night, she knew the train timetable to Paris by heart.

“There’s a train tomorrow at 06.56 to Gare d’Austerlitz. This is a big house and I’ve got a sofa, so that should be bearable for one night.”

“I’m not afraid of having a bad night. I’ve had a lot recently.”

“The bearable part was for me, asshole. Wake-up call at 05.30. After that, you’re out of my life. I want nothing to do with your remorse.”

Adriel stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking hard done by.

“You surely have something for me to eat, don’t you? Or do we go to bed at nine?”

She tasted a string of spaghetti, burning her fingers and lips. A knob of butter and a pinch of salt: that was all he was getting. Adriel’s once loved smell floated around her. Two years of a happy, passionate relationship drifted slowly to the surface, like a corpse.

She heard him walk around the upstairs room, then come down the staircase. She heard his footsteps approach but didn’t dare turn round. The sound of his breathing was right behind her. Adriel dug his thumbs into her waist and kissed the back of her neck. He knew her body better than anyone else, knew to press just where she liked it; his hands awakened the memory of a thousand nights. As if she’d been scalded, Noémie whirled round, spiteful and offended.

“It may be less evident in this soft light, but I can tell you I’ve got exactly the same mug as the one that made you run away three months ago.”

“No, not a bit of it. You’re stronger. In control. And I miss you.”

“You’ve no right to say that to me. You don’t even have the right to be here.”

She opened a cupboard and took out a bottle of vodka only slightly less than full.

“Don’t imagine I’m offering you a drink. I’m simply telling myself the evening will go quicker with some strong alcohol.”

She half filled a white china cup.

“Serve yourself if you like. My hospitality doesn’t stretch that far.”

Adriel did as she suggested before she could change her mind, then broached a topic he knew was dear to her.

“Do you want to hear about your team?”

“They’re your team now. You fought hard enough for that, didn’t you? My team is here.”

“Chloé is pregnant,” he hit her with.

Noémie had left all that behind. Paris and Bastion. Even her friendship with Chloé. She had sworn she would find the time to call her and reassure her but hadn’t done so. She had been excluded from this baby, this new life and new future. Wounded by the thought she hadn’t been taken into her confidence and had nobody to blame but herself, she drained her drink, filled the cup again, and retaliated instinctively.

“So where are you going to send her? To Saint-Pierre et Miquelon? An officer with a big belly isn’t much use in the Drug Squad, is she?”

“You’re right. Right to be angry, and to be mad at me. I know I deserve all that. Coming to see you was stupid and selfish, I’m doing you more harm than good. Don’t worry, you won’t even see me leave tomorrow.”

He poured himself a second drink, already feeling the effects of the first. Noémie took the bottle and went upstairs to sit in front of the fire. The abandoned spaghetti grew cold in the kitchen, while up here the flames from the fire filled the room with a golden glow. Adriel followed her up hesitantly.

“How far gone is she?”

“Six months.”

Noémie did the calculation, gave a start and Adriel confirmed it.

“Yes, she was three months pregnant when you had your accident. She was going to tell us a few days later.”

Noémie realised that Chloé hadn’t wanted her joy to upset her. One life being brought to a sudden halt, another one just beginning: that was cruel enough to make Chloé decide not to say anything.

“You’ve got a photograph at least?”

“Of course. We had a non-alcoholic drink to celebrate. It was crap but fun.”

Adriel searched on his mobile and handed it to Noémie. Her eyes quickly became moist.

“I should have lived that with all of you. But you stole it from me.”

Their third drinks disappeared as quickly as the previous ones. Adriel lost some of his nervousness, while Noémie’s anger flared up. As with the fire, the embers were still burning.

“But you’re also to blame,” he defended himself. “To blame for believing I was stronger than I was.”

Noémie’s face darkened, but Adriel didn’t heed the storm warning.

“I’m sorry,” he continued, “but you didn’t have any choice about living with your wounds or not. I did, for an instant at least. I was afraid I wouldn’t be up to it. Afraid I couldn’t help you overcome your trial.”

The months on his own had allowed Adriel to rewrite history in his favour, but Noémie still felt the brutality of his cowardice. She had never asked him to go on loving her. Simply to forget her, to drop her if he wanted to, but to let her return to her job.

Like a mouse not seeing that the cat is about to pounce and that it’s time to get away, Adriel still tried to defend himself.

“And if I handed in the report about you failing the firearms test, it was for the safety of the whole team. I took the decision you should have taken, because you weren’t able to do so at the time.”

Noémie’s hand began to tremble slightly, and the vodka in her glass shook in concentric circles, as if there was a distant earthquake. As if in the distance an army was making the ground vibrate.

He had denied her when her face was ruined. Distanced her when all she wanted to do was return to a normal life. He had driven her away from her team when she needed its support. He had destroyed her life with just as much violence as the pellets had done. All of a sudden she realised that she had never once thought about Sohan, the man at the other end of the gun, but she had frequently cursed Adriel. This man who even now couldn’t look at her right profile for more than two seconds.

Noémie might have yielded. Noémie might have forgiven. But No preferred revenge.

She sat astride Adriel on the sofa and took his head in her hands.

“Look at me. Look at me properly. This is what I am now.”

Like an animal, she rubbed her scarred cheek against his smooth one. She kissed him savagely, her mouth wide open. Just as savagely she undressed him and took off her own pants, then almost forced him to penetrate her. Adriel seemed lost, out of his depth, overwhelmed.

“I hate you, Adriel,” she whispered against his face.

Grabbing his hands, she pressed them on her scars. He struggled free and fondled her breasts as if to reassert himself in a situation that was altogether beyond him. No roughly replaced them on her wounds.

“You can’t hurt me any more. You’ll never have any of me again.”

With a few rapid movements, she climaxed. Then she rolled off Adriel before he had time to come himself.

“I don’t give any more. I take.”

She hadn’t made love to him, she had fucked him. No, she hadn’t fucked him, she had humiliated him. She scooped up her things and headed for the bedroom, leaving him prostrate on the sofa.

“Wake-up call at 05.30. I’ll take you to the station. And if I ever see you here again, I’ll shoot you.”

In the shower, while she rubbed herself so hard it hurt, Noémie’s invisible tears mingled with the scalding hot water. Then, imperceptibly, a hint of a smile spread across her lips.

In the living room, trousers round his ankles, Adriel had not moved a centimetre.

40

Half past three in the morning Pierre Valant’s farm

An old mare nearing the end of her days had accepted sharing her stall with the young calf whose mother had refused to recognise it. As she lay on the straw, the horse’s warmth made up for the lack of maternal affection enough for the calf to no longer spend the nights wailing in distress and incomprehension. Around them, horses and cows slept peacefully, while two insomniac sheep, weighed down by their fleeces, took the opportunity to nuzzle one another.

A metallic sound.

The mare pricked up her ears. Other animals in the barn did the same as the padlock on the door dropped to the ground, clipped in two.

The man entered stealthily, carrying two jerrycans. He unscrewed the tops, and as he sprinkled their contents on the straw bales and the wooden walls, a strong smell of petrol filled the air.

Retreating from the barn, the man soaked a dry pine cone with petrol and lit it with a cigarette lighter. A rustic Molotov cocktail that he tossed inside. The pine cone bounced to the far end, setting the ground on fire at every bounce. The scattered fires soon coalesced to create one vast flame.

The heat increased rapidly. A thick cloud of white smoke visibly swelled and filled the roof before plunging towards the ground and the animals, who were already starting to panic.

The mare struggled up and nudged the calf awake with her muzzle. Terrified by the flames, the other horses kicked at the doors to their stalls. Unimpeded, the two sheep rushed to the barn door, but their wool caught fire. Thinking they were doing the right thing, they rushed back before finally collapsing, roasted alive. The stench of burning flesh and their anguished bleats maddened the other animals. Hoofs clattered, cries shattered the night.

Despite her age, the mare charged as hard as she could and managed to split the wooden stall door, then smash open the bolt. Petrified, the calf had huddled in a corner and was now refusing to leave the stall. The mare could not bring herself to take the chance of a last few seconds to escape. She had never had any young and as soon as the calf was placed against her, this newborn had become hers. Returning inside the stall, she got behind the calf and pushed. As she did this, her tail caught fire. She reared and toppled on her back. Her mane was soon alight, and when she saw the calf disappear into the smoke, she stopped struggling, closed her eyes and breathed her last.

The cows had no idea what was going on. They let themselves burn, barging mindlessly into one another.

Other stalls gave way, but by now it was far too late. Blazing horses left the barn, galloping through the fields like flashes of lightning in the sky.

Blinded by pain and the intense glare from their own immolation, the stallions kicked out blindly, whinnying piteously. One of them clattered into the yard of Pierre Valant’s farmhouse. Wakened by the noise, he was already outside, rifle in hand. The horse almost lumbered into him, and ended its career against the house wall. Knocked off balance, it sank on its forelegs for a moment and then, with the strength of despair, reared on its hind legs right in front of Valant, before crashing to the ground.

Fires reach a point of no return where all one can do is look on as they devour their prey. Standing in stockinged feet on the wet earth outside his barn, Pierre Valant let the bonfire rage.

He walked among the smoking carcasses, where necessary putting the animals out of their misery, firing bullet after bullet. Only then did he go back into his house to call the fire brigade. The barrel of his gun dragged along the ground, leaving behind a furrow in the hot ashes.

As Valant came out again into the farmyard, the windscreen of his van splintered. He came to a halt, but all he could see around him was dark night.

Then it was the turn of the house windows, one after another. Cracks appeared in some of them, while others exploded from the impact of the bullets.

Pierre Valant stood stock-still, as if certain that nobody would dare shoot him there, right in front of his home.

At last, the gunshots ceased.

41

Romain had repeatedly tried to reach Chastain on his mobile but without luck. Following the beam of his torch, he walked along the side of the capitaine’s house, surprised to see light inside even though it had gone just five in the morning.

Noémie appeared, wearing linen trousers and a tight-fitting T-shirt. She looked wide awake.

“It’s far too early to be good news,” she said, greeting Romain.

“That’s perfect then, because I have none. But it doesn’t really involve you or even the investigation. Part of my father’s farm was set on fire. He’s lost a good few animals.”

“Shit, I’m so sorry. Do you know how it happened?”

“The fire brigade found traces of hydrocarbons all over the place. Shots were also fired at his house.”

“Shots? How is he?”

“Don’t worry. It takes more than that to frighten him.”

Chastain appeared to pause for thought . . .

“Despite what you say, it could involve the investigation,” she concluded. “We have no leads, so anything suspicious for ten kilometres around needs to be considered as having a possible link to it.”

As day dawned, a silhouette appeared behind Romain.

“That’s what I told your lieutenant on the way here,” Hugo said.

A moment’s surprise. Embarrassment. From then on, depending on events and on Adriel’s discretion, everything could come crashing down.

“Morning, Capitaine,” Hugo said with a smile. “We thought we’d wake you up.”

“Morning, diver. And you? Are you stalking me?” Noémie said in a falsely neutral voice.

“I saw the flames from the Hôtel du Parc, and the smoke that followed. A policeman is always a policeman, so I went to see what was going on, and met your deputy there.”

He stepped forward, as if being invited into the house was a given, but Noémie blocked his way.

“Will you make us some coffee, or are we staying out here with the dog?”

This was the moment Adriel chose to come sauntering out of the shower, a towel wrapped round his waist, a silly grin on his face.

“I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” he said to no-one in particular, before becoming aware of the two policemen outside the sliding doors.

Not in the least embarrassed, he approached them with one hand extended, the other holding up his towel.

“Good morning, gentlemen. Adriel. Ex-colleague. Ex-boyfriend.”

The two men returned his greeting. Romain didn’t know where to put himself, and Hugo could not have looked more hostile if he had tried.

“I’m making myself a coffee: shall I put some on for everyone?” Adriel said, turning round and playing the genial host as if he had lived there forever.

Hugo muttered an “I’ll wait in the car” and disappeared into the pale morning light. Romain, who had noticed his superior’s embarrassment as soon as the diver appeared, and Hugo’s obvious interest in her – he had talked of nothing else on the way to the house – preferred to look elsewhere. Utterly abashed, Noémie took her head in her hands, wanting only to give herself slap after slap.

“What an idiot, what an idiot,” she lambasted herself. “I’m such a super-idiot!”

“Yeah. You’ve really messed up there, Capitaine,” Valant said. “Especially if that’s your ex from the Drug Squad you mentioned to me.”

Noémie recovered her composure almost at once and tried to limit the damage.

“I’m really sorry about your father, but could you please take that bastard to the station for me?”

“The 06.56? Of course I will. And you, get running!”

—

“Wait!”

Her trousers became spattered with mud from the uneven track. Still clutching the Land Rover keys, she speeded up.

“Wait, please! Let me take you back to your hotel.”

Hugo reluctantly came to a halt.

“I’ll give you as long as a free dive takes.”

“I was a fool, a complete fool . . .”

She was using the same words as Adriel the night before! She found it impossible to finish her sentence. She fell silent, trying to find a way to explain the inexplicable. The outburst of rage against Adriel. A sly revenge. A stupid challenge. Rancour still seething. Dominate him, then cast him off. Nothing concrete enough to lessen the hurt she could see in Hugo’s forlorn smile. He broke the silence.

“You conceal your wounds. But for me you’re no better or worse than you’ve ever been. I’ve only ever known you the way you are. And I like it. At least your wounds are honest. They don’t hide themselves, they don’t lie. They tell your story. But maybe you’ve been thinking? Maybe, seeing your ex again, you’ve said to yourself that you could wipe everything away, return to your life where you left it, at a time when you had some self-love. If that’s the case, there’s no room for me. And anyway, it’s not so serious, we hardly know one another. We haven’t started anything, so no-one will suffer.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I can explain everything.”

“He means nothing to me.”

Although all this was absolutely true, Noémie thought it over and rejected the kind of excuses so often heard when none will do. Her inability to speak brought the conversation to a close. Hugo extended his hand towards hers. Noémie was hoping this meant he was going to forgive her, but all he did was grab the Land Rover keys.

“I’ll leave it in the hotel car park. You can get one of your team to pick it up. I’ll let you sort your life out as you see fit. You know where to find me. Quais de Seine. River Police.”

Returning to the house by the lake, a sombre Noémie bumped into Romain and Adriel.

“Get the crime scene people to the farm. I want them to find one of the stray bullets and send it to ballistics. Then tell your father to come to the station in an hour. If this was arson, Pierre Valant has an enemy. I want to know who it is.”

“I’m on the case,” Romain said.

Adriel approached her, probably to say farewell. He opened his mouth, but Noémie didn’t give him the chance to utter a word.

“You, just shut it.”

42

Noémie sat across from Pierre Valant. She had made sure she was alone with him. It was out of the question for Romain to be present or take part in the interview, even if the strained relations between the two men guaranteed objectivity. The mayor’s funeral suit had stayed in Avalone town hall; in front of her this morning Chastain saw only a weary farmer with tousled hair, his clothes covered in black soot, stinking of petrol and burnt wood.

“When I first got here, Commandant Roze told me that a police investigation in a village is very different from one in a city. Apparently everyone here knows one another’s secrets, their past and their fights, and all our scientific techniques are useless compared to knowing everybody so well. So, Monsieur Valant? Who set fire to your cows last night, and who shot at you?”

“If my gun is still on its rack, that means I have no idea.”

“Why? Are you the kind of person who likes to settle scores personally?”

“It was just a manner of speaking, that’s all,” Valant defended himself. “I would obviously have informed my son.”

Noémie straightened her computer keyboard.

“So, shall I put that you don’t know? That’s not a very long statement.”

“Sorry. You only need write that people here are dumb men of the soil rather than men of letters. That’ll be another on your long list of clichés about life in the country.”

Seeing how things were going, Noémie abandoned her screen and went to stand by the window, her back to Valant. This was perhaps also due to the difficulty she had in looking straight at him. Discovering that his attitudes and gestures had to some extent been inherited by his son made her uneasy.

“Are there people who are envious of you?”

“I support the Chinese project for Mecanic Vallée.”

“What’s the relevance of that?”

“People are afraid of change. They think their land is going to be taken. They fear that if our economy changes, agriculture will be forgotten. Others are quite simply afraid of invasion by the Chinks. That creates tensions. It stokes hostility. Added to which, I’m the biggest landowner in the six communes. The question isn’t who is envious of me but finding someone who isn’t.”

“That makes sense. If you can’t see eye to eye with even your son, I imagine the rest fits.”

“I wouldn’t go down that route if I were you, Capitaine.”

“Sorry. You know we Parisians have no manners.”

One all in the game of clichés.

“Is this the first time?” Noémie continued.

“The fire? Yes. The shots as well, mind you.”

“Are you currently buying or selling property? Do you have a pet project that could lead to commercial friction?”

“I’ve got more than enough on my hands not to add problems. I’m like all us peasants, I try not to croak, to pay my employees on time, and to adapt to Europe.”

Recovered from the Hôtel du Parc, the Land Rover was driven into a parking place outside the police station, and Bambi emerged. He waved to Noémie, who responded with a smile from behind her window. She turned round.

“In the city, people can burn their old jalopies and pass it off as arson, to claim the insurance.”

“My farming business isn’t an old jalopy. I’m not saying it isn’t hard, but my head’s still above water. And if I were pushed to such extremes, I would have made sure I set fire to somewhere with no animals inside. I’ve brought almost all of them into the world. They all have names. You know nothing of the bond between us.”

Noémie thought of Picasso. For some reason, she couldn’t see Pierre Valant being implicated in the fire. Yet she was willing to change her mind at any moment.

“What about your investigation?” Valant said.

“It’s slow-going, I have to say.”

“It’s not the farmer speaking to you but the mayor asking for precise information on the advances you’ve made concerning a drama that took place in his commune. Need I remind you that as mayor I am the first police contact for Avalone?”

In an instant, their roles had been reversed: now it was Noémie’s turn to be questioned. She tried to reassert herself.

“Alex Dorin was discovered in a barrel. The River Police found a second barrel in the same spot. That will be either Elsa Saulnier or Cyril Casteran. But there is no third barrel. No third child.”

“Perhaps the body is somewhere else?”

“That’s what I tell myself, but it doesn’t make sense. The community centre cellar is big enough to contain an entire cemetery. Why snatch three children and then, depending on the hypothesis, kill two of them but not the third, or kill all three but look for two different places to hide them in? We have three disappeared children who became two dead bodies, so in all probability the third is dead as well. And that’s the one I’m looking for.”

“It’s reasonable to talk about probabilities, but they’ve never solved a case,” Valant said.

“They direct me towards what’s most likely to produce results.”

“In other words, you’re floundering.”

Now it was Chastain’s turn to feel under attack. She opened the office door wide.

“I’ve kept you long enough, your honour. Brigadier Bousquet will finish taking your statement. For the insurance claim.”

Noémie was about to leave the building to smoke a cigarette to steady her nerves when she bumped into Bambi chatting with the young desk policewoman. She held out her hand, and he returned the Land Rover keys.

“Any news from forensics?”

“Yes, Capitaine. One of the bullets was aimed at Valant’s van. It went through the windscreen and the driver’s headrest, and lodged in the back seat. It’s been sent to ballistics, as you requested.”

While Noémie was listening to Bambi’s model report, her attention was drawn to an incongruous pot of flowers balanced on the knees of a woman of around 70 sitting in the waiting area, staring blankly ahead of her. Noémie glanced enquiringly at Bambi.

“It’s Juliette Casteran, little Cyril’s mother. You saw her here once before, the day the first body was identified.”

The two women’s gazes met, making it impossible for Noémie not to go over and greet her.

“I’m Capitaine Chastain, do you remember me?” she introduced herself.

“Yes,” Madame Casteran said, standing up. “It’s you I’ve come to see.”

“My office?” Noémie suggested, stuffing the packet of cigarettes into the back pocket of her jeans.

“I imagine you’ve got a lot of other things to do. I just wanted to ask you to keep me informed when you pull little Elsa out of the water. I never watch television, and only rarely listen to the radio, but I don’t want to miss putting flowers on her grave.”

The little girl. Or the little boy. Elsa. Or Cyril. Madame Casteran seemed to have forgotten that there were still two possibilities, one of them her son, but Noémie decided not to challenge her. She pointed her chin at the flowerpot.

“Is that for Alex?”

“Yes. They’re marguerites. Did you know my husband was the cemetery caretaker? I’ve always been in the habit of leaving flowers on the graves of the forgotten ones. Some of them were also clients of mine. My husband often said: ‘If you don’t manage to cure them, I’ll take care of them.’”

It was a rainy day, and Noémie noticed that the bottoms of Juliette Casteran’s trousers were wet. She must have come on foot to see her.

“It’s quite a distance to the cemetery. Shall I drop you?”

43

Noémie was finally smoking her cigarette on the low wall around the cemetery while Juliette Casteran paid her respects at Alex Dorin’s grave. Then she crushed her butt in a bouquet of lavender and approached Madame Casteran.

“I’m not going to be able to put this gently, so I may as well come straight out with it.”

“I know very well what you’re thinking,” Madame Casteran said. “Saulnier is crazy, the Dorin family are as welcoming as a bear with a sore head, and here is the old Casteran woman refusing to believe her son is dead.”

“I wouldn’t have been so blunt, but yes, that’s the gist of it.”

Juliette Casteran put the marguerites on the grave and straightened up.

“What did you expect? We’ve all lost at least part of our reason over this. The loss of a child, of course, but above all the lack of information that forces us to imagine the worst. It’s said a mother feels a stab to her heart when her child dies, even if there’s a continent between them. But I’ve never felt anything.”

“Is that all? I mean, is that enough for you?”

“Enough to give me hope. I’ve never given up. I call the A.F.C.V. every week to see if there’s any news. I pray every day. I even hired a private detective for almost four years, but that was just a waste of money. I’m not mad, I’m simply trusting. Births and deaths. Life is a tale of cradles and graves. One grave after another. But it’s not the moment for my Cyril.”

While she was talking to Juliette Casteran, Noémie felt the same unease as she had a few days earlier when she left the cemetery and her unconscious had mentally placed a red flag on it. Something did not fit, and she recalled what Melchior had said about her accident and the hypermnesia it could cause. That was what she was asking of her memory now. To rediscover the colour, the smell, the texture, the sound or melody – the tiny detail that, through an association of ideas, had flashed an alert. She was convinced it must have something to do with her investigation.

She watched the cemetery attendant watering the plants on the graves in the distance. One after the other, as Juliette Casteran had said. One grave after another. Again and again. Memory is a bitch.

Then her thought processes delivered their result. Right in front of her eyes. At her feet. This headstone, announcing the date of a death in 1987. Then row upon row for 100 metres or so. It was far too big for such a small village. Leaving Madame Casteran on her own, Noémie hurried over to the attendant, who raised his watering can and took a step back, as if she was going to shout at him.

“Chastain. Police,” she presented herself, extending her badge.

“Oh yes, I know that,” the young man in green overalls and matching boots said nervously.

“How many graves are there exactly?”

“Exactly? I don’t know. A thousand or so.”

“So a thousand people, right?”

“Oh no. If you look at the monuments, you’ll see most of them are family vaults. And there can be between two and five bodies in each of them.”

“So at least two thousand people who’ve died in 25 years.”

Noémie took out her smartphone and spoke into it.

“Mortality rate in Avalone 2018,” she said clearly.

“The village of Avalone saw 31 deaths in 2018,” the metallic voice replied.

“So, over a period of 25 years, and using 2018 as a starting point, that makes at most 775 deaths. Not 2,000. Unless there was an epidemic in Avalone, a war or an earthquake I haven’t been told about, this cemetery is three times too big.”

The attendant looked all round and seemed suddenly to realise that the age of the cemetery and its size did not match.

“Oh, yes,” he admitted limply.

Noémie inspected the dates engraved on the marble or stone. Some were recent, from the new millennium, which fitted perfectly. Others seemed stranger, showing dates for years the cemetery ought never to have contained: 1980, 1970, 1960.

Avalone had been flooded in 1994, so those dates had no reason to be there. Turning away from the attendant, she went back to Juliette, who was already walking down the gravel path to the way out.

“Wait, Madame Casteran, I’ll take you home.”

“You’re very kind, but I live only 500 metres away.”

“O.K., but I’ll accompany you anyway. Is your husband at home?”

The old lady looked at the watch on her thin wrist.

“Ten o’clock? Yes. But you’ll have to be quick. He’ll be at the bar in less than an hour. And he won’t be as easy to understand.”

—

The interior of the Casterans’ house was as Romain Valant had described it. The walls were covered with photographs of Cyril at every age. Well, until he was ten.

Juliette had disappeared into another room, and Noémie found herself alone with André, her husband. Hands shaking, face ruined by cirrhosis, with burst veins, cheeks and nose swollen and full of blemishes like burnt plastic. He poured two coffees, half in the cups, the other half on the oilskin tablecloth.

“What did you say to my wife?”

“Nothing special. She was the one who talked to me.”

“You mustn’t confuse her. Her kid is going to come back: that’s all she ever says. The more time she wastes in hoping that, the more she leaves me in peace. That’s all I ask. She’s a pain, but I’ve no-one else to live with. The body under the water mustn’t be the little one. She wouldn’t be able to bear it.”

Noémie watched him spike his coffee with an equal amount of Armagnac.

“But you, Monsieur Casteran, you know it’s a possibility, don’t you?”

“Yeah, if it’s him, I’ll tell you.”

“And you think she’ll never accept it?”

“She doesn’t watch television, she doesn’t read the paper, she doesn’t listen to the radio, except for music. People have heard her talking about Cyril for 25 years now. No-one contradicts her, and they’re not going to start now. Everybody knows she’s frail. If it’s him, and note that I say ‘if it’s him’, we’ll bury Cyril quietly. That will do.”

Chastain nodded for him to add a drop of alcohol to her coffee. Unfortunately, Casteran’s hand shook so much it became a torrent.

“Now you mention burial, there are a few questions I’d like to ask you about the cemetery. You were the caretaker in the old village, weren’t you? But after being in use for only 25 years, isn’t this one too big? What are those graves from before 1980? Unless it’s an anachronism, I don’t understand how they came to be there . . .”

“Twenty-five years? Where did you get that idea? The cemetery is ageless. It’s been the same forever. It’s the only thing they couldn’t contemplate drowning. It was moved, coffin by coffin, into the new Avalone. Even if some people weren’t too keen on disturbing the dead, they liked the idea of leaving them under the water even less.”

“Do you remember precisely when?”

“Alcohol has helped me forget my son, so I have to tell you there’s not much I remember about the changeover.”

“Maybe there are records of it?”

“Oh yes. There must be. You just need to go back where you came from. Sorry you’ve wasted your time.”

“Don’t be sorry. Going back over things is the basis of any investigation.”

—

Noémie made her way between the rows of metal filing cabinets sagging under the weight of files. The cemetery office was little more than a shack of light-coloured stone with a flat, moss-covered roof. Its only window gave on to an imposing family vault that blocked all the light. Although he was small, Bambi had to flatten himself against the wall to avoid brushing against the capitaine when they met.

“What are we looking for?” he said.

“The exact date of the changeover. The kids disappeared on November 21, 1994. We’ve found two bodies out of three, but they’re all part of the same event.”

“So we’re looking for a second hideout?”

“Exactly.”

“And why here?”

Noémie put back a dusty folder, and for the first time expressed a hypothesis born of her police instinct.

“I simply want to check. Even though I don’t understand why they would have been hidden in two different places, I have to accept the evidence. That means I’m wondering where you can hide a body without running the risk of it being found some day.”

“In a cemetery?”

“Yes, Bambi. Somewhere nobody would ever dare rummage about.”

Noémie finally found a box file with a label showing two years: 1993/1994. Turning its yellowing pages, she soon came across a copy of the public procurement contract for a transfer operation between November 1 and 30, 1994. Thanks to her noticing a single grave with a date that didn’t fit, Noémie had probably stumbled on her first real lead. She showed the document to her young colleague.

“Especially when that cemetery is being dug up for a month and the coffins moved, just when someone needs a place to hide a body. Add to that the fact that I haven’t found any contract for security measures.”

“Well, you know here isn’t like Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. There aren’t many Goths who hang around the graves, and even fewer Satanists to turf out.”

“I mean security during the two moves in 1994. The cemeteries were opened like Advent calendars in the run-up to Christmas. A thousand holes in the ground in the original site, another thousand waiting to be filled in the new one. No checking if there was one more or one less. Nobody would have noticed.”

“You think the third kid could be buried here?”

“I’ve no idea, but that’s how I used to work when I was with the Drug Squad. Examine every single branch of the tree of hypotheses, down to the tiniest leaf.”

Out of respect Bambi said nothing, but it was the second time he had heard this.

“How do you want to proceed, Capitaine?”

“We’ll divide the avenues into four, then count the number of graves and the number of bodies registered. If there’s one over, we’ll know where to dig.”

—

The news sped all around the village without any need for journalists or gossips. Even Pierre Valant was looking on from outside the cemetery, surrounded by a hundred or so curious locals. The four police in the investigative team were carefully counting the burials in their allotted area. Once they had finished, they announced the final tally.

The result meant they had to start all over again.

They changed places to carry out a recount. An hour later, they each repeated exactly the same figures. Added up, this gave 2,327 bodies: 2,327 bodies against 2,326 registered burials. There was a usurper among all these graves. One extra body. One too many.

As the sun set, a gentle rain began to fall.

“We’ll have to compare each grave with the list of burials in the cemetery records.”

“In half an hour from now we won’t be able to see a thing,” Romain pointed out.

“Then I’ll expect you all here at first light tomorrow. And I don’t want an audience.”

—

Despite his cravings, André Casteran had not immediately headed for the bar. He had resisted his shaking hands and the violent contractions that churned his stomach, his blood begging to be given a few drops of alcohol. Instead, from a distance but in full view, he had closely watched the Parisian officer’s moves, and now the stress and repressed bad memories made him suffer even more than the lack of drink.

He took out his mobile, an antiquated model with a flap, and waited patiently for the other person to respond.

“She’s at the cemetery,” he announced without preamble.

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s counting,” he said uneasily.

“Even if she discovers the grave, I don’t see how she could trace it back to us.”

“Do you want to bet?”

The heavy silence seemed to answer that question.

“Go home, André. I’ll call you back.”

44

A few minutes before nine that evening, Noémie received an email from ballistics. The bullet found in Pierre Valant’s van was traceable but unfortunately not to a weapon in their archives. An 8mm bullet that was not very common but not so rare either. For now, what had happened to Pierre Valant would remain a mystery.

Climbing into her Land Rover, Noémie was thinking of the peaceful drive back to Avalone, her fireplace, her pontoon disappearing into the lake like a cut-off road, her dog. A sense of “at home” that she was feeling for the first time.

As she left the police car park, an old van with no lights on began to follow her, sufficiently far back not to be spotted by Noémie. She drove through Decazeville, passed under the bridge at Aubin, then began the climb up to the top of the dam. As the sky darkened, the lights of Avalone began to shine. The level of the lake was continuing to drop: here and there, the roofs of the tallest houses were appearing. Only a few more days and they would be able to walk along the streets of the old village.

When she arrived, she would make herself a big bowl of tea and call Melchior. If she felt up to it, she would try again to apologise to Hugo. All of this was going through her mind when a dazzling light flooded her rear-view mirror. There was a violent bang at the rear of her car. She was propelled a few centimetres over the embankment, and scraped a massive oak before, with a huge wrench of the wheel, she steered back onto the road. But the other vehicle was clamped to her rear bumper, tyres smoking and engine roaring, pushing her towards the ravine. The Land Rover left the road and hung for a moment in mid-air, wheels spinning aimlessly, and at that moment Noémie remembered exactly how high the dam was.

A hundred and thirteen metres.

So a fall of a hundred and thirteen metres.

The vehicle hurtled downwards, rolling over several times in a glittering shower of smashed glass. The headlight beams veered wildly as the car bounced, briefly revealing the colour of rocks and the trees it uprooted as it rushed past. The seat belt pressed against her so tightly that Noémie almost suffocated as the tonne of metal ploughed a furrow down the hillside. Various objects inside the Land Rover began dancing around in a gravity-free ballet, before they all suddenly dropped back down when the car crashed onto the sandy bank of the River Sentinelle.

45

The breakdown truck’s whirling orange light set the trees of the wood bordering the road on fire. A metal cable taut to breaking point trailed over the edge of the hillside, winching up the heavy, empty shell of the Land Rover centimetre by centimetre.

Valant and Bousquet peered into the vertiginous drop that extended far beyond the reach of their torches.

“I found this,” Bambi announced, holding a sealed evidence bag. “Fragments of white paint, all along the road.”

“White. Like all goods vans,” Bousquet said. “And like the capitaine’s Land Rover. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help.”

—

The duty doctor in the emergency department at Decazeville hospital went over to the radiologist staring at the X-ray of their new patient on a light-box.

“Shit, what’s this? A boxer? Stuntman?”

“No. A police officer. A female police officer.”

The doctor took the X-ray and went on analysing what it showed as he walked along the corridor, occasionally raising it to the neon strip lighting. He knocked on the door of the end room.

“Mademoiselle Noémie Chastain?”

The Land Rover’s fall had been arrested by several trees, and it was thanks to them that she was still alive. She had come round dangling from her seat belt, surrounded by a worrying petrol vapour, her face against the ground and with earth in her mouth.

She now had a red graze covering the entire cheek. The left one, naturally, as if fate was imposing symmetry on her disasters.

“To judge by your file and your X-ray,” the doctor said, “I imagine this is a day like any other for you.”

“When do I get out?”

“Just as I thought,” he sighed. “You’re to sleep here tonight. Tomorrow we’ll do a routine scan, and then you’ll be free to go and throw yourself off another cliff.”

“No need to shout at me, it wasn’t an accident.”

The doctor paused as he attached the thick medical dossier to the end of the bed.

“Not an accident?” he repeated, surprised. “You mean to say that . . . Well, we must tell the . . .”

He stopped when he realised he was already talking to them.

“Oh yes,” Noémie said. “I’ll see to everything.”

Pain spread all over the left-hand side of her face. Noémie ran her fingers over her fresh wounds.

“Just tell me how bad these grazes are, I wouldn’t want them to spoil my looks,” she joked.

“With Betadine and a cream for scar tissue they should be gone in a week. I’ll give you a prescription. But the seat belt left you with nasty bruising from your shoulder to your hip. That’ll take time to fade. But now it’s one in the morning and I’d like you to get some sleep.”

“You’re going to have to give me a helping hand.”

“Fine by me.”

46

When she woke up, Noémie saw a little girl sitting cross-legged on the end of her bed, like a guardian angel watching over her as she slept.

“How are you, No?” Lily said.

Noémie sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“Don’t worry, I’ve seen worse.”

Then she gazed at her team, showing them her face.

“So, no jokes, no wisecracks? Nothing? You disappoint me, guys.”

“The fact is we used them all up on the way here,” Bambi admitted. “But it was only to lighten the atmosphere, we weren’t really making fun of you.”

Romain approached her bed.

“Did you see anything? Anyone?”

“Unfortunately not. But the message is clear. We sniff round the cemetery and an hour later I’m the forced guest at an improvised crash test. Cause and effect. We’re on the right track, I would say. Did you keep a watch on the cemetery last night?”

“Yes, of course,” Valant reassured her. “Inside, outside. Nothing to report.”

“So we go back, find this fucking grave and take a look.”

“Language,” Romain corrected her.

“You said the F-word,” Lily giggled.

“Impossible, I never would,” Noémie told her, pretending to be offended. “But shouldn’t you be at school? You’re not bunking off, are you? You know that makes you an outlaw, don’t you?”

“I wanted to see you,” Lily said, tugging at the thin gold chain around her neck until her fingers found the medallion on it. “I’ve been praying for you.”

Noémie took the medal between two fingers to examine it more closely.

“A Virgin Mary?”

“Yes. It’s from my grandmother in Africa. I got it for my first communion. I prefer that to bracelets.”

A chain or a chain bracelet.

Chastain felt the by now familiar warning signal in her brain.

“Do we have the results from the imaging people about the Dorin bracelet?”

“Er, yes,” Bambi said, surprised. “I told you about them yesterday, but you didn’t seem interested.”

Romain gave him a discreet nudge.

“Unless I forgot, which is possible,” he redeemed himself. “But they were categorical. The angle of the photograph is fine, but the quality makes it impossible to zoom in on the name engraved on the bracelet.”

“We know it disappeared between when the photograph was taken in the barn and when the personal effects were listed by the police. And that those closest to a victim are officially informed that all possessions or clothes worn by the dead person will be returned in 48 hours if they have no bearing on the case.”

“Yes, otherwise they would never let us have any objects of sentimental value,” Bousquet confirmed.

“So why make the effort to take the bracelet directly from the body? And why only that? Unless, that is, it was of interest to the investigation. A bit too much interest, maybe. And when the police returned his wife’s jewellery to Serge Dorin, how come he didn’t notice that one piece was missing? That doesn’t make sense. Or it makes perfect sense.”

“You’re ruling out our colleagues rather too hastily. We’ve all known a light-fingered policeman.”

“Can you see yourself snitching jewellery from a dead body? That’s not very karma-friendly. And even supposing you’ve no moral scruples, why would you take the least valuable item? Almost all of them are made of gold, but it’s the silver one that vanishes? No, there’s something important about that bracelet which led to it being stolen from Madame Dorin’s body just after her death, so that it wouldn’t reach the police. And since, apart from the police, only Serge and Bruno Dorin were present that day, that doesn’t leave many suspects.”

“We won’t be making any friends,” a worried Romain said. “Investigating the relatives of the disappeared kids is going to rub people up the wrong way.”

“I couldn’t give a damn.”

“I know.”

“Together with the cemetery, we’ve now got two leads,” Bousquet said.

“The cemetery is a lead. The bracelet is nothing more than a grey area.”

“So, where do we start?”

“We can follow both up at the same time. Romain, I want you to bring Commandant Roze up to speed. It’s all getting complicated, and you should never leave the hierarchy in the dark.”

Lily came up to give her a kiss. She whispered a secret in Noémie’s ear the way children do, that is, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Your boyfriend is in the waiting room.”

Thinking it might be Adriel, Chastain’s face fell, but Romain instantly understood the confusion.

“No, not him, the other one,” he reassured her. “He must have heard about your accident at his headquarters. No sooner than he arrived in Paris, he got into his car and headed straight back here. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

Noémie’s emotions went from unease to remorse. At least with Adriel she could have shouted, behaved badly, hidden herself in a cloak of hatred. But now, with Hugo, she would be naked, without a shield. Herself.

“We’ll see you at the police station, No.”

—

“Why did you come back?” she asked in a grateful voice that was at odds with the question.

Hugo sat on the bed, 20 centimetres away from her.

“Because as soon as I leave you on your own for a few hours, you do something stupid to your body.”

“Nothing happened. Nothing important, I swear.”

“So let’s say no more about it.”

“As simple as that?”

“I’ve got a thousand more complicated scenarios, but that’s the one I’ve chosen. Right now, what worries me most is your investigation. Seeing what’s just happened to you, you’ve made someone see red.”

“That’s what I reckon.”

“So instead of putting the brakes on, I guess you’re going to accelerate?”

“We’re quite similar in that way, aren’t we?”

Noémie edged closer to him.

“Are you going to stay?”

“I’ve got quite a lot of overtime I can take as rest days. And somebody needs to keep an eye on you.”

Noémie drew closer still.

“Are you going to kiss me?”

Hugo took a good look at her, from one wounded cheek to the other.

“I’d love to, but where?”

“Bastard,” she said with a smile.

A nurse opened the door without warning and immediately closed it again.

“Why don’t you go in?” her colleague said. “We have to clean the room.”

“I think that can wait a while.”

47

It had not stopped raining since the first few drops fell on Avalone the previous evening. A trestle table had been set up between two of the cemetery avenues, a plastic parasol over it to protect the records. As Bousquet and Valant called out the names on the gravestones, Bambi ticked them off the list and put the death certificates to one side.

“Claire Favan?”

“Yes,” Bambi confirmed. “Favan, Claire, here it is.”

“Jacques Saussey?”

“Saussey, Jacques. Got it.”

Bousquet thought they could use twigs with little red ribbons on them to see which graves had already been counted, but they would have needed thousands of twigs, and an equal number of red ribbons, so they abandoned the idea. What they did have was a plentiful stock of the plastic tape used to cordon off accidents and crime scenes. So each checked grave now sported a red and yellow scarf with the slogan “NATIONAL POLICE” on it.

As the rain soaked them, the colour of the graves, the headstones and the earth darkened.

Noémie dropped Hugo at the house by the lake and borrowed the 4×4 Ford in which he had driven back from Paris. Before going to take statements from Serge and Bruno Dorin, she made a detour to the cemetery. She was surprised to see the Avalone graves decked out with their red and yellow scarves.

“It looks like modern art,” she said.

“We’ve still got almost half to check,” Bambi said. “It takes forever.”

“I know, but either there’s a mistake in the records, or one of the kids has been waiting for us somewhere under there for 25 years. So keep at it; I’m going back to the office.”

—

Serge Dorin stared at Noémie with a look as cold and bleak as a bad winter.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Than search for your son’s killer?”

“You know perfectly well what I meant. We’re the victims in this affair. So why are we here?”

“I simply need your witness statements.”

“And you really think the disappearance of a bracelet will get you somewhere?”

“It’s a grey area. And everything hidden in grey areas interests me.”

“What a lousy job you have.”

“I realise that. So it was Bruno who found his mother?”

As soon as she mentioned his son, Serge Dorin became even more taciturn if that were possible.

“He lost his mother and brother in the same year. Get off his back. Shouldn’t you be looking instead at the police who were at our place that day? I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them pinched it.”

“That’s another of our theories,” Chastain said, to calm him a little. “Were both your sons baptised?”

“Yes, baptism and first communion. And yes, they were both given a bracelet, if that’s what you want to know.”

“And yet when we found your son’s body, he wasn’t wearing it. We found metal shoe eyelets and a ten-centime piece, but nothing else.”

Dorin clenched his fists on his knees.

“So you accept the idea that he was killed, but not that someone stole a valuable object from him? In other words, you do as you please. You latch on to whatever suits you, and dismiss anything that doesn’t fit your stinking theories.”

“It’s the complete opposite. I pull on all the strings I come across. I don’t see one as more important than another, however long or thin it may be. I try to reach the end of each one. That’s why I’ll have to ask your son the same questions.”

“That’s ridiculous, he was only eight!” Dorin exploded.

“We have to consider everything. I grant you that memories from before the age of ten are rare, but traumatising events stay engraved in our minds as if they happened yesterday. I should know.”

She was half expecting him to stand up and shout at this, or even tip her desk over. But Serge Dorin’s reaction was the complete opposite. His body slumped, and his face softened.

“It’s me,” he whispered finally, as if a weight had been lifted.

“You’re going to have to be more precise.”

“Alex wore his bracelet all the time. Bruno never wanted to put his on, and it ended up in my wife’s jewellery box. That day, there were police officers swarming all over the barn, taking photographs, asking questions. They cut the rope, her body was put on a stretcher, and when I was given permission to kiss her one last time, I recognised Bruno’s bracelet on her wrist. So I took it off.”

“Why?”

“Because there was no reason for it to be there. Because I didn’t get the message. Why take your life wearing something that belongs to your son?”

“Where is it now?”

“I kept it with me for ages, as a memento. First in my pocket, then in my car, until one day I couldn’t find it. Bruno was never aware of any of this, so there’s no point in you asking him questions. It will only unsettle him even more.”

“Considering his police record, he doesn’t seem that fragile: illegal drug use, violence, swindling and extortion, burglaries, damage to personal property. I’m amazed he’s managed to avoid jail.”

Serge Dorin remembered the calls from the police station in the middle of the night and the violent arguments that occasionally ended in fist fights, the sort a father should never have with their child.

“I don’t know what your childhood was like, but his began with his brother’s disappearance and his mother hanging herself. He’s had nothing to do with the police since he was eighteen. He’s a hard worker, far harder than I am, and nowadays he doesn’t cause anybody any problems. So forget him, if you don’t mind.”

Noémie did not have much more to ask, so decided to end the interview. A few minutes later, she saw father and son leave the station, Serge Dorin holding his raincoat over the two of them. They disappeared into their old white van, which was spattered with earth and dust.

Noémie lit a cigarette and stood in the front doorway to enjoy the fresh air outside. Commandant Roze came to join her.

“How did the interview go?”

“Like a match flirting with a petrol can.”

“Does he make sense?”

“Not much.”

“Do you get the impression he’s taking you for a ride?”

“Quite possibly. But he does it well.”

“Well, from looking at the file I guess we don’t have much against him,” Roze said, “apart from the missing bracelet.”

The Dorins’ ancient van left the police yard, its tired engine spluttering.

“I’ve come to the same conclusion,” Noémie admitted.

At that moment her mobile began to buzz in her pocket. She waved an apology to Roze.

“Don’t you answer your landline?” Romain wanted to know.

“I’m not in the office now. I’ve finished with the Dorins.”

“Both of them?”

“No, I haven’t interviewed the son. I don’t think this is the right moment.”

“I’m with Bambi and Bousquet at the cemetery.”

When she heard what else Valant had to say, she crushed out her cigarette.

“Call forensics. I want them there at once,” she said, ending the call.

She turned to Roze.

“They’ve found the grave.”

PART FOUR

Deep in the Heart

48

Less than three hours later, a tarpaulin had been thrown over the extra grave. On the headstone was engraved a name that had probably been invented: “Pauline Destrel, 1972–1994”.

Outside the cemetery scores of villagers were being kept in check by uniforms from Decazeville police station.

“Did you find the name in the register?” Noémie said.

“Not known.”

She turned to the team genealogist.

“Bambi? Does the Destrel family mean anything to you?”

“No. Not in our six communes, at any rate.”

“Just this once, I give you permission to ask your mother.”

Bambi turned red, and Noémie understood that this was where he had already got his information.

The Pauline Detrel tombstone had been lifted using the cemetery hoist, and now the first careful spadefuls of sodden earth had been dug. The forensics team in their white overalls were waiting for the first thud of a spade on the wood of the coffin to finally get to work.

But the sound was not what they expected. An ominous crack like that of a broken branch made them halt the digging. One of the technicians knelt down and plunged his hands into the soft earth. He pulled out a bone damaged by time and partially eaten away by insects. Despite this, it was obvious it was a left femur. The problem was its size.

The forensics team gingerly removed the earth from around the skeleton. Night was falling, and a spotlight now lit this scene of criminal archaeology.

“It’s an adult skeleton,” the forensics officer confirmed. “Not exactly what you were looking for.”

“No, not exactly,” Noémie said, more confused than ever.

Heavier rain began to fall. As the drops hit the gravel path they created not only a curtain of rain but a knee-high mist.

Once the remains were cleared of earth, Noémie crouched in front of the jigsaw puzzle of bones, then used her pen to turn the skull on its side. At the back she saw a big hole. A gunshot? A blunt instrument? And did this body have any link to the disappeared kids? Noémie inwardly cursed this seemingly endless investigation.

“Bambi, you finish up here with forensics and have the skeleton taken to the pathologist. To be frank, this damn day has taken us right back to the beginning. We’ll meet up again tomorrow after a good night’s sleep.”

“We let it settle, like novelists do?” Bambi enthused.

“That’s right. Like novelists do.”

Noémie left the cemetery soaked to the skin. Beyond the crowd of curious onlookers the uniforms were now dispersing, she caught sight of the journalist Saint-Charles, sheltering under an umbrella as he lounged on the bonnet of Hugo’s 4×4. It had replaced the Land Rover, which was now no more than a collection of spare parts.

“Bit stuck, are we?” he said by way of greeting.

“I don’t like that way of putting it, but yes, we are. I feel as if today began a week ago.”

Saint-Charles stood up, notebook in hand.

“Can we mention your accident?”

“Not if you can avoid it . . .”

“And did you find anything in the grave?”

“Yes, an adult skeleton.”

The journalist could barely contain himself at this sensational news.

“And can I mention that?”

This was the first time a journalist had ever asked Chastain’s permission to publish something. Noémie took advantage of this.

“Can you be patient for a few days?”

“If I’m the first after that, it’s a deal.”

Noémie held out her hand, and Saint-Charles shook it.

“You’re in the Aveyron now, Capitaine. Do you know what a handshake means here? Less than a century ago, even the most important transactions needed no more than a handshake to be sealed.”

“In Paris, promises are only kept by those on the receiving end, but I’m happy to adapt to local customs.”

Saint-Charles put away his notebook, as if to cement their agreement.

“Be careful, Chastain. You’ve obviously stirred somebody up.”

“Thanks, Saint-Charles. I’ve been told that already.”

49

The night brought with it a host of bad dreams that descended on Avalone and the neighbouring communes. Memories had been reawakened, like so many bogeymen creeping out of wardrobes and from under beds.

—

Serge Dorin woke with a start, fists taut and stomach gripped by an invisible hand.

Sékou. He remembered the name.

He had hardly gone back to sleep when the nightmare began again, as if it had only been paused. He saw himself on the site of the dam, 25 years earlier. It was the middle of the night, and he had his gun in his hand. A young African man trembled as he knelt in front of him. The boy was wearing only a T-shirt; his legs were bare.

“I’m Sékou,” he said, terrified.

Dorin loaded his gun and pointed it at the back of the man’s neck, covered in sweat.

“I’m Sékou,” the stranger repeated, as if there had been a mistake he could correct simply by saying his name.

“Shoot,” Dorin heard behind him.

He took a step backwards, closed his eyes, and fired.

The African’s body was flung forward and crumpled to the ground. His blood gushed out and was slowly soaked up by the earth.

Dorin woke again, mouth dry and heart thudding.

In the bathroom, he turned on the cold tap and splashed his face. Then he tiptoed past his son’s bedroom and went down into the cellar. He switched on the staircase light, pushed open the rotting door, and felt behind the unstable pyramid of empty wine bottles. His throat tightened as he pulled out a dusty red box. He explored beneath the gold and silver jewellery as if it were a nest of coloured insects and finally took out a chain bracelet with the name Alex engraved on the disc. As it slipped through his fingers, he burst into tears.

—

André Casteran turned over in bed. He was covered in sweat as his body gave off waves of tannin from all the red wine he had consumed during the day. His mind was filled with images he tried to push away.

The cemetery. His cemetery. And those voices.

“We have to bury him,” one of them said.

“It’s that murdering nigger,” the other one said. “He only got what he deserved.”

In his dream, Casteran started to dig with his hands until they bled. The body was thrown into the bottom of the pit without even a coffin, then covered with earth.

“Do what you have to, André, do what you have to.”

—

Romain Valant heard a noise in the house. A noise like the moist chewing of somebody eating a juicy piece of fruit. He got up and walked through a fog spreading slowly across the old wooden floor. When he reached his daughter’s closed door, he saw a strip of light from inside. The chewing became louder and louder, interspersed with sucking sounds. He opened the door cautiously, gun in hand. Lily’s room was lit by moonlight, and he could clearly see what was going on. The filthy, stinking Malbouche ogre knelt on the bed, draped in an animal skin. He was crushing his daughter’s body in his powerful hands. His mouth, open wide like a snake’s, had completely gulped down her head, and was starting to swallow the rest of her body. Romain fired and fired until he had no more bullets left. Then Aminata woke him.

“You’re having a nightmare.”

It took a good hour, sitting on the cane chair opposite Lily’s bed watching her sleeping peacefully, for him to be able to return to his own bed.

—

Noémie had fallen asleep next to Hugo. During the night, her cat leaped up onto the bed. He climbed stealthily up her legs and onto her body. When he reached her midriff, he began to dig his paws in, kneading her body as if giving her a massage or comforting her. He turned round once, then continued upwards, until he was on her face. He licked her cheeks with his rasping tongue and then crunched her nose. No pain. No blood. Her body was made not of skin or muscles but a deliciously light and airy Genoa cake, its different layers revealed with each mouthful. The cat continued to devour her until he got inside her cake head and lay there purring.

When she woke up, she decided to call Melchior. She hadn’t been in touch with him for far too long, so set up a video call on her computer.

“How weird,” the psychiatrist said when he heard the story of her dream.

“That’s what I thought too.”

“Well anyway, did you get the message?”

“Not really. Do you have any ideas?”

“The cake is a dessert. It comes at the end of a meal. Could it be that you’re coming to the end of your investigation?”

“It’s true it’s been an age since I called you, so I’ll try to find the right words. I’ve got nowhere.”

“Yet your cat seems quite happy, comfortably installed in your pastry head. Perhaps you have all the ingredients you need but can’t see how to make the connection yet.”

“That’s not the method I learned in the Serious Crime Squad. A clue leads to proof, and the proof nails the suspect. I have none of that here.”

“Of course not. You’re coming to this after 25 years. The clues, the evidence, have disappeared a long time ago. You’re going to solve this with your mind, your logic and your deductive abilities.”

“Like one of Agatha Christie’s grand finales?”

“How do you think your predecessors managed before investigations became scientific?”

“I should remind you that in the days you’re talking of, people ended up in prison simply because someone informed on them.”

“Every generation has its bad officers, and you’re not one of them. I’m not at all worried.”

At that moment, Hugo crossed the living room on his way to prepare coffee, snatching a glance at the computer screen as he did so.

“Goodness,” Melchior exclaimed, “I’ve just seen a silhouette pass behind you. Shall I call the police or will you explain?”

“That’s Hugo. The River Police diver.”

“Well, I must say I’m delighted to learn there’s a Hugo.”

“Thanks. I have a dog too.”

“That’s excellent news. To be honest, that’s the best thing that could happen to you – and I’m talking more about Hugo than the dog. It reinforces so many positive signs as to your progress I should perhaps even consider you cured.”

Noémie was horrified. “I forbid you to abandon me.”

“It has to happen some day.”

“You could be a little jealous, all the same.”

“That’s something you’ll never know, Noémie. But for now, I promise I won’t let go of you. Why don’t you tell me about your team?”

“That’s precisely the word. It’s become a team, and that says everything.”

“What about the village? You must be bringing back life to a period no-one wants to remember. How do they see your work?”

“Oh yes, about that – I could have done with you in my group. I have to deal with pretty complicated victims. A lot of deep wounds that put mine into perspective. I have a fourth-degree alcoholic, a woman who’s convinced herself her son is still alive, and an irascible farmer who’s probably taking me for a ride. Also a crazy old woman who’s stuck 25 years in the past and is found lost all over the village. But I haven’t really talked to her yet.”

Melchior gave her a broad, teasing smile.

“You’re telling me you’ve got an old woman for whom 1994 is like yesterday, in an investigation where your biggest problem is how long ago it all was – and you haven’t gone to talk to her?”

Pursing her lips, wishing she could disappear, Noémie didn’t know where to put herself.

“Yes, that makes me look kind of stupid, doesn’t it?”

“Capitaine Chastain,” Melchior said seriously, “three months ago you were shot point-blank in the head, your jaw was drilled open to insert metal pins, you had loads of shotgun pellets removed from your skull. Today you’re the respected leader of a team and heading up the most complex investigation of your career. Plus, you have a dog. And a Hugo. You’re on the right track, Noémie, on the right track.”

And with that, as if this was a Hollywood movie, Melchior vanished without waiting for her response.

Noémie went down into the kitchen and saw so many little warm, sugary and vitamin-filled delicacies that she rewarded Hugo with a long kiss. She let him serve her coffee, thinking back to old Madame Saulnier. All she knew about her, apart from her unstable mind, was her penchant for spur-of-the-moment excursions. And if they followed a similar pattern, there must be a reason. Her somewhat random powers of recall unexpectedly helped her to remember the details of her conversation with Romain when he listed the places where Madame Saulnier ended up.

The media library and the former cinema in Decazeville, the shores of the lake at Avalone, and the Puy de Wolf. They must all be linked to Elsa.

The media library and the cinema were probably where her daughter’s intellectual curiosity had been aroused.

Beneath the lake and its waters were the house where she had grown up and the primary school where she had learned to read.

That left the Puy de Wolf. Given its steepness and rugged terrain, nothing could justify it being chosen for a stroll. Still less with a young girl. No, there was really no explanation for it.

She let a sugar cube dissolve in her coffee, then took Hugo’s hand.

“How about a walk?”

“Is this professional?”

“We’ll know when we get up there.”

Noémie waited for her diver on the pontoon. In front of her, the lake was now no higher than the house windows of the old village. Another 24 hours and they would finally be able to recover the second barrel. Cyril or Elsa.

Behind her, Picasso was gambolling round Hugo.

“I think he knows we’re going for a walk,” he said with a laugh.

50

Trusting Hugo as if he were a new member of the team, Noémie took advantage of the climb to relate the details of the investigation. As she did so, she reinserted the scattered pieces of information in her mind.

“Will I seem less manly if I beg you for a rest? Climbing’s not really my thing; I prefer the depths.”

“At 90, Madame Saulnier does it effortlessly.”

“Where exactly does she climb to?” Hugo said, taking in the whole of the vast hill.

“To the top.”

“Obviously.”

Breath recovered but pride wounded, Hugo took Noémie’s hand and started up again, the indefatigable Picasso at their heels.

The wind flattened the clumps of grass, and the rocks rose from the surface in dry lichen-covered humps. Here and there, sharp blades of the serpentine rock stuck up from the ground like so many claws.

When they reached the summit they saw, stretching out beyond several valleys, the spectacular La Vaysse natural park, with its biggest acacia forest in all of Europe, now a mass of white blossom in the month of May.

“I still don’t understand what she was doing here, so far from her house and somewhere so difficult to reach,” Noémie reflected.

Gazing out over this vast expanse, Hugo did not look where he was treading; his shoes slipped on a rock and set off a small avalanche of pebbles. He quickly recovered, while Noémie watched the stones roll down the hillside and disappear between two big boulders. A split second later, they heard them bounce several times off the rock walls. So there was an almost invisible crevice down there. A crevice Madame Saulnier had almost fallen into when Noémie first met her. She went to the edge and looked down. Picasso did the same, and growled.

“It’s at least three metres deep,” she reckoned. “And it’s filled with damn gorse bushes.”

“Would you like me to go first?” Hugo suggested, with awkward gallantry.

“Are you trying to rile me?”

Noémie switched on her mini-torch, stuck it between her teeth, and edged her way cautiously down to the bottom of the crevice.

“Well? Can you see anything?”

Noémie knelt in front of the screen of thorny bushes. Removing her sweater, she wrapped it round her hand and began to part the branches, oblivious to the tears in the wool. Pointing the torch ahead of her, she discovered, concealed by the gorse, an old wooden cross leaning against the rock wall.

“Alex. 1984–1994” read an inscription crudely carved with the point of a knife.

“Shit, yet another grave,” she groaned.

She got out her mobile and took a photograph, then clambered back up out of the crevice.

“I think I’ve found out why she comes here,” she told Hugo as she put her pullover, now full of holes, back on.

“Look at your hands. It’s as though you’ve had a fight with a cat.”

“There is a cat in the story, but you’d think I was mad if I tried to explain.”

The chilly air made her shiver; Hugo rubbed her back to warm her up. “How can an old lady climb down into a crevice like that without breaking all her bones?” Hugo wondered.

“I’m not sure an old woman could, but if you take away 25 years, it’s possible. And anyway, I don’t think it was Madame Saulnier who came here. Take a look at this.”

Noémie brought the cross up on her mobile and continued her train of thought.

“The name on the cross is Alex. So logically it was Jeanne or Serge Dorin who made it. But yet again, I’ve a problem with the dates.”

“From 1984 to 1994, that’s ten years – the age he was.”

“Yes, that’s true. But try to put yourself in the family’s shoes. Their child disappears on November 21, 1994. At the time, it was seen as a simple kidnapping. And yet somebody put a cross here as if he were definitely dead. Do you see my problem?”

“The timeline?”

“Yes, the timeline. The cross was put here between November 21 and December 31. One day later, and it would have read 1995 rather than 1994. So it took less than 40 days for whoever carved those dates on the cross to be convinced Alex was dead. That’s a very short time to lose all hope.”

“If I follow you, you reckon a member of the Dorin family knew there was nothing more to wait for? Do you want to dig under it?”

“No point: we’ve already found Alex on the surface of Avalone lake. And have you seen what the ground here is made of? Pure rock. Nobody could make even a scratch on it without a digger.”

“All that’s as may be, but it isn’t exactly convincing evidence.”

“As far as evidence goes, it looks as if I’ll have to get used to not discovering any more. I simply want to find a convincing scenario. It’s yet another grey area and, together with the question of the bracelet, that makes two surrounding the Dorin family.”

“Do you want to go and talk with them?”

“No, I know them by now. They’ll say they know nothing, that they’ve forgotten, or they’ll blame it on the mother’s despair. As you say, I’ve got nothing very convincing. But there is someone who might talk to me more openly.”

Noémie slid her finger across the mobile to get rid of the photograph of the cross, then pressed the call icon to reach Romain.

“Can you meet me at Saulnier’s? I want to talk to her about the past.”

“Haven’t you forgotten something?” Valant said.

“Yes, lots of things. In fact, it’s my trademark.”

“We have the autopsy of the skeleton by video conference in less than an hour.”

“We’ll have time. So, shall I see you there?”

“I’m behind with quite a few reports, and I need to send off the requests for the forensic institute.”

“In that case, send Bambi.”

“If you don’t want to scare Madame Saulnier, I advise you to have someone she knows accompany you. Somebody she knew when he was just starting out as a police officer.”

“Commandant Roze?”

51

Noémie parked her car outside the two-storey red granite house. Roze sat immobile, staring in a melancholy way at the shabby facade covered in Virginia creeper, with flowers on its windowsills.

“The human mind can stock the equivalent of 213,000 D.V.D.s,” Chastain thought out loud. “Let’s see how much Madame Saulnier has retained in her memory.”

Roze did not appear to have heard her.

“Are you alright, boss?”

“That’s the first time you’ve called me that,” the commandant said.

“You seem a bit . . . hesitant.”

“It’s only uncomfortable memories.”

Noémie switched the engine off and turned towards him.

“You were the one who had to tell the families about the kidnappings, is that it?”

“Not all of them. But yes, I did tell her.”

“Would you prefer me to go in alone?”

“I’m not that thin-skinned, you know.”

They had to ring the bell several times before they heard movement inside the house. Through the frosted glass they could see someone inching towards them, and finally the door opened.

“Why, it’s little Arthur from the police, isn’t it?” the delighted old lady exclaimed.

“Hello Marguerite,” Roze responded, adopting the gentle voice and attitude of the young man she had known and no doubt still saw in front of her.

“What’s wrong? Has Elsa done something naughty?”

“Don’t worry. You know Elsa is never naughty. I just came to introduce you to Noémie. Another police officer. She has a few questions to ask you.”

“I never refuse a bit of company. Come in, come in, I’ll put on the coffee,” she said, disappearing through the kind of wooden bead curtain that Chastain had only ever seen at her greatgrandmother’s.

The cups clinked together as Marguerite laid the tray on the table. Noémie and Roze had half expected it to go flying through the air in the short journey from the kitchen to the living room.

“Do you remember we met at the top of the Puy de Wolf?” Noémie said.

Madame Saulnier smiled at her. The apologetic smile old people have when their minds have wandered and they’ve lost track of time.

“Imagine we’ve gone back 25 years,” Roze said to Noémie in a low voice.

Noémie rethought her line of questioning, adjusting to the old lady’s reconstructed universe.

“How is Elsa?” she said.

Brought back to her own inner world, a big smile lit up Marguerite Saulnier’s face.

“Oh, you know, she’s growing up too quickly. She no longer even waits for me at the school gates. She comes home all on her own, does her homework and when I get up she’s already gone off again. A real young lady who doesn’t need anyone now. My husband would have been so proud.”

“You took her in when she was three, didn’t you?”

“Oh, you know that,” Marguerite Saulnier said, her face clouding.

When she tried to fill their cups, Roze had to help her to avoid a catastrophe.

“Oh Arthur, you and that loose tongue of yours,” she scolded him, wagging a gnarled finger. “It’s important Elsa knows nothing about that. I know some people say I’m too protective. But when she first came here, the paediatrician diagnosed sleep apnoea. I spent almost two years watching her sleep, terrified whenever she stopped breathing for a few seconds. So there was a bond between us. My husband wanted to tell her she was adopted when she was old enough to understand. I always hesitated. Now he’s no longer with us, it’ll be up to me to decide.”

She struggled to her feet and went to pick up a black-and-white photograph from the sideboard. It showed a man in a dinner jacket next to a woman in a fluffy white dress like a meringue, under a snowstorm of confetti.

“Look how beautiful we both were! The poor man didn’t even see Elsa reach the age of ten. A few years after our daughter arrived he died from a stupid fall. The house fuses had blown, and he lit a candle to go down to the cellar to change them. He always used to say he was born under the sign of the cat and could see perfectly well in the middle of the night. He used to say lots of things like that to impress me. Anyway, he missed a step, went head first down the stairs and landed on the bottom one. He split his skull open and never got up again. It must have been his ninth life. Even nine lives can speed by, my little ones.”

Everyone has their own memory. Friendly or hostile. Noémie’s was somewhere between the two, as if still trying to find its way. Marguerite’s was a good friend, protecting her from unbearable suffering. Her husband’s death must have been an event that, although difficult, was to be expected. But the impossible scenario of the death of a child had given rise to a self-defence mechanism that allowed the old lady to carry on living from day to day. Chastain led her once more in the direction that interested her.

“And the Puy de Wolf is one of the walks you go on with Elsa?”

“Oh yes, the Puy . . . it’s important,” Marguerite appeared to remember. “I’m sure she would like that spot. I must take her there one day, after school.”

“Who is it important for?” Noémie pressed her.

“For Jeanne, of course. She’s the one who takes me there. To talk to little Alex.”

“Jeanne Dorin?”

“I don’t know any other Jeanne. We’re friends, you know. Well, we were,” she corrected herself. “It’s been a long time since she called for me to accompany her up there.”

Roze slipped his mobile onto the living room table. Noémie saw on its screen that they had only ten minutes to get back to the police station before the autopsy began.

Capitaine Chastain and the commandant left the old lady at her front doorstep watching them leave. Noémie gave a little goodbye wave, but Marguerite did not even seem to see it. Chastain realised that she was already back in her own world, waiting for the school day to end.

In the car, Roze remained silent, unsure of what they had gained from the meeting.

“Did you learn anything interesting?”

Chastain showed him the image of the cross she had discovered that morning.

“This is what Jeanne Dorin came to see on the summit of the Puy de Wolf. A cross with the name of Alex on it. It dates from 1994.”

She let the commandant absorb this information for a few kilometres, just to see. Five minutes later, they pulled into Decazeville and Roze finally reacted.

“Did you say 1994?”

“A problem, my little Arthur?” she said jokingly.

52

Noémie went up the steps to the police station two at a time, leaving Roze in her wake. By the time she reached the office her cheeks were flushed. Valant, Bousquet and Bambi were sitting around one of the computers.

“Have I missed anything?” she said anxiously.

“We were waiting for you, Capitaine,” said a voice from the screen.

Already in his gown and gloved up, the pathologist gave her a friendly wave. Behind him she could see the gleaming steel table, and on it the unknown man’s reconstituted skeleton.

“Good morning, doctor. I am sorry to be late.”

“Good morning, Chastain. I hope you’re not going to ask again for a date of death?”

“No point. He died between the first and thirtieth of November 1994, when the cemetery was moved. But that’s all we know.”

“Alright, so let me give you a bit of help,” the pathologist said with a touch of pride. “Your dead body is male. An African male to judge by the dimensions of his nasal bridge, the nostril aperture and the zygomatic bones.”

“Sorry, but I’m new to the region,” Noémie interrupted him. She turned to the others. “I don’t know the history of immigration in the region. Was it common to find Black people here in the ’90s?”

“Not common, but there were some,” said Roze, whom she had not seen come in. “Metalworking, road construction, building sites,” he continued. “They’ve never come in great numbers, but they were here alright. Especially in 1991.”

“Why that date precisely?”

“That’s when Global Water Energy began work on the dam. Who else do you think they got to do the hard graft for next to nothing, without bothering about their rights or any possible trade union?”

“Poor bastards like him,” Noémie said, pointing to the skeleton.

The pathologist picked the webcam up from its base and took it over to the remains.

“However that may be, my dear officers, what is certain is that he didn’t die from a work accident.”

They all watched more closely as the camera began to explore the body.

“I imagine the first thing you saw is this hole in the back of his head,” the pathologist said.

“It’s hard to miss. A bullet of some kind?” Noémie suggested. “He was shot?”

“I think so. People don’t commit suicide by shooting themselves in the back of the head. Now, if you follow the trajectory, you’ll see the bullet hit several obstacles and damaged them on its way.”

He took a laser pen from his coat and pointed to different parts of the skull.

“The entry point is the occipital bone. Then it crosses the temporal bone at the base of the skull before becoming lodged in the jaw.”

“Before becoming lodged?” Noémie repeated.

“Yes, Capitaine. That’s what I said.”

He held the camera closer to the red dot. A round piece of metal glinted in the light.

“Take a look at that,” the pathologist almost cooed. “It’s been waiting there for us for 25 years. I’m almost touched.”

Noémie straightened up, re-energised.

“O.K. doctor, remove the bullet without getting any scratches on it. It’s really important for ballistics. We’ll send a team to collect it. Thanks, you’ve done a great job.”

“I’m the one who thanks you, Capitaine. Since you arrived, you’ve brought so much fun to my daily grind.”

He replaced the webcam on its base, then spoke directly to her, his face looming large on the screen.

“Do you have a lead for the third child?”

“As it happens, that’s who we expected to find in this grave.”

“So you’re disappointed?”

“That all depends on what the bullet tells us.”

“I’ll get onto it straightaway,” the pathologist said.

No-one in the office had moved; they all still sat staring at the now darkened screen. Noémie incorporated this fresh information into the blurry jumble of theories jostling in her brain.

“The events took place over a very short space of time,” she said. “On the one hand, three children disappear, and two of them are hidden in plastic barrels in a cellar. On the other, we have a new dead body: an African shot and killed by a bullet to the head. If those two things are related, what is the connection between this new victim and Malbouche?”

“Fortin,” Valant corrected her.

“Yeah, Fortin, that’s who I meant to say. A contrario, if these two cases aren’t related, you had a hell of a spate of criminal activity here in November 1994!”

The four men stared at her as if waiting for the climax of an exciting T.V. series.

“Gentlemen!” she said loudly. “Your comments, please!”

Bambi might be the youngest, least experienced member of the team, but his youthfulness meant he was the least afraid to leap in, even if he said something stupid.

“Maybe Fortin and the African were in cahoots. Things went badly, so Fortin got rid of him?”

“Murderous duos are rare, but why not?” Noémie conceded.

“A troublesome witness who saw Fortin?” Bousquet suggested.

“That could be.”

“A work accident to be concealed on the Global site?”

“Why not?”

Noémie looked again at the puzzle wall, where new photographs had been pinned. The recovered plastic barrel. The underwater images from the River Police’s explorations. The smoking remains of Pierre Valant’s barn. The crushed Land Rover. And finally the earth-covered skeleton in Avalone cemetery.

“We’ll let things settle. The answer must lie in what we already have.”

“Apart from that,” Romain asked, “do you have any precise instructions?”

Chastain picked up her coat from the back of the chair and prepared to leave the office.

“The lake will be completely drained by tomorrow. I need the most detailed possible map of the village. Bambi, I give you permission to go and chat with your mum. We need her to tell us who lived where before it was flooded. That should take her most of the day.”

“She’ll do that for you in an hour,” Bambi boasted.

“And after that?” Bousquet asked.

“After that?” Noémie said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to buy myself a pair of rubber boots. It’s going to be a muddy day.”

53

Just as the police all donned boots, so the mini-digger of the L.M.A. – the Lake Maintenance Agency – was kitted out with the plastic tracks needed for difficult or muddy terrain. It was patiently scraping away the heap of stones that once had constituted Avalone’s community centre.

Metal barriers normally used for market days had been put up all around the drained lake to create a security area. Behind these barriers, almost the entire village was watching the operation, together with as many journalists, microphones and T.V. cameras at the ready. After a quarter of a century, Avalone was regaining its sad notoriety.

Noémie walked past Saint-Charles, who nodded to her. He hadn’t written a word about her car accident or the discovery of a new skeleton. Their handshake, as promised, had been respected.

A cameraman pushed his way through the crowd to join a journalist sitting in her car, notebook in hand. As he did so, he almost bumped into Bousquet, who was struggling to pull on his boots.

“Have you found someone?” the young woman asked.

“You only have to choose,” the cameraman said. “They all have their theory, or at least something to say. But I think I’ve found something better.”

Leaving her notebook on the passenger seat, the journalist climbed out of the car and followed where he was pointing: the police capitaine in charge of the investigation.

“You see that female officer over there? Can you see the scar on her face? She’s the capitaine from Paris, from the Drug Squad . . .”

“Oh shit! I want her!” the journalist brayed. “That’ll make good television.”

They tried surreptitiously to get over the barrier, but Bousquet, who had not missed a word of their conversation, confronted them.

“If you go anywhere near my capitaine, I’ll smash your camera and stuff it down your throat.”

“You have no right to do that,” the cameraman protested.

“I’ll say it fell off your shoulder. And you too, asshole. I’ll say you fell over with your gadget.”

Grabbing the cameraman by his coat collar, Bousquet made him take two steps back.

“There’s a barrier here. Make sure you stay on the right side of it.”

A makeshift headquarters had been established under a white plastic tent in the centre of the village. A table was firmly planted in the mud, on it a map of the village covered in notes. Everyone was studying it.

“Problem with the media?” Noémie asked Bousquet when he finally rejoined the team.

“You know what they’re like, Capitaine. Like kids – they always want to get as close as possible to the fire. They’ll stay in line.”

One of the tent flaps was raised, and a workman, mud spattered on his overalls, came in.

“We’ve reached the cellar level. We’re going to finish things off by hand, if you want to come.”

The remains of the collapsed roof and one of the walls had been cleared away. Noémie recognised the interior of the building that until now she had only seen thanks to Hugo’s GoPro camera on the dive that had almost cost him his life. The entrance, meeting room, corridor, storeroom and finally the double trapdoor in the floor leading to the cellar, splintered by one of the load-bearing beams. The lift bag that had helped Hugo raise the beam lay there like a deflated balloon.

Next to it, red, immobile, split open and partially covered in algae, crushed by the beam’s several hundred kilos, was the barrel. Through the wide hole in the plastic the skull of one of the Avalone children was clearly visible.

“Have the body sent to the forensic institute,” Chastain ordered, “and send a request for an autopsy, as well as one to the lab for an analysis of the D.N.A. As rapidly as possible.”

“So as not to keep the families waiting?” Bambi asked.

“Not really. If it’s Cyril, his mother won’t believe it. Her husband doesn’t even want us to tell her. If it’s Elsa, Marguerite Saulnier simply won’t understand. I’m asking for the results as soon as possible because I can’t stand not knowing.”

One of the L.M.A. workmen came to tell them that they were about to lift the beam and needed the area cleared. They all trooped out of the building, leaving it to the hydraulic crane.

“O.K., Bambi. Want to show me the village?”

Their investigative walk first took them through a desolate landscape, swampy ground littered with soaked stones and trees petrified by minerals, the colour of grey concrete, their branches reaching upwards as if calling for help, as rigid as the inhabitants of Pompeii. When they entered the old village of Avalone, the atmosphere became post-apocalyptic. A village without a living soul, houses torn apart, as if they had been chewed up by a giant who wanted to taste each one of them in a mouthful.

They walked down the main street, pausing level with a metal street lamp bent double, almost to the ground. On their left, in the middle of a courtyard surrounded by an L-shaped building, partly collapsed, stood a rusty old climbing frame and a slide cut in half. Noémie walked over to a still erect road sign covered in slime that she wiped away with the sleeve of her coat. Two small figures holding hands appeared, in the centre of a triangle.

“The school?” Noémie said.

“Yes. The one the three kids went to,” Bambi confirmed.

Chastain walked round the schoolyard. On a block at the foot of the entrance wall she discovered the trace of a children’s love story: a heart had been clumsily drawn there.

They continued their walk, getting lost in the small side streets. Bambi showed her the house the Casteran family once lived in. A hundred metres further on, almost at the end of the village, was the Dorins’ house, next to several hectares with no buildings on it; this must have been where they had their agricultural land. Finally, at the edge of the old village of Avalone, on a broad rise with steep sides and a flat summit, they saw the Saulnier family house. It was almost identical to the one Noémie had visited the previous evening. A wrought-iron gate that must have marked the entrance was still standing; Chastain’s attention was drawn to one of the stones on the crumbling low wall next to it. She squatted to get a better view of the little heart gouged into it. The second time she had seen it today, and now it made more sense. She thought of Alex and Elsa. A childish love that knew no bounds, one of total commitment, free of all the fears of adult love.

“Capitaine?”

Noémie turned and saw one of the forensic technicians, dressed in overalls which a few hours earlier would have been white.

“We’ve removed the barrel, and it’s on its way to the forensic institute as you requested. But we didn’t find a third victim. Not in any of the rooms, or in the basement.”

That’s no surprise, thought Noémie, even if she still could not explain to herself why the three children had been separated.

“Shall we get out of here, Bambi? This place is giving me the creeps,” she said.

“So imagine how they feel,” the young policeman said.

Chastain turned to look at the lakeshore, where the barriers kept back a crowd of onlookers. Amongst them, those who had lived in the old village were rediscovering it with bitter nostalgia. All their memories, their summers, their springtimes and childhoods were henceforth tarnished by the horror of what had happened here. The investigation was trampling on their past, an insult to all the happiness they had known there, leaving only a dark criminal case.

As Noémie and Bambi reached the centre of the village, Bousquet came out of the tent, mobile in hand.

“Ballistics for you, Capitaine.”

Noémie sought shelter from the throbbing machinery and, one hand on her ear and the telephone in the other, she listened carefully.

“The projectile is not in our register,” the technician informed her. “But since this is the second time you’ve sent us the same kind of munition, we compared them.”

“By ‘the same kind’, do you mean 8mm? I thought that wasn’t very common.”

“Yes, that’s right. So uncommon we compared the two, and it’s a match. The bullet removed from the back seat of the mayor’s van was fired from the same weapon as the one discovered in your skeleton’s skull.”

Noémie was lost for words.

“Does this help, Capitaine?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Shall I email you a copy of my report and post you the original?”

“Yes, I’ll give you my personal email address. Send the report directly to me. I don’t want it to get lost, if you follow me . . .”

A little white lie. What she wanted was for this information to stay with her for now.

“So?” Romain said. “What do ballistics say?”

She quickly went over what they knew. In November 1994 a weapon firing 8mm bullets had killed an African man around the same time as three kids were presumed to have been abducted by Fortin. And now, in 2019, the same weapon had been used to fire at Pierre Valant’s van the day Alex Dorin was buried. Noémie was sure of it: what had happened in the old Avalone not only had repercussions in the new village but involved many more people than just the Malbouche ogre. Again, however, she wanted to keep her conclusions to herself.

“Ballistics haven’t come up with anything, Romain. Projectile not registered.”

—

The pathologist had upended his timetable to make the investigation of the Avalone disappeared children a priority. Because it was exceptional and because in his eyes the capitaine in charge of the case was equally exceptional. He didn’t even allow Noémie time to change, and so it was with mud all over her that she sat down at her computer. The contrast could not have been greater between her and the spotless room in the forensic institute, with its surgical implements as shiny as silver cutlery. The pathologist pulled on a pair of gloves and addressed Noémie through the screen.

“When my assistant saw a second barrel arrive, he almost fainted. As you may remember, he was the one who had to fumble in that organic soup for the ten-centime piece found in Alex Dorin’s barrel.”

“Thank him from me when he recovers.”

“I will. But about this new child. As you know, since it’s not an adult, I can’t be sure of the sex. I’ll use the same method for extracting D.N.A. as last time, drilling into the osteoblasts. As for the date of death, that’s not certain either, but, given the circumstances of the discovery – that is, a child in a plastic barrel in a lake, it makes sense to presume his death too took place in 1994. That, though, is only a supposition. I’ll leave it up to you.”

“I’m interested above all in the cause of death. According to your report, the first child died because of a ‘clear fracture of the spinal column, caused by violent bending, as if it were simply folded in two’. You also stated that inflicting that kind of wound could not have been done manually. Where have we got to today?”

The pathologist moved the camera over to the steel table, close to the body.

“This one is different. The pelvis is shattered, and all the ribs are broken at the same point at the back of the ribcage, as if he or she was struck violently from behind. I’ve seen that before in violent car crashes.”

“Does it correspond to Alex’s autopsy?”

“Unfortunately not. If he too had been knocked down by a vehicle or if he had been in that vehicle when the accident took place, we’d have different breaks or fractures. In his case, only the cervical vertebrae were affected.”

“So you’re telling me that, for two victims who died at the same moment and have been found in the same place, I have to find two different causes of death?”

“I’m afraid so.”

54

After a long day that had been more like an archaeological dig than a police investigation, Noémie returned home covered from boots to hair in mud and silt. A long shower washed off the earth of the old Avalone easily enough. In the jet of hot water, it slid from her shoulders and back, down her slender legs and into the plughole in a dirty brown wave. When Hugo joined her, she even forgot how tired she was.

Noémie spooned her diver as they curled up in her big bed. Her greatest fear was to fall asleep facing him, but like this she felt both safe and at ease.

“You lied to them?” Hugo said with astonishment.

“There’s something not right between the Dorins and Pierre Valant.”

“Pierre Valant? Romain’s father? Your deputy?”

“I know. It’s pretty scary. And as long as I don’t know what it is, I prefer to continue on my own. Anyway, I didn’t lie, I just kept back information.”

“You can play on words if you like, but they could resent it. And in a team, a lack of trust is a sly virus.”

She pushed her back a little closer to Hugo to enjoy his warmth.

“I spent the whole day thinking what we would have found under the ruins if you hadn’t got out. I imagined your body caught under that beam. It would have been unbearable.”

“I’m here now.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? I thought I was just a one-night stand.”

She turned round at last.

“A one-night stand? May I remind you we haven’t done anything yet.”

“We can rectify that right now . . .”

—

The next morning, Noémie arrived an hour early at the office, and found her team already there, with coffee poured and a sweet brioche on the table. She picked up a slice and took a bite as if she hadn’t eaten in a week.

“Do we all agree this is disgusting?” she said, choking.

Bousquet and Valant guffawed, while Bambi looked crestfallen.

“It’s called fouace. A local speciality. My mother made it.”

“Don’t tell her, but it’s really inedible.”

Noémie went to sit at her computer and saw on her keypad an envelope marked “Personal” with her name on it. The report on the 8mm bullets. Ballistics had worked quickly, and the information would continue to be “withheld”. Setting the envelope aside, she switched her computer on and scrolled through her emails, clicking on the one from the genetic lab. They had compared the D.N.A. from the most recent body recovered the previous day with the biological traces from the underwear and toothbrushes of the youngsters the day they disappeared.

And, of course, the D.N.A. corresponded to one of them. Cyril or Elsa?

The three others sat down, Romain on the edge of her desk, the two others on chairs across from her.

“It’s Cyril Casteran,” Chastain announced.

Valant rubbed his face with both hands like someone having difficulty waking up.

“What shall we do about the family?” he said.

“André Casteran asked a favour of me, and I intend to keep my promise. We’ll tell him. But only him. He can decide whether or not to tell his wife. I’m afraid of losing her or her doing something stupid if she hears about it. Hope is all that keeps her going.”

“Well, anyway,” Bousquet added, “we’re not legally obliged to contact the entire family. We inform the husband and then what’s said or not between them isn’t our responsibility.”

“Someone is bound to confess it to her some day,” Bambi said nervously.

“She’ll only believe it if we shove the results under her nose,” Noémie said, “and maybe not even then. Get Monsieur Casteran to come in.”

“If he asks why, what shall I tell him?”

“Don’t worry, he’ll understand what it’s about if he gets a call from the police.”

Noémie dropped a sugar cube into her coffee and stirred it absent-mindedly. She looked again at the envelope, thinking she would have to surreptitiously hide it in a drawer until she decided to talk to the others about these disturbing 8mm bullets. One in the head of a stranger hastily buried; the other in the back seat of a van. Bullets fired 25 years apart. But a detail caught her eye: the envelope should have come via the internal mail, from the lab to Decazeville police station. So why were there postage stamps on it? Looking at it more closely, she saw it had been posted in Spain. Leaning back in her chair, she opened it carefully. She took out the letter inside, holding it by one corner to avoid getting her fingerprints everywhere, in case it had to be sent for analysis. However, somebody seemed to have saved her the trouble, because in the centre of the sheet of paper was a deliberately made red thumbprint, obviously an adult’s. Examining it, she realised it was not red ink. A dark red, scarlet in places. Blood. Beneath it was an address, followed by instructions.

“Casanova. Bielsa church. Spain. Come alone.”

A fingerprint and fresh D.N.A. Somebody was revealing themselves to her, and her alone, and wanted to be sure she would know who it was. She could have sent everything to the laboratory and waited for the results, but she was already certain who was trying to attract her attention.

“Something new?” Bambi said, seeing her frown.

“Nothing. Or rather, yes. A hitch. I lost track of time and I’ve missed my psychiatric appointment in Paris. I have to go back there.”

“You have to go north?” the baby police officer exclaimed, seeing such a trip as a big adventure.

“Unless some villain moved the capital overnight, yes, I think so.”

“Do you have to? I mean, I could tell them you’re completely off your head, and that you absolutely shouldn’t leave Decazeville.”

“You’re a doll, Bambi, but yes, I have to. If Hugo is happy to drive me, we can be in Paris this evening and I’ll be back with you tomorrow.”

She snatched up her coat and pulled it round her shoulders.

“Romain, can you tell Roze, please?”

With that she left them where they sat, mouths agape at this sudden departure.

—

Noémie searched beneath two pullovers in her bedroom wardrobe. She took out the small case containing her firearm. She opened it, picked the gun up by the grip; the barrel began to tremble. They were still strangers to one another, and that could not last. She told herself she was a police officer again, and the firearm went with the job. She promised herself that as soon as she came back from Spain she would overcome this last obstacle. It was up to her to do it, without the aid of Melchior.

Out on the front steps she patted Picasso’s head and told him to be good. Then she threw her bag onto the back seat of Hugo’s Ford, parked outside the house.

“I’ve brought a few things in case we have to spend the night there. Aren’t you taking anything?”

“I always have what I need in the boot. Personal diving gear, because one can always come across a good site, plus some spare clothes, because one can always come across a beautiful capitaine.”

Noémie grimaced.

“I don’t think I’m ready yet to hear the word ‘beautiful’.”

“That’s your problem.”

Chastain had great difficulty getting Picasso out of the vehicle, but when he finally did as he was told, Noémie found she had to explain herself to Hugo.

“D’you think this is madness?”

“I think everyone has hit a brick wall with this investigation; you’re the only one who’s made any progress. But are you sure about what you’re doing? To wait for the D.N.A. results from the blood or the fingerprint wasn’t such a bad idea, was it?”

“You’re talking about the scientific approach; I prefer instinct and deduction. I have to commit to this affair, not hide behind technical details any more. Put myself in the protagonists’ shoes. That’s what I’ve done. Besides, I know perfectly well who sent me the message. There’s someone who had to flee France in 1994 because he was accused of kidnapping and even paedophilia. He had to abandon everything and make a new life for himself, doubtless in another country. Now we’ve found two of his supposed victims in the old village. So where does that leave the kidnapping idea? I get the sense he wants to clear his name.”

“Fortin?”

“Yeah, the Malbouche ogre. And I want him to tell me what happened the night he left Avalone.”

“So we set off gaily like two boy scouts with no handcuffs and no weapons, when he could very easily have killed the three children in the village and run off.”

“That was always one of my theories. But this letter tells me something different. He wouldn’t have come out of hiding if he was guilty. It’s written by someone who wants to talk to me. And I’d like to talk to him.”

Convinced, Hugo switched on the engine and put the address into the G.P.S.

“We’ll be there in five and a bit hours.”

55

They reached Toulouse in two hours. They swapped seats and two hours later they were driving past the Pyrénées National Park towards the border with Spain. It took another hour and several wrong turnings to reach Bielsa, one of the first villages on the Spanish side. It was like another Andorra: a paradise for duty-free alcohol, perfumes and cigarettes, on the banks of the Rio Cinca, at the foot of the Mont-Perdu mountain.

It wasn’t hard to find the church with its fifteen-metre belfry and three naves in an elongated building. But once they had parked, they faced much more of a challenge: Casanova.

Was it a hotel? A restaurant? A person? Their smartphones and G.P.S. were no help. They’d have to do things the old-fashioned way.

“Let’s pretend we’re tourists, and ask around,” Hugo suggested.

“You go. With this face of mine I prefer to stay in the car.”

“We’re really going to have to talk about that, you and I.”

“I know. But not now, please,” she said softly.

Twenty metres from the church, on the terrace of Los Valles café, Hugo went from table to table but found only tourists in baseball caps, with cameras and backpacks.

“Casanova aquí?” he said repeatedly in his basic Spanish.

Negative replies in French, Italian and German almost made him give up, until a charitable soul came to his rescue.

“Buscando Casanova?”

“Sí,” Hugo replied.

“You’re going to be disappointed.”

*

A few moments later Hugo tapped on the window of the Ford holding a can of cold soda.

“I’ve found Casanova.”

“Is it a place?”

“No. It’s a dead person. Come on.”

They walked down a sloping path around the church; behind it they came to a small square burial ground with patches of unkempt grass.

“Again?” Noémie moaned. “I’ve had it up to here with cemeteries!”

Here and there were uneven rows of graves, crooked headstones and equally lopsided wrought-iron crosses. Weeds grew everywhere, and moss filled the rest. Noémie wandered among the 30 or so tombs and finally came to a halt in front of one of them. A nondescript cement grave with cheap purple plastic flowers laid on it. The inscription read: “Joaquina Casanova, 1901–1955”.

“Those dates, 1955 is a far cry from the real Casanova,” Hugo told her.

“I’m getting used to fake tombs.”

“What are we supposed to do now?”

“No idea. There was no other instruction in the letter. I imagine we have to wait.”

Although obviously no longer in use, the cemetery had a certain Tim Burton-style Gothic charm and, since they had time on their hands, they spent it going from grave to grave and didn’t notice the man in a cassock who turned to go as soon as he saw them.

“I’ve got a Dom Juan here too,” Hugo discovered with amusement.

The gravestone had broken into eight pieces, and a fern poked out from between each of them.

“Except that Dom Juan is a fictional character, and I’m beginning to think somebody is messing us about.”

After waiting for half an hour, they were hesitating over whether to leave when a woman in a plain white dress and loose sweater came down the path they had followed and entered the cemetery, a bouquet of flowers in her hand. She respectfully followed the overgrown paths, then came to a stop a few metres from them, replacing a bunch of faded flowers with the ones she had brought.

Hugo and Noémie exchanged a quizzical look.

“I asked you to come alone,” the young woman said, without turning round.

Hearing this, Noémie realised how mistaken her deductions had been. Everything suddenly became clear.

“Elsa Saulnier?”

“You look surprised. But it’s me you’ve been looking for these past few weeks, isn’t it?”

“Amongst others,” Noémie stammered, still stupefied.

As gently as she could, Elsa brushed away the fallen leaves covering the tomb she had brought fresh flowers for.

“Amongst others, obviously,” she said irritably. “I’m sure you’re still pursuing Fortin. You’ll never get it, will you?”

Noémie looked more closely at the grave and its headstone dedicated to someone by the name of Matéo Chapiro who had died three years earlier.

“Who is he?” she said.

“Matéo? When we arrived here, a long time ago, the entire French police force was on his heels. We had to change names and become the Chapiro family.”

For the second time, Noémie’s certainties were turned upside down.

“My name is Elsa Fortin. Your monster was my father. All Matéo did was protect me by taking me as far away from Avalone as possible. It was for his sake that I got in touch with you. Because he died a fugitive, despised and humiliated.”

Noémie had been wrong about the identity of this woman they had just discovered, but right about the motive. It was indeed a question of honour.

“Do you know somewhere where we can have a strong drink?” she asked.

56

Back on the terrace of Los Valles café, the sun was beating down on the parasols. Elsa, Noémie and Hugo sat at a shady table.

“How did you know we’d arrived in Bielsa?” Chastain said.

“I’m a waitress here. And the priest in the church is much more than a friend. I gave him a copy of the front page of La Dépêche, which has a clear picture of you. I learned of your arrival before you had even got out of your car. It has to be said—”

“That I’m easy to recognise?” Noémie finished her sentence for her.

“Sorry, but yes.”

Elsa turned towards Hugo, who so far had not said a word.

“Is he police as well?” she said, pointing at him.

“I’m more of a boyfriend.”

“But from the Paris River Police,” Noémie admitted, thinking it best to be honest. “He’s the one who found Cyril at the bottom of the lake.”

The young woman seemed somewhat reassured.

“In any case, I’ll only speak to the public prosecutor.”

“So why contact me?”

“Because if I called him directly, he would have sent the police after me. I preferred to do it myself. Besides, it’s not the police I contacted but you. I chose you.”

“Why me?”

“Like everyone, I’ve got international news channels and the internet here. For the past month I’ve been watching you struggling on your own to find Alex and Cyril. And you have the advantage of not being from Avalone. I still mistrust the people of that village, and with reason. You should have read everything they said about my father at the time! We had to flee, change our identities, begin all over again and live constantly in fear of being recognised.”

“You were only ten. How can you remember all that?”

“I spent a good part of my adolescence cooped up in our apartment here, with not much room to play in. Bored kids search without even meaning to; I discovered some press cuttings my father had kept. I made him tell me everything. I was fifteen when I learned the truth: the kidnapping of Alex and Cyril he was falsely accused of, and which led to him being called a monster on the other side of the border. It was then that I understood why we hid when it was holiday time in France, and why we never left this village of 500 people. Why we were caged in the open, as it were.”

The waiter put a coffee, a beer and a vodka drowning in ice cubes on the table. He gave Elsa a friendly greeting, laying his hand on her shoulder.

“After we fled Avalone, we first had to go back to Paris,” the young woman continued. “My father had a friend there from his former life who could forge identity papers for the two of us. That day I became Elsa Chapiro. When we arrived here, my father got a helping hand from someone who doesn’t judge other people: the Bielsa parish priest with his cemetery of phoney names – Dom Juan, Casanova . . . I told you we were a lot more than friends. He became my godfather and watched me grow up. My father was taken on as a handyman and never had to answer any questions. The priest only judged him on how he behaved in the present, not caring what had come before. When my father died, to avoid any paperwork that might have caused problems for me, he agreed for him to be buried here, alongside Casanova and Dom Juan. Pseudonyms the village is proud of. For my security, we decided we wouldn’t bury him under his real name, but used Chapiro, his fugitive identity, instead. The priest came to an agreement with the cemetery caretaker to give him a headstone and a gravestone even though there was no death certificate. One hole too many, or one too few: nobody noticed.”

Just like in the cemetery in Avalone, Noémie said to herself. The words “headstone” and “tomb” began to dance in her mind. Unable to connect them to anything, and anxious to know more, she continued with her torrent of questions. “How did he die?”

“Cancer, the doctor told him, but my father wasn’t able to treat it. Too expensive. Too dangerous, again because of our false papers. I for one am convinced he died from the accusations made against him, that he was never allowed to defend himself from. Do you really want to know what happened that night in Avalone? Someone laid a trap for him.”

“Who?”

—

Noémie walked up and down outside the café, mobile to her ear and Commandant Roze on the other end of the line.

“She’ll only speak to the public prosecutor,” she told him.

“That’s understandable. But how did you come across her? I thought you were in Paris for your psychiatric interview, and here you are in Spain.”

“It’s a long story. I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”

All of a sudden, she completely changed her strategy.

“But now you can tell everyone.”

“You mean your team?”

“No, everyone. The mayor, Saint-Charles, even Bambi’s mum if you like. We’ll be back late this evening. Will you inform the prosecutor?”

57

Noémie installed Elsa in the second bedroom of the house by the lake. Given how small it was, it must have been Romain Valant’s when he was a boy.

“You know it’s going to be quite a day tomorrow, don’t you?”

“I’ve been waiting for it for so many years! To come back here and finally tell the truth thanks to your investigation.”

Noémie tossed a clean sheet and thick blanket onto the bed.

“You could talk to me now, you know.”

“I can’t trust the police, although I’d like to believe in your good faith. You’re nothing more than a link in the chain, and even if you’re an honest one, the whole chain is rotten. If I talk directly to the prosecutor, that will avoid the Chinese whispers. Nothing I say will be modified, distorted, truncated or concealed.”

After a quarter of a century playing hide-and-seek, she had become fiercely anti-police. Even Chastain could understand that.

“I’ll let you get settled. The bathroom’s just next door. Shall we open a bottle and wait for you downstairs?”

“Spending an evening with police! In a police officer’s house! I’d never have bet on anything like that a couple of months ago,” Elsa said wryly.

“And I wouldn’t have bet on you twelve hours ago,” Noémie told her.

She was about to leave the room when this young disappeared child asked her one last question.

“How is Madame Saulnier?”

“As far as she’s concerned, you never left,” Chastain admitted. “She still thinks she’s living with you.”

“I’d like to go and see her.”

“If you think it will do her good. You can decide tomorrow. One thing at a time.”

Noémie closed the door gently behind her. Before rejoining Hugo, she went into her own bedroom. Without switching on the light, she went over to the wardrobe where she had put the little case and opened it. She slid her fingers over the cold metal of her pistol and spoke to it like an old friend she hadn’t contacted for far too long.

“A nice evening for us to meet again, don’t you think?”

Noémie poured herself a drink, her back to the still timid fire in the hearth.

“Even though I can see her, I still find it hard to believe.”

Hugo said nothing. Silent or upset?

“Are you sulking?” she said.

“No, of course not. I’m just a bit lost. First you suspect that the police have been infiltrated and you conceal progress in the investigation from your team; then you broadcast the discovery of Elsa in Spain to the whole village. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I imagine that the guys back in the office couldn’t understand it either when Roze told them about our little Iberian detour. But I have to change my approach. Very few officers have worked on cold cases. There’s no set procedure because there’s no longer any evidence or clues. You have to use your imagination, conjecture, fit things together, undo them, then fit them back again in a different way, but always credibly. I need to uncover the entire story and Elsa can only tell me a tiny part of it. If her father is innocent in this business, she can explain how and why he had to flee Avalone. But that doesn’t account for the deaths of Cyril and Alex, the shots fired at Valant, or his farm being set on fire, the African found in the extra grave, and the mysterious vehicle that nearly left me pushing up daisies in the ravine. Plus our search for Casanova, which led to Elsa, raises another question.”

“Do I have to guess, or are you going to tell me what it is?”

“Her father’s gravestone has a false name: Chapiro. That had to be commissioned, and to do that they had to have the help of the priest and the cemetery caretaker.”

“So far, so good.”

“Following the same track, once the body of our unknown African was thrown into a hole in Avalone cemetery, who ordered the gravestone and headstone in the false name of Pauline Destrel?”

Hugo took this in slowly, as if this simple question had altered the whole panorama.

“You’re thinking of Casteran?” he said finally.

“Him or his successor as caretaker. Anyway, it’s too soon to grill either of them. Church bells don’t produce music unless you harmonise them.”

“So you think that by telling everybody about Elsa there’ll be reactions?”

“Precisely. Her return is bound to scare the living daylights out of everyone involved in this. I’m expecting movement, reckless acts, reflex reactions from fear, suspicious behaviour. There’s going to be an upheaval in the village this evening and tomorrow. The pawns are going to move on the board; all we have to do is stay vigilant.”

“So you’re trying to create fresh evidence?”

“I don’t really have a choice.”

Hugo came over to Noémie to take advantage of the fire, put his arm round her shoulder, then slid it down her back. He stopped when his fingers came into contact with something metal.

“The gun under your pullover doesn’t exactly reassure me.”

“I admit that we’ve only just become reacquainted, but I don’t think there’ll be a direct attack on me. No-one will come here. If things shift, it’ll be in Avalone. I’m not their enemy.”

“So why the precaution?”

“Because a couple of months ago I thought I was going to raid a drug dealer, arrest him, send him to prison, then go home to wait for my medal. But nothing ever turns out as you imagine.”

Picasso had crept under the Ford’s still warm engine. In an hour or two he would come whining at his mistress’ door, knowing she wouldn’t resist very long before allowing him in.

At the back of the house, 20 or so metres from him, the door leading to the basement and boiler was open. A silhouette closed it carefully before moving off as stealthily as possible.

The bottle of wine was polished off in a few glasses; the fire died quietly without being replenished. Elsa bid them goodnight, even though doubtless she would be far too nervous about the revelations she was going to hit everyone with the next day to be able to close her eyes.

Hugo cleared the coffee table of a few leftovers and, as he was going down to the kitchen, suddenly felt dizzy and had to hold on to the handrail. Almost twelve hours’ driving and a little Marsillac that had been stronger than expected could explain the dizziness. He soon steadied himself. Down in the kitchen he put the plates in the sink, almost lost his balance again, and dropped a glass that smashed on the floor. The strange sound it made seemed to echo endlessly off the walls. He bent down to pick up the biggest pieces, before quickly grabbing hold of the rubbish bin and throwing up in it. He gave one last painful hiccup and sat unable to move on the floor, eyes staring emptily.

“Noémie!” was his first thought.

Up in the bathroom, Noémie was putting away the toiletries she had taken with her in case they spent a night in Spain. She heard a noise near the shower behind her and turned round. A shadow appeared behind the curtain. As she tugged it aside, the rings jangled on the rail; she saw a skeleton floating in a brackish puddle. Her head began to spin, and it was as if the floor came up to meet her. She found herself face down on the tiles, staring at tiny details as if through a microscope. Down below, she heard a glass smash in the kitchen. Hugo!

She closed a fist and pressed it against the floor. She did the same with the other one, and managed to raise herself with as much effort as if she were trying to get out of quicksand. She collapsed several times as the walls began to melt around her. When at last she reached the living room, on the other side of the sliding doors she saw a huge, misshapen monster jumping up and howling. She took one more step before she collapsed.

Outside the house, Picasso was barking his head off. When he saw Noémie fall to the floor, he began to howl like a wolf. Drawing back, he ran and crashed into the double-glazed sliding door. It didn’t give way. Stunned and thrown to the ground, he tried again, this time cutting his muzzle open but failing once more. Blood streaming from his mouth, his side aching, he limped off and vanished into the night.

Hugo had summoned up the strength to crawl out of the kitchen and join Noémie. She had not passed out but was lying immobile, still conscious. Exhausted, he fell heavily, blacking out. Seeing Hugo in such distress roused Chastain from her torpor. Her arm felt as heavy as lead, but she managed to slide it behind her back. She drew her pistol, praying her hand would not shake. The barrel stayed as steady as the horizon line, not wavering a millimetre. She fired two shots. The first bullet went straight through the window, leaving nothing more than a small round hole. The second splintered the glass. Three jagged lines appeared, but the double glazing still held together. She tried to press the trigger a third time, but the gun slipped from her grasp and ended up on the floor. Avalone would keep its mystery; Noémie glanced at Hugo one last time.

Then the glass doors shattered in a thousand pieces.

Two powerful hands lifted her, and she could feel herself being carried out into the fresh air. She filled her lungs with oxygen. She caught sight of the back of a man diving into the house, a scarf wrapped round his mouth. He dragged Hugo out, and when he left him alongside her, Noémie recognised Vidal, her legionnaire neighbour. A grateful Picasso was bounding all round his former tormentor.

“Elsa . . .” Noémie managed to whisper.

Vidal disappeared inside once more. A few seconds later, his silhouette loomed up, carrying a young woman’s body on his shoulders. He laid her down gently on the grass near the other two.

Hugo came round after a few deep breaths. He struggled over to Noémie, who was examining Elsa. She showed no signs of life. Elsa and all her secrets.

“We’ve been poisoned,” she gasped.

Noémie plunged her hand into her pocket to pull out her mobile. She could hardly see but managed to dial the fire brigade. Even the light from her now smashed mobile screen stung her eyes.

“It’s the air inside the house,” Hugo said. “If it’s been poisoned, it will carry on affecting us. They’ll never get here in time.”

He turned to Vidal and pointed to the garage.

“My car. A cylinder of pure oxygen.”

Vidal ran off, only to reappear with all the cylinders he had found in the boot of the Ford. In his arms they looked like no more than a bunch of twigs. He laid them next to Hugo, who pushed aside the ones filled with compressed air for diving and took hold of the one used for decompression emergencies, filled with pure oxygen. He slipped the mouthpiece into Elsa’s mouth. Gasping for breath, she slowly came round. When she opened her eyes, the mouthpiece was passed from Noémie to Hugo and back to Elsa while they waited for help to arrive.

The whirling lights first lit the underside of the trees in the wood, then finally appeared on the track leading to the house. Noémie looked round, but Vidal had already vanished. Picasso was wagging his tail wildly; Noémie tore up a clump of grass and wiped his still bleeding muzzle.

“We’ll look after you as well, my beauty.”

He thrust his wet nose into his mistress’ neck, then planted one paw on her stomach, as if he still needed to protect her.

“Don’t push your luck, you filthy beast,” she told him, pushing him off affectionately.

To save their lives that night it had taken a crooked dog, a heavy-handed brute and a diver’s pure oxygen.

58

It was past two in the morning when the duty doctor in the Decazeville emergency department looked at the list of new arrivals and recognised one of them.

“Noémie Chastain? Has she got it in for me, or what?”

He strode down the long corridor leading to the private rooms, knocked and entered.

“I see the countryside isn’t to everyone’s liking. Or are you just tired of life? You crashed your car, so now you’re trying collective suicide from carbon monoxide poisoning?”

After opening all the windows and doors at the house by the lake, the firefighters had gone to check the basement and found the gas boiler had been tampered with, the evacuation flue badly damaged. As a result, most of the odourless, colourless and non-irritant gases had remained inside the house.

“It still wasn’t an accident, doc!”

“If you say so . . . But I’m finding it increasingly hard to believe you.”

He turned the pages of her file and went through the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Nausea? Dizziness? Hallucinations?”

“All of the above,” Hugo confirmed.

“Whose idea was the pure oxygen?”

“Mine.”

“Well done. It accelerated the dispersal of the carbon monoxide in the red blood cells. Are you in the same line of work?”

“I’m a diver for the River Police. I know a thing or two about blood being poisoned.”

“You reacted well. But weren’t there three of you?”

“Mademoiselle Saulnier is next door,” Noémie said.

Chastain waited a few minutes so as not to interrupt Elsa’s medical examination, then decided to go and see her.

“The firefighters talked about the air being poisoned. Does that mean someone tried to kill us?” Elsa greeted her.

“Sadly, it’s no novelty for me,” Noémie admitted. “In fact, it’s the third time in less than four months.”

“That’s good going. I salute you!”

“The last two were to try to stop me and this investigation. So? Is that proof enough of my good faith?”

“Hard not to see it that way. I’m sorry. And thank you.”

“I didn’t do much. Some biscuits for my dog and we’re all square.”

Chastain closed the door for greater privacy. She sat on Elsa’s bed.

“Look, Elsa, it’s half past two in the morning. I’m not going to be able to wait for daylight and a trip to the public prosecutor to hear your father’s story. By now the whole village knows you’re back, and I have to listen out for the slightest rustle. Events are likely to accelerate, and if I don’t know the whole tune, I won’t be able to detect any false note. Do you understand that?”

The bright neon ceiling light gave the room the unpleasant look of an operating theatre or police interview room. Noémie switched on the bedside lamp so that the atmosphere was better suited to revelations.

Elsa hesitated for a moment, perhaps searching for the right words to express a quarter of a century of mystification.

“I’d like to be able to tell you my father was an angel,” she said, “but that would be to start with a lie. My parents were 20-year-old kids when they had me. I wasn’t wanted, but they kept me. They were both serious addicts, and my father began to steal from small shops to have money every day. Until he got caught, then began again, got caught again, and in the end the justice system had had enough. With my father a repeat offender in prison, and a druggie mother, the judge didn’t have to think things over for long, and he stripped them of their parental rights. At the age of three I was fostered by the Saulnier family in Avalone, far away from Paris.”

“How did your father find you?”

“He saw me on television when I was about seven. A report about work starting on the new dam. I was on one of our monthly school visits to the site to see the progress being made. The T.V. journalist fleshed out the story and asked us children questions. That was when I appeared on screen and my father recognised me. After he left prison in 1991, he came to the region looking for work, and he was taken on by the biggest landowner. Pierre Valant.”

“As a seasonal worker, according to the files.”

“Yes, seasonal for the first year. After that, full time but undeclared, paid cash and given a bed in one of the farm’s outbuildings. That was what suited everyone. One day Valant caught him looking a bit too closely at the schoolyard and the children playing there. My father refused to explain, and Valant realised he didn’t know much about this strange worker of his. So he decided to go through his things. Among them was a photograph of me. Before he called the police, and because he risked being questioned by the work inspectorate, Valant confronted my father about the photograph, and my father told him his story. His criminal past, which he had left behind him. How he had been banned not only from seeing me but going anywhere near me. For years it had been enough for him to watch me grow up from afar. But when my foster father died in a stupid accident, he plucked up the courage to approach me. I can’t tell you what a gift the return of her real father was for a nine-year-old girl. From then on, we managed to see one another in secret every day just before supper, to tell one another our news. Madame Saulnier thought I was with Alex and Cyril, and never found out. That was in the ’90s, and we were in the country, so kids ran wild until nightfall and nobody worried. Valant, though, was well aware that we were seeing each other. The two men even became quite close for a while.”

“Close?” Chastain said in surprise. “That’s not at all the way Valant spoke about it in his interviews with us.”

“I can believe that. The truth is my father was even invited to go to dinner with them occasionally. Then one day late in the afternoon, Valant came rushing into the outbuilding in a complete state. He told my father the police were about to raid the farm, that they had found him, Fortin, and were going to arrest him because he had renewed contact with me. He said Marguerite Saulnier had seen us and tipped off the police, that my father was bound to be sent back to jail and would never see me again. So we had to get out as quickly as possible, and he would help us.”

Noémie interrupted this stream of threats, which seemed to her too glib.

“Employers are sometimes warned about an arrest, but it’s quite exceptional. Besides, there’s nothing about that in our files. Didn’t your father find it a bit suspicious?”

“You’re analysing it as an investigator. And with a cool head. Of course, now I understand the police never called Valant. But you have to see this through the eyes of a father who has finally recovered his daughter and who risks being separated from her a second time when he’s sent back to prison. I was so angry with Marguerite for having reported us that I agreed to go with him, wearing only the clothes I stood up in. Valant let us use one of his vans, and we left Avalone without looking back. I was heartbroken at abandoning Alex, but my father was more important. The next morning, when we arrived in Paris, it was a rude awakening.”

“You’d been tricked?”

“That’s right. We were all over the radio and television. Well, Fortin was. The monster who had snatched three children from a village in Aveyron. The photographs of Alex, Cyril and me were forever being shown; Fortin became public enemy number one. That meant we had to leave France. One of my father’s acquaintances agreed to drive Valant’s van and burn it somewhere in the east of the country, while we headed south, to reach Spain.”

Noémie’s brain struggled with the effort to fit these new pieces into the puzzle and rejig all this information. So, the day Alex and Cyril were murdered, Valant helped Fortin escape with Elsa by inventing a fake police raid on his farm. And thus Fortin became the Malbouche ogre. But if Valant needed to create a guilty person, that meant he was implicated in the affair in some way or another. Did that explain the arson attack on his farm, and the shots fired at his house?

As she sat trying to work all this out, Noémie was startled when Hugo suddenly flung open the door, her mobile with the smashed screen in his hand.

“It’s Valant!”

“How do you know?” Chastain replied, astonished.

“Your mobile rang: it’s Valant, Romain Valant, your deputy. He’s at his father’s. He’s just been shot.”

“Who’s just been shot, for fuck’s sake? My lieutenant or the mayor?”

“The mayor.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“Bruno Dorin, I think. They’re all in the farmhouse. It’s a standoff, and they want you to come. Bousquet is on his way to fetch you. You were right, things are moving!”

Noémie leaped up from the bed.

“Stay with her,” she said, pointing to Elsa. “Don’t let her out of your sight for a second.”

“You’re not serious,” Hugo protested. “You’re the one I shouldn’t lose sight of!”

“This is the climax, I’m sure of it. I swear I’m not at risk any more. And what Elsa has to say is too important. She has to make it to the prosecutor or the whole investigation is blown out of the water. Please, trust me.”

She kissed him on the mouth.

As they kissed, Hugo placed his hands on Noémie’s face. This time, she gently laid her hands on his.

59

Avalone
Pierre Valant’s farm
4 a.m.

Bousquet drove at more than 100 kilometres an hour along the winding country roads, trying to work out how the investigation could be reaching a climax.

“What on earth were you doing in the hospital again, Capitaine?”

“I’ll explain it to you later, if you can live with that.”

Bousquet reluctantly accepted being kept in the dark.

“Are you sulking, or simply concentrating?” Noémie said.

“It’s difficult to sulk with you around. You send divers into the lake, then you have it drained, and you dig up a new body in Avalone cemetery. And as a grand finale you discover Elsa in Spain. So I accept things, because I’ve never known a police officer like you, and because I imagine you know perfectly well what you’re doing.”

“I believe I do,” Noémie replied, only half convinced.

“That’ll have to do.”

Bousquet raced into the yard in a cloud of dust. His headlights lit up Pierre Valant’s farmhouse, where the recently shattered windows were covered by plastic bags.

“Got your weapon?” Bousquet asked as he charged towards the front door.

“No, I left it in the house by the lake. Anyway, if it comes to firearms, that means I’ve messed up.”

She pushed open the door and found herself in the hallway at the foot of a semicircular staircase. The traces of an argument were still visible. Dirty boots and still warm jackets lay on the floor, and the hall table had been turned over, spilling out its contents of black-and-white photographs, letters and bills as if it had been torn apart.

“Upstairs, Capitaine!” she heard Romain say.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she gave a quick glance around. Pierre Valant’s living room betrayed his lonely existence. In one corner, a low table in front of an old television spoke of long monotonous evenings. In the centre, a desk covered in a heap of files, on top of them a pair of spectacles, one broken arm repaired with sticky tape. In front of the desk, Pierre Valant was clutching his thigh, his hands bloody. Behind him, Bruno Dorin was holding a rifle, its barrel pressed against the back of the mayor’s neck. A metre from them, Romain had obviously been forced to drop his weapon, which lay at his feet. Fists clenched, face purple with anger, he was just waiting for a moment’s inattention on Bruno’s part to grab it, shoot, and free his father. Serge Dorin sat on a threadbare sofa, a crushed spectator. He made no attempt to hold his son back.

Chastain’s first question disconcerted them all.

“Are you alright, Bruno?”

A bullet in his leg, Valant stared at her, nonplussed. For a moment, Bruno’s rifle wavered, but he instantly recovered and levelled it again.

“He’s making fools of us. He’s been making fools of us for 25 years!”

“I know. Elsa told me everything.”

“She’s supposed to be dead as well,” he cried, tears in his eyes. “Why is she alive? Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because Pierre Valant let her leave with Fortin. Her father.”

This news froze everyone in the room. Chastain had to seize the opportunity of this brief window before the young man did something irrevocable. She wouldn’t get another chance; everything had to come together now, even if she was in the dark about some of it.

“The kids were never snatched by Fortin,” she told them. “He left with Elsa when Valant asked him to, on the day of Alex and Cyril’s supposed disappearance.”

Bousquet and Romain gazed at one another. All they could do was let their capitaine take the lead.

“It’s you I’m talking to, your honour. Why did you invent that police operation to persuade Fortin to flee? Why pass him off as a seasonal worker when he spent almost two whole years hidden on your farm? Why allow him to go with Elsa and leave us to look for her, digging in the cemetery and diving in the lake?”

When Valant said nothing, the barrel of the rifle came crashing down on the top of his head. A trickle of blood appeared, staining his shirt collar.

“Talk or die!” Bruno growled.

The mayor looked over at his son, as if asking for forgiveness in advance. He could hardly feel the pain in his leg now.

“I did it for Avalone,” he admitted, rather than reply to Chastain’s accusations. “I did it for all of us. To save the dam. To save what allowed the village to stay alive for almost ten years. The kids were never murdered or abducted. They found a way into the building site through a bit of broken fence. They went down to the foundation pits. They fell into a 20-metre hole.”

One of them falling on his head, Noémie recalled, snapping his spine in two. The other on his back, crushing his rib cage. So there weren’t two different causes of death as the pathologist had surmised, but simply two different kinds of fall.

“The site manager had been informed by one of his workers,” Valant continued. “He had a choice: either call the police or call me, the mayor. I had fought for the project, so he knew I’d do all I could to avoid any repercussions.”

“Cover up the accident just for the sake of a project?”

“Just for a project? You don’t understand a thing! Two kids dead meant everything would be put on hold for the duration of the investigation. Millions lost because of the delay. All the machines and hundreds of workmen at a standstill. Millions more in damages and interest. Global Water Energy held responsible for a security slip-up. The entire scheme threatened. Avalone could lose its school. The post office had already closed a year before, unemployment was on the rise, the village was becoming abandoned – I couldn’t permit it. To allow Fortin to flee at that moment, with his criminal past, would make him the obvious suspect.”

Noémie advanced her pieces to force Valant where she wanted him to go, increasingly cornering him as the logical development of those past events was revealed.

“So you found yourself with two children’s bodies to dispose of.”

“Yes, and it had to be done quickly before day dawned and men returned to work on the site.”

“A filthy night,” Chastain conceded. “Why choose the Avalone community centre?”

“The transfer of public buildings had begun, but at that moment only the community centre was closed, and the old stuff inside was worthless. Nobody would go back there, especially not to the coal cellar. I went to get two plastic barrels from my barn. We put straps round the kids’ bodies and hoisted them to the surface.”

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” Chastain wanted to know.

“The site foreman and me,” Pierre Valant explained.

A stony silence greeted his words. He continued:

“Then I went to the community centre to hide the children. They were dead, there was nothing more to be done with them. Knowing the truth would not have spared their parents’ grief, but it would have put the future of the entire village at risk.”

Serge Dorin straightened up, a weary look of hatred in his eyes.

“Why did you tell me they were buried on the building site, then?”

“Because not everything went as planned.”

Noémie listened intently to everything they said, concentrating on their every word like an animal waiting for the best moment to pounce. She dug her claws into Serge Dorin’s hatred.

“Valant assured you the children had died accidentally on the site, and that they had stayed there. But a quarter of a century later, when your son Alex was found on the surface of the lake several hundred metres away, you realised something was wrong. Hence your argument at the cemetery. But what came next doesn’t follow. Why not go at once to talk to the police? You’d done nothing wrong. It would have been so easy to denounce Pierre Valant. Unless, that is, you too have something to reproach yourself for in this affair. Something that prevented you talking to the authorities. Nevertheless, you did react. The day after Alex’s burial, Pierre Valant’s barn was set alight, and he was shot at with 8mm bullets, as if in revenge. I could take the rifle being held to Valant’s neck and have ballistics analyse it. That’s certainly what I would have done until now. But I don’t need to, because I know that’s the gun you used to shoot at his farm that night. And that it takes 8mm bullets.”

“My father didn’t do anything,” Bruno Dorin interrupted her, his rifle still pressed against the mayor’s neck. “It was me who wanted to pay Valant back for all his lies. I set fire to the barn, and I took potshots at his house.”

It was then that Noémie produced one of the aces hidden up her sleeve.

“Except that there’s a piece of information I kept to myself,” she said. “Ballistics showed that the bullet found in Pierre Valant’s van has the same grooves as the one found in the skull of our unknown African. Bruno, you were only eight at the time. I suppose, therefore, it was your father who had hold of the gun back then.”

Noémie turned towards Serge Dorin.

“So the night you learned your son fell down a 20-metre pit, you killed that man. It doesn’t make sense. You’ll go to prison for that, but your sentence won’t be extended if you tell me how you became a murderer. And above all, whose fault it was?”

The words “prison” and “murderer” wounded Serge Dorin more grievously than two bullets to the stomach. Furious, he rose to his feet accusingly. He stared straight at Valant, who for his part did not react at all, as if he already accepted his execution.

“Valant never mentioned an accident. It was a murder he came to tell me about that evening. My wife and I spent most of the night searching for Alex in the woods and fields, anywhere he used to go and play. Pierre came to see me. He said my boy had been killed by a worker, that he knew where to find the culprit. He said he’d been told by the site foreman, who was hesitating to call the police. But when a father hears his child is dead, he doesn’t want anything to do with the police. I found my rifle, got into Valant’s car, and we drove to the workmen’s huts on the site. Valant showed me the African, who was locked in one of them. He was already terrified when we went in, with tears in his eyes. That drove me mad. I jumped on him, hit him, asked him where my son was. All he did was repeat the same thing: ‘I’m Sékou.’ The more he repeated it, the harder I hit him.”

Sékou. The poor guy who had found the children’s bodies in a trench and informed the site foreman. The poor guy who had become an inconvenient witness and a man to get rid of. Sékou. The unknown skeleton from the cemetery had finally reclaimed his identity.

“And was what Pierre Valant said enough to convince you that this man had killed your son?” an astonished Chastain asked.

“No, obviously not. But he said he’d found this in the man’s locker.”

Serge Dorin searched in his trouser pocket and threw a heavy chain bracelet onto the table. A bracelet with the name Alex inscribed on it. The bracelet.

“When he showed it to me, I became someone else. I was overwhelmed by hatred. That man had to die, for Alex, and at my hands. The three of us walked away from the huts. I put the gun to the back of his head, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. I wanted to see my son first. That was when Pierre spoke. He said: ‘He’s a murdering nigger. He’s getting what he deserves. God only knows what he put them through before he killed them.’ I imagined my boy in his arms. I looked at the bracelet. And I fired.”

In her mind’s eye, Chastain saw her office wall and the photograph of Madame Jeanne Dorin, hanging from a beam in her barn, wearing all her jewellery, including the bracelet.

“How come it was in your possession, Monsieur Valant?”

“It must have been dropped when the bodies were being transferred. I picked it up from the mat in the back of my van. The children were already in barrels in that cellar, but I didn’t want to go back there. I kept it. Then I produced it at the right moment, to accuse the African.”

“So how did it reappear on your wife’s wrist, Monsieur Dorin?”

“Juliette Casteran and Marguerite Saulnier were driven mad with anguish when they heard their children had been kidnapped. Quite simply mad in Madame Saulnier’s case. My wife was going the same way, and I didn’t want that for her. I wanted her to know, to try to live with it, and no longer spend every minute of the day next to the telephone, as if it was a lifeline. So a few weeks later, I told her everything. I gave her the bracelet to prove I was telling the truth. That day, without realising it, I placed the rope round her neck.”

“Bruno also seems to have known about it, as he shot at Valant’s farmhouse. Did you tell him everything, despite what happened to your wife?”

“It was different for him. He had to grow up with a phantom brother and a mother who’d committed suicide. Drugs, violence and bouts of depression – another kind of suicide. One evening, with the help of a good deal of alcohol, I decided to tell him. I’d killed Alex’s murderer, there was no room for vengeance. He had to live and not destroy himself bit by bit as he was doing. After that, Bruno calmed down and put all his energies into our farm. Alex’s death was never mentioned again. The page had been turned. At least we pretended it had.”

Noémie rapidly refocused the outpouring of words back to that night on the construction site. Just as in an interrogation, she had to make sure Dorin and Valant didn’t have time to modify their stories.

“So Valant turns an inconvenient witness into a murderer and provokes you to shoot him. Obviously, Sékou could talk, confide in someone, even blackmail Global Water Energy. That makes sense. However, after the murder you two had a body to dispose of somewhere outside the construction site, and there was no longer a chance of seeing your son one last time. You had to find a hiding place as quickly as possible where nobody would find the body. Why not simply bury him where you were?”

“There was no risk in moving the children’s bodies in the middle of the night,” Valant said. “But by now day was dawning, and we didn’t have time to move the African or to dig a grave.”

“So you decided to go to Avalone cemetery.”

“It was the only place we could think of. Woods can be chopped down, houses destroyed, fields ploughed up, but no-one ever touches cemeteries. That is, of course, unless a village is flooded, but there seemed little risk that would happen twice.”

“I imagine that’s where André Casteran came in? He had lost a son as well, so Valant also gave him the story of the ‘murdering nigger’, for him to find you a place in his new cemetery.”

Valant finally looked up, and found the courage to exchange glances with Serge Dorin.

“No, André wasn’t involved,” the mayor said. “We just took advantage of all the graves being transferred.”

Chastain remembered the tombs of Casanova and Dom Juan, but above all Fortin’s, with the false name of Chapiro. They corresponded exactly with her line of questioning.

“That’s impossible,” she insisted. “You can throw a body into a hole and keep it secret. But there is a gravestone and a headstone, engraved with a fictitious name. As the cemetery caretaker, Monsieur Casteran must have been involved, for them to be commissioned without a death certificate. As you know, Casteran gets the shakes from ten in the morning on. Forty-eight hours in the cells with no drink should mean he sings like a bird.”

The two men said nothing, which Chastain took to be a tacit admission.

“So, Monsieur Valant, you managed to get rid of the witness and turned two fathers blinded with grief into accomplices who would never – even when their children’s bodies were discovered in a completely different place from where they had imagined – be able to go to the police without being implicated in a homicide.”

“I don’t have a criminal brain. It was all done on the spur of the moment, almost without thought. The survival instinct. One immigrant sacrificed for the future of the village and all the people who had trusted me. At that moment it almost seemed justice had been done.”

“I’m sure the judge will take that thought into account. But if you had succeeded in persuading those two of that poor workman’s guilt, why organise Fortin’s flight?”

“I knew the affair would become news. I also knew we must have made lots of mistakes, that it would be easy to trace things back to us if they started investigating closely in Avalone. I threw Fortin to the police: they searched everywhere but here.”

“Unfortunately for you, I began nosing around the cemetery, and that scared you. Sufficiently for you to push me off the road. It must have been one of the three of you: Casteran, Dorin or Valant. And I couldn’t give a damn which of you it was, because the three of you thought up the idea. What I do know is that a few months behind bars will undermine your fragile agreement. You’ll talk, accuse and cast responsibility on each other. It always happens.”

For the first time, Serge Dorin dared to confront the capitaine.

“After you discovered there was one grave too many, you were going to search the whole cemetery. You were bound to find the African. We needed to bring the investigation to a halt for a while to give us time to dig up the body. But it was no use: you put the cemetery under surveillance.”

“You might have suspected I wouldn’t leave it unguarded.”

“We’re not professionals. We reacted like drowning men, flailing about. But I swear we didn’t mean to kill you.”

“My vehicle fell 113 metres, so there was at least a risk of it. But I like to think I’ve become immortal, especially after your second attempt at homicide tonight.”

Bewildered, Bousquet and Romain exchanged quizzical glances, trying to guess how much the other knew.

“Is that why I had to collect you from the hospital?” Bousquet asked.

“Exactly. Carbon monoxide poisoning at the house by the lake. And so, Monsieur Valant, I come to my simplest deduction. If you’re capable of concealing an accident to ensure the smooth running of the building of the dam, if you’re capable of having an innocent man killed because he saw the kids in one of the excavation pits, and if you can have Fortin accused and force him to hide for the rest of his life in order to point the investigation away from Avalone, I imagine that going into a house you own and sabotaging your own gas boiler to prevent Elsa Saulnier from reaching the prosecutor can’t have given you too many scruples.”

One last time, Pierre Valant lowered his head, crushed by 25 years of a life of lies and secrets.

“Bruno,” Noémie concluded, “now you know the whole truth, and you’re at a crossroads. Take one way, and put a bullet in Valant’s head, and I wouldn’t blame you . . .”

Stunned by everything he heard, Romain was gripped by fear. Valant was a racist, a liar, a murderer, but he was still his father.

“But that would lead to 20 years in prison,” Chastain continued. “If you take the other way and lower your gun, you’ll only face a charge of criminal damage and arson. The judge will understand your story and you won’t spend a day in jail. Now choose but do it quickly.”

Serge took a step towards him.

“I’m going to need someone to look after the farm, son. Don’t ruin your life for us.”

Bruno lowered his rifle. His father gently prised it from him and handed it to Noémie. Bousquet calmly took Serge Dorin by the wrists and handcuffed him.

“Drop him off at the cells in Decazeville,” Chastain told him. “Wake Bambi up and the two of you get to Casteran’s as quickly as possible.”

Then she turned to Romain, who stood there, arms by his sides, incapable of reacting.

“Go with Bousquet to the police station. I’ll sort out the rest.”

She went over to the mayor and helped him to his feet.

“Stand up, we’re going back to the hospital.”

Dawn greeted Noémie and the handcuffed Pierre Valant as they left the farmhouse. The line of trees in the woods was still misty, and a few metres away they could see the silhouette of the burnt-out barn.

Despite his capitaine’s instructions, Romain had not got into Bousquet’s vehicle. He was waiting for Noémie, leaning on the bonnet of the Ford, looking grim. She installed Valant in the back seat and closed the door before joining her deputy.

“All that was rather violent . . .”

“Yes, it was,” he agreed, through gritted teeth.

“Are you mad at me for going it alone?”

“You didn’t exactly follow the rules.”

If Noémie had succeeded in getting inside the minds of the suspects, she could do the same with her lieutenant, whose father she had just arrested. She could understand Romain’s hostility, and did her best to explain.

“Look how many people were implicated and knew everything from the start. You must see that I was bound to wonder who I could trust.”

When he heard this, Romain lost control. He slapped the car bonnet.

“But we’re your team, dammit! It’s trust that binds us together!”

Noémie jumped at this unexpected show of anger.

“Calm down, Romain. I know all that. But trust is something that’s earned, and I’ve only been here seven weeks.”

Romain took a deep breath, as if to release his bottled-up tension, and regained a semblance of composure.

“Only? It seems to me you arrived on the platform at Decazeville years ago.”

He turned to his father, who was sitting in the vehicle with his wrists in handcuffs, his soul far away, leaving only the empty shell of his body.

“I’d like to be present at his interview,” Romain said.

“I’m sorry, that’s not possible. Nobody here will be allowed to be. You’re a lieutenant in charge of the investigation, and he’s your father. On top of which he’s officially the first police contact for Avalone. This affair will be taken out of our hands and the courts will bring in the Toulouse police judiciaire to guarantee objectivity.”

“My objectivity? Tell the prosecutor not to worry. If I could, I would throw him into jail myself.”

“I know. Go home and be with your family. Enjoy what little calm there still is in Avalone, before the storm breaks.”

60

When she reached Decazeville police station, Chastain handed her prisoner over to Roze. The arrest of the mayor was going to shake the village far more than any earthquake, and the commandant took no pleasure in taking Pierre Valant down to the holding cells.

Exhausted by her sleepless night, Noémie remained on the front steps to light a cigarette. Almost immediately she saw the police patrol car driven by Bousquet speed into the yard and when he screeched to a halt she realised that a new problem had been added to an already long list.

Bambi jumped out of the car first and ran towards her.

“We’re in real trouble, Capitaine. We searched everywhere, but Casteran’s not at home. According to his wife, at this time of day he should still be sleeping off his wine.”

“What shall we do?” Bousquet, puffing over to them, wanted to know. “Send out a search party, or get the uniforms onto it?”

Noémie calmly finished her cigarette.

“Everybody knows Elsa is back. He must do too. He spends his days in the bar, and the news will have reached there. He probably suspects their whole house of cards is about to collapse.”

“O.K. So?” Bambi tried to follow her reasoning.

“What time is it?” Noémie asked, so tired she didn’t even have the strength to get out her mobile.

“Eight o’clock.”

“Go as fast as you can to the hospital to pick up Elsa and take her to the prosecutor. You can collect my man too and leave him at the house by the lake, if that’s alright with you. Tell him I’ll be there in an hour.”

“What about Casteran?” Bambi insisted.

“I haven’t forgotten him. He suspects it’s his last day of freedom, and he still has one thing to do. I’ll take care of it.”

—

Noémie pushed open the heavy wrought-iron gates of Avalone cemetery and walked down the principal avenue. Ten metres in front of her, André Casteran, hunched and with his arms by his side, watched while the two bearers lowered his son Cyril’s small coffin into the grave. As the former caretaker, he had asked for this emergency favour, with no members of the public or priest, and didn’t want to explain any further.

Chastain sat on the low wall and plunged her hands into her coat pockets as she waited for the ceremony to end.

The burial was soon over. Casteran turned and saw the police capitaine. It was only then that Noémie allowed herself to go and join him. She and the guilty man greeted one another like old acquaintances.

“Good morning, Capitaine.”

“Good morning, André.”

They stood side by side, facing the grave.

“You made me a promise, about my wife.”

“Don’t kid yourself. This affair is going to make far too much noise. One way or another, your wife will hear about your son’s death.”

“And I won’t be there to support her.”

“No. I’m sorry. Things have turned out badly.”

Casteran shook hands with the young caretaker and slipped a banknote into the pocket of one of the bearers, before thanking them. A moment later, and he and Noémie were alone.

“I know I’m an accomplice for the African, even though I didn’t do much. And I also knew about your car accident. I want you to know that I was against it. But when they decided to do it, I went along. I’m no better than them.”

“I don’t hold it against you, André.”

“You ought to.”

“A father who lost his child. That’s all I see.”

Slipping her hand in her pocket, she came into contact with the cold metal of her handcuffs but changed her mind.

“Tell me when you’re ready.”

“Just one more minute, if you don’t mind.”

“Take all the time you need.”

61

André Casteran wasn’t the only one Noémie had made a promise to. After four hours being interviewed by the public prosecutor, Elsa had been driven back to Avalone, and she met Chastain and Commandant Roze on Madame Saulnier’s front doorstep.

“I was imagining a more private meeting with her,” Elsa complained, examining this unknown police officer from head to toe.

“You’re 35 now,” Noémie reminded her. “Madame Saulnier only knows an Elsa aged ten. I myself have met her twice and I’m not sure she will recognise me. Commandant Roze on the other hand has never left the region, and she sees him stuck in the past just as she is. That ought to reassure her.”

A ring on the doorbell and they heard noises inside the house. A good two minutes went by between the chime and the moment Madame Saulnier opened the door, as if she had got lost on the way.

“Why, it’s little Arthur!”

“Hello, Marguerite. Do you remember Capitaine Chastain?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, though her hesitation betrayed the opposite.

“And here’s another young woman I’d like you to meet.”

He stepped aside to reveal Elsa. The ghost and Marguerite finally came face to face. Madame Saulnier’s embarrassed smile was that of a lost old woman. She brought her hands together and laced her fingers as if trying to make knots with them. Her eyes became moist; her eyelids filled with tears without her really knowing why. Then with a feeble voice she invited them in.

This time it was Arthur Roze who went off to make the coffee. He disappeared behind the beaded curtain to give the three women seated in the salon some privacy.

Part of Marguerite’s brain was well aware who this stranger with such familiar eyes was. But for self-protection that part had been pushed aside for so long that the other half of her brain refused to believe it.

“Because of her apnoea I spent two years watching her sleep,” Marguerite had confessed during their previous visit. Despite the length of time elapsed and Elsa’s adult physique, she could not help being troubled.

“Thank you for receiving us,” Elsa said.

The old lady stroked the back of her hand with gnarled fingers, staring at her face. She was breathing calmly and seemed at peace with herself, as if a long, anguished wait was finally over.

“You must stay,” Marguerite whispered. “You have to wait for Elsa to get back. You look so much like her you could be her sister. But she does as she pleases. Comes in when she wants to. Would you like to see her? I’ve got so many photographs. I used to have a camera, but I can’t find it now. Which is annoying.”

A tide of conflicting emotions, of certainties and doubts. Madame Saulnier was gradually fading away, getting lost in a string of even more than usually disconnected sentences. Elsa took her hand and cradled it.

“Of course I’m going to stay. And of course I want to see your photographs. All of them, in fact.”

“That’s good, then,” Marguerite said contentedly, rising to her feet.

*

During that afternoon outside time, the old Avalone came back to life as they leafed through dog-eared photograph albums. The dried-out glue no longer kept all the photographs in, and occasionally some fluttered to the floor or onto the tabletop.

“I’m sure all the boys are in love with you,” the old woman said as she opened the first album. “Just like with my little Elsa.”

An entire childhood passed before their eyes in a series of immortalised events. Roze had come to sit on the long sofa next to Noémie and took a pleasantly nostalgic enjoyment in this leap backwards in time.

A photograph with the laughing trio of Alex, Cyril and Elsa romping with an all-white puppy. Christmases from every year, with the most improbable winter jumpers and trees laden with decorations. Alex and Elsa hand in hand, gazing at ducklings on a pond. A series of birthdays, with brightly coloured cakes, torn wrapping paper, and little guests disguised for the occasion, cheeks puffed as they prepared to blow out candles that became more numerous with each page of the album.

In one of the photographs, separated from the other children, an unhappy-looking little cowboy with his silver sheriff’s badge. Hidden in a corner of another photograph, the same child was staring at Elsa the way one gazes at stars that are beautiful but too distant to touch. Recognising him, Noémie put her hand on the page to prevent Marguerite moving on.

“That little boy there, do you remember him?”

“That’s Romain, my sad boy,” Madame Saulnier said without hesitation.

Intrigued, Elsa Fortin leaned closer to the photograph.

“Romain Valant! The mayor’s son,” she said in a voice that dredged up the past. “He only came once to the house, right at the start, because I invited the whole class.”

“A sad boy. I’ve heard you call him that before, Madame Saulnier,” Noémie asked. “Why sad?”

“Because love makes boys sad and girls silly. And he too is madly in love with Elsa,” Madame Saulnier said, only able to talk of the children in the present tense. “She’ll tell you when she gets back.”

“And I can confirm it,” Elsa said. “The mayor’s son, that’s what we used to call him. My father this, my father that, he never stopped bragging, saying his father was the boss of the village. I remember we used to have to hide so he couldn’t follow us. I don’t know whether he was sad, but he was really odd. Worrying, disturbing even.”

Noémie frowned. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she had been taken for a ride.

“You mean you knew each other well?”

“The two of us? Not especially, because we avoided him. But he wanted to be part of our group. To be honest, I think we were a bit unfair to him, but his clingy side gave us the creeps.”

“Sorry to insist, but are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Marguerite Saulnier replied instead of Elsa. “He often waits for her at the school gate, then runs off when he sees her. Too shy to talk to her, my Romain. But those little hearts of his give the game away.”

“The heart cut in the school wall?” Chastain remembered.

“And the one on a stone here at the house. But I can’t find it today. It was there, I’m sure.”

“Yes, that thing with the hearts, it was really spooky,” Elsa agreed. “But there were also the letters, drawings and presents left on my windowsill. I even remember my father once went to talk to his because Romain was always hanging around our house.”

“That’s impossible!” Noémie almost shouted. “He told me several times he didn’t know you!”

“Then he must have forgotten me, but I remember him only too well. All the more so because during those first months I spent in Bielsa I kept thinking of Avalone. Everything was engraved on my memory. Romain always wanted to take us to the dam construction site. My father this, my father that – my father can get us in whenever I want. I know all of it, it’s my kingdom. He was forever skulking in that building site of his, telling himself horror stories to scare himself.”

This left Noémie open-mouthed, and Roze could not believe his ears.

“The poor boy has no friends,” Marguerite excused him. “He doesn’t deserve that. He plays all alone. A sad boy. You should have seen him when all the children left. He was on his own in the village. Little Romain. He was waiting for Elsa to come back as well.”

“When all the children left?” Noémie repeated.

Then she leaped to her feet.

“When all the children left!”

Standing on the front steps of Marguerite’s house, Arthur Roze, who had wondered what could possibly happen that was worse than having to arrest the mayor of one of his communes, was beginning to get an inkling of the answer. For her part, a furious Noémie clutched her mobile.

“Fast as you can to the offices of La Dépêche,” she ordered. “At the far end of rue Gambetta. Ask for Saint-Charles. I want to see all the editions of the newspaper from November and December 1994.”

“Are you coming?”

“As quickly as I can, Hugo.”

When she ended the call, a perplexed Roze said:

“Why not ask Bambi or Bousquet?”

“Because I need them for something else. Romain Valant should be at home; send them there and ask them to keep a quiet eye on the house. Tell them what we’ve just discovered; I don’t want to keep them in the dark any more. If Valant comes out, they’re to follow him. I have to check one last detail before I talk to him. I’ll see you there, boss.”

“What about Elsa? Do we leave her here?”

“No. I’m going to need her as well.”

62

Hugo and Saint-Charles were in the newsroom at the La Dépêche offices. The centre table was strewn with the editions Noémie had asked for.

“What are we looking for?” Hugo wanted to know.

“An article about a holiday camp, just after the kids disappeared. So, after November 21.”

“Why does that interest you?” the journalist asked, without looking up from his searches.

“I just want to be sure of something.”

“You owe me a story, remember?”

“We shook hands on it,” Noémie reassured him.

Hugo was concentrating on the old editions and didn’t hear them. All of a sudden he paused.

“The big camp. Holidays to forget,” he announced. “Global Water Energy offers the children of Avalone a fortnight’s holiday in the mountains. The village empties of all its youth.”

“That’s it!” Chastain confirmed. “What date is it?”

“December 5, 1994. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but there isn’t much else, not even a photograph.”

“I know, I’ve got that article on the wall in my office. It’s precisely to find what’s missing that we’re here.”

She turned to Saint-Charles, who was well aware that something unexpected was going on as the investigation neared its climax, and that he was in the front row.

“You’re always taking photographs,” Chastain said to him. “I hope your predecessor did as well. And above all, that you keep them.”

“Of course,” the journalist said. “Our newspaper is the memory of our villages. We archive everything. What was the date again?”

Saint-Charles scrolled through the photographs on his computer. The ones used as well as those put aside, due to a lack of space or a lack of interest. Here, the refurbishment of the fortress at Aubin. There, the international fireworks competition. And finally, the photograph of all the Avalone children together, smiling, caps firmly on their heads, in front of the bus taking them on holiday.

“At the risk of repeating myself,” Hugo said, “what are we hoping to find?”

“It’s what we don’t find that interests me. Can you zoom in?”

“Whatever you say,” Saint-Charles said, doing as he was told.

Searching in her pocket, Noémie took out a photograph stolen from one of Marguerite Saulnier’s albums and laid it on top of the pile of newspapers.

“This is the kid I’d be astonished to see in that group.”

Hugo looked closely at the birthday snapshot.

“He looks like your lieutenant.”

“That’s because it is him.”

For a second time, she studied the children’s faces one by one.

“And he’s not there.”

Saint-Charles raised an enthusiastic, almost avid eyebrow.

“Are you telling me that you suspect your deputy could be mixed up in this business?”

“You wanted a scoop? Here it comes.”

63

Hugo parked his Ford 4×4 20 metres from Romain Valant’s house, concealing it behind a bend. Noémie picked up the police radio from between her knees.

“Chastain to Bousquet.”

“Bousquet here, receiving you loud and clear, Capitaine.”

“Has he left home?”

“No. All calm.”

“Are his wife and daughter with him?”

“It’s Sunday, Capitaine. The kid played outside for ten minutes, then went back in. Not sure about the mother.”

“O.K., I’ll go in on my own, but I promise there’ll be no heroics. As soon as I get to the door, move closer, but keep out of sight. Got that?”

“We’re with you, Capitaine.”

“Chastain to Roze,” she announced, changing interlocutor.

“Roze here.”

“Not until I give the signal, O.K.?”

“Loud and clear.”

Noémie prepared herself for what she hoped was her final challenge. Hugo kissed her hands as she left the car.

“Have you got your pistol?” he asked her.

“I have my team.”

She adjusted her earpiece, switched her radio to carrier mode so that they could all hear, then walked calmly up to the front door. Her regular breathing crackled on the radios in the parked cars.

A short ring on the doorbell, and a few moments later, the door opened a crack.

“Hello, No. I didn’t know you were coming.”

Chastain had to look down to see the little girl.

“Hi Lily. I just happened to be passing. Is your father in?”

The little girl didn’t answer but ran away shouting “Papa” at the top of her voice. Noémie held her breath. The sound of footsteps. Coming down the staircase. Romain appeared on the threshold.

“No? Is everything alright?”

“I just came to see how you are. Is your wife in?”

“She’s at L’Auberge du Fort preparing the evening meals.”

“I imagine this is a complicated day for you.”

“I’m still trying to digest everything. Thanks for asking. Do you want to come in for a coffee? Or something stronger perhaps?”

“No, we’re fine here.”

Noémie might have a police officer’s instinct, but so did Valant. He could immediately sense his capitaine’s hesitation. That, plus the radio earpiece she was wearing, linked to the wire disappearing under her coat. He looked left and right over her shoulder, as if the danger could come from anywhere.

“Is there something you wanted to talk to me about, Capitaine?” he asked, instantly on guard.

“I’ve come to offer you a choice . . . There are two paths open to you.”

This was the second time that day that Romain had heard these words.

“The first: you tell me everything, without me asking you a single question. That won’t alter what then happens in any way, but you’ll come out of it with your head held high. The second: you force me to get you to talk.”

“Now you’re worrying me, No. I’ve no idea what you’re driving at.”

“Alright,” she said, sorely disappointed. “That’s not the path I’d have chosen, but alright.”

She felt in her coat pocket, took out two photographs, and handed them to Romain. One of a birthday party; the other of children leaving for a camp.

“You knew Alex and Cyril. You knew Elsa even better – in fact, you were madly in love with her. You and those little sad boy’s hearts. You lied to me.”

Romain’s face fell.

“You knew every corner of the dam building site like the back of your hand. Thanks to your father’s contacts, it was your playground. Your kingdom, you called it. You lied to me.”

This time, Romain looked behind him, as though afraid Lily might hear.

“You never left for that holiday camp. You were on your own in the village all that fortnight. You lied to me again. And strangely, everything becomes clearer now.”

“For you perhaps, because I don’t see what that changes,” he challenged her.

“Well then, if I’m wrong, simply tell me why you’ve played me for a fool throughout this investigation. I’m listening.”

Unable to justify himself, Romain said nothing.

One last skirmish, Chastain told herself. The last one.

She dropped her arms down by her side and clenched her fist. Roze recognised the signal. He started his car, rolled forward slowly to the front of the house, and pulled up again. The car door opened, and Elsa appeared. She stood where she was, visible but some distance off. Romain stared at her for a moment, lost in memories. Elsa and that face of hers that he had never forgotten . . .

Chastain took advantage of his obvious discomfort.

“People don’t lie just for the sake of it. And three lies must cover up a really dark secret. There was no reason for you not to go to that camp with the others. Why leave you on your own in Avalone when all the other children were making snowballs and trying to forget their houses and bedrooms being flooded? Quite simply because a ten-year-old kid talks. He confides in other children, in assistants. Your father couldn’t run the risk of not having you under his control. One misplaced word, and all his fragile plotting would come crashing down. But what could you say that was so dangerous, if not that you were present when the accident happened? Your father never wanted to protect Avalone, or even the dam. It was you he wanted to save. And now I understand all the lengths he went to. Because it’s you who took Alex and Cyril to the building site. And the secret that bound you and your father together so painfully has split you rather than united you. That’s what he’s saying in his interview now Bousquet has shown him these same photographs.”

A white lie to increase the pressure. For the first time, Romain’s face was unrecognisable. Harsh, angry. Even his voice became gruff and aggressive. He glanced again at Elsa a few metres away.

“You said it. An accident. I would have been the kid who brought misfortune on the village. Can you blame a father for protecting his child? I showed them the pit. Alex slipped and grabbed Cyril as he fell. What do you have against me, after 25 years? What are you accusing me of, apart from being an irresponsible kid?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. You’re doing that very well all by yourself. You knew Elsa couldn’t have died with the others, because she wasn’t with you. Throughout our investigation you let me search for her and put myself in harm’s way. You knew what she said would incriminate your father, and following my car ‘accident’ you suspected he’d stop at nothing to keep her quiet. Even if Hugo and I had to be got rid of as well. All that, and you said nothing. That’s complicity by omission. Complicity in three attempted homicides. You’ll get 20 years, you’ll never be a policeman again, and you’ll never set foot in Avalone again. Fortin’s fate, and that’s all you deserve.”

Noémie removed her earpiece and switched off her radio in front of her lieutenant. The rest was between the two of them.

“There’s something I don’t follow,” she continued. “If, as you claim, it was a mere accident, I simply can’t believe you could have borne the consequences. Fortin had to leave, with Elsa, that girl you loved so much. Jeanne Dorin killed herself in her barn. Madame Saulnier lost her reason. Juliette Casteran has shut herself up in her house, surrounded by photographs. And you witnessed all that over the years. Then there were two attempts on my life, and one on Elsa’s. Could you really have witnessed all those broken lives, covered those crimes, for nothing more than a child’s foolishness?”

Valant had not blinked, standing there stiff and haggard-looking.

“Keep going, Capitaine. You’re almost there.”

“Did Cyril and Alex fall, Romain? Or did you push them, to have Elsa to yourself? Those events happened so long ago you can no longer be charged. There’s no risk for you, but I need to know.”

Valant leaned forward and whispered in her ear.

“You already know everything, Capitaine.”

Bambi and Bousquet left their car and came up to the house. Uncomfortable at confronting someone who had been their commander long before Chastain, they had to be pushed to arrest Romain.

“Bambi, handcuff him.”

He gave her a bewildered “why me?” look.

“Time to grow up.”

As Lieutenant Valant was being escorted to the police car, head down and arms behind his back, a little face appeared at the front door.

“What’s happening, No?”

“I’m sorry, Lily. So sorry.”

Epilogue

Noémie found Commander Roze in his office, staring out of the window just as he had been when she first saw him. And just like that first time, he spoke to her without turning round.

“The Toulouse police judiciaire are on their way. The case is being taken out of our hands. They’ll follow it up; you’ll need to liaise with them. They’ll want to interview the team.”

“That’s better for all concerned,” Chastain conceded.

“The disappeared children of Avalone was the first serious investigation in my entire career,” Roze said thoughtfully. “And it’ll be my last. You’ve been a real cluster bomb, Capitaine. We’re going to need a new lieutenant to replace Romain, and Avalone will need a new mayor. But I think I’m too worn out for the job now. I’ve sent in my report.”

“Retirement?”

“No,” Roze said, returning to his desk. “I don’t want to creep away like a thief in the night. I’ll see out this year at least. My report is a request for promotion to the rank of commandant. For you. A fresh commandant is exactly what this place needs.”

Embarrassed, Noémie did not know what to say. Roze noticed her hesitation.

“Did you have something else in mind?”

“I have to make a call to Bastion, boss.”

He stood up and pushed the telephone to the middle of the desk.

“It’ll be quieter for you to phone Paris from here. I’ll leave you to it.”

Before he left the room, he laid his hand on her shoulder.

“You’d be fine here, Noémie.”

—

The Bastion switchboard announced that Capitaine Chastain was on the line. The director-general did not pick up at once, giving himself time to think through their conversation. Six rings were enough.

“Capitaine Chastain, you’re on all the news channels.”

“It was the only way for me not to be forgotten,” she said waspishly. There was a nervous laugh at the end of the line.

“I told you so, didn’t I? Your stay in the country has restored you, made you even better than before. You were supposed to assess a police station on the quiet, but instead you’ve solved what everyone thought was an impossible case, with repercussions so big that your little country police companions aren’t likely to see their station closed any time soon. We’re very proud of you here. Did you know your name has been put forward for promotion?”

“I did hear.”

“Good. Now let’s organise your return. Your team is expecting you, and if you want to get rid of Ariel, no problem. He hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory while you were absent, anyway.”

“I wasn’t absent, I was put out to grass.”

“Let’s not quibble over words, Capitaine. If you think I pushed you out, well then, you’ve won.”

Noémie switched to speaker and went to stand at Roze’s office window. She contemplated the peaceful village outside.

“Do you know the Aveyron, sir?”

“Not well, no. But I don’t think the position there could ever match the legendary Paris Drug Squad. That’s where your career lies.”

Through the window Noémie could see Bambi deep in conversation with a pretty older woman holding a cake plate covered in a white cloth. Probably his mother. And doubtless her inedible fouace.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Capitaine?”

“You can stuff your legendary Drug Squad.”

—

A smile on her face, her future clear for the first time in months, Noémie had one more thing to do.

“Chloé Vitali. Who’s speaking?”

“Even on maternity leave you answer like a police officer!” Noémie teased her.

“Noémie? Is that you?”

Tears came to Noémie’s eyes, and a lump rose in her throat. She found it hard to get the words out.

“I’ve abandoned you rather, my dear friend,” she murmured eventually.

“Stop! I won’t have you talking like that. What you’ve done down there is amazing.”

“It wasn’t just me, but thanks anyway. But let’s talk about you. How’s the baby?”

“Ugly and wrinkled, like all babies. I see time flying by and I’m terrified at the idea of going back to work. With the hours we put in, being a young mother in the Drug Squad will soon become hellish. I can see what will happen: they’ll push me out as well . . .”

“I was coming to that. Do you know the Aveyron?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. I need a new lieutenant. And why not a woman? Between a deputy who gets me thrown out of Bastion and another who protected the people trying to kill me, I need someone I can trust.”

“The Aveyron . . .” Chloé repeated dreamily.

“You’ll soon see that you have to be mad to live in Paris.”

*

Hugo parked his car in the police car park, his luggage loaded onto the passenger seat. Noémie went to meet him, stomach churning.

“You’re staying?” he asked.

“You’re leaving?”

“The River Police want me back. I couldn’t stay here forever. I have a job in Paris.”

“We both knew that from the start, didn’t we?”

Tongue lolling, Picasso stuck the muzzle of his battered face out of the 4×4’s back window.

“I’m sorry, he refused to stay at the house by the lake.”

He opened the car door and the dog ran to rub himself against his mistress’ thigh.

Hugo took hold of Noémie’s hands and gave her a tender kiss.

“You know my address. I live in a houseboat on the Seine.”

“And you know mine. I live in a little village south of Paris.”

As his vehicle drove off, Noémie knelt beside her battered dog.

“Aha? So you and I are sticking together, are we? I warn you, I’ve got this weird cat in my head.”

Picasso licked her face.

“Saint-Charles has left a message,” she heard Bousquet say. She hadn’t seen him come over. “He wants to invite you to lunch. It seems you two have a lot to talk about.”

Impatient, Picasso began to chew the tips of Bousquet’s shoes.

“Do you want me to take charge of your prisoner?”

“Yes, take him,” Noémie said, handing the brigadier the length of rope that served as a lead. “Put him in a cell with some water and a slice of Bambi’s brioche.”

“Whatever you say, Capitaine. Capitaine or Commandant?”

“News travels fast.”

The Ford disappeared around a bend in the distance.

“Is your diver coming back?”

“No idea. That depends on the currents.”

—

Noémie lined her bags up in front of the shattered sliding doors and closed the front door one last time. Bambi had promised that his mother would find her somewhere just as charming and less haunted by sad memories. For the next few days, a room at the Hôtel du Parc awaited her.

The woods grew smaller and smaller in her rear-view mirror. As she drove around the drained lake to leave Avalone, she caught sight of two children chasing one another along the deserted streets between the tumbledown houses. Heart in her mouth, she slowed down, and the boys looked up. Cyril and Alex waved at her before whirling away in a cloud, as if made of sand.

She touched her face and smiled.

She was Noémie again.

She would have to talk to Melchior about it.

Acknowledgements

To the Decazeville police and Commandant Verlaguet, protectors of their six communes. For their generosity, patience and the important social bond they know how to preserve with their community, a link so often weakened in big cities.

Francine Bousquet, my favourite bookshop owner. I have decided officially that the “Presse-Bulle” in Decazeville is a book-shop. For your kindness and your smile. Apologies for making you the village gossip in this novel.

The Paris River Police, and in particular Commandant Berjot who put up with my seasickness (on the Seine!) and allowed me to meet Nicolas Leclerc and Serge Denis, who showed the way for the underwater intrigue. Thank you, gentlemen, for teaching me what goes on beneath the surface.

Marc Taccoen, my forensic pathologist from the outset. Considering the number of murders we’ve collaborated on, I confer on you the title of “literary serial killer”.

Colonel Melchior Martinez of the Hôpital Percy, psychiatrist of our maimed soldiers and damaged police officers. The repairer of souls.

Marie-Dominique Colas, for everything I’ve learned from Le Visage des hommes, published by Éditions Lavauzelle.

Babeth. Noémie Chastain owes a lot to you. She has your courage and strength.

Stéphane Delfosse, simple and “marvellous”. If your accident didn’t break your spirit, nothing will.

Jamix, the man without a memory, because you know what it means to rebuild yourself.

Benjamin Fourré and Benoît Abbas, ballistic experts . . . thanks for the 8mm.

Doctor Cayot and the emergency doctor Denis Gruska at Decazeville hospital. You helped me mistreat and then repair my heroine.

Florence Bonneviale, for our Spanish escapade alongside Casanova and Dom Juan.

My first readers of this new novel: Martine, Claude Wikipapa, Babeth, Bruno, Dodo, Caroline, Julie, Bernard-Hugues, Martin, Lili La, Aurélie and Anaïs.

Dodo, 24/7 policewoman, mother, animal rescuer, inventor of 72-hour days.

Aubin, my village.

My family. Martine, Claude, Corrine and Victor. One day I dreamed of the end of the world and smiled, because we were in the family home at Aubin, sitting together to watch the sky burn.

Denise Solignac. I’m sorry for all the words I could not say to you as an adult.

Michel Lafon. What an adventure, chief, what an adventure!

Huguette Maure. Six years ago, I didn’t know you, and today I couldn’t write anything without you. I love you.

Béatrice Argentier, specialist in shells and repetitions. Let’s go back to the Café Pouchkine!

Margaux Mersié, if you were a room in a house, you’d be my panic room.

Honorine Dupuy d’Angeac, who dispatches my books all over the world . . . Russia, Spain, Italy, Germany, Britain . . . I still have a few empty pages in my passport!

Anissa Naama and Anaïs Ferrah, the magical duo who have sent me to festivals and bookshops all over France.

Alain Deroudilhe, for this incredible year and promotional grand slam. If we meet again, I prefer to cook. (Sorry, Martin!)

Claire Germouty, the start of it all.

Éditions Pocket, Carine, Charlotte, Emmanuelle, Bénédicte, Camille and the mysterious Madame Pocket . . . So one can have fun at work!

Mathieu Thauvin, the artist of my ever more beautiful book covers.

Bruno Chabert, official photographer of my literary adventures, musician of the original version of our friendship since we were seventeen, my other brother.

Manu, calm and serene . . . like the eye of a hurricane. Thanks for those evenings that allow me to relax (a bit too much sometimes!). We’ll get to the next level in 2019 . . . all the best, bro.

Victor, my younger brother, the best example of the Norek family! Sail away to your new Canadian life!

The officers of the police judiciaire in Seine-Saint-Denis . . . and police officers in general. Another complicated year with no-one to thank you. In Argentina, the police are so corrupt nobody ever dials their emergency number. Just imagine a society where we couldn’t call for help!

The bookshops, newsagents, major retailers in big cities and small villages, those struggling to stay open, those courageous enough to be starting out, even those that sell Nicolas Lebel books.

Bloggers . . . especially for what you wrote about Between Two Worlds: you contributed so much to the success of that book and succeeded in getting its message across. You’re the new literary chroniclers of thrillers. Accomplices in every new mystery, every new dead body – you discover, shine light on, love or hate . . . with complete objectivity.

The journalists who have looked kindly on my work, but who I can’t name because that would be cronyism.

Julie Casteran, pink belt in Krav Maga, the only shrink without empathy. I’d like to see your diploma one day, just to check.

Thriller writers, my literary family. Without you and book fairs, 80 per cent. of the pleasure would be gone.

Cyril Canizzo, my hyperactive agent. Agent and something more, I hope.

The Ligue de l’Imaginaire for welcoming me into their group of extraordinary gentlemen.

Gilles Paquet Brenner for the film of Between Two Worlds, and Michel Montheillet for the graphic novel version. Adam, Kilani and Ousmane are in your hands. And I trust you.

Nicolas Cuche, Eric Jehelmann and the formidable Solène Bouton, this year is for you!

Marianne, Xavier and Chloé: kisses from the worst godfather on the planet!

Last but not least, my faithful friends: Benjamin, François M., Mathias, Valérie B., Aline and Marie Chacha.

OLIVIER NOREK served as a humanitarian aid worker in the former Yugoslavia prior to his career in the French police force. His crime fiction has sold millions of copies and won many prizes. His latest novel, The Winter Warriors, which won three major French literary prizes, has been sold in eighteen languages and is being made into a feature film.

NICK CAISTOR’s translations include works by Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé and Isabel Allende. He has contributed to the Guardian and the TLS and was for many years Latin America editor for the B.B.C. World Service. His translation of Mendoza’s An Englishman in Madrid won the Prix du Livre Européen.

First published in Great Britain in 2026 by
Open Borders Press

London

www.openborderspress.co.uk

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First published as Surface

© Éditions Michel Lafon, 2019

English translation © Nick Caistor, 2026

The moral right of Olivier Norek to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Nick Caistor asserts his moral right to be identified as the translator of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners and the publishers

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN (HB) 978-1-9195033-3-2

ISBN (eBook) 978-1-0666351-1-5

Designed and typeset in Minion by Libanus Press, Marlborough

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

This book is supported by the Institut français (Royaume-Uni)

as part of the Burgess programme