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finally happens, but nothing happens and gradually the whispering dies away, interest fades, it’s getting late, a few hours later and as the night draws on, excitement becomes irritation, the first shouts of protest come from the windows,
Can you keep it down? There are people here trying to sleep
.
    “Maybe they should call the police,” Camille says.
    Louis, as always, is more stoical.
    On his map, he has marked out the main roads leading away from the scene of the abduction. There are four possible routes the woman could have taken before being kidnapped. Place Falguière, boulevard Pasteur or rue Vigée-Lebrun or, from the other direction, rue du Cotentin. She might haven taken a bus – either the 88 or the 95. The nearest
métro
stations are quite some distance from the scene, but can’t be discounted: Pernety, Plaisance, Volontaires, Vaugirard …
    If they don’t find anything, tomorrow they’ll have to widen the search area, comb further afield in search of some scrap of information and for that, they’ll have to wait for people to get up, to wait for tomorrow, as if they’ve got time.
    Kidnapping is a singular crime: unlike murder, the victim is not present; you have to imagine them. This is what Camille is trying to do. With a pencil he sketches the figure of a woman walking down the street. He looks at it critically: too elegant, asociety woman. Maybe Camille is getting too old to draw women like that. He puts a line through it and starts again, making telephone calls as he sketches. Why does he imagine she is young? Do people kidnap old women? For the first time he thinks of her not as a woman but as a girl. “A girl” has been kidnapped on rue Falguière. He goes back to the drawing. Jeans, short hair, handbag slung over her shoulder. No. Another sketch: in this one she has a pencil skirt, a big bust. Exasperated, he crosses it out. He pictures her young, but actually he can’t picture her at all. When he pictures her, he sees Irène.
    There was never any other woman in his life. On the rare occasion the opportunity has presented itself to a man of his height, his sex drive has been complicated by too many factors – a feeling of guilt, a touch of self-loathing and the fear of resuming normal relations with women – so things never worked out. That’s not quite true: there was one exception. A colleague who’d got herself into a jam, a girl he’d helped out of a tight spot. Turned a blind eye. What he saw on her face at the time was relief, nothing more. Later he had run into her by chance near his apartment. They went for a drink on the terrace at La Marine, then on to dinner and – one thing leads to another – you go upstairs for a nightcap and then … In normal circumstances, it’s not the sort of behaviour a decent, upstanding officer should allow. But she was sweet, a free spirit, and seemed genuinely eager to show her gratitude. Or at least this is what Camille told himself later to allay his guilt. It had been more than two years since he’d touched a woman, that was one reason – but it wasn’t reason enough. What he had done had been unethical. That casual, tender evening, they hadn’t felt it necessary to think about feelings. She knew hisstory – it’s one everyone in the
brigade criminelle
knows: Verhœven’s wife was murdered. She had said things, simple everyday things, she had undressed in the next room and immediately climbed on top of him, with no foreplay, they looked into each other’s eyes, Camille had closed his at the end – he couldn’t help himself. They run into each other from time to time; she lives close by. Forty-something, maybe. And six inches taller than him. Anne. Tactful, too: she hadn’t spent the night, had told him she had to get home. It was the right thing to do; it spared Camille pain. When they run into each other, she acts as if nothing happened. The last time, there was a crowd of people and she even shook hands with him. Why is he