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tomorrow night. Until then, it’s probably best to let the boys from forensics do their work …”
    “So what do we run with?” said a young blond guy who looked well on his way to liver failure.
    “You say: two women who have not yet been identified. You say: murdered in the past forty-eight hours by person or persons unknown, motive and cause of death yet to be determined.”
    “It’s a bit thin!”
    “That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
    It would have been hard to say less. There was a moment of confusion in the ranks.
    And at that precise moment, what Camille had fervently hoped would not happen, happened. The forensics van, having reversed, found it could not get close enough to the entrance of the building because for some mysterious reason there was a concrete planter in the way. The van driver got out and flung open the rear doors and two forensics officers jumped out. The reporters, who up to that point had been distracted, were suddenly riveted as the door to the warehouse apartment opened to reveal the living room wall completely covered with blood spatter like a Jackson Pollock canvas. As if the reporters needed any further confirmation, the officers meticulously began loading the van with clear sealed bags, tagged and ready to be sent to the morgue.
    Reporters are a little like those undertakers who can size up a corpse for a coffin with a single glance. Seeing the bags being piled into the van, the hacks could tell the bodies had been dismembered.
    “Shit!” the hacks said in chorus.
    Before the officers had time to extend the cordon, the photographers were clicking away furiously. The pack divided intotwo like a cancerous cell, one half photographing the forensics van and shouting “Over here!” so the grisly removal men would stop and turn to look, the other half grabbing their mobile phones and calling for backup.
    “Shit!” echoed Camille.
    A complete cock-up. Then he too took out his mobile and made the calls that would put him in the eye of the hurricane.

9
    The boys from
identité judiciaire
had done a good job. Two windows had been cracked open to create a through breeze and the stench of morning had dissipated to the extent that handkerchiefs and surgical masks were no longer necessary.
    At this point, crime scenes can be more disturbing than they were before the bodies were removed. It feels as though death has struck a second time, whisking them away.
    This particular crime scene was even worse. Only the lab assistants were still there, armed with cameras, rangefinders, tweezers, vials, evidence bags and luminol, and it now looked as though there had been no bodies, as though death had denied the victims the final dignity of a corpse that had once been living. The forensics teams had taken away the severed fingers, the heads, the entrails. All that remained were traces of blood and shit and, stripped of its stark horror, the apartment now appeared verydifferent. Even to Camille, it looked utterly bizarre. Louis warily eyed his boss, who had a peculiar expression – brow furrowed, eyebrows knitted – as though trying to solve a crossword puzzle.
    Louis stepped into the room and headed straight for the T.V. unit and telephone. Camille went into the bedroom. They explored the space like visitors in an art gallery, eager to discover some detail they had previously overlooked. A little later, still brooding, they ran into each other in the bathroom. Louis headed off to make his own inspection of the bedroom and Camille stared out of the window while the forensics technicians unplugged the spotlights and rolled up the cables and plastic sheeting, snapped shut cases and toolboxes. As he wandered through the apartment, his mind made keener by Camille’s troubled expression, Louis’ neurones were firing on all cylinders. And, gradually, he too took on a more preoccupied air, as though he were doing mental arithmetic to eight decimal places.
    He found Camille in the living room. On the