‘But if he floated across from one of our neighbours, it’ll be for you. Mm?’ Her own unlabelled specialty being the borderland defining the murky legal edge of France. ‘IJ’s already gone down,’ he added. IJ was Identité Judiciaire, their two-man forensics team. And now Claude smiled, trying to be encouraging — at least in his role as boss. At home, all he could do was dig in and hold his ground. ‘Go. It’ll help you get this off your mind.’ Whether he meant Piaf or them was left professionally unclear, hanging in the space between.

She rose, robotic, file in hand.

He smiled again. ‘I’m sure the right solution will come.’

Inspector Nouvelle descended to the garage and requisitioned a car from mechanics Joël and Paul. Sorry, the barf-green Opal with the fritzy clutch was the only vehicle not out or up on a hoist. Shedding her coat because it was a now sunny and rather humid early autumn day in Alsace, and in no big hurry — she was in mourning and mourners don’t rush — she headed out of town, took the slower D201 down to D105, then went east. The sickly coloured Opal brought her thinking back to Piaf, his poor tummy, always full of fur balls and bugs and only God knew what…

2

Crime Scene

French side

The longest river in Europe has its source in the Swiss Alps. Flowing west, the Rhine forms the Swiss-German boundary until making an abrupt jag north at Basel, where the Swiss briefly share the river with both Germany and France. The Rhine then forms the French-German line before entering Germany, where it flows on to the Netherlands and into the North Sea. The thirty-kilometre man-made canal separating the Rhine from ports serving the French shoreline dates from 1925; for most of those thirty kilometres the view of Germany is blocked by a finger-like faux-isle which is home to park and beach areas, government-owned farming sites, several hydro stations. The inspector’s destination was a park-like stretch of shoreline at the mouth of the canal where it joins the actual river. A uniformed cop on the side of the road across from an industrial pump parts factory directed her down a well-worn track through the trees. Emerging from the forested area separating road from water, she could see beyond the tip of the finger-island to Germany on the far side. Aliette left the car and headed across fifty metres of scrubby grass and shrub-strewn terrain to the boulder-lined shore.

After almost ten years with the PJ force in this corner of the Republic, Inspector Nouvelle had dealt with lots of cases arising from the Rhine. Illegal immigrants. Illegal traffic. Drugs. And bodies. Floating, snagged in the rocks, dredged up from the mucky bottom, a body in the river usually meant a murder without a home as jurisdictions bickered to lay claim or, more usually, took steps to deny any. While the victim languished in a legal nowhere-land, the perpetrator gained the benefit of wasted time.

There were pockets of sand along the bank, large enough for a beach towel, maybe two. The place was probably fine for swimming, partying, lovemaking, quiet thinking — but you could never call it a bona fide beach. Jean-Marc Pouliot and Charles Léger of Identité Judiciaire were hard at it. Jean-Marc was marshalling the movements of half a dozen gendarmes trained to assist. The group, always strangely absurd in their snowy ‘bee keeper’ suits and bag-like boots to match, trooped softly, methodically picking through the rocky edges and shrubby growth.