Chapter 10
I ran to work. Really, I ran as much as my heels allowed me to.
You see, Fridays are a strange day at the office.
Sarah doesn’t work in the afternoons. Bastian leaves early and shows up whenever he feels like it, if he doesn’t decide to start the weekend a few hours early.
And then there’s André, who almost never takes a break at noon; for him, Fridays blend into an endless workday.
Except for this Friday. André had a lunch meeting with a client and would be returning late. With no one else in the office, it was the perfect chance for me to slip into his office unnoticed.
Everything was too organised. Papers neatly arranged on André’s desk, file folders stacked on a tall shelf, each one labelled with precision: the case name, client name, and the date of our boss’s last action. Closed cases bore an orange label, while ongoing ones were marked in green.
I left the office door open to hear if anyone arrived early and started going through the files.
Mr. Larousse’s case was recent, so it should be visible. I started with the papers on the desk. Then I moved on to the colour-coded folders. Open cases were organised in alphabetical order.
Nothing in L.
Nothing in T for Timotheo.
I crouched down to see those at the bottom. Bingo.
I pulled out a thick dossier labelled Death of Antonia Hawtrey-Moore, Larousse Case.
I opened it on the carpeted floor. It contained at least two dozen documents.
What was I looking for, you ask? Something that caught my attention.
Ivet Britwistle had mentioned Elo?se Hawtrey-Moore and her knowledge about her parents’ divorce. Did André know something I didn’t?
You might wonder: Why did it matter to me? Why not focus on my own case, which was in two days, and forget about this?
I was asking myself the same thing. But just as I had a hunch about Enzo before, I had one about the Larousse case now. By hunch, I mean curiosity. André had involved me when he sent me to visit Ivet. I felt I had to follow up.
I skimmed through the documents, reading what they were about. Statements, requests, copies of an inheritance, a list of names. Bastian’s words kept ringing in my ears. It wasn’t the first time André defended a murderer. Were they so sure Larousse was guilty? Was I?
I went back.
A list of names. It was a list of suspects provided by the police—those who had testified and who were scheduled to testify next Thursday. There were eight.
Timotheo Larousse
Joseph Badou
Antoine Benit
Ivet Britwistle
Laurent Marius Dubois
Laurent Adrien Dubois
Elo?se Hawtrey-Moore
Norman Plaskitt
Three names I hadn’t heard before. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the list. Then I continued rummaging through the documents.
This time, I had a goal. Who were Laurent Marius Dubois, Laurent Adrien Dubois, and Norman Plaskitt?
If all three had testified to the police, André surely knew what role they played in the case.
The information had to be here somewhere; I just needed to find it…
A sudden bang echoed through the office, and I froze.
“Hello?” The voice called out, drifting from the reception area of Saidi.
Bastian. Fuck. I closed the folder, trying to leave the documents as I had found them. I quickly replaced the file on the bottom shelf and stood up just as the lights in my boss’s office flickered on.
“Vera? What were you doing under the desk?”
Bastian appeared in the doorway, arms crossed and a stern look on his face.
“I dropped an earring,” I said, offering the lamest excuse I could think of. I kept my head down and walked past him, hoping he wouldn’t press for details. “I found it already.”
“Wait.”
Too late. I exited André’s office. Bastian had caught me rummaging through the boss’s things, and all I wanted was to get out of there as soon as possible.
What would I say if he asked for an explanation?
I couldn’t lie to him again. Bastian would run straight to his uncle.
If I had to come clean, I’d rather it be to André.
“I’m sorry!” I shouted, giving him one last glance before locking myself in my office. “I have a lot of work!”
That, at least, was true. He stayed in the same spot, but his expression shifted to one of confusion and a hint of something more—so quickly gone that I thought I had imagined it.
“What the hell are you wearing?”
I had forgotten to change my clothes. At least the office floor wasn’t transparent. I closed the door and sat down at my desk. My heart raced. The money. Ivet’s confession. The list of suspects. I forced myself to forget it all for a few hours. Julian’s case wasn’t going to study itself.
I’d win us the trial, no matter what.