Read Chapter 15: The Informant's First Step

The café on the Quai du Port smelled of stale coffee and Gauloises smoke. Moreau sat in the back corner, his raincoat draped over the chair beside him like a second skin. He didn't look up when Étienne slid into the seat across from him, just let the steam from his espresso curl past his face.

"You're late," Moreau said.

"Customs doesn't stop because you have an appointment."

Étienne placed a folded sheet of paper on the table between them. He'd prepared it that morning, transcribing from his memory of the port ledger and then destroying the notes. The list contained eight ships, their cargo manifests, and the discrepancies he'd catalogued over months of quiet observation. Ships carrying Turkish tobacco that weighed more than the crates could hold. A fishing trawler with a registered catch that never made it to the auction house. Industrial machinery arriving from Genoa with serial numbers that matched nothing in the manufacturer's catalogs.

Moreau unfolded the paper and read it in silence. His eyes moved slowly, methodically, and Étienne could see him committing the details to memory rather than reaching for a notebook.

"This is good work," Moreau said finally. "But I notice the *Madame Claire* isn't on here."

Étienne's jaw tightened. The ship with the Corsican heroin shipment, the one Captain Reynaud had personally cleared with a signature so clean it might have been printed. The one that would prove the mole's involvement beyond any doubt.

"That ship's operations fall under a different oversight committee," Étienne said. "It wouldn't help your case."

Moreau studied him. "You're holding something back."

"I'm holding leverage," Étienne corrected. "You want Reynaud. I want out. We both know that once I give you everything, I'm just a loose end to be clipped. The day I testify, you need me more than I need you. After that day, the balance shifts."

The inspector's lips thinned but he said nothing. He was a patient man, Étienne had realized. Patient enough to build a case against a captain of police over years, waiting for a clerk with a talent for forgery to fall into his lap.

"Vidal," Moreau said, changing tack. "You've been digging into his disappearance on your own time."

It wasn't a question. Moreau seemed to know everything Étienne did before he did it.

"I went to the tram stop where he was last seen. Nothing but tracks and cigarette butts."

"Your inspector friend at the Deuxième Bureau told me you were asking about a police officer. Lenoir?"

Étienne caught his breath. He'd made one inquiry to an old colleague who had contacts in the transport police, a single question couched in casual curiosity about whether anyone named Lenoir worked the late shifts at the Saint-Charles station. Two days later, the colleague had returned with nothing, but the name had lodged itself in Étienne's internal ledger like a splinter.

"He exists," Étienne said. "He works the night patrol out of the transport division. And he was on duty the night Vidal vanished."

Moreau set down his coffee. "Vidal was investigating a discrepancy in the manifests. That's what you told me."

"He asked questions about a cargo haul that moved through Berth Two three weeks before he disappeared. The manifests showed machinery, but the weight corresponded to something denser. Something like—"

"Arms," Moreau finished.

Étienne nodded. "The shipment had police clearance. Vidal went looking for who signed off on it. He found Lenoir's name in the transport records. The next day, he stopped coming to work."

Moreau was silent for a long moment. The café's other patrons talked loudly about football, about the weather, about anything that wasn't the undercurrent of violence that ran beneath Marseille's polished surface.

"Lenoir isn't one of Reynaud's men," Moreau said slowly. "He's a different kind of corruption. He works for whoever pays him. Which means he's either a freelancer or he answers to someone higher up the chain than Reynaud."

"Someone who wanted Vidal gone."

"Someone who wanted Vidal gone," Moreau agreed. "And someone who knew Vidal was getting close enough to be a problem."

The photograph flashed in Étienne's mind. Claire in the market, unaware of the lens that had captured her. The scar-faced Corsican who'd been asking about him at the pawnshop. The surveillance that had begun before Moreau ever approached him.

"If Lenoir answers to someone else," Étienne began, "then whoever killed Vidal may not be from Guérini's operation at all."

Moreau's expression flickered. It was barely perceptible, a momentary loosening of the muscles around his eyes, but Étienne caught it. Moreau hadn't considered that possibility. Or he had, and he hadn't wanted to face it.

"That's conjecture," Moreau said.

"It's a thread. And you're the one who told me threads matter."

The inspector pocketed the list of ships. "You've given me something to work with. I'll have Lenoir looked into. But you need to stay focused on the bigger picture. Three days. We have a converging timeline."

"And if Lenoir's trail leads somewhere before then?"

"Then you'll be the first to know." Moreau stood, draping his raincoat over his arm. "But I need you where you are, Morel. Inside. Collecting evidence. Not running your own investigations and putting yourself at risk."

"Risk," Étienne repeated. "You're worried about risk now?"

Moreau paused at the table's edge. "I'm worried that if you get yourself killed, I lose my witness. And if I lose my witness, Reynaud stays in power and men like Vidal keep disappearing."

He left without another word, threading through the café's crowded tables toward the door. Étienne watched him go, then pulled out his father's watch from his coat pocket. The pawnbroker had cleaned it well, the silver face gleaming even in the dim café light, but the clasp hung loose and broken. He'd promised himself he'd repair it when his double life ended. Three more days. He pressed the watch back into his pocket.

The waiter materialized at his elbow with the bill. Étienne paid and stepped out into the gray afternoon, the smell of diesel and salt washing over him. He needed to return to the custom house before anyone noticed his absence, but his feet carried him in the other direction, toward the tram station where Vidal had last been seen.

Moreau had told him to stop investigating. But Moreau didn't know the name that now sat at the top of Étienne's internal ledger—different from the official book, the one no one else would ever see. Lenoir. A transport officer with no fixed allegiance. A man who might have watched Vidal board a tram and ensured he never reached his destination.

And if Lenoir answered to someone outside Guérini's circle, then the web of corruption in Marseille was wider than Étienne had imagined. Wider than Moreau's investigation could contain. There were other players at the board, and Étienne had just realized he couldn't see half the pieces.

He stopped at the tram stop, staring at the empty tracks. Somewhere beyond this point, Vidal had stepped off his ordinary route and into the machinery of men who erased problems. The same machinery that might already be closing around Étienne, grinding its gears in ways he couldn't yet perceive.

He turned toward the port. The *Madame Claire* would anchor again in four days. Guérini expected him at the warehouse tomorrow for the updated manifests. Reynaud watched from within the police force. Paoli waited with forged papers. And now Lenoir, a new name, a new thread he hadn't intended to pull.

Étienne began walking, the watch's broken clasp tapping against his coat with every step. He had three days to finish his double game before someone else finished him. But as the port's cranes rose on the horizon, he realized his list of enemies had just grown longer than his list of allies.