I closed my eyes and imagined a scenario. Someone had used these photos to blackmail my father. This explained what I had discovered only minutes earlier when I looked at the screenshots Pianelli had sent and realized that the leather bag had once belonged to my father. If Rick had given Vinca a bag stuffed with a hundred thousand francs, it could only be because she was threatening to tell people about their relationship.

Maybe even about the fact that she was pregnant.

I needed some fresh air. I turned the key in the ignition, rolled down the roof, and headed toward the sea. I could no longer postpone the showdown with my father. As the car sped along, I could barely concentrate on the road ahead. The photographs of Vinca were engraved in my mind. For the first time, I noticed a sadness, an uncertainty in her eyes. Had she been afraid of my father? Had Vinca been a victim or a devious manipulator? Perhaps she’d been both.

I came to La Siesta—the most famous nightclub in Antibes—and stopped at the intersection where the road turns off toward Nice. The traffic lights hadn’t been updated and they still took an age to change. When I was fifteen and riding my old moped, I had decided just once to run a red light here, and I was immediately stopped by cops. I was issued a seven-hundred-and-fifty-franc fine that my parents droned on about for months afterward. The curse of being a nice guy.

I dismissed this embarrassing memory, but another image appeared in my mind unbidden. Click-click. The girl with the Leica. Click-click. The girl who was mentally taking photographs of people even when she did not have her camera slung around her neck. I heard someone lean on the horn. The light was green. Suddenly, I knew who had taken the photos of my father and Vinca. I shifted gears and headed for La Fontonne Hospital.

2.