The idea had occurred to me. It was a possibility, but it struck me as more fantasy than reality, the sort of twist you might find in a second-rate thriller. Which is what I said to Maxime, but he did not seem entirely convinced. I decided to tackle the subject that seemed most important right now.

“There’s something else I need to tell you, Max. In early 2016, when I was about to fly back to the States after a tour promoting my new book, I had a run-in with a border control officer at Roissy Airport. This asshole thought it was funny to humiliate a trans woman, calling her ‘monsieur.’ The whole thing got pretty heated, and I was in custody for a couple of hours…”

“They took your fingerprints!”

“Yeah, I’m in the police database. That means we don’t have much time. If they find a single fingerprint when they dig up the body and the crowbar, my name will pop up and I’ll be taken into custody and questioned.”

“What difference does that make?”

I told him what I had decided on the red-eye flight the night before. “I won’t mention you. Or your father. I’ll take the blame. I’ll tell them I killed Clément and I got Ahmed to help me get rid of the body.”

“They’re never going to believe you. And besides, why would you do it? Why would you take the rap?”

“I have no kids, no wife, no life. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“No, it doesn’t make sense,” he said, shaking his head.

There were gray bags under his eyes; his face was crumpled, as though he had not slept in days. Far from reassuring him, my suggestion had only made him more jittery. I pressed him and found out why.

“The cops already know something, Thomas. I’m convinced. You can’t get me off the hook. Last night, I got a call from the Antibes Precinct, from the chief of police himself, Vincent Debruyne.”

“Debruyne? Like the former public prosecutor?”

“Yeah, his son.”

This was not particularly good news. In the 1990s, the Jospin government had appointed Yvan Debruyne public prosecutor to the Nice District with the stated purpose of putting an end to political racketeering on the Côte d’Azur. “Yvan the Terrible,” as he liked to be called, had arrived in a blaze of glory like a knight in shining armor. He’d held the post for more than fifteen years, waging war against the Freemasons and corrupt elected officials. Many were relieved when he finally announced his retirement. A lot of people in the region loathed Debruyne and his bravado, but even his critics admitted that he was fiercely tenacious. If the son took after his old man, we would be dealing with a shrewd, stubborn cop with an innate suspicion of elected officials and anyone remotely connected to Macron’s campaign.