In his new capacity as inter-service liaison officer, Lieutenant Basile Diament, Varappe Division, had been given a minuscule, windowless office at the end of a corridor one floor beneath the attic at number 36. Once the lieutenant had managed to manoeuvre his two metres and 120 kilos behind the desk, the room only seemed smaller. He was like Gulliver in the land of the Smurfs. Only no-one wanted to have lunch with this particular Gulliver, who had gone three weeks now without a banquet.
He would be back soon. A friendly colleague had reassured him that it was just to make a point. No big deal. It would not be for ever. Just do this job and rejoin the fold.
The guy better be right.
Basile Diament had not spent years busting his balls only to wash up in an office narrower than his shoulders. He had put up with too much crap, grinding out each promotion with gritted teeth so he could fold up his uniform, to crack now. Not now he had reached the B.R.I., the holy grail, the elite squad he had trained for day and night, including weekends, always thinking that every extra second of graft would help him stand out from the next person. Having landed grants for his studies and made his mother so proud, Lieutenant Basile Diament was not about to give up because of this minor speed bump. It was only a warning. Nothing but a warning. He would have to toe the line and bounce back, just like at the start.
The start. He thought back to his first day on patrol, when he had pulled on his uniform, fastened his buttons, buckled his belt and straightened his cap. An outfit that confirmed him as a soldier of the Republic, an embodiment of law, order and security, for everyone. He had walked down the street, shoulders back, with the sense that he was part of something greater than himself: in these clothes, he represented the nation; an offence against him was an offence against the whole of France. And if he himself was at fault, then the entire nation would suffer from his dereliction. Basile Diament was keenly aware of what he stood for and the faith people placed in him. He was there to defend them.
In the armoury, along with all his colleagues in blue, he had grinned from ear to ear when he was handed his service weapon. His weapon. He had tested its weight in his fingers, ejecting and replacing the clip, checking the safety catch before sliding it into his holster. Each motion guided by the thousands of images he had gobbled up from T.V. He was mimicking the pros, even though officially he was becoming one. The officer in charge of the armoury handed him a piece of paper to sign.
“Just don’t go selling it to your pals in the banlieues,” he had said with a sneer as he stowed away his clipboard.
What pals? What banlieues? His mother had worked all hours of the day to keep them within the Périphérique, and luckily enough she managed it. Basile had grown up on rue de Belleville in Paris’s twentieth arrondissement. His mother, a white woman from the Ardèche, had married his father, a West Indian, and the two of them had had a son together, a good Parisian half-blood.
First posting: border police.
His ranking from his examinations meant he had little choice in the matter, but it was nearby and he was happy. The young Diament had taken up his post. In uniform and in an airport to boot, life seemed limitless, as expansive as Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle itself.
Before long, thin men with glazed looks started arriving. Hoping for asylum, they presented their poorly forged documents that did not stand up to Diament’s scrutiny. He had to tell them no, to try to explain. As if they were not tired enough already. He would point them towards an area on the far side where they could wait, before they were told no again.
Diament did not go in for politics. He had no opinions and knew that decisions were made on high because the people at the top were aware of the bigger picture. Diament just said no. But he often got the feeling that he was the only person not to derive pleasure from it.
At times, the young policeman wondered whether his skin colour had played a part in this posting. Whether it might have been deemed the safest way to judge how far his loyalty stretched. Whether the powers-that-be were afraid that his half-caste status inevitably made him into a brother, an accomplice, as if gangs formed with the help of a Pantone colour chart. In his team, there were a couple of second-generation guys of North African origin. Were they going through some kind of initiation ceremony too? That said, the police now recruited from a far wider range of backgrounds. Things had changed.
Some things. Perhaps not his white working-class pals.
Every morning, Diament ignored the mocking looks as he opened his locker. The disparaging remarks and the jokes – of course you’ve got to be able to take a joke. We’re all on the same side, right? Right, guys? These men – just a handful of loudmouths, really – were scraping the barrel in terms of intelligence, leaning hard on the one quality that afforded them any importance whatsoever. They were white – that was all they had going for them, so they wore it on their sleeves, buffing it up, massaging it to make up for their piddly frames. Basile Diament’s height spared him any direct confrontation, not to mention the need to talk back. He would shut his locker, check the final button on his uniform, and leave the changing room. He kept to his path.
His mother had warned him about this from an early age: “Until you’re thirty, don’t react to anything, my boy. No-one makes wise decisions until they’re at least that age. Play the game until you’re thirty, then take the time to think and speak. Before that, it’s just too tedious.”
Diament had put up a defence made of steel and concrete. The structure was sound, albeit with a bit of flexibility. Enough to weather strong winds or withstand the odd tremor. But one day the first bolt would come loose and the whole thing would come crashing down. Not anytime soon, he hoped.
He returned to his booth, with its bulletproof window, and sat on his stool.
*
Instinctively, the thin man came towards him. A flicker appeared in his eyes when he saw the officer; not a roaring fire, more like the last gasp of a match. No. No, Diament begged inside. Don’t let hope creep up on you. My colour means nothing. Not to you, at least. Only to them.
In his bedroom at night, Basile cried often, to release the pressure, to wash away the memory of those faces that had reached the end of the road, but were still so far from arriving. They would have left again already. In the space of a few hours, they would remake a journey that had taken them so many months and so much grief. For a moment or two, Basile would let his tears flow with theirs. He had been a traitor to both factions.
He had stuck at it, passing his exams and earning his stripes. He played the game, waiting patiently to turn thirty. He was still going, and soon he would be back in action.
The month before, it had taken just one second for him to stray off-course. One fleeting moment at the police fair and here he was in this tiny office.
It was recoverable. Open dossiers, maintain communications and soon he would be back in the Varappe Division.
Commissaire Serge Rufus’s murder.
Their instructions: only hand over files that are of no interest; forget to include important sheets in their reports. We don’t want those loose cannons investigating anything of substance. Don’t let them snap at our heels. The case was practically sewn up anyway. A guy had confessed that very morning.
So, which files would he send next?
Diament smiled. This pile here seemed just the ticket.