The Awkward Squad

by Sophie Hénaff

  After showing it to Capestan, he carefully returned it to his inside pocket. He then smoothed it with the palm of his hand through the material of his jacket to make sure it didn’t get more crumpled.

  So Valincourt’s wife had perished in the shipwreck. Capestan wondered how, as Gabriel continued, not looking any of the police officers in the eye.

  “My father never talks to me about her anymore. It makes him sad, and I don’t want to force him. So I asked for the names of the survivors from the Association, then went to meet them with this photograph . . .”

  Évrard pushed the sugar bowl across the table toward the boy, who vacantly fished out four lumps before continuing:

  “. . . to ask . . . I don’t know. If anyone had met her. Remembered something about her, anything. If they had made friends on board. That’s why I went to Issy-les-Moulineaux . . . Madame Sauzelle was at the top of the list. I also wanted to meet the sailor, Monsieur Guénan, who was the only French crew member.”

  Gabriel, with his hair flopping over his eyes, gazed deep into his mug. To avoid frightening him, the four officers tried not to make too much noise—the only sound was their breathing and the crackle of the fire.

  “I saw on the list that Monsieur Guénan had died not long after his return. So I called his wife. The day before . . . well, you know.”

  The son had planned to question the victims. The father had not let him. Gradually, the gist of the matter started forming in Capestan’s mind.

  “You and your father managed to escape, but not your mother? Were they separated during the accident?” Rosière said, trying not to let her voice grate too much.

  “Yes. At least, my father told my mother not to move while he went to get me from the cabin, and when he came back, she wasn’t there anymore. He thought she might have already boarded a lifeboat.”

  “Your parents left you in the cabin by yourself? When you were two?” Évrard said in disbelief.

  She had hit on a sore point, and Gabriel seemed upset.

  “Yes. I don’t know, that’s what Papa always said, but maybe I misunderstood him . . .”

  A man as cautious as Valincourt would never have left a toddler unsupervised on a ferry, Capestan thought to herself. The father had lied to his son. Gabriel sat deeper in his armchair, gripping his mug in both hands. He was reaching his limit, but Capestan got the feeling that his day was far from over.

  “You know we’re going to have to call your father?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Would you rather do it yourself?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  Rosière went to her desk and scooped up her beige handset, a standard-issue France Télécom model from the nineties, and stretched the cord until it reached the young man.

  “Are you ever separated from your cell phone?” Capestan said. “Sometimes leave it on your bed when you go to the bathroom, or on the table in the living room before you go to the kitchen?”

  Gabriel pulled on the drawstrings of his hoodie and his feet knocked quietly against the wooden floor.

  “Yes. Sometimes.”

  The boy did his best to ignore the commissaire’s insinuation. He took Rosière’s telephone set, placed it on his lap, and looked at it for a long while before dialing the number.

  44

  The sound of the doorbell announced the arrival of Alexandre Valincourt. He was on his way back from a ceremony where the préfet de police had awarded him the Légion d’Honneur. The squad had been waiting for him, closed ranks, for over an hour. The nerves in the main room were palpable. Each person ran through their role scrupulously. Capestan had laid out her plan: a two-stage relay race followed by a sprint finish. Failure was not an option. If they botched it with Valincourt, they would all end up in some hellhole of a dungeon, having kissed good-bye to any prospect of a pension. They were well aware that they were punching above their weight.

  After a final glance around her troops, Capestan stood up and went to answer it. The divisionnaire, in full ceremonial garb, stood in the doorway and sized her up without saying a word. His hooked nose and big brown eyes dominated his aquiline face, which sat on top of his long, hardened, marathon-runner’s frame. Capestan adopted a colder tone for the father than she had for the son.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur le Divisionnaire,” she said.

  Valincourt merely lifted his chin and stepped into the room, with his officer’s cap under his arm, then took in the surroundings with a haughty look.

  “They’re original, your premises. What is it exactly that you do here? Admin, sorting through the archives, revisiting old reports?”

  The divisionnaire was playing the role of the grandee deigning to rub shoulders with his lowly subjects. Capestan decided to get in there early with a frostiness of her own:

  “Sorting through the archives. Your archives, as it happens . . .”

  Valincourt ignored her. He was happy to nonchalantly inspect the lay of the land, but refused to rise to a jab that he deemed to be beneath him. Capestan had counted on him reacting like this: their relay tactic was really a war of attrition. To crack someone as distinguished as Valincourt, they were going to attempt the classic “carpet trick”: grill the suspect in one room, then transfer him somewhere with a slightly different, slicker tone and décor, where another officer would elicit a confession. A slowly-slowly psychological method that had stood the test of time at number 36. Today they faced a tough adversary who was well versed in those tactics. They would need to embellish their approach. But the squad did have one sneaky weapon up their sleeve, one that was perfect for unsettling their suspect: Malchance, the unlucky charm. They had Torrez.

  “Lieutenant Torrez will look after you while I wrap up the paperwork with your son.”

  Valincourt blinked slightly, but not enough to lose face. The man was more than impressive. Without moving a muscle, hemmed in by the members of the squad, he still dominated the room. The officers seemed like a set of small, ramshackle buildings in the shadow of Notre-Dame. To nip this sense of supremacy in the bud, Capestan gave Torrez the nod to come in.

  An exaggerated shudder went around the room and the squad parted in silence, forming a sort of guard of horror as Malchance prowled forward. He was wearing a dark brown corduroy jacket over his sling. His beard was starting to show again, darkening his cheeks, and his black eye completed the macabre sinister look. The lieutenant, more serious than ever, walked up to Valincourt and stopped a little too close to him, deliberately intruding into his senior officer’s personal space.

  “If you’d care to follow me, Monsieur le Divisionnaire.”

  Still ramrod straight, Valincourt hesitated for a moment. He was visibly conflicted. If he followed the lieutenant, he was capitulating to the demands of this pitiful squad. But if he refused, it would look as though he were flinching in the face of superstition and fear. Either outcome would damage his credibility. He was trapped. In the long term, cowardice must have struck him as the more harmful option since, with a nod at Capestan, he made up his mind to accompany Torrez to his office.

  Torrez opened the door and invited the divisionnaire to go in ahead of him.

  “Please, take a seat,” he said, not gesturing toward any chair in particular.

  Valincourt, hands behind his back and gripping the visor of his cap, studied the room, doing his best not to touch anything. He believes the stories about me, Torrez thought to himself. This proximity was frightening him.

  There were two chairs facing the desk. Valincourt chose the less accessible one and sat down as calmly as possible.

  “That one’s mine, in fact,” Torrez said, feigning embarrassment. “No, no, stay there, please. It’ll be fine.”

  The divisionnaire could not prevent his backside from lifting up an inch or so.

  “Commissaire Capestan won’t be much longer, I don’t think,” Torrez said, moving to the other side of his desk.

  Then he simply waited, drawing out the moment to exacerbate any mounting
paranoia. Torrez had that effect on people. Others officers shied away in his presence like arachnophobes from a basket of tarantulas. The more audacious simply avoided running into him. Occasionally some hothead or other might play the toreador and approach him, body tensed and ready, but just one look would send them packing. Crazy people dice with death, but they do not fool around with someone cursed with bad luck. Bad luck carries the threat of terrible things: disease, ruin, an accident for you or a loved one. It lurks just below the surface, festering and unexpected.

  Valincourt stayed where he was, perfectly motionless. He had already come into contact with various elements—nothing he could do about that—but he was reluctant to add to the haul. Torrez worried that his powers of intimidation were waning. Around Capestan, Malchance had become less resolute: the façade was cracking and he was breathing more easily. He now had a colleague he could have coffee with or talk to about the weekend, something he had spent twenty years of his career dreaming about. Capestan was prouder than a band of Corsicans, but she always had a smile and a kind word at the ready for her team. Capestan was no toreador, not with him at least. And she had trusted him with the first leg of the relay.

  Valincourt cleared his throat. He was eager to regain the upper hand.

  “Alright. Where’s my son?”

  “In an office down the corridor, with Commissaire Capestan and Lieutenant Évrard. They’re looking after him; you have nothing to worry about.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” the divisionnaire said, sweeping aside any suggestion that he was being overprotective. “What’s he doing here? What are you accusing him of?”

  “I have no idea, I’m not working on that case,” Torrez said, pulling a file out of one of his drawers.

  He placed it on his desk and crossed his hands on top of it. Valincourt wriggled slightly with a mixture of impatience and discomfort. These irritants were nibbling at his defenses.

  “No, I’m working on a different case . . . ,” Torrez continued.

  “I don’t give a damn about your little cases! It’s not as though I’m planning on moving in. I’ve had enough. If you think I have the time to entertain your . . . Take me to Gabriel, let’s be done with this.”

  Valincourt considered himself far too important to be kept waiting like this, and Torrez’s presence was only increasing his sense of urgency.

  “I’m dealing with a different case,” the lieutenant repeated, unfazed. “It dates back to 2005, but we have a new lead.”

  A hint of surprise flashed across the divisionnaire’s face. Curiosity was taking hold of him. For several years, Valincourt had been sitting on a handful of murders that had gone unpunished. He wanted to know what they knew. Torrez slowly removed the elastic ties from the corners of the file, pulled out a color photograph, and slid it toward the divisionnaire. It was of Marie Sauzelle.

  “Do you know her?”

  Valincourt barely even looked at him.

  “Of course, I headed up the case.”

  Torrez nodded gravely, pulled an afflicted expression, and took out a second picture, this one of a mailbox. He turned it toward the divisionnaire and poked one of his thick fingers onto the print to indicate the NO JUNK MAIL PLEASE sticker.

  “You see stickers like this on the doors of eco-minded folk, or people away on vacation,” Torrez said, nodding as though approving of such sensible measures. “But do you know where you never find them?”

  Valincourt avoided meeting his eye, so Torrez answered his own question:

  “On the doors of old ladies who collect discount coupons.”

  Torrez mulled over his words before coming to the natural conclusion:

  “But a sticker like that isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. He must have brought it with him. In a murder case, that means premeditation.”

  The lieutenant enunciated each syllable of that last word. Valincourt pursed his lips for a moment, but must have considered it wiser not to comment. After all, he had not been overtly accused. He arched his eyebrows and looked at Torrez scornfully. The divisionnaire was good at controlling his facial expressions, but he could not avoid turning pale. They had him. It was time to pass on the baton. Torrez held out a hand and gently tapped the divisionnaire’s arm. His own special coup de grâce.

  “Follow me.”

  Torrez led Valincourt, shaken but still standing, down the corridor to the main room, where Lebreton was waiting next to his perfectly tidy desk. Rosière and Orsini were in the background, each holding a thick notebook.

  The divisionnaire had just looked Destiny in the eye. Now Torrez was delivering him to the instruments of Law and Opinion: Lebreton and the IGS; Orsini and the press; Rosière and the mob. Valincourt was standing firm, but his brow was starting to glisten from the pressure of this ordeal. Nevertheless, he managed to recover all his outward dignity, and, still not seeing his son, protested with a strident voice:

  “Look, where is he? I’m ordering you to release him. Right away.”

  Lebreton moved closer to the wastepaper basket at the foot of his desk, then took a step back.

  “No.”

  “Excuse me? Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? You can start by telling me on what grounds you’re holding my son.”

  Lebreton tucked a stray propeller pencil away in its container before eventually going to stand impassively behind his chair.

  “Fleeing the scene of a crime, as he said on the telephone earlier.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, capitaine—”

  “Commandant . . .”

  “He was walking down a street, correct? He ran off when Capestan confronted him? She’s a good-looking lady—you know how shy young men can be. She’s wrong to take it so personally.”

  Lebreton grinned with amusement. Valincourt was attempting to sound lighthearted, but the effects of his fifteen minutes with Torrez were clear: sarcasm is harder to pull off when your voice is trembling. The divisionnaire was aware of the slight stammer, too, and his face was overcome with irritation.

  “He happened to be walking down the street of a murder victim,” Lebreton said, gesturing toward one of the armchairs.

  Valincourt grabbed hold of the arm and paused for a moment before deciding to sit down.

  “He was coming to see me. Listen, you do realize this counts as an arbitrary arrest. You can’t charge my son with anything—you’ve got nothing.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’re not even entitled to place him in custody,” he said with a disdainful, sweeping motion that took in the room and the squad.

  “No, I’m not sure we are,” Lebreton conceded blankly.

  He studied the body language of the divisionnaire, who still had a stiff, almost military bearing. He had deliberately not changed before arriving, choosing to present himself in ceremonial uniform. Nothing incidental about that: he was trying to reassert his status and remind them of his rank.

  “Fine, then,” Valincourt said. “Let him go.”

  “Of course,” Lebreton said.

  Valincourt made as if to stand up without any further comment, but the commandant cut him off to clarify what he meant:

  “I’ll let him go. He hasn’t murdered anyone, after all. You, on the other hand . . .”

  The divisionnaire bristled, but he checked himself immediately, regaining the necessary composure.

  “How dare you, you shitty little officers? What right do you have to make such accusations?”

  “My own. Are you making any progress on the Maëlle Guénan case? Because . . . well, we’ve got the culprit,” Lebreton said.

  “Stop with your theatrics. I was staying out of courtesy, but this time . . .”

  Valincourt stood up and put on his police cap. He was about to set off down the corridor to fetch Gabriel.

  “What were you doing on Thursday, September 20, between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.?” Lebreton said.

  “I’m not answering your questions.”

  “Then I’ll answer the
m myself. On September 20, you went to rue Mazagran with a set of kitchen knives, you rang Maëlle Guénan’s doorbell, then you stabbed her to death before searching the apartment for any documents belonging to her husband.”

  As he delivered that last point, Lebreton was watching for any sign of confirmation: Valincourt flinched, and the commandant knew he had found his target.

  “You killed her, just as you killed Yann Guénan and Marie Sauzelle. You knew the victims and you deliberately hid that fact from us. Don’t bother with any unnecessary objections, we have it on video. Does the memorial of a shipwreck sound at all familiar?”

  Lebreton pointed the remote at the TV and revealed the paused picture of Valincourt with Sauzelle. This time there was no doubt whatsoever about his aim. All means of escape had been sealed. A look of panic shot across Valincourt’s face, but his survival instincts quickly chased it away.

  “You’re making it sound as though I should be calling my lawyer.”

  Lebreton turned to Orsini and Rosière behind him, who had been scribbling away in their notebooks nonstop, punctuating the interview with satisfied nods.

  “Note down that, during a courtesy call, Divisionnaire Valincourt requested a lawyer to be present.”

  Lebreton looked back at the divisionnaire before politely asking:

  “Would you like to contact your lawyer?”

  Valincourt batted the question away with a look of disgust, and Lebreton stared at him for a moment, his smile gone. Bad luck, links, premeditation . . . He let the divisionnaire fully digest the implications of the previous half-hour’s exchanges.

  The greasy smell of reheated panini wafted in from the street through the half-open windows. From around the Fontaine des Innocents came the sound of mooing boys and chirruping girls; the local teenage fauna were patrolling Les Halles as the Indian summer finally drew to its close. The commandant looked Valincourt up and down. He was a paragon of self-denial, authority in motion. A slight feverishness in his movements was the only evidence that his armor had been breached. He waited for the gap to widen a little before delivering his closing speech: