SOVRENCOURT
There are two kinds of policemen, and Benoît Sovrencourt understood this. There are policemen who solve crimes often and policemen who solve crimes rarely. This is not always a matter of wits, or of hard work, or of mere good luck. Some policemen have easy beats: they loiter at intersections, looking for jaywalkers; they trace embezzled funds through amateurs’ bank accounts; they cradle TV remotes in their palms, skimming forward and reverse through department-store security tapes. Other policemen, policemen like Sovrencourt, have more difficult duties. They chase ghosts. They follow footprints that disappear. They look at empty spaces and imagine the things that once rested there.
Theo Potiris was not the ghost Sovrencourt had hoped to catch. Potiris was the one he had hoped would lead him to others. Immersed in one of his regular stakeouts, spying on the crew he called the Black Cats, Sovrencourt had observed a stranger with a cheerful face and tousled hair, sitting uncheerful, surveilling the gang’s parked motorcycles. Who was he? Why had he followed Jean-François Tanguay to the Black Cats’ clubhouse, yet hung back, to peer through a window?
So Sovrencourt brought him in. Requisitioned an interrogation room at the local precinct, asked some questions. The man seemed totally clueless but also completely dishonest. He was hiding something, Sovrencourt was certain. He added him to a watch list and it was only a matter of weeks before the detective’s suspicions were borne out. Despite Potiris’s claims that he made his living (a) working for a certified forecasting association, the Rabbit’s Foot SRK, and also (b) for his family’s grocery business, the mathematician/grocer was soon spending whole days and nights with the Black Cats. These interactions extended well beyond normal business hours and often took place in the location’s basement – an area suspiciously blank on the diner/hardware store’s official plans.
Inspecteur Sovrencourt and the Agency were not concerned with the enforcement of petty city bylaws. They didn’t care about the accuracy of blueprints. The Black Cats had first appeared on their radar years earlier, following a notorious incident at the Port of New Orleans. (A motorcyclist hidden in a shipping container, a fire at a warehouse, a yacht that was never found.) Their names next surfaced in the aftermath of an operation at Paris-CDG, where undercover police seized half a terabyte of records from a sky-to-sea chartered-cargo ring. Two officers were injured in that raid. Over the next six months, their financial unit flagged multiple tax irregularities – a succession of trails converging on one commercial address. Sovrencourt was brought in following a bank heist in Colombo. There was a later episode near Belfast. Yet whenever clues began to stack up, the sense of a mystery reaching conclusion, the trail would go cold. Once it was a security guard who forgot to replace a surveillance tape. Once, in Denmark, a freak snowstorm destroyed forensic evidence. Despite these misfortunes, or perhaps because of them, Sovrencourt had become convinced that the thieves’ operations were larger, more wide-spanning, than the Agency presumed. He began to wonder about the arms trade. And also, naturally, drugs.
Until this summer, Sovrencourt’s investigation had the standard staggered rhythm of contemporary detective work. He had never liked working with partners so he sat alone in his 1995 Buick Century, back-issues of Nouveau Projet and the New Yorker stacked on the passenger seat, observing Le Black Cat’s front door in his rear-view mirror. Police chatter rustled over the radio. From time to time his flip-phone rattled in the cup-holder, messages from colleagues at their desks. Sometimes he’d call them back. Sometimes he’d record somebody’s arrival or departure on a yellow legal pad.
Other days Sovrencourt drove to the city’s grandiose downtown library, claiming a desk in one of the reading rooms. He draped his overcoat on a brass hook; tilted the banker’s shade; sat. He opened a secure connection on his notebook computer, browsing data from Agency partners. He examined the Black Cats’ flight histories, speeding tickets, customs claims, potentially correlated police reports. Sometimes all it took to break a case was a trifling correlation, an unlikely coincidence: a gift. With his thumb on the 
key, his ring finger touched S. A ruby sparkled.
Late one Sunday night, in an office hidden behind oak-panelled walls, a casino’s chief fraud prevention officer showed Sovrencourt a series of surveillance clips, captured in the games room. A suite of familiar faces, under different wigs, watching the bounce of a phenolic resin ball across a roulette wheel.
In late July, Sovrencourt went to Zurich to present his findings to his superiors. They commended his work, assigned an additional officer to the case. The detective ate a plate of geschnetzelte Kalbsleber at a café overlooking the Limmat, drained a single glass of Petite Arvine. The following morning, after his red-eye touched down at home, Sovrencourt’s cellphone shuddered with a notification. All five Black Cats had boarded a plane to Taipei.
Taiwan is not China, but this destination still posed challenges. It took days to obtain the proper clearances and by then he had given up any hope of having eyes on his targets. In a city of so many millions he ruled out a needle-in-a-haystack approach. Sovrencourt resolved instead to be ready for the next time.
Which explained what led to the arrest of Theo Potiris on the desert steppe of Merzouga, 400 kilometres southeast of Marrakesh. The Sûreté Nationale de Maroc had been uncommonly willing partners – their interest piqued by the entanglement of a certain billionaire foreign landowner. Unfortunately the Sûreté’s zeal outstripped their competence, or else their interest in Z. Largo overwhelmed their attention to police work. When Sovrencourt and his deputy charged through the gates, sights set on the contraband, their partners at the scene either missed, or overlooked, the Black Cats’ main party. Instead of apprehending five suspects, Benoît Sovrencourt was left with only one.
As Sovrencourt walked toward him across the sand, Potiris’s expression had wavered between abject confusion and something close to awe.
Bonjour, Theodore, the detective said. Would you please come with me?
The early signs were good. In Sovrencourt’s experience, the more docile a suspect the more likely a confession. At their first encounter, Potiris had been jumpy, squirrelly, weird. This time the man came quietly, neither panicky nor proud. He was polite, cooperative, thoughtful. This thoughtfulness, Sovrencourt realized later, should have been a warning. They sat together in the back seat of a Moroccan police cruiser, dawn bluing the edges of the sky. Giddy Sûreté officers had established the perimeter and now were swarming across the crime scene: cameras strobed at footprints, tire tracks; women in gloves and headscarves dusted the motorcycle/sidecar for fingerprints. One entire team was devoted to the contraband – cordoning off the site, documenting its position, preparing the material for transport. As his deputy moved among them, meticulous and confident, Sovrencourt was able to lean back in his seat and concentrate on Potiris. The man seemed melancholy. The rising morning light hadn’t reached his eyes.
So, Sovrencourt said.
I’m on holiday, said Potiris.
Sovrencourt set his jaw.
It’s such beautiful country, what I’ve seen of it.
Sovrencourt’s lips curled. What exactly have you seen of it?
Less than I’d like.
He took him back to Marrakesh. Just the two of them, alone for the long drive. Sovrencourt thought that the story would come spilling out of him. Potiris was silent.
You understand we know everything, Sovrencourt said.
They had stopped at a roadside stand. Sovrencourt returned to the car with a pair of merguez sandwiches, two oranges, coffee. Potiris left his sandwich, began unpeeling the orange. The rind came off in a single supple spiral. Sovrencourt watched him slip a segment of fruit into his mouth.
Good orange, Potiris said.
Your friends have abandoned you, said Sovrencourt. You don’t owe them anything.
The man continued eating.
Here’s some advice, Potiris said finally, wiping his hands on his jeans. Not everything’s a transaction.
Potiris refused to change his story. He had come to Morocco on vacation. He was travelling alone. Why was he in the desert? He was looking at the stars. As an alibi it was terrible. Hadn’t Potiris known his seatmates on the airplane? What about his companions at the Argo, whom the hotel staff remembered well?
Fellow travellers, Potiris said. I can’t recall their names.
The man did admit that he had met a friend at Largo’s Clarity Retreat. We were catching up, he said. The woman’s name came up empty in the Agency databank; Sovrencourt made a note to research further.
What about the motorcycle?
What about it?
It has a sidecar.
There was a discount on the rental so I took it, Potiris said. Will you make sure it gets returned?
After speaking to the rental agent, the deputy was certain Potiris had paid him off. But there was nothing to do about it. The agent described the matter as a simple rental, nothing special, and confirmed that Potiris came alone.
The real blow occurred when the lab results came back. By then they had returned home. Forensics had collected the contraband at the airport; thirty-six hours later the report came in. Sovrencourt stared at his phone in the foyer of the precinct. Negative for everything. Cocaine, meth, fentanyl, nothing addictive or hazardous, weaponizable – not even flammable. The tote contained sand. Pale dirt. Unusually high in feldspar. Traces of gypsum. Origins unknown.
He called the lab, practically yelling into the receiver. Sovrencourt, he said, mispronouncing his own name. He said it the way Americans would say it: sovereign court. He wanted to know if the powder could be a concealant, one substance disguising another. Or was it radioactive?
Forensics laughed. They suggested that he could use it for his beach-volleyball court.
Although Potiris was still in custody, without actual illicit goods it wasn’t clear how – or why – Sovrencourt could keep him. It had already been two weeks. The detective went to see him in his cell, which Potiris shared with two other men.
It’s sand! Sovrencourt said.
Potiris shrugged.
One of the other men laughed.
Later that evening, at a police facility south of the city, Sovrencourt washed all the worthless powder down a drain. Water slooped and sloshed across the surface of the sand; the detective, sitting on a plastic crate, held the hose in one hand.
Eventually they reached a representative for Zooey Largo. The businessman had no comment. He denied any involvement. He did not wish to press any charges.
Theo Potiris was set free.
During their final conversation – on a sunny Monday morning, their table scattered with the shattered remains of two croissants – Sovrencourt asked Potiris what he would do if he let him go.
Potiris seemed surprised by the question. He hitched forward in his seat, looking at his intertwined fingers.
Eventually, he said, I guess I’d get back to work.