“Tomorrow morning? That’s wonderful, darling!”
After a ton of kisses, Juliette went back to her game, all cheerful. Lucie and Marie stood at the doorway to the room, coffees in hand. Lucie took a deep breath and blurted out:
“Mom, I’m afraid I have to ask you to watch Juliette for at least four more days—four days and nights, I mean. I’m really sorry. This has been a really difficult case and—”
“Where are you off to now?”
“Montreal.”
Marie Henebelle had a gift for making you feel guilty with a look.
“Going abroad now? Nothing dangerous, I hope.”
“No, no. I just have to search through some old archives. Nothing very exciting, but somebody has to do it.”
“And of course that somebody is you.”
“You might say that.”
Marie knew her daughter too well; she knew that even if Lucie were going off to face the devil himself, she’d claim she was just out to pick mushrooms. She jerked her chin interrogatively at a gray stuffed animal, a hippopotamus.
“Your ex came by.”
“My ex… You mean Ludovic?”
“Have there been others?”
Lucie remained silent. Marie looked sadly at Juliette.
“You should have seen how much fun those two had together. Ludovic spent two hours here with her. He was going home, and he said that if you want to call him, you can. You should.”
“Mom…”
Marie seized upon Lucie’s gaze and didn’t let go.
“You need a man, Lucie. Someone to get you settled down, who can bring you back to reality when you need it. Ludovic is a good boy.”
“Yeah, the only problem is I don’t love him.”
“You never gave yourself time to love him! Your twins spend more time with their grandmother than with their mother. I’m the one watching and raising them. Does that seem normal to you?”
Ultimately, Marie was right. Lucie thought again about Sharko’s view of the job: a devouring monster that ultimately spat out ruined or damaged families.
“After this case, Mom. I promise I’ll slow down and think about it.”
“Think about it—right… Like after the last case. And the one before that, and before that…”
Her eyes were filled with reproach, along with a kind of pity.
“It’s too late for me to remake my daughter. You’re set in stone, missy, and it takes a pickax to change anything in that hard head of yours.”
“At least I know where I got it from.”
Lucie managed to wrest a half smile from her mother, who caressed her cheek with her hand.
“Don’t worry about it. Let me just make a quick stop at the house. What time do you have to leave here?”
“Five at the latest. Just enough time to get to the airport and check in.”
“That leaves you three short hours to spend with your daughter. Good lord, you’d think we were in the visiting area of a prison!”
41
After dropping Lucie off, Sharko had sped to Nanterre. The young female detective had left a burning trace in his mind, an indelible presence that he found he couldn’t erase. He could still see her, wrapped in a towel, covered in foam, in his bathroom. Who would ever have thought that someday a woman would shower where Suzanne had once showered? Who would have thought that the sight of a semi-undressed body could once again make his heart race in his chest?
For now, he paced back and forth in his boss’s office. Lucie was far away, and his mind was on other matters. He was yelling at Leclerc, who was seated at his desk.
“We can’t just keep our mouths shut like this. Others have gone after the Foreign Legion before us.”
“And they all got shot down. Péresse and the boss feel the same way. You need to forget about your shortcut and get me something concrete. Josselin is willing to assign two investigators from Criminal to retrace Mohamed Abane’s steps from the moment he left his brother’s. That’s the only legal recourse we’ve got.”
“It’s going to take forever and it’ll get us nowhere. You know it as well as I do.”
Leclerc stretched his chin toward an express pouch lying in front of him.
“As I said on the phone, before you make the shit hit the fan bypassing Péresse, I got hold of the list of humanitarian groups who were in the Cairo area. We’ve got a few names, especially the mission leaders. But the thing that’s really interesting is the SIGN conference itself. Have a look…”
Martin Leclerc’s face was somber, closed off. He shuffled some papers needlessly and took care not to meet Sharko’s gaze. The chief inspector picked up the file and started reading:
“A Smile for the World’s Orphans, around thirty people. Planet Emergency, more than forty. SOS Africa, sixty… I’ll spare you the best ones…” He squinted. “March 1994, annual meeting of the Safe Injection Global Network. More than— More than three thousand persons from all over the world! WHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS, a ton of NGOs, universities, doctors, scientists, health professionals, people from industry… More than fifteen countries. But—what the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“March 1994 was the month and year of the murders, wasn’t it? We’re waiting for a detailed list of SIGN participants, which we should have later today. At first glance, it looks like between a hundred fifty and two hundred Frenchmen.”
“Two hundred…”
“As you see, we’re a long way from combat boots and flak jackets here. So let the Legion go for now—we’ve got enough on our plates as it is, with Canada, these lists, and the Abane investigation.”
Sharko leaned on the desk.
“What’s with you, Martin? We used to go at these things like bloodhounds, and today you’re burying it all under lists of names. Once upon a time, you would have been all over this.”
“Once upon a time…” Martin Leclerc sighed. His fingers clutched a sheet of paper, which he crumpled and tossed into the wastebasket. “It’s Kathia, Shark. I’m losing her.”
Sharko absorbed the blow, but deep down he’d been expecting it for several days now. Kathia and Martin Leclerc had always symbolized the very image of a stable couple, who had weathered so many storms that nothing could split them apart.
“It started with the Huriez case, didn’t it? Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because it is what it is…”
Sharko recalled every detail. One year earlier, cocaine smuggling near Fontainebleau. One of the small fry in the network gets pinched, Olivier Hussard, twenty years old. Kathia’s godson… She asked her husband to intervene, use his influence to get a lighter sentence. But Martin Leclerc was inflexible, faithful to the standard of his office.
Sharko had blamed himself. Carried away by his own demons, he hadn’t noticed anything wrong with his chief. He was the analyst who was supposed to recognize behavior patterns.
“I had a right to know, Martin.”
“You had a right to know? And what piece of shit rule gave you the right to know?”
“Our friendship, that’s all.”
A heavy silence fell over the room. In the distance they heard the roar of a motorcycle.
“I went to see the boss, Shark. Day before yesterday.”
“What? Don’t tell me you—”
“Yes. After this case, I’m resigning. I can’t hold on for eight more years, waiting for retirement with my guts in a knot. Not without her. She’s been staying at her sister’s for the last few days, and it’s driving me insane. And besides, can you see me growing old alone, like—”