The Awkward Squad

Book 3: MacLehose Press Editions

by Sophie Hénaff

Genres: Black Humor; Mystery; International Crime & Mystery; Police Procedurals; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Suspended from her job as a promising police officer for firing "one bullet too many", Anne Capestan is expecting the worst when she is summoned to H.Q. to learn her fate. Instead, she is surprised to be told that she is to head up a new police squad, working on solving old cold cases. Though relieved to still have a job, Capestan is not overjoyed by the prospect of her new role. Even less so when she meets her new team: a crowd of misfits, troublemakers and problem cases, none of whom are fit for purpose and yet none of whom can be fired. But from this inauspicious start, investigating the cold cases throws up a number a number of strange mysteries for Capestan and her team: was the old lady murdered seven years ago really just the victim of a botched robbery? Who was behind the dead sailor discovered in the Seine with three gunshot wounds? And why does there seem to be a curious link with a ferry that was shipwrecked off the Florida coast many years previously? Translated from the French by Sam Gordon

Release date: March 9, 2017

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 255

Sample

Paris, August 9, 2012

Anne Capestan was standing at her kitchen window waiting for dawn to arrive. She drained her mug in one and set it down on the shiny green tablecloth. She had just drunk her last coffee as a police officer. Or had she?

The brilliant Commissaire Capestan – the star of her generation, undisputed career-ladder-climbing champion – had fired one bullet too many. As a result, she had been dragged before an Inspection Générale des Services disciplinary hearing, received several reprimands and been handed a six-month suspension. Then radio silence, right up until the telephone call from Buron. Her mentor, now in charge of 36, quai des Orfèvres, the headquarters of the Police Judiciaire, had finally broken his silence. Capestan had been summoned for August 9. Typical of the man: bang in the middle of the summer break. A gentle reminder that this was no holiday, that she was unemployed. She would emerge from this meeting with or without her badge, stationed in Paris or the provinces, but at least the waiting game would be over. Anything had to be better than wallowing in limbo, this hazy, uncertain space where moving on was not an option. The commissaire rinsed her mug in the sink and told herself she would put it in the dishwasher later. It was time to go.

She crossed the sitting room where the familiar pulsating double bass of a Stray Cats record was thrumming from the stereo. The apartment was spacious and comfortable. Capestan had not skimped on the rugs, throws and ambient lighting. Her cat, snoozing away happily, seemed to approve of her choices. But the cosiness was punctuated by traces of emptiness, like patches of frost on a lawn in springtime. The day after her suspension, Capestan had watched as her husband left her, taking half the apartment’s contents with him. It was one of those moments where life leaves you with a bloody nose. But Capestan was not one for self-pity; she refused to run away from what had happened.

Hoover, T.V., sofa, bed . . . within three days, she had replaced the essentials. That said, the round marks on the carpet were a constant reminder of the furniture from her former life. The wallpaper gave the clearest illustration: the shadow of a desk, the ghost of a bookshelf, the late lamented chest of drawers. Capestan would much rather have moved, but her precarious professional situation had kept her in this cage. Come the end of this meeting, she would finally know which path her life would pursue.

She removed the elastic band she kept on her wrist and tied her hair back. It had turned blonde, as it did every summer, but soon a deeper chestnut tone would start reasserting itself. Capestan smoothed her dress with a mechanical motion and pulled on her sandals, without so much as a flinch from the cat on the armrest. Only the pinna of the feline’s ear twitched into action, tilting towards the door to monitor her departure. The commissaire hitched her big leather handbag onto her shoulder and slipped in the copy of The Bonfire of the Vanities that Buron had lent her. Nine-hundred and twenty pages. “That’ll keep you busy while you wait for my call,” he had assured her. Waiting. She had had enough time to read all thirteen instalments of Fortunes of France and the complete works of Marie-Ange Guillaume. Not to mention stacks of detective novels. Buron and his hollow words without dates or promises. Capestan closed the door behind her, turned the key twice and set off for the stairs.

*

Rue de la Verrerie was deserted in the soft morning light. In August, at this early hour, Paris seemed restored to a natural state, cleared of its inhabitants, as though it had survived a neutron bomb. In the distance, the flashing light of a street-sweeper gave off an orange glow. Capestan walked past the window displays of B.H.V. before cutting diagonally across the square outside the Hôtel-de-Ville. She crossed the Seine and continued to the far side of Île de la Cité, arriving at the entrance of 36, quai des Orfèvres.

She went through the enormous doorway and turned right into the paved courtyard, pausing to glance at the faded blue sign: “Stairway A, Police Judiciaire Senior Management.” Following his promotion, Buron had set up shop on the third floor, the cushy level for the force’s decision-makers. No gun-toting on that corridor, even for the real cowboys.

Capestan pushed open the double doors. The thought of this meeting made her stomach lurch. She had always been a police officer; never considered any other options. Thirty-seven’s hardly the age to go back to school. The restlessness of the past six months had already taken its toll. She had done a lot of walking. She had followed every single line on the Parisian métro at street level: 1 to 14, terminus to terminus. She was desperate to be welcomed back into the fold before having to tackle the banlieue trains. Sometimes she wondered if she might be forced to run the length of the T.G.V. tracks, just to give herself something to do.

Face-to-face with the gleaming, brand-new engraved plaque bearing the name of the regional chief of the Police Judiciaire, she gathered herself and knocked three times. Buron’s deep, booming voice instructed her to come in.

Buron stood up to greet her. His basset-hound face was framed by military-cut grey hair and a beard. Everywhere he went, he wore a kind, almost downcast expression. He was a good head taller than Capestan, who was not exactly short herself, and a good stomach wider too. But despite his hearty appearance, Buron radiated authority: no-one joked around with him. Capestan smiled at him and handed over the Wolfe novel. There was a small scuff on the cover, which prompted a flicker of disapproval from the chief when he noticed it. Capestan apologised, even if she failed to see what the fuss was about. It was nothing, he said, but he clearly did not mean it.

Behind Buron, sitting in large armchairs, she recognised Fomenko, the former head of the drug squad and now deputy regional chief, and Valincourt, who had recently left a senior role at serious crime to become top brass at Brigades Centrales. Capestan wondered what these big guns were doing there. Given her current status, the prospect of her being snapped up by one of them seemed unlikely. She smiled at the lordly law enforcement triumvirate, sat down and waited for the verdict.

“I have good news,” Buron said, diving straight in. “The I.G.S. investigation has wrapped up, your suspension is over, and you are formally reinstated. The incident will not go down on your file.”

A huge sense of relief washed over Capestan. She could feel the joy coursing through her veins, and with it came a sudden urge to rush out and celebrate. But she managed to retain her focus as Buron continued:

“Your new post takes effect in September. You’ll be heading up a new squad.”

Capestan could not help raising an eyebrow at this. Her reinstatement had been enough of a surprise; entrusting her with a position of responsibility was starting to look suspect. Something about Buron’s little speech had the effect of the crack of knuckles that usually precedes a punch.

“Me? A squad?”

“It’s a special, force-wide initiative,” Buron explained with a distant look. “As part of the police’s restructuring that aims to optimise the performance of various frontline services, an ancillary squad has been formed. The squad will report directly to me, and will comprise some of the force’s least . . . conventional members.”

While Buron delivered his spiel, his associates looked bored beyond belief. Fomenko was studying the collection of old medals in Buron’s glass cabinet without any real interest. From time to time he ran his hand through his white hair, tugged at the bottom of his waistcoat, or gazed at the points of his cowboy boots. His rolled-up shirtsleeves revealed hairy, muscular forearms: a reminder that Fomenko could unhinge your jaw with one swing of his fist. As for Valincourt, he was fiddling with his watch in a manner that made it plain he wished it would speed up. He had clean, angular features and a dark complexion that brought to mind an Apache chief; an old soul that had been through many incarnations. He never smiled and gave off a permanent air of irritation, like a monarch who takes offence at the slightest inconvenience. He was no doubt reserving his attention for more lofty concerns, an altogether higher purpose. Mere mortals would do better than to disturb him. Capestan decided to put them all out of their misery.

“And practically speaking?”

The casualness of her tone irritated Valincourt. Like a bird of prey, his head revolved abruptly to one side, revealing a powerful, hooked nose. He shot Buron a questioning look, but it took more than that to ruffle the chief. Buron even allowed himself a smile as he edged forward in his armchair.

“Very well, Capestan, here’s the bottom line: we’re cleaning up the police to give the stats some gloss. The drunkards, the thugs, the depressives, the layabouts and everyone in between – the people hamstringing the force but who can’t be fired – are all to be absorbed into one squad and forgotten about in some corner. With you in command. Starting in September.”

Capestan did not react at all. She looked towards the window, taking in the blue shades playing across the double-glazing. Beyond the glass, she watched the gentle ripples of the Seine gleaming beneath the clear sky, giving her brain a moment to extract the meaning of this pitch from the men in suits.

A shelf. One big shelving unit, basically. Or rather a bin. A bunch of down-and-outs discarded into the same skip; the department’s shamefaced pigsty. And she was the cherry on the top. The boss.

“Why me in command?” she said.

“You’re the only one ranked commissaire,” Buron replied. “Oddly enough, most people with a penchant for thuggery or drunkenness don’t get much of a sniff at promotion.”

Capestan would have bet good money that this squad had been Buron’s idea. Neither Valincourt nor Fomenko seemed to approve of the scheme: the former out of disdain, the latter out of indifference. Both of them had better things to do, and this whole business was a tiresome distraction.

“Who’s in the team?” Capestan said.

Buron stuck out his chin and leaned forward to open the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a thick, bottle-green leather folder and dropped it on his blotter. There was nothing written on the cover. The anonymous squad. The chief opened the dossier and picked out a pair of tortoiseshells from the line-up of glasses below his lamp. Buron had a variety of spectacles that he alternated depending on whether he wanted to appear reassuring, trendy or strict. He began reading.

“Agent Santi, on sick leave for four years; Capitaine Merlot, alcoholic –”

“Alcoholic? So there’ll be no shortage of personnel . . .”

Buron closed the folder and handed it to her.

“I’ll leave you to study it at your leisure.”

She tested the weight: it was almost as heavy as the Paris phonebook.

“How many are we? Are you ‘cleaning up’ half the police force?”

As the regional chief sank back into his chair, the brown leather issued a creak of surrender.

“Officially, around forty.”

“That’s not a squad, that’s a battalion,” Fomenko jeered.

Forty. People who had taken bullets, done days of stakeouts, piled on the pounds and filed divorce papers for the sake of the force, only to be spat out into this dead-end. They were being sent to a place where they would finally hand in their notice. Capestan felt sorry for them. Curiously, she did not count herself as one of them. Buron sighed and removed his glasses.

“Capestan, most of them have been off the grid for years. There’s no chance you’ll even see them, let alone get them to do any work. As far as the police force is concerned, they no longer exist: they’re just names, that’s it. If any of them do turn up, it will be to nick the stationery. Don’t be under any illusions.”

“Any actual officers?”

“Yes. Dax and Évrard are lieutenants, Merlot and Orsini are capitaines.”

Buron paused for a moment and concentrated on the arms of his glasses as he twiddled them in his hand.

“José Torrez is a lieutenant too.”

Torrez. Better known as Malchance: the unlucky charm, the black cat you would never want to cross your path. Finally they had found a place for him. Isolation had not been enough – they had pushed him even further away. Capestan knew Torrez by reputation. Every police officer in the country knew Torrez by reputation, and would always cross themselves when he was nearby.

His story had started with a simple accident: a partner was stabbed during an arrest. Fairly routine. While the officer was convalescing, his replacement was injured too. Occupational hazard. The next one took a bullet and spent three days in a coma. And the last guy had died, thrown off the top floor of a tower block. Any blame on Torrez’s part had been brushed aside each time. He had not been responsible in any way, not even of negligence. But his aura became thicker than pitch: he brought Bad Luck. No-one wanted to be on Torrez’s team anymore. No-one wanted to touch him; few would even look him in the eye. Except for Capestan, who didn’t give a stuff about such things.

“I’m not superstitious,” she said.

“Oh, you will be,” Valincourt said, in a funereal tone.

Fomenko nodded in agreement, suppressing the shudder that rippled down the dragon tattoo on his neck, a souvenir of his days as a young man in the army. Nowadays, Fomenko wore a big white moustache that fanned out beneath his nose like a shaggy butterfly. Somehow the moustache didn’t go too badly with the dragon.

Every time Torrez’s name was uttered, a silence fell over the room for a few moments. Buron filled it.

“And finally there’s Commandant Louis-Baptiste Lebreton.”

This time, Capestan sat bolt upright in her chair.

“The guy from the I.G.S.?”

“The very same,” Buron replied, spreading his arms resignedly. “I know, he didn’t make things easy for you.”

“No, he wasn’t the most flexible. What’s that fair-play fanatic doing here? The I.G.S. isn’t even part of the Police Judiciaire.”

“A complaint was filed, something about a personality clash at the I.G.S.: basically an internal affair at internal affairs, and they decided they didn’t need him anymore.”

“But why the complaint?”

Lebreton might have been monstrously uncompromising, but no-one could accuse him of being shady. The chief shrugged the question aside, feigning ignorance. The other two scanned the cornice of the ceiling, smiling mischievously, and Capestan realised that she would have to make do with the party line.

“Let us not forget,” Valincourt said coldly, “you are hardly in a position to judge people for behaving aggressively.”

Capestan took the hit without wincing. It was true: she was not without sin, and she knew it. A ray of sunshine spilled across the room and she could hear the distant reverberation of a pneumatic drill. New squad. New team. All she needed now was her mission.

“Will we have any cases?”

“Plenty.”

Anne Capestan had the feeling that Buron was starting to enjoy himself. It was his little welcome-back joke, a knick-knack to mark her brand-new position. After a decade and a half of service, she was back in first year, and this was her initiation ceremony.

“Following an agreement between police headquarters, the local branch of the Police Judiciaire and the Brigades Centrales, you will take on all the unsolved cases from every single squad and commissariat in the region. We have also relieved the archives of any closed cases that still have question marks. They have all been sent to your office.”

Buron gave a satisfied nod to his colleagues, before continuing:

“The headline is that the Île-de-France police force’s record for solving cases stands at 100 per cent, and yours will be 0 per cent. One incompetent squad letting down the whole region. It’s all about containment, you see.”

“I see.”

“Archives will send the boxes over when you start moving in,” Fomenko said, scratching his dragon. “In September, when you’ve been assigned your premises. We’re fuller than a Roman Catholic school at number 36, so we’ll find you a little spot elsewhere.”

“If you think you’ve got off lightly, then you’re wrong,” Valincourt said, still not moving an inch. “You should know that we’re not expecting any results.”

Buron made an expansive gesture towards the door; Capestan’s cue to leave. Despite these less than encouraging final words, she had a smile on her face. At least now she had an objective, and she had a start date.

Paris, September 3, 2012

Jeans, flat shoes, lightweight jumper and trench-coat: Anne Capestan was back in her police officer’s outfit, and she was clutching the keys to her new commissariat. She was imagining that twenty of the forty might show up. If one in two could see the point in this squad, then it would be worth the effort.

Capestan, feeling eager and full of hope, strode past the gushing Fontaine des Innocents at a lively pace. The owner of a sports shop was winding up the graffiti-covered metal shutter and the smell of fried fast-food was lingering in the cool morning air. Capestan turned to face number 3, rue des Innocents. It was not a commissariat – in fact there was nothing to suggest any link to the police at all. It was just an apartment block. And she did not have the door code. She sighed and went into the café on the corner to ask the owner. B8498. The commissaire converted it into a mnemonic (Boat-Orwell-World Cup champions) to memorise it.

A barely legible “5” on a crumpled label on the bunch of keys indicated the floor number. Capestan summoned the lift and went to the top. No chance of an official-looking ground-floor space with windows, neon lights and passers-by. They had been hidden away in the attic, with no sign or intercom on the street outside. The door on landing opened up onto a vast, dilapidated but well-lit apartment. The premises might have been short on prestige, but they had at least some charm.

The previous day, after the electricians and telephone people had finished, the movers had come to set the whole place up. Buron had told her not to worry: H.Q. would take care of everything.

As she entered, Capestan spotted an iron desk that was pockmarked with rust. Opposite it, a green Formica table was leaning crookedly despite the beer mats shoved under the shortest leg, while the last two desks consisted of black melamine shelves perched on rickety trestles. They were not merely clearing out the police officers, they were clearing out the furniture too. You could not accuse the scheme of inconsistency.

The parquet floor was dotted with holes of various sizes and the walls were browner than a smoker’s lungs, but the room was spacious and had large windows that looked over the square, and offered an uninterrupted view beyond the old garden at Les Halles towards the towering Église Saint-Eustache, which jostled for space with the cranes that dominated the perpetual construction sites.

Navigating around a knackered old armchair, Capestan noticed a fireplace that had not been bricked over and seemed to be in working order. Could come in handy. The commissaire was about to continue her tour when she heard the lift. She glanced at her watch: 8.00 a.m. on the dot.

A man wiped his hiking boots on the mat and knocked at the half-open door. His thick, black hair seemed to follow its own peculiar logic and, despite it still being early, his cheeks were already flecked with salt-and-pepper stubble. He stepped into the room and introduced himself, his hands in the pocket of his sheepskin coat.

“Morning. Lieutenant Torrez.”

Torrez. So the bringer of bad luck was the first to roll up. He did not look as if he wanted to take his hand out of his pocket, and Capestan wondered whether he was afraid she might refuse to shake it, or if he was just a bit oafish. Unsure either way, she decided to dodge the issue by not offering her own, instead throwing him a toothy smile that flashed like a white flag, full of peaceful intent.

“Good morning, lieutenant. I’m Commissaire Anne Capestan, head of the squad.”

“Yes. Hello. Where’s my desk?” he said with a vague attempt at politeness.

“Wherever you like. First come, first served . . .”

“Can I take the tour, then?”

“Go ahead.”

She watched as he headed straight to the room at the back.

Torrez was one metre seventy of solid muscle. If the black cat thing was true, then he fell into the puma category. Compact and thickset. Before washing up here, he had worked at 3e B.T., the Brigade Territoriale of the 2nd arrondissement. Perhaps he’ll have some good local restaurant tips, Capestan thought. In the distance, she saw him open the last door at . . .