The First Fingerprint Read Free Page A

covered his solid bones, then he cracked his resin-brown fingers. The night before, he had had bad dreams. A quarter of a century in the force had no doubt driven him somewhatcrazy, maybe semi-paranoid, and definitely insomniac. But he had gone to bed early, with the firm intention of snoring like a sawed log so as to recover from all those long nights spent looking at night-birds dressed up to the nines in the flashy bars on Carré Thairs.
    Around 2:00 in the morning, fatal crime scenes burst into his mind without any warning. Always the same images of lacerated bodies, faces with eyes rolled upward, guts torn open, corpses blue under the striplights in the morgue. Women and men of all sizes, all colors, going in and out of the morgue’s drawers, mechanically, like the staging of some modern play.
    And then children. Many too many children. Like night-watchmen, the lifeless faces of the little dead invaded his sleep and kicked him awake pitilessly, asking again and again for impossible justice. The image of his brother, a close-up of his fine, soft eyes, had finally replaced all the others.
    He had spent a couple of hours on the balcony, staring into the night, listening to the murmurs of his sleepy neighborhood. His wife, Marie, had hated this quartier more than anything. It was the ugliest part of the eastern sprawl of Marseille, and one of the poorest too, despite its lovely name which filled your mouth like a zest: La Capelette. He had always lived there.
    Marie had left a month ago.
    His policeman’s salary had allowed him to buy a spanking-new three-bedroom flat on boulevard Mireille Lauze, in a leafy, “classy” cluster of buildings, named Paul Verlaine Residence by its inspired promoters: three cubes of compressed concrete, each of four floors, built over a stretch of what were once gardens of the convent of the Holy Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition. The rest of the park was now occupied by a psychiatric hospital and a nursing college. On summer nights, when the nice and normal slept with their windows open, lugubrious howls tore through the purring of the televisions, providing a strange ground bass of human suffering to this theater of shadows.
    â€œGià nella notte densa
    s’estingue ogni clamor
,
    già il mio cor fremebondo
    s’ammansa in quest’amplesso e si rinsensa.”
    Capitaine Anne Moracchini pushed open the office door and slipped her head of long brown hair through the gap. She flicked back her locks gracefully and gave de Palma a wicked look.
    â€œYou doing overtime, Michel? We’re going for a drink at Le Zanzi. Want to come?”
    â€œNo thanks. I’m going to have a quiet evening at home. Tomorrow, if you want.”
    â€œCome on now. You’re not going to play at being dark and mysterious again?”
    â€œOh yes I am,” he answered, forcing himself to smile. “I’ll take you to dinner tomorrow.”
    â€œI can’t tomorrow.”
    â€œSome other time then?”
    â€œYou’re not trying it on with me, are you? Watch yourself, Michel, I might end up taking you seriously.”
    De Palma liked Capitaine Moracchini. First of all, he respected her for what she was: a police officer of rare qualities. She was the only woman on the squad. All the boys had more or less had a go at her, including Duriez, the big boss, and Paulin, the squad’s head. Every one of them, except de Palma, who had never betrayed the slightest sign of physical attraction, even though her supple, slim body, as gentle as it was dangerous, provoked waves of desire in him which he sometimes had trouble controlling. As far as he knew, she had not had a serious relationship with anyone since she had divorced a dentist in Vitrolles two years before on the grounds of their political incompatibility.
    â€œGoodbye, Michel. See you tomorrow.”
    â€œGoodbye, my lovely,” he answered, slipping his exercise book into the top drawer of his