Bred to Kill by Franck Thilliez

Author:Franck Thilliez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

27

The official Peugeot 407 with Levallois at the wheel had just veered onto Highway A6a, heading toward Fontainebleau. The late-morning traffic was moving easily—a relative notion on the roads around Paris—and the cops didn’t have to turn on the siren to open a passage.

Before that, Sharko had stopped by number 36 to pass along his discoveries and fob off the day’s assignment—questioning Terney’s friends and coworkers—onto a colleague.

At present, the two cops were speeding toward La Chapelle-la-Reine, a small town just south of the Fontainebleau forest. They had an appointment with the captain of the local gendarmerie, Claude Lignac, who had briefly held the bag on a rather sordid case: a double murder in the woods, committed by a killer whose DNA figured in the book Terney had written in 2006. Given the unusual and particularly grisly nature of the crime, the gendarme had been forced to hand over the investigation to the Major Case squad in Versailles.

Obviously, apart from the officers at 36, no one knew that the genetic code of the man who had committed this double homicide six days ago figured in the pages of a scientific textbook that had come out four years earlier. In order to prevent leaks, especially to the press, the cops were keeping that information strictly confidential. Officially, they were looking into the murder because it might be related to an ongoing case about which, for the moment, they couldn’t give out any details.

Sharko switched the radio station, landing on “Zombie” by The Cranberries. Levallois smiled at him.

“You’ve been sprucing yourself up a bit these past few days. New suit, new haircut . . . and you don’t look quite as sad. You got a girl?”

“Why is everybody asking me that, for Christ’s sake?”

“They say you’ve had something of a dry patch since your wife died. So I just figured . . .”

“How about you keep your figuring to yourself.”

Levallois shrugged.

“We’re partners. Partners tell each other things. With you, it’s like talking to the lamppost. Nobody really knows what you were up to at Violent Crimes. And why don’t we ever talk about anything but the case? Why don’t you ever ask about . . . about my life, for instance?”

“Because it’s better that way. The job seeps into your life enough as it is; don’t let your life get into the job. Leave your wife and kids, if you’ve got any, at the door to number thirty-six. You’re better off.”

“I don’t have any kids yet but . . .” he hesitated, “but my wife is pregnant. We’re having a little girl.”

“Good for you.”

A cold, toneless reply. Levallois shook his head and concentrated on the road, the investigation. The case was sucking him in more and more each day, and each day he got home a bit later. He caught himself feeling a growing excitement the deeper he sank into the shadows. Would he, too, end up like Sharko? Sticking with the cut-and-dried, he aired aloud his thoughts about the case:

“Terney wrote his book in 2006.

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