“French guy, no noticeable accent.”

“I think he’s a big man. Physically. Any way of tracing the call?”

“No. Even if I wanted to and I don’t. We would need to have an open investigation approved by a magistrate. But there is nothing here that would interest a magistrate. Just a phone that you illegally took off some kid you mugged.”

“Alright let’s get out of this place.”

We sat in her car.

I said, “Ever have complaints about the kids on trail bikes?”

She placed her hands on the wheel, looking at her nails. “Sure, we get complaints about them all the time. Harassment, disorderly conduct, noise. They’re what we have for local hooligans.”

“Do they all come from Les Brosses?”

“Depending upon who you talk to, all of France’s social issues come from places like Les Brosses.” She turned her big and beautiful eyes on me. “But look on the bright side, I come from Les Brosses.”

“It’s just a place right?”

“It’s just a place that has more than its share of poverty. But more than its share of hope and aspiration as well.”

I told her about the migrant trafficking I had witnessed earlier. She wasn’t surprised. “Any time someone wants something badly, there will be more than enough people willing to take advantage of their situation.” She looked up at some movement in a residential block window. “The situation with migrants is spawning an underground economy. You’ve got smugglers of all kinds either exploiting migrants to carry drugs, exploiting female migrants, or exploiting migrants who want to get into hard to reach places.”

“Like the UK.”

“Right.”

“Why do they want to get to the UK?”

“Perceived opportunities, linguistic and economic, I guess. Or they may have family there already.”

“So trafficking in migrants wouldn’t surprise anyone.”

“Nobody would be surprised. The BRI is heavily involved in those kinds of operations. The municipal police doesn’t deal with it directly. It’s out of our jurisdiction because by its nature, smuggling and migration crosses national boundaries.”

“Is it illegal to extract money from migrants in exchange for transport?”

“If they are illegal migrants, yes. There are occasional prosecutions. Usually when political will shifts in that direction. Temporarily.”

“I think Gilles Vaugeois was caught up in something tangentially related to this. Would the police be interested in the connection?”

“Frankly, you would need to come up with something more than ‘I think’.”

“What would happen then?”

“Municipal Police don’t handle investigations. Rigalle just hands over anything we’ve got to regional agencies, like the BRI.”

“Rigalle makes those decisions.”

“The mayor signs it. Rigalle’s the commanding officer, but he answers to the mayor. All Municipal Police in France are under the direct command of local mayors.”