She could have been part of the major Divisional restructuring and run her affairs from an office in the city of Béziers, forty minutes south. She could have eaten lunch with Sergio each day. But this spacious, often chilly room in a generic Third Empire provincial administrative building was at the heart of her assigned territory, and, three years prior, newly transferred, still sorting through the personal fallout of a failed relationship in the north, an office here had seemed both operationally logical and emotionally necessary. Her new Divisional bosses in Montpellier had reviewed the numbers related to the cost of office space for her and her team and said, ‘Fine, carry on in the old commissariat, Inspector.’ So long as she coped with the constant commuting into the city, it balanced out and it was all the same to them. Yes, her choice. She hadn’t known Sergio then.

In summer she was unequivocally glad to be here in this busy, if muted, town, while the city sweated and stank, and where byzantine streets meant wearying traffic bedlam.

Leave Saint-Brin? The thought had occurred, but it always got lost in the flow of days.

It was April, consistently warm now. The public gardens below were doing well, the season of unconditional love for her town and the life that came with it was hoving into view. Aliette had not laid eyes on Luc Malarmé since that Sunday in the market back in March. Or thought about him. She had ranted at Sergio about her fellow citizens’ lack of charity toward another popular god fallen low, then moved on from that dismaying moment. Presiding over a sprawling rural territory encompassing almost fifty towns and hundreds of villages and hamlets kept her too busy to brood.

And so: ‘Oui?’ turning from her window, responding to a timid knock, she was nonplussed to find the disgraced star standing at her office door. Unescorted, looking lost and shambling in dirty blue jeans, a ragged grey training jersey displaying an American logo, and needing a haircut. But healthy — he had been getting air and sun. He must have wandered up the stairs. Aliette deduced that staff secretary Mathilde Lahi and her counterparts downstairs were all still at their lunch.

‘Is this the police?’

‘Police Judiciaire,’ she stammered, suddenly face to face with the famously boyish presence. She stood, extended a hand across her desk. ‘Chief Inspector Nouvelle. How can I help you?’

He stepped forward and shook it. ‘My name is Luc —’

‘I know your name.’

Said too hastily, it got a grimace — a delicate place touched too quickly, indiscreetly.

A pained look revealed another layer. He was taller than he always seemed, more substantial, and obviously no longer the boyish presence his name automatically invoked. He was a man in his forties and starting to show it: hints of jowls forming, some burst capillaries under his eyes, touches of grey at his temples hiding under the swirling curls.

But he recovered in a blink and moved closer. A not-so-shy gleam in those green eyes, a slight twitch of his fleshy lips forming the beginnings of a hopeful smile; the illusion fell back into place, enigmatic and attractive. Aliette felt something automatic move inside her.

Not sure what exactly, but one felt one cared.