A few hours later, Évrard walked into the small room where Dax was working on the e-fit along with the witness. The shopkeeper did not even notice the newcomer.
“How about the eyes, bigger or smaller?” the lieutenant asked, his hand on the mouse.
“A bit bigger. But then he did have deceptively thick lenses.”
The man was choosing his words with a lot of care, as though he had registered that Dax might not be the brightest spark. He seemed eager to get it over and done with.
“Does this seem like a good resemblance, sir? We can move onto the nose if you’re happy?”
Évrard found Dax attentive and amiable, as always. He applied himself. She skirted round the desk to look at the screen and immediately understood the witness’s reservations. Ever the bluffer, she managed to ask the lieutenant for an explanation without betraying her emotions.
“Do you consider this system more reliable?”
Dax, concentrating hard on his portrait, answered without looking up from the screen.
“The Police Judiciaire refused to give us any e-fit software. Apparently it costs a bomb. So I set up an account on this. First twenty levels are free, you see. Working well, wouldn’t you say? Realistic, no?”
Leaning in for a closer look, Évrard was inclined to agree.
“Seems spot-on to me.”
*
In the sitting room, Capestan was thumbing through the article from La Provence.
“This is extraordinary! It can’t be a coincidence.”
“No,” Orsini said. “The M.O. is too close, as are the dates.”
The staging of Jacques Maire’s murder in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue had the same complexion as Commissaire Rufus’s in more ways than one. It was now up to them to scrutinise this killing and find the link between the victims.
When Orsini brought this article to her attention, Capestan had been examining the profiles of the suspects that number 36 had just placed in custody. The weapon used to shoot Rufus had been used in the murder of a fence a few years back. At the time, the two men now under arrest had been questioned and released without charge. No clear link with Rufus, but Capestan did not think for a moment that she had all the documents at her disposal.
Orsini’s article was a game-changer. This identical crime in Provence turned their inquiry on its head, giving the team a strategic advantage. How would they ram this home? Sharing the information was not just the honourable thing to do; it was the responsible option too. These were murder investigations, after all. Plus it would give them the chance to rub something in their rivals’ faces for a bit. Keeping quiet, however, would let them get their noses well and truly in front. Tempting. So, should they tell Diament? Buron? Capestan barely had time to consider it. The telephone was blaring out. It was the landline with its particularly aggressive ring. Buron, no doubt. She excused herself with a nod to Orsini, who went back to his office to work on the lead.
It was indeed the directeur:
“Capestan, have you hacked into a business’s website without permission from the public prosecutor and without covering your tracks?”
“Errr, that’s not . . . impossible,” the commissaire said, looking across the room at Dax.
“Not impossible? Not impossible? Did you or did you not give the order?”
“For the hack? Yes, absolutely. I was only hoping the break-in would be more discreet.”
“Now there’s a fine example of contrition and regret, Capestan! ‘I didn’t think I’d get busted.’ You sound like a bloody teenager!”
“There’s an element of that,” the commissaire said with a grin.
“We won’t be able to use any information you found. A formal complaint has been lodged, you know.”
“We’ll add that one to the pile . . . In the meantime, we’ve just hit on an interesting lead. The street sign sold on the site we hacked links Rufus’s murder with that of another man in the Vaucluse. Same method.”
This revelation nudged Buron’s disgruntlement into the background.
“Go on.”
Capestan summarised the article from La Provence. She also brought him up to speed on their findings relating to the enamel sign. She could sense the cogs turning in the directeur’s head down the line.
“How did you make the link? Provence is a long way away. Cases like this are out of our jurisdiction.”
“Orsini is an avid collector of press cuttings.”
“True, I’d forgotten that.”
“We’re currently making up an e-fit, which I was intending to send over to Lieutenant Diament.”
“No. As I’ve already said, any such e-fit will have been obtained illegally from a hacked website. I think it would be unwise to compromise all the teams’ investigations, Capestan. Just yours is quite enough.”
“What about the other case – do we hold onto that info. too or shall we play the game?”
“Hmmm, the other case . . . Listen: the B.R.I. and Crim. have their own lines of inquiry that are proceeding very nicely. Let’s not spread ourselves too thinly. Look into that yourselves, for the time being.”
“Monsieur le Directeur?”
“Yes, commissaire?”
“Are you going to come out with it straight away, or will I have to guess like last time?”
She could hear Buron’s smile broadening into the receiver.
“There’s nothing to guess, Capestan. This is simply about considering other leads and methods. At the moment, the B.R.I. are making like Scorsese – they’ve only got eyes for De Niro. At least your rabble brings a bit of variety.”
“My rabble, as you insist on calling them, have – ”
“Yes, yes, I know. By the way, you’re getting a new recruit tomorrow.”
“A new recruit?”
“D’Artagnan. He was let out of the psych. ward this weekend. He’s one of yours, no doubt about it. He got a mention in the paperwork when your squad was set up.”
D’Artagnan. Real name Henri Saint-Lô. His nickname stemmed from his belief that he had started his career as a musketeer to the king, making him immortal. Quite literally a man for the ages.
After hanging up, Capestan went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. While the kettle was coming to the boil, she went to the terrace to join Lebreton who was sitting in a deckchair with his long legs stretched in front of him, smoking as he read the autopsy report.
“Anything?” she said.
“Nothing we didn’t know already, apart from a bit more precision on the time of the murder: between 6.00 and 6.30 a.m. And yes, he was beaten up, with fists and with the butt of a pistol. One, maybe two people.”
A squeak caught their attention. It was Merlot’s rat, who was wiggling towards his bowl at the foot of the small rhododendron. The two officers watched as he took a few sips. Lebreton tapped his cigarette on the ashtray at his feet, and, between drags, said drily:
“It could have been a pig.”
Capestan stared at the rodent for a few seconds.
“True, we did escape lightly,” she agreed, before changing the subject. “We’re going to have a meeting tomorrow morning, bright and early. Orsini has come across another murder with exactly the same M.O. as Rufus’s. He’s looking for additional info. and we’re going to review it. The article is in the sitting room if you want to take a look in advance.”
“Yes, of course. Just let me finish this first,” Lebreton said, waving the autopsy report.
Back at her desk, steaming mug in hand, the commissaire began rummaging through her papers for the profile of the fabled musketeer. Eventually she found it and switched on her lamp to study it.
She was so engrossed in her reading that she did not hear Dax approaching, forcing the lieutenant to alert her of his presence by knocking her desk like it was a door. Standing tall with his shoulders straight, he handed her a document that he was clasping in both hands.
“The e-fit, commissaire. It’s ready.”
“Thank you, lieutenant,” she said with a smile.
Her smile vanished the instant she set eyes on the image. The man did indeed have brown hair, a beard and glasses, and was an average height, but he was also covered in long green fur, and armed with a sword and scabbard. A speechless Capestan simply pointed at them as she glared at Dax.
“Oh, don’t worry about those – that was just to give Évrard a laugh,” the lieutenant said, squirming a little. “It’s ‘World of Warcraft’.”
“‘World of Warcraft’?”
“Well, since we don’t have any Police Judiciaire software to make up e-fits, I used the system for creating avatars on ‘World of Warcraft’. It’s an online game set in a fantasy world. Come on, you must have heard of it? There are elves, orcs, gnomes . . . You can create some awesome characters! And because the shopkeeper couldn’t remember what clothes the guy was wearing, I thought it might be funny . . . O.K., I’ll redo the body. But I can’t guarantee I’ll find a shirt and trousers . . .”
“They didn’t give you the software?”
Capestan – raging inside about this latest example of institutional miserliness, yet another insult from the powers-that-be – examined the picture a second time. Overall, the image screamed online video game, but the finish was strikingly realistic. Dax was surprising her more and more.
“It was an ingenious idea, lieutenant. Super work, well done.”
Swelling with pride, Dax made to return to his station.
“Just one thing, though – you didn’t delete your tracks after hacking into persorigolo.com, did you?”
“Well no, you didn’t ask me to.”
“True, true, I didn’t specifically request that. Next time, though, especially for the telephone records – stay under the radar. Always. That must be your default setting.”
“O.K., noted,” Dax said, literally noting it on a Post-it to be stuck on the edge of his screen: Delete illegal hacks always.
Just the sort of aide-memoire you want lying around when a suit pops in for a visit.