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you manage to find out?’
    ‘This and that. Your godfather has been in the drugs squad, the gambling squad …’
    ‘… and seventeen years a commissaire in criminal justice,’ the old man calmly finished the sentence. ‘A position from which I was dismissed with dishonour. Chucked out without my service medal after twenty-eight years. With a reprimand, disgrace and public ignominy.’
    ‘A fair summary,’ said Lucien, nodding.
    ‘Terrific,’ said Marc through clenched teeth, glaring at Lucien. ‘If you knew, why didn’t you say anything?’
    ‘Because to me it’s wholly unimportant,’ said Lucien.
    ‘Great,’ said Marc. ‘Uncle, nobody asked you to do anything, not to come downstairs, or to listen at doors, and as for you, Lucien, nobody asked you to go peeping into papers and then open your big mouth. That could have waited, couldn’t it?’
    ‘No, as a matter of fact it couldn’t,’ said the older Vandoosler. ‘Madame Siméonidis needs your help in a delicate matter, so it’s best she should know that there’s an ex-policeman in the attic next door. Better that she has the means to decide whether to withdraw her request or not. It’s more honest this way.’
    Marc looked defiantly at Mathias and Lucien.
    ‘OK, if that’s the way you want it,’ he said, even more vehemently. ‘Armand Vandoosler is an ex-flic, true enough. And he has been disgraced. But he’s still a flic and he’s still bent, believe me. And he still takes liberties with the law, and with life in general. And those liberties may or may not come back to haunt him.’
    ‘As a rule they do,’ Vandoosler confirmed.
    ‘And that’s not all,’ Marc went on. ‘You can please yourselves what you do about it. But I’m warning you, he’s my godfather and my uncle. My mother’s brother. So, it’s not negotiable. That’s how it is, full stop. Now, if that means you don’t want to stay any more in this patched-up house …’
    ‘“The disgrace”’,’ said Sophia. ‘That’s what the neighbours call it.’
    ‘OK, “the disgrace”. Well, if you want to leave because my godfather was a policeman in his own special way, it’s up to you. We’ll manage somehow, me and him.’
    ‘Why on earth is he getting so worked up?’ said Mathias, looking mildly around with his clear blue eyes.
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Lucien. ‘He’s highly strung. They were like that in the Middle Ages, you know. My great-aunt used to work in the slaughterhouse, but I don’t go round boasting about it.’
    Marc looked down, and folded his arms, suddenly calm again. He glanced at the opera singer from the Western Front. What would she say, now she knew about the disgraced policeman living next door, in the house that the neighbours called ‘the disgrace’?
    Sophia guessed what he was thinking. ‘It doesn’t bother me at all that he’s here,’ she said.
    ‘For reliability,’ said Vandoosler, ‘a disgraced policeman is actually a good bet. He’ll listen and try to find out answers, but he’s obliged to keep his mouth shut. The ideal confidant in fact.’
    ‘He may have had his faults,’ said Marc in a quieter voice, ‘but my godfather was a pretty good investigator. He might be able to help.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said Vandoosler, looking at Sophia. ‘Madame Siméonidis will make up her own mind. If there is a problem, that is. As for these three,’ he said, pointing to the young men, ‘they’re not entirely half-witted. They may be able to help too.’
    ‘Who said they were half-witted?’ said Sophia.
    ‘Well, it’s sometimes best to make things clear,’ said Vandoosler. ‘My nephew Marc now … I know a thing or two about him. I looked after him in Paris when he was twelve, that is, almost grown up. He was already vague, pig-headed, on a high, off-balance, but too clever to sit still. I never was able to do much with him, except to impress on him a few sound principles about the disturbances one must constantly bring