“Yeah, it was a Macedonian gang, really well organized. The cops caught a couple of them and they’re behind bars now.”

I leaned on the guardrail. The rocky half-moon terrace afforded a stunning view of the lake. “Other than Francis, who else knew that Clément was murdered?”

“You and me, no one else,” Maxime said. “And you know my father, he wasn’t the type to talk.”

“What about your husband?”

Maxime shook his head. “Fuck no, that’s the last thing I’d want Olivier to know about me. I’ve never talked about what we did to anyone.”

“What about Ahmed Ghazouani, the site foreman?”

Maxime looked skeptical. “I don’t know anyone more tight-lipped than Ahmed. And besides, why would he have talked about it when he himself was an accomplice?”

“Is he still alive?”

“No. He got cancer and went home to Tunisia to die.”

I put on my sunglasses. It was almost noon. From high in the sky, the sun beat down on the Eagle’s Nest. Ringed only by a wooden guardrail, the place was as dangerous as it was beautiful. The students of Saint-Ex had never been allowed to come up here, but being the son of two deans, I had special privileges, and I remembered spending several magical evenings here with Vinca, smoking and drinking mandarinello as the moon glistened on the lake.

“Whoever’s sending us those messages has got to know what we did!” Maxime said. He took one last drag on the cigarette as the glowing ember reached the filter. “Did he have any family, this Alexis Clément guy?”

I knew Clément’s family tree by heart. “He was an only child, and his parents were pretty old even back then. They’re bound to be dead by now. Besides, that’s not where the threat is coming from.”

“Who, then? Stéphane Pianelli? The guy’s been trailing me for months. Since I started campaigning with Macron, he’s been investigating me from every angle. He’s dug out old case files about my father. And he wrote that book about Vinca, remember?”

Maybe I was naive, but I could not imagine Stéphane Pianelli going this far to flush us out.

“He’s an interfering hack,” I said, “but I don’t see him writing anonymous threats. If he did suspect us, he’d splash it on the front page. But he did mention something that got me worried—that cash they found in the old locker.”

“What are you talking about?”

Maxime had missed the news story. I summarized it: the floods, the discovery of a hundred thousand francs in a sports bag, and the two sets of fingerprints, one of them belonging to Vinca.

“The problem is that the money was found in what used to be my locker.”

Somewhat bewildered, Maxime frowned. I explained a little more.