Cover

Title Page

Dedication

To Flora,

in memory of our conversations

that winter during those

four-in-the-morning feedings…

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Epigraph

The problem of the night remains intact.

How to come through it?

Henri Michaux

Map

Smugglers’ Way

Introduction

The Maiden

Pass by! Oh, pass me by!

Go, cruel man of bones!

I am yet young! Leave me, dear one,

And touch me not.

Death

Give me thy hand, thou fair and gentle creature!

I am a friend, and come not to chastise.

Take heart! I am not cruel;

Softly shalt thou sleep in my arms!

Matthias Claudius (1740–1815),

“Death and the Maiden”

2017

Southernmost point, Cap d’Antibes, May 13

Manon Agostini parked her patrol car at the end of the chemin de la Garoupe. She slammed the door of the battered old Renault Kangoo, inwardly railing at the chain of events that had led her here.

At about nine p.m., a security guard of one of the most opulent mansions on the cape had called the precinct in Antibes to report hearing a firecracker or possibly a gunshot—some strange noise—coming from the rocky coastal path. The Antibes Precinct attached little importance to the call and relayed the information on to the local police, who could think of nothing better to do than radio her, even though she was not on duty.

At the point when her superior officer called to ask her to check out the coast road, Manon was already in an evening dress and preparing to go out. She wanted to tell him to fuck off, but she felt she could not say no to him. Just that morning, he had given her permission to use the Kangoo outside working hours. Manon’s own car had recently died, and she desperately needed a car that Saturday night to go to an event that was important to her.

The school she had attended, the Lycée Saint-Exupéry, was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary and there was to be a reunion of her former classmates. Manon secretly hoped she might run into a guy she had been smitten with long ago, a boy who was not like the others but whom she had stupidly passed over at the time, preferring to date older guys who had all turned out to be utter shits. There was nothing rational about her hope—she could not be sure that he would be there, and besides, he had probably forgotten that she existed—but she needed to believe that something was finally going to happen in her life. Manicure, haircut, clothes shopping; Manon had spent all afternoon getting ready. She had blown three hundred euros on a designer dress—midnight-blue lace with a silk bodice—borrowed a pearl choker from her sister and a pair of sling-backs (Stuart Weitzman suede pumps that pinched her feet) from her best friend.