My hands are white with cold as I lean against the window and pull up a browser, going to her page. I scan down the videos, past the couple on the bridge, the busker counting his money in le Bois de Boulogne, the group of students huddling together and checking for onlookers and then, there it is.

The video I’m remembering.

I click on it.

I watch a group of well-dressed people swirl around each other in Le Voltage. Then the camera focuses on the opposite wall. Two people are speaking.

One is Agnès Bisset.

And the other is a certain tall and creepy fake PI.

Chapitre Vingt-huit

Chapitre vingt-huit

My stomach twists as I reach for my phone, scroll through to my Instagram messages and stare down at my unanswered words: Noah, can we talk. It’s important.

It’s Friday morning – over 24 hours since he was taken in for questioning – and according to Google, that’s the standard length of time to be garde à vue. So I know he has his phone back.

I also know he’s seen my message. I know this as there’s a little ‘seen’ beneath my words. Yet he has chosen not to answer.

And I need him to answer.

Because there are only two reasons Agnès Bisset would be having me followed. One of them is: Noah, jealousy, the usual suspect. The other is: she somehow knows I’m onto her. And call it a journalistic hunch, but I just know it’s the second one.

Which means this is a real story.

The kind of story that makes a career.

She’s following me because she’s scared I’m going to expose her.

Which I absolutely fucking will. But I need more information. The sort of information someone like Noah might have. Because he was married to her. He must have seen something.

I reach for my phone and try again. I can’t tell him what I know over text, it’s too volatile and what if Ms Bisset has spyware on his US phone too, like she did on his other one?

And so I settle on: Please.

And then I take a deep breath, look back at the page on my screen and glance over the paragraph I’ve now read and reread ten times in the last thirty minutes. Hyacinth sent me back notes on my photography exhibition article this morning and she wants it in by 5 pm. Fair enough, I should be well and truly done with it by now but I can’t focus. I don’t care about an exhibition right now. I care about things like the fact that creepy fake PI was probably following Sabine too. He’s probably the one who killed her.