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casualty department.”
    Shots fired? At Anne? During a hold-up? It is difficult to make sense of the words, impossible to imagine the scene. Anne and “armed robbery” are concepts that have nothing in common . . .
    The woman on the telephone explained that, when she was found, Anne did not have a bag or any form of identification; officers had discovered her name and address from the mobile telephone lying nearby.
    “We called her home number, but there was no reply.”
    So they had dialled the number Anne had called the most frequently – Camille’s number.
    The woman asked his surname for her report. She pronounced it “Verona”. Camille corrected her: “Verhœven”. There was a brief silence and then she asked him to spell it.
    This triggered something in Camille’s mind.
    Verhœven is hardly a common surname, and in the police force it is very unusual. And, frankly, Camille is not the sort of policeman people forget. It is not simply the matter of his uncommonly small stature, every officer knows his history, his reputation, they know about Irène, about the Alex Prévost case. To most people, Camille might as well have a tattoo reading “As seen on T.V.”. He has made a number of high-profile appearances on television; cameramen favour an angled shot of his hawk-like features, his balding pate. But the assistant had clearly never heard about Verhœven, the renowned commandant de police , the T.V. appearances: she asked him to spell his name.
    In hindsight, Camille decides that this is the first piece of good news in a day that bodes no others.
    “Ferroven, did you say?” the girl said.
    “That’s right,” Camille replied, “Ferroven.”
    And he spelled it for her.
    *
    2.00 p.m.
    Such is the nature of the human animal: give them an accident and people immediately hang out of their windows. As long as there’s a flashing police light or a smear of blood, there will be a rubbernecker there to pry. And right now, there are lots of them. I mean, an armed robbery in the middle of Paris, shots fired . . . Disneyland has nothing on this.
    In theory the street is cordoned off, but that doesn’t stop pedestrians strolling past. The order has been given that only residents are allowed through the barrier, but it’s a waste of time – everyone claims to be a resident because everyone wants to know what the hell is going on. Things have calmed down a little, but from what people are saying, it was chaos this morning. With all the police cars, police vans, forensics teams and motorcycles clogging up the Champs-Élysées, the city was gridlocked from Place de la Concorde to l’Étoile and from the boulevard Malesherbes to the Palais de Tokyo. I have to say that just knowing I’m responsible for all that chaos is kind of exhilarating.
    When you’ve fired a shotgun at a woman covered in blood and made off, tyres shrieking, in a four-by-four with fifty grand’s worth of jewels, coming back to the crime scene gives you a little thrill, like Proust and his madeleine. It’s quite pleasant, actually. It’s not hard to be cheerful when your plans work out. There’s a little café on Georges-Flandrin right next to the Monier. The perfect location. It’s called Le Brasseur. The noise is deafening. Everyone babbling and arguing. It’s very simple: everyone saw everything, heard everything, knows everything.
    I stand at the far end of the bar, keeping a low profile, away from the people milling in the doorway, I blend in, I listen.
    Fuckwits, the lot of them.
    *
    2.15 p.m.
    The autumn sky looks as though it has been painted especially for this cemetery. There are lots of people. This is the advantage of serving officers, they turn up to funerals en masse so you are guaranteed a crowd.
    From a distance, Camille spots Armand’s family, his wife, his children, his brothers and sisters. Well groomed, ramrod straight, desolate, serious. He does not know what they are like in reality, but they look like a family of