Read Chapter 29: The Video Evidence

The port lights were still smearing across the windscreen when Julien killed the engine. He didn't get out. Neither did she. The silence in the car was heavy with everything they'd just learned and everything they still didn't know.

"We need to see what he had before the meeting," Camille said finally. "Something that makes a syndicate courier run through the night to collect a dead man's scrum cap."

Julien's knuckles were white on the wheel. "Vincent kept something. Something that could hurt them. And Lucas handed it over like a lost wallet."

"Lucas didn't know." She said it gently, but it came out like a question.

Julien exhaled through his nose. "I know. That's the worst part. He thought he was doing right."

They went up to his apartment in silence. The city below was still dark, the Mediterranean a black void beyond the rooftops. In three hours, the board would meet. In four, Delacroix would make his play.

Julien dropped his keys on the kitchen counter and pulled two beers from the fridge. He cracked one and set it in front of her without asking. She took it, let the cold bite her palm.

"Vincent kept everything," he said, half to himself. "Every contract, every message. He was methodical. If he had something on Valois or the syndicate, he'd have stored it somewhere safe."

"Where was the cap?"

"His locker. The one he used when he played here."

"Then maybe there's more in that locker."

Julien shook his head. "I checked it after he died. Club cleared it out, gave me a box of personal effects. I went through it twice. Nothing but old training gear, a few letters, his first contract."

Camille stood. "Where's the box?"

"Storage room. Downstairs." He studied her. "You think we missed something."

"I think Vincent was smart enough to hide evidence in plain sight. He put something inside a scruffy old cap because nobody would look twice at it. What else did he own that nobody would look twice at?"

They found the box in the building's communal storage, shoved behind a stack of unused floodlights. Julien carried it up, set it on the kitchen table, and they went through it together for the first time.

Old boots with cracked studs. A photo of his father lifting a trophy. A team sheet from a match ten years ago, the paper gone yellow. A match programme with Julien's face on the cover, the headline screaming *PHENOMENE*. Camille felt the ghost of Vincent's pride in that box, and it hurt.

"Nothing digital," Julien said, turning over a folded thermal top.

Camille was about to say they'd have to go to the club, search Vincent's old locker again, when her fingers found a seam they shouldn't have. The inside lining of a training bag, where the stitching had been unpicked and re-stitched with a different thread. She pulled at the thread.

"You found something?"

Camille worked the lining open and slid her hand inside. Her fingers touched plastic. She pulled out a USB stick, no markings, the cheap sort that came free at conferences.

Julien stared at it. "He never told me about that."

"Get your laptop."

They sat side by side on the edge of his bed, the laptop between them. The drive contained a single folder, dated three days before Vincent's death. Inside, one video file.

Camille's hand hesitated over the trackpad.

"Play it," Julien said, his voice flat.

The file opened to a fish-eye view of a locker room. Low angle, high up near the ceiling, looking down into the middle of the room. Camille recognized it instantly: the home team's changing room at the Stade de la Mosson.

"What is this?" Julien asked.

"Security camera footage." Camille leaned closer. The timestamp in the corner read nine months ago. "This was the week before I started."

On screen, two figures moved into frame. Vincent. And behind him, a lean, younger player holding a towel around his waist. Camille didn't recognize him at first. Then the younger man turned and she saw the face under the fresh bruising from a match the day before.

It was Julien. Three years younger. Hair longer, face less guarded. And he was shouting.

The audio was tinny, captured from a distance, but the words were clear enough. Julien's voice rose and cracked as he demanded to know who had started the rumour in the press that his shoulder was finished, that he was a liability, that the club was shopping him to smaller teams.

Vincent's response was calm, measured. Exactly the older-brother tone he'd always used with Julien.

The argument built. Julien hurled a boot against the lockers. Vincent pointed at him, said something Camille couldn't catch. Then Julien stepped forward, chest to chest with Vincent, and shoved him hard enough that Vincent's head snapped back into the lockers.

Camille felt Julien stiffen beside her.

On screen, Vincent pushed back. Two men grappling, a blur of motion, then Julien swung—

The video cut.

Not the file. The recording. It had been truncated, the timestamp jumping two minutes forward. The next image showed the locker room empty, the two men gone.

"That's not what happened," Julien said quietly.

"That's not the whole thing," Camille corrected. "Someone cut it."

"Who cuts security footage of a locker room and hides it in Vincent's bag?"

Camille's mind was racing. "Valois didn't want the cap itself. He wanted whatever was inside it. Give me your phone."

Julien handed it over without question. She shot several frames of the video on screen, focusing on the timestamp and the two figures in the frame.

"We have footage of you assaulting Vincent," she said, stating the obvious. "Fifteen seconds of it, taken out of context. If Delacroix gets this—"

"He'd crucify me. And the board would have all the ammunition they need to terminate my contract for conduct." Julien ran a hand through his hair. "Vincent kept it. Why would he keep evidence that could destroy me?"

Camille watched the frozen frame, Julien's younger face contorted with rage, Vincent's arm raised in a defensive block. Then she saw it. In the background, at the doorway of the locker room, a shadow half-caught in the frame. Someone watching. Someone who should not have been there.

She zoomed in on the photo. The edges blurred, but the build was unmistakable. Stocky, broad-shouldered, standing with the easy stillness of a man who would rather watch than fight.

"Julien." She held up the phone.

He looked at it, and recognition flickered in his eyes. "That's not club security."

"Who is it?"

"Delacroix's man." Julien's jaw tightened. "The one who does his dirty work. I've seen him escorting Delacroix in and out of the president's office like he owns the place."

Camille's stomach dropped. "The video didn't end because it was edited. It ended because whoever was holding the camera cut the feed and took the full recording."

"Vincent found out about it. He stole the truncated copy to protect me."

"And now Valois has the original." Camille closed the laptop. "Or whoever was inside the cap took it."

Julien sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped between his knees. "If Delacroix and Moreau both have copies of this, they don't need to fabricate anything. They just release fifteen seconds of me losing my temper, and the press does the rest. The board won't even need to vote."

Camille looked at the frozen frame on the phone screen. At Vincent's arm raised in defence. At Julien's face, desperate and furious.

"He didn't want to destroy you with this," she said. "He kept it because it was proof. Proof of someone else's plan to break you."

Julien looked up. "What plan?"

"Your shoulder. The rumours. The contract pressure." Camille met his eyes. "This wasn't a random fight. Vincent was trying to tell you something that day. And someone recorded it to make sure you couldn't hear it."

She stood and began to pace. "If Valois has the original, he has it because the syndicate wants it. And if the syndicate wants it, Delacroix knows exactly what to do with it at that board meeting."

Julien's voice was low. "Then we go into the meeting without a way to counter the evidence."

"We go in with something better than evidence." Camille stopped. "We go in with the video that proves Vincent was trying to warn you. And we find out what he wanted to say."

She set the phone down. "First, we need to figure out who runs the security feeds at the Stade. And if they're loyal enough to Delacroix to hand over the raw footage."

Julien was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had changed. Harder.

"I know one man who might have kept a copy. He used to run the locks on Vincent's locker."

"Who?"

"The old kit manager. Marcel." Julien's eyes met hers. "He quit the same week Vincent died. Said he couldn't work in a place where players forgot whose colours they wore."

Camille grabbed her bag. "Then we see Marcel before the board does. And we hope he kept more than just memories."