Sebag was drinking a lousy coffee in a little bistro in Moulin-à-Vent. He was early for his meeting and was taking the opportunity to read the newspapers. The local paper’s big headline was about the bad weather. In addition to the fords, several roads had been cut, notably along the coast between Collioure and Cerbère. In Canet, about thirty houses in a subdivision had been evacuated and their residents put up for the night in the community center. The destruction of the monument did get a half-page on the inside of the paper. Illustrated by photos, the article described the damage caused to the monument and then quoted members of the association that had erected it, their opponents, and, finally, the mayor. The state prosecutor, however, had refused to make a statement. Below the article, a box recalled the polemic that had exploded when the monument was put up and the tensions that persisted every time a memorial ceremony was planned there.
Fortunately, the journalists had not yet made a connection with the murder of Martinez. And for good reason: the information regarding the “OAS” painted on the apartment door had not yet been divulged.
But it was only a matter of days, or even hours.
Sebag finished his excessively bitter coffee, paid without leaving a tip, and left. Outside, the clouds were beginning to stop dripping, and under the impact of a vigorous north wind, bits of blue sky were starting to colonize the sky. Sebag chose to walk to the place where he was to meet the witness. He liked to walk in the Moulin-à-Vent quarter. The broad ramblas had pleasant median strips planted with immense palm trees. Regularly re-stuccoed, the apartment buildings were aging well and their white walls naturally harmonized with the green lawns on which prospered not only palm trees but also majestic parasol pines.
Sebag walked fast and soon arrived in front of the church of Saint Paul, a triangle of concrete covered with white stucco and topped with a tuft of red tiles. Built in the late 1960s, this religious edifice might have been confused with an ordinary community center if its pediment hadn’t been decorated with a big cross and the square in front of it provided with a campanile with two bells.
A little bald man was standing across from the church, waiting. The witness.
“Mr. Clément Ollier, I presume?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Lieutenant Sebag. Thanks for having agreed to meet with me despite all the hitches, and especially for having been willing to come here.”
The witness shrugged.
“I live right nearby, in fact. I’ll go to work afterward. It won’t take long.”
“No, I don’t think so. What do you do for a living? I read in the file that you were a sales rep for an import-export firm. That means everything and nothing.”
“That’s true,” Ollier acknowledged. “I work for a firm at the Saint Charles market that imports fruit and vegetables from Spain. I’m leaving this afternoon for Andalusia.”
“On a Friday? Don’t they know about weekends in your business?”
“Oh, but they do,” Ollier replied with a sly gleam in his eyes. “I have to be there on Monday and I’m taking advantage of the trip to spend a weekend with my wife.”
“When it’s possible to combine business and pleasure . . . ”
“I see that policemen have a sense of humor . . . ”
“Yes, I know, too many people think a sense of humor is incompatible with the job.”
Clément Ollier refrained from commenting. He was probably not far from sharing the general opinion. And then he must have thought that the polite chitchat had gone on long enough and that it was high time to get down to brass tacks.
“Tell me what happened, please,” Sebag asked.
“I wasn’t working the Wednesday of the accident, and I had gone out to buy cigarettes. I saw a van coming up the street at a rather high speed. It passed by me and then suddenly swerved to the left. That was when it hit the scooter that was coming in the opposite direction. Bang! The boy went flying and landed three meters farther on. I can still hear the sound. It was a real shock, I can tell you that. In every sense of the term. I still get shivers behind my knees when I talk about it. Poor kid . . . ”
Clément Ollier expressed himself with the accent of a southern area other than Catalonia. Sebag would have bet on somewhere around Toulouse. Ollier’s bald head made him look older, but he was probably not much over forty.
“In your opinion, why did the van swerve like that?”
“I heard on the local radio that the driver claimed that a car had run a stop sign.”
Ollier didn’t add anything more. Sebag was forced to ask him to be more precise.
“Did you see that car?”
“Me? No, I didn’t see anything. Just the van and the scooter. Nothing else.”
Sebag made a disappointed face. Clément Ollier was, in fact, the only eyewitness to the accident, everyone else in the file having rushed to the spot only after the collision. That was the main weak point that he had noted in Cardona’s investigation, the only bone he had found to gnaw in the hope of finding something new. But this slender hope had just evaporated. The accident had happened near the church in front of which they were standing, right on the other side of the street, about fifteen meters further on. Thus nothing could have escaped Clément Ollier.
“Were you standing right here at the time of the accident?”
“Not far away, yes.”
Sebag recovered a little hope.
“Where?”
Ollier made a vague gesture.
“A couple of meters away.”
“Could you show me exactly?”
Followed by Sebag, Ollier walked down Foment de la Sardane Boulevard. To the policeman’s great surprise, he went past the site of the accident and then continued a good twenty additional meters.
“I believe I was here,” he cried.
He took two more steps before pounding on the pavement.
“Precisely here!”
Sebag contemplated the site from their new position. The perspective had changed radically: they were now on the left rear of the van.
“I had a ringside seat, so to speak. The kid couldn’t do anything, it all happened so fast!”
The inspector closed his eyes, trying to imagine the scene and especially to judge the angle of view. When he reopened his eyes, he was sure: at the moment of the collision, Clément Ollier was behind the van. He could very well not have seen the infamous white Clio coming toward the right front side of the van. On the other hand, he could have seen it when it continued on its way and took off.
“And then . . . after the accident, what did you do?”
“I rushed over to the kid. I was a volunteer fireman for ten years, so I wanted to make myself useful. At first, we thought all the damage was to the van, the kid was very pale but seemed not to have been hurt. If only we’d been able to guess . . . ”
Sebag was no longer listening. Hurrying to help Mathieu, Clément Ollier had stopped looking at the street. His attention must have been entirely focused on the victim. It was possible that he hadn’t seen the car. Pascal Lucas’s claim became credible.
“Of course, even if we’d guessed earlier, we couldn’t have done anything. Internal bleeding . . . Still, it was bad luck.”
Sebag was wondering what he was going to be able to do with this new information. It was a long way from the credible to actual proof, and Cardona wasn’t going to help him get there. He needed another witness. He looked up at the apartment buildings surrounding him. The white façades were adorned with loggias with wooden railings and trellises made of round tiles. After the rainy period of the last few days, it was warming up again and here and there Sebag could see people through the open windows. If that damned car existed, someone must have seen it. Must have.
“Papa, I know you have a lot of work. If you can’t deal with Mathieu’s accident, it’s O.K. I won’t be mad at you.”
Gilles had come home late the preceding evening. Sévérine had watched him out of the corner of her eye and her father’s preoccupation hadn’t escaped her. She had joined him on the terrace when he’d gone out to sip his coffee. He could drink coffee at any time of day, it had never prevented him from sleeping. Sévérine had come up quietly behind him, put her arms around his waist, and laid her head on his back.
“I’m fourteen years old, I can understand . . . ”
He hadn’t known what to say. In any case, he had a lump in his throat and couldn’t have talked. He’d savored his coffee down to the last drop before turning around to face Sévérine and take her in his arms.
Then his voice and his words came back to him.
“Thanks, sweetheart, but don’t worry: I’m going to be able to find a little time. And as I told you from the beginning, if there’s something to find, I’ll find it.”
He was now up against the wall, in both the literal and figurative senses. Across from him, two rows of apartment buildings with five stories each. He was going to have to go door-to-door. That was the part of his job that he hated the most.
He said goodbye to Clément Ollier, thanking him warmly. Then he called Molina on his cell phone.
“So, is he there?”
“One second, hang on.”
He watched his witness get into his car parked in front of the church. Clément Ollier started to drive away and waved as he passed in front of him. Molina’s voice resounded again in his ear.
“Excuse me, I was with Abbas.”
“He came after all, then?”
“Yes, he was on time. I was the one that made him wait half an hour before seeing him. Llach lent me his office.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Nothing, for the moment. We’ve just started. We’re still getting his vital statistics.”
“Do you need me?”
“Do you think I can’t handle this by myself?”
“It’s not that. It’s just that Castello wanted us both to work on it.”
“You’ll join in later. Whatever happens, I’m not going to let this guy go anytime soon. I’m going to teach him some manners, after all! You can just come by for dessert. Are you getting anywhere?”
“I’ve got something new, yes.”
“Enough to annoy Cardona?”
“Not yet. But enough to hope I can.”
“O.K., go for it, I’m counting on you, champ! I’ve got to let you go, I’ve got a client on the grill.”
During the following two hours, Sebag knocked on fifty-two doors. Thirty-seven of them opened up. More or less spontaneously. Each time, he tried to question every member of the family. In all, he obtained a total of a hundred and twelve negative opinions: seventy-five persons were out at the time of the accident, thirty-four had looked out their windows only after hearing the sound of the collision or the emergency vehicle’s sirens, and the last three, though present, had heard nothing at all.
Thus there remained fifteen apartments, fifteen closed doors that he’d have to try to get to open up another time. Luck was on his side. Mathieu’s accident had taken place less than three hundred meters from Martinez’s apartment; he could always claim to be working on one case while he was working on the other.
However, it was now time to get back to headquarters to help Molina. As he drove down the boulevards toward the city center, through a gap in the clouds he caught a glimpse of Le Canigou towering against the blue sky. For the first time this season, a fine white powder had covered the summits, but after two days of heavy rain the peak was as blotchy as cokehead’s nose.
Sebag found Molina alone in their office, playing on his computer.
“Well, how did it go with Abbas?”
“It’s happening . . . ”
Silence. Jacques didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
“Well?” Sebag insisted.
“Mr. Abbas is not exactly a motormouth.”
Another silence. Molina remained absorbed in his game.
“That makes two of you, then,” Sebag commented.
Molina grimaced. He must have been in a particularly delicate phase of his game.
“Two what?”
His fingers gripped the mouse. He clicked nervously twice and then pushed it away and swore. He’d lost.
“Two what?” he asked again, this time looking up at Sebag.
“Two motormouths. Words have to be extracted from you with forceps, too.”
“The computer helps me relax, and I needed it,” Molina explained. “Abbas immediately agreed to give his identity, but then nothing more! He just kept repeating that he’d talk only in the presence of his lawyer.”
“He really said nothing at all?”
“I’m exaggerating a little. He said—I’m summing up—that the OAS was nothing but a bunch of fascist, racist assholes, and that he was glad that some courageous guy had finally decided to massacre the monument.”
“What about the murder?”
“There, he was more moderate. He said that the Algerian War was very far away and he didn’t understand how anybody could want to take revenge at such a late date.”
“Did you talk to him about his father?”
“Obviously. That’s when he shut up. Fortunately, I’d gotten a few details thanks to an early morning phone call from Ménard. He’s really a hard worker, that guy. Apparently he stayed all night in his historian’s archives. Of course, he hasn’t anything else to do in Marseille.”
“And so?”
“And so Émile Abbas’s father, first name Mouloud, was a doctor at a hospital in Algiers. He worked in the emergency room and is supposed to have secretly treated several FLN activists. In any case, that’s what the OAS accused him of, but I think it was mainly the fact that he was a doctor and an Arab that really bothered those bastards. In short, a commando burst into the hospital in the middle of the day—it was in early January 1961, I think—and shot him in cold blood, a dozen bullets to the body, right in front of patients and nurses, and then calmly walked out.”
“How old was Abbas then?”
“Four.”
“And when you questioned him, did he really have nothing to say about his father’s murder?”
“No. Just something to the effect that it was just like the police to confuse victims with perpetrators.”
“And how did you react?”
“I remained very Zen. Yes, I did, I did . . . You should’ve seen me, you’d have been proud. I asked my questions, he didn’t answer. I calmly asked them again, and since he still wouldn’t answer, I left.”
“Still calmly?”
“Yes. I gently closed Joan’s office door and went down to drink a cup of espresso in the cafeteria.”
“Great!” Sebag said ironically.
“Of course, I did kick the coffee machine. Mustn’t be too Zen . . . ”
“Ah, now you’re reassuring me.”
“Were you worried?”
“Not really. No one has ever seen an old rugby fullback become as Zen as a Tibetan monk from one day to the next. And since then you’ve been letting Abbas stew?”
“Exactly.”
“How long has it been?”
Molina glanced at his watch.
“Almost an hour and a half.”
“Not bad. Then what?”
“I’m going to have to go back.”
“And say what?”
“I’ll ask my questions again. Still calmly.”
“And since he’ll continue to refuse to answer, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t have any idea,” Molina said, annoyed. “As people say, ‘that’s when it starts to get complicated . . . ’ Now, either we put him in custody or we let him go.”
Sebag noticed the sudden use of “we” at the point where an important decision had to be made. Molina was bringing him back into the game.
“I suppose he didn’t allow you to take his fingerprints?”
“Are you kidding?”
“And he didn’t say anything about what he was doing on the night the monument was damaged or on the day of the murder?”
Molina just shrugged.
“So we don’t have anything! Not against him, or for him, for that matter . . . And in that case there’s no point in hoping for a second that the prosecutor will authorize us to search his home.”
Sebag sank into his chair and turned on his computer.
“We’ve put the cart before the horse. It would have been better to investigate this guy before we called him in. Either we would have found nothing and we’d have let it drop, or we’d have something useful and we could question him more precisely. And then even if he didn’t answer, it would mean police custody and all the rest.”
“It’s a little late to see that now!”
“Yes, I know. But we couldn’t foresee that he wouldn’t give us anything at all. And then yesterday I was obsessed with the witness to the accident.”
“What happened, by the way?”
Sebag summed up what he’d discovered, the absence of real witnesses, and told him about his failure to find other witnesses.
“So you haven’t won yet, then?”
“Not yet.”
“O.K.! What about Abbas?”
“So far as Abbas is concerned, I’m going to take my turn and have a little conversation with him.”
“Good luck! And what am I going to do in the meantime?”
“Play another game?”
Molina didn’t have to be asked twice. His hand was already on the mouse, and his eyes immediately flew back to the screen. In front of the door to Joan Llach’s office, Sebag took a deep breath before entering.
“Hello.”
Émile Abbas didn’t respond to his greeting and watched impassively as he sat down in front of Llach’s computer. Sebag shook the mouse to wake up the machine. He resumed the session Molina had left open.
“So . . . Your name is Émile Abbas. You were born on November 28, 1957, in Algiers. Your father, Mouloud Abbas, was a doctor, and your mother, Geneviève Fontaine, was a nurse. In the same hospital?”
Émile Abbas sighed.
“Is that important?”
The two men looked at each other for a few seconds. Abbas had a lean, hard face with hollow cheeks. His long, pointed nose plunged toward a large, thin mouth. His delicately framed upper lip was supported on a more generous lower lip. Under his straight black eyebrows his eyes shone with a dark light.
Sebag sighed in return.
“No, it isn’t important. But we have forms we have to fill out, you know. And since you don’t want to talk about anything else, we have to do something.”
“I haven’t done anything, and so I don’t have anything to say, anything to justify.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that just because you’re such a nice guy?”
“That’s your business.”
Sebag looked at his watch.
“You could have been outside a long time ago if you’d cooperated. Especially if, as you say, you haven’t done anything.”
“I don’t even know what you’re accusing me of. Your colleague mentioned the destruction of the OAS monument and the murder of a Pied-Noir. The one you already came to see us about at the Collective, right?”
“And you really helped us out a lot that day . . . ”
“We don’t much like ‘collaborating’ with the police.”
“We’ve changed, you know, since the Second World War. The Resistance, the Gestapo, that’s over. Even kids no longer play that game during recess. The only people still playing that game are a handful of old-fashioned activists.”
“The police can’t change, it’s genetic.”
Sebag didn’t want to prolong a debate that would benefit no one. He shook his head several times while Abbas looked at him. Then he lowered his eyes and looked at the computer screen.
“You’re a teacher of technology at the Pablo Picasso Lycée. You are married to Chantal Abbas, née Vila, and you have two children, Samira and Didier. They are both grown-up and have left the family home.”
Abbas sighed again. More loudly.
“Whenever you want, we can talk about more serious matters.”
Abbas did not reply.
“We’d just like you to tell us where you were on the night the monument was destroyed and on the day of the murder. If you have an alibi, we’ll check it out and if it holds up, we’ll let you go. It’s as simple as that.”
“And if I don’t have an alibi? I go directly to jail? And all that because my father was murdered by the OAS fifty years ago? For you, that’s enough to harass decent people and you claim that the police have changed?”
“We’re only human,” Sebag acknowledged. “We have our flaws, and first among them is a cruel lack of imagination. We work in a basic way. For a crime or misdemeanor, we look first for the motive. Here, it’s not money, it’s not a woman, it’s politics. We have reasons to think that Bernard Martinez, the victim, was killed because he used to belong to the OAS. So yes, the murder of your father and the fact that today you’re an active opponent of the former supporters of French Algeria make you . . . ”
“The ideal suspect!”
“I would say rather a person we absolutely have to question, a lead we can’t ignore. If you were a suspect, you’d be in custody, you’d be handcuffed and we’d be searching your home. And all that with the permission of the state prosecutor. We live in a state under the rule of law.”
“My father was murdered, and at the time, the police didn’t make any effort to investigate, and you call that the rule of law?”
“You just said ‘at the time.’ Today, the war is over. The Algerian War and the Second World War. And then, in case you didn’t know it, French policemen were killed by the OAS for having tried to do their jobs.”
“They were a minority!”
“I’ll grant you that, but they died all the same. They deserve your respect.”
Abbas pressed his lips together and said nothing. Sebag had the impression he had scored a point.
“You’ve never found out who killed your father?”
“It was the OAS. The men who did it don’t matter.”
“Yet you have just said that you wish there had been an investigation.”
“It’s hard enough to lose your father. But then to see that no one gives a shit is even worse.”
“I understand.”
“No, you can’t understand,” Abbas replied with scorn. He sat erect on his chair, his hands on his thighs. Sebag saw no hatred in him, nothing but rage. A furious rage capable of spoiling a life but not of killing. Especially not fifty years afterward.
“You’ve never tried to find out who killed your father?”
The scorn in his dark eyes grew.
“If you think I don’t see you coming with your hobnailed boots! I didn’t know this Martinez and I didn’t kill him.”
“Why are you active in the Collective Contra Nostalgeria if it isn’t to settle accounts?”
“I want to settle accounts only with History. No question of letting killers pose as martyrs. That monument in honor of the OAS is already a scandal. The fact that it could be put up in a public place is a scandal. The people whose names are inscribed on it—do you know what they did?”
“The principal names were crushed with a sledgehammer.”
“Bastien-Thiry, Degueldre, Dovecar, and Piegts, those are the names! Four killers sentenced to death by the French Republic and shot, some of them for having tried to assassinate General de Gaulle, and others—well, precisely!—for having killed cops. Do you think it’s O.K. that today monuments to them are put up with the complicity of the public authorities?”
“No.”
This direct response threw Abbas off balance. Sebag continued, blowing cold after blowing warm:
“But destroying that monument is nonetheless a crime. If you weren’t the one who did it, where were you the night it happened?”
“Duty is duty, right? I told you the police would never change. You claim to be against this monument, but you’re prepared to arrest and put in prison the person who destroyed it. That was the logic used by your predecessors who helped deport the Jews in 1940. In thirty years of activism, I’ve learned to mistrust the police. I know it’s better not to say anything. First you demand an alibi, then it will be my fingerprints—your colleague already asked for them, moreover—and finally a sample of my DNA. And once I’m in your files, anything can happen.”
Sebag patiently listened to this anti-cop diatribe. For someone who didn’t talk much, Abbas was beginning to talk a lot. Words eliciting words, it was better to let them come out.
When Abbas finally stopped, Sebag slipped in amiably:
“It’s certain that your fingerprints would make our job easier. Martinez’s murderer left us some beautiful ones. All we need to do is compare them to prove your innocence.”
“And did you find any on the monument?”
Sebag had to admit that they hadn’t.
“You see,” Abbas said triumphantly. “That’s not enough to clear me of everything you want to blame on me. If you want to hassle me, nothing will keep you from continuing to do it.”
“Except the alibi . . . ”
“Does it seem to you that we’re going around in circles?” Abbas retorted.
Sebag rubbed his eyes, then suddenly relaxed.
“O.K., you’re right. We’re going to end this. Do you want something to drink? How about a glass of water, would that do?”
Abbas hesitated before turning down the offer with a wave of his hand.
“If you don’t mind, I’m thirsty,” said Sebag, getting up.
The lieutenant left the room and went to get a cup of water at the fountain in the middle of the corridor. He ran into a young woman cop in uniform and for a few seconds remained so spellbound by her blue, almond-shaped eyes that he forgot to respond to her greeting. He drank his water, threw the cup in the bin, and filled another one. Back in his office, he set the cup in front of Abbas.
“Just in case . . . ”
He moved back toward the door.
“I’m going to get my colleague for the official report on your testimony.”
Molina was already deep in his game. Sebag waited patiently in the doorway.
“You couldn’t get anything out of him, either?” Molina asked, without raising his eyes from the screen.
“No, it’s pointless to waste any more of our time.”
Molina consented to pause his game.
“Do you think he has nothing to do with our two cases?”
“Objectively, we have no reason to implicate or clear him.”
“And subjectively?”
“I may be mistaken, but I don’t see him as a killer, and especially not as a cold-blooded killer. And then he’s married, has children, a job, and friends . . . No, I just can’t imagine it. Obviously, if the investigation into Martinez’s past proves that the little old man played a role in the murder of Abbas’s father, I’ll reconsider my view.”
“What about the monument?”
“He chose collective action in broad daylight, and I’d find it odd if he suddenly started attacking the monument with a hammer at night.”
“But somebody did it! Somebody who wasn’t fond of the OAS!”
“Are you fond of the OAS?”
“No, but I don’t see the connection . . . ”
“I mean that so long as we’re not sure that the damage is linked to the murder and vice versa, I don’t give a damn who destroyed that monument. It was ugly, anyway . . . ”
“I’m not sure they see things that way at the prefecture.”
“It’s true that to keep the peace between these communities, it’d be better that there be no more acts like that one. I’d forgotten that aspect of things.”
Molina got up and joined Sebag in the hallway.
“To sum up, in your view Abbas is pure as the driven snow?”
“That’s how I see it, yes.”
“If Madame Irma says so . . . ”
Molina trusted his partner’s intuitions, but never missed a chance to make fun of them. When they entered Llach’s office, Sebag noted with satisfaction that the water cup was empty. He let Molina sit down in front of the computer. Jacques reread the report out loud, occasionally looking up to see if Abbas agreed. But Abbas remained motionless on his chair, his fingers drumming on his thighs. When he finished reading, Molina hit the print button.
He collected the printed sheets to present them to Abbas. He handed him a pen as well.
“I don’t want to sign it.”
Molina took back the report.
“What you said committed you to nothing, but O.K.,” he said with annoyance. “That’s your right. You can go now, we have nothing more to say to each other.”
Then he added, wanting to sound threatening:
“For the time being.”
“I understood that.”
For the first time, he’d smiled. Sebag opened the door for him.
“Take the stairway at the end of the hall. At the bottom, just push the button on your right to open the door.”
He stepped aside to let Abbas pass. Abbas started to hold out his hand and then thought better of it. He left the office, but once he was in the hallway, he hesitated.
“I . . . if . . . you . . . ”
Abbas looked down at his feet.
“If by chance in the course of your investigation . . . ”
He looked up at Sebag. His eyes were no longer so dark.
“If you discover that this Martinez or one of his buddies played a role in my father’s murder, would you tell me?”
Sebag no longer had in front of him a ferocious and battle-hardened activist but a kid whose father had been taken away from him too soon.
“Of course!” He grinned. “Then you’d be our prime suspect.”
“Of course, how stupid I am . . . ”
He turned on his heel, went down the hallway, and disappeared.
“Go ahead, give him a big kiss while you’re at it!”
Molina, standing up, was furious.
“That guy has been screwing with us for four hours and you whisper sweet nothings to him? It won’t hurt too much, do you want a little Vaseline? And on top of that, you give him a glass of water. Why not a cup of coffee? Oh, yeah, that’s right, you think the coffee here is too disgusting!”
Molina went to grab the cup and throw it in the trashcan. Sebag shouted:
“Stop!”
Jacques froze before he’d touched the cup. Sebag pointed to the desk.
“In the bottom drawer on the left: Llach always keeps plastic bags there.”
Molina, taken aback, obeyed without saying a word. Sebag took the bag and slipped the paper cup Abbas had used into it. Molina let out a long whistle: he’d just understood. Sebag handed the plastic bag back to him.
“Here, you’ve got his prints if you want them, and also a bit of his DNA.”
“You could have taken the opportunity to pull out one of his hairs, while you were at it,” Molina laughed. He was in a better mood.
“So far as that’s concerned, we don’t need to do an analysis. The guy still has brown hair, despite his fifty-four years.”
Molina wrote a made-up name on a self-adhesive label.
“All this isn’t very legal, Lieutenant Sebag.”
“So? And if it ends up definitively removing Abbas from our list of suspects, he won’t hold it against us. But then of course he’ll never know anything about it.”
“And if we find that they are the murderer’s prints?”
“Then we won’t be able to use these prints as evidence, but we’ll have no trouble getting others. But frankly, I don’t think he’s the killer. And neither do you.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t.”
Molina stuck the label on the plastic bag.
“I’ll take care of this right away. It’s Friday; if we want to have the result before Monday . . . ”
Sebag went back to their office. He sat in front of Molina’s computer and finished his game. He enjoyed it, and started another one.
The analysis of the prints came in quickly and confirmed their views. Abbas hadn’t killed Martinez. Sebag immediately informed Castello. Then he began giving serious thought to his weekend. The weather report predicted a very pleasant Saturday—sun, mild temperatures, and moderate wind—but another big storm was supposed to come in on Sunday.