Among the robbery victims were a distant relative of the Saudi royal family and a prominent French art collector, patron, and dignitary. Although the latter had not been home during the incident, the furious gang, frustrated at not being able to find anything salable in the villa, had destroyed the paintings hanging on the walls. What they did not know was that among them was a very valuable work of art: Dig Up the Hatchet, by Sean Lorenz, one of the hottest painters on the market. The destruction of the work had sent shock waves through the contemporary art world, even in America. The New York Times and CNN mentioned the break-in and talked about Aurelia Park, once the flagship estate on the Côte d’Azur, as a dangerous area; in the space of three months, property prices had plummeted by 30 percent. To stem the panic, the regional serious crimes office had set up a dedicated team to track down the burglars.

From this point, the investigation moved quickly—DNA samples, phone tapping, high-level surveillance. In early February, the cops conducted a dawn raid on several homes in a small village on the Italian border and arrested a dozen Macedonian men, some without papers, others known to have been involved in similar crimes. A search of the houses uncovered jewelry, a significant amount of cash, firearms, ammunition, computer equipment, and fake passports. Officers also found balaclavas, knives, and a number of additional stolen items. Five weeks later, they tracked down the head of the gang, who was hiding out in a hotel in Drancy. He had already sold much of the loot in Eastern Europe. The suspects were transferred to Nice, where they were charged and held in custody to await trial. Most of them pleaded guilty to several charges but denied involvement in the raid on Francis’s villa. This was hardly surprising, since a man who admitted to that could be charged with voluntary manslaughter and sent to prison for twenty years.

3.

I shuddered as I leafed through the press clippings, at once horrified and excited. The remaining documents related to the home invasion and the vicious assault on Francis Biancardini. Maxime’s father had not been merely roughed up; he had been beaten to death. The articles described his grotesquely swollen face, numerous lacerations to his body, and deep cuts left on his wrists by handcuffs. I was beginning to understand what Maxime was getting at. In my mind, I fleshed out a scenario: Ahmed had confessed to someone who had then tracked Francis down and tortured him, perhaps to force him to confess. But confess to what? His role in the death of Alexis Clément? Ours?