The receptionist tells Emeline Monsieur Legros will see her immediately and explains the dozens of turns and stairs she will have to take to get to his office. Emeline follows the instructions and five minutes later, finds herself in the office of Cyril Legros.

  According to Emeline’s information, he is fifty-five, but he looks closer to sixty. What remains of his hair is entirely white and his face is scored with wrinkles, some from smiling, many from frowning. He has a bit of a beer belly straining his white shirt, and spindly legs hiding in too-large jeans. Even though Emeline didn’t give him a warning she was coming, he offers her a smile and a firm handshake.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Monsieur Legros,” Emeline says. She spares a glance at the view, as do probably all visitors. Monsieur Legros must have some power, indeed, to merit not only a large wooden desk and a separate meeting room table touting a live plant, but also an office with a panoramic view of the river. The low hills of Pech David are visible in the south and immediately on the north side, the soccer stadium on the island in the middle of the river. The sun pounding down directly on the windows makes Emeline send up quick thanks for air conditioning.

  “How can I be of service, Captain Evian?” Monsieur Legros asks and waves for her to have a seat in one of his visitors’ chairs.

  Emeline slides gratefully into the seat. She pulls out her phone and opens a photo she took of Clothilde’s letter before leaving home. “I’m investigating a cold case from the late eighties,” she says, weighing her words, wondering how much she should tell the man. “The murder of a young woman named Clothilde Humbert.”

  No reaction from Monsieur Legros. The name must not ring any bells.

  “I found this letter in her belongings.” She hands over her phone so Monsieur Legros can study the document. “I realize it’s a form letter of sorts, but it has your signature, so I would very much like to pick your brain on the subject.”

  Emeline doesn’t miss the downward twist of his mouth when he reads the short letter, nor the deepening of the furrow between his bushy eyebrows.

  “This is a form letter,” he says. “So much so, it doesn’t even say what subject this person—” He checks the letterhead and realizes it’s the name Emeline just said belonged to a murder victim. He clears his throat. “—Mademoiselle Humbert wanted to talk to Madame Redon about.”

  “She worked with a non-profit organization for the improvement of traffic fluidity in Toulouse,” Emeline says. “From what I understand, this is as close as she ever got to Madame Redon, despite multiple attempts to meet with the woman.”

  Sighing, Monsieur Legros sets Emeline’s phone on the desk to return it, and leans back in his chair, making it creak under his weight. His gaze goes out the window but he’s not seeing the river, the cars driving past, or the soccer stadium.

  “I spent three miserable years working for Madame Redon,” he says, his voice low. “Do you know, she’s the reason I changed political parties? Simply couldn’t stand the idea of being on the same side as her.”

  His gaze comes back to the office and he looks around as if really seeing it for the first time. “Although, to be fair, I guess she pushed me to discover where my real loyalties and beliefs were earlier than I would have otherwise. Not that I will thank her for it.”

  Leaning forward in his chair to place his forearms on his desk, he reaches out and taps a finger on Emeline’s phone. “She ordered me to send those letters to anyone approaching her on three very specific subjects. She didn’t care if it was a preschooler or the President himself, she wasn’t interested in any input or opinions. She had better things to do with her time.”

  “So I assume traffic management was one of the three subjects?”

  “Yes.” Emeline doesn’t need to formulate the next questions for him to answer it. “The two others were housing management and public transport. The latter is quite close to traffic management, of course, but they are two separate issues to be dealt with. Ideally, you manage the two in concert.”

  Emeline jots down the two subjects in her trusty notebook. It’s slightly damp from the time spent in her back pocket but as long as she can take her notes and read them later, that doesn’t matter.

  “What happened if someone wouldn’t give up?” she asks. “Surely, not everyone was satisfied with this form letter reply?”

  Monsieur Legros’ snort is flat and devoid of any real mirth. “Nobody was satisfied with that letter. It would be followed up by a second letter, a third… Then they’d start calling. Giving that same answer on the phone was fun, I can tell you. When that didn’t work, they showed up in person. Well, the driven ones did, anyway. I suppose I did lose some during the process.”

  “Clothilde probably showed up in person,” Emeline says.

  Monsieur Legros throws out his arms, hands up. “I saw a lot of angry people trying to get to Madame Redon or one of the other Council members. And it was over thirty years ago. Maybe I met your Mademoiselle Humbert, maybe I didn’t.”

  “What happened when they showed up at City Hall?”

  “They were escorted out by security. Mostly, it happened calmly and without incident. Only once did one young lady make such a scene, only the mayor showing his face and rebuking her in person could get her to consider lowering her volume or leaving the building.”

  Emeline has a feeling, in the pit of her stomach. It isn’t even her tingly sense this time, only her own intuition and her knowledge of Clothilde’s character. She grabs her phone and quickly searches for another photo she took of something from Clothilde’s boxes.

  Her school photo from her senior year in high school.

  She turns the phone to show it to Monsieur Legros. “You wouldn’t happen to recognize this face, Monsieur? Was she the young lady making a scene?”

  Monsieur Legros leans so close his nose is almost touching the phone’s screen. “I’ll be damned. That’s her!”

  Of course it is.

  Five

  “ I wasn’t trying to meet with Redon,” Clothilde says. She’s perched on one of Legros’ filing cabinets close to the door. “I wanted Pradel. His form letter responses were a lot more annoying and insulting. Couldn’t let it stand.”

  I smile at my friend. I’ve opted to take up position in the corner, leaning against the wall behind Evian, with an unimpeded view of the river and cars outside. I keep stealing glances at the soccer stadium behind me—it has been through some major renovations since my time. I’d love to know what the occasion was but unfortunately, I don’t think Evian will know—or care.

  I miss playing soccer, I realize. Haven’t really thought about it before now but I loved being part of a team, pushing myself to my limits, making an ass of myself every time I scored. Even if I found enough ghosts to make up two teams, it wouldn’t be the same.

  Evian has taken back her phone and is staring at Clothilde’s high school picture. It’s odd to see her in full color like that. It’s definitely my Clothilde, there’s no mistaking the mischievous smile or the glint in her eye, but I never pictured her eyes to be that shade of dark green, or her hair to be such a rich chestnut. The flush high on her cheeks is downright surprising.

  Yet another reminder of what we’ve lost. We might still be around and pretending to be equal partners to Evian while solving crime, but we have some pretty severe handicaps. Life isn’t quite life without soccer or color.

  “Do you know where the order to refute all requests came from?” Evian asks. “Other than Redon, I mean. Do you think she did it on her own initiative, or could the order have come from higher up?”

  Legros’ frown deepens. “From the mayor, you mean?” He seems to go through memories as he takes a moment before replying. “I suppose it’s possible. Might even make sense, to a certain degree. What makes you ask the question this way?”

  Evian will have to watch what she’s saying so nothing comes to the ears of certain people at the police station. She is still officially working a case but has received increasingly restrictive instructions from several levels of superior officers. She is to work on Clothilde’s death and her link to me, and that’s it. Throwing around accusations against the long-dead but still-beloved mayor would not go down all too well.

  And Legros is a politician. He’s cooperating well enough, but the chances of him talking to someone, who talks to someone…and word ending up in Divisional Commander Spangero’s ear are unfortunately rather high. It’s very frustrating. Both because it hinders us from properly investigating Clothilde’s past and because it confirms Clothilde’s past is intimately linked to something the big bosses at the police station don’t want Evian to look into.

  “I talked with Monsieur Pradel not too long ago,” Evian says. “He also had some run-ins with Mademoiselle Humbert in the time before she died. In fact, I think she may have been trying to see him that time you saw her at the City Hall.”

  I can’t read any emotions on Legros’ face but I’m guessing he’s heard about Pradel spending some time being “interviewed” by the police recently. “I guess that makes sense,” he says slowly. “He was working on urban development for a long time. Is this why you suspect Madame Redon wasn’t really behind the orders she gave me?”

  “Come on, dude!” Clothilde yells from her perch. “You’re not the police officer here, she is! She’s the one asking the questions. You should be answering. If you don’t, we’re going to think you’re one of the bad guys.”

  Evian cocks her head. I think she’s confused by what she feels from Clothilde.

  She’s not yet sufficiently familiar with Clothilde’s particular brand of questioning.

  It seems to work, though.

  “I guess that’s not important,” Legros says as he suppresses a shiver. “I’ll have to redirect you to Madame Redon if you wish to know what made her do what she did. She didn’t confide in me, only gave me the most unsatisfying tasks possible. She may have been trying to drive me away from politics.”

  Evian nods. This is where, logically, we would move on to interviewing Redon. Unfortunately, she’s on the no-go list given to Evian by her boss Diome. Too many restrictions.

  Evian’s phone vibrates. I lean over her shoulder to see it’s an incoming call from Nadine Tulle. Could she already have information on Constantine’s husband?

  Although finding Jacques Larcher isn’t as important to Evian as searching for Clothilde’s murderer, it seems we won’t be getting any useful information out of Legros without letting him know we have our hands tied, so she uses the call as an excuse to put an end to their meeting. They shake hands quickly, Evian leaves him one of her cards, and we’re out in the hallway, following Evian toward the staircase as she accepts the call from Tulle.

  “You found something already?” Evian asks as she pushes the door to the stairwell open.

  I could hear more than tinny noises if I leaned very close to Evian’s ear, but I leave her be. I trust she’ll share whatever information she gets once the conversation is over. I fall into step with Clothilde a few paces behind Evian as she hurries down the spiral staircase.

  “Well, that’s quick,” Evian replies to whatever Tulle said. “Hang on, let me write that down.” She stops just before reaching the exit on the ground floor and pulls out her notebook. She flips to a blank page and jots down “Cimetière de Salonique,” followed by a plot number.

  Looks like Constantine’s husband is dead, and we’ve found his final resting place.

  She also writes down the name Béatrice Larcher and an address that I don’t recognize. Next of kin?

  Evian thanks Tulle profusely and is about to hang up when she cocks her head. I don’t hear anything through the phone.

  “Was there something else?” Evian asks. With a quick glance up and down the staircase, she makes sure we’re alone, and presses a button to put Tulle on speaker. No sound comes out.

  Evian’s on-point intuition doesn’t come only from her capacity to communicate with ghosts. Tulle’s silence means she has something more than the name of a cemetery. And Evian is giving her the time to decide whether or not to talk.

  “It’s probably nothing…” Tulle begins, then trails off. There’s a faint click in the background. I think she might have closed the door to her office.

  “I’m guessing it’s something,” Evian says, her voice encouraging without being condescending. “Does it have to do with Monsieur Larcher?”

  “No,” Tulle says immediately. “I gave you everything I have on him. It’s just… You remember that search you had me do when you first came here? Looking for cold cases with similar profiles to that young woman?”

  Here she goes with her secrecy again. Both women know Clothilde’s name, and the case Evian has been on since she came here. Tulle is worried about someone listening in and is staying vague.

  “Of course,” Evian says. She leans sideways to check the staircase again. We’re still alone.

  “Clothilde will tell you if someone is coming,” I tell her. My friend has taken up position half a flight of stairs above us, being the lookout now coming naturally to the both of us.

  “Well,” Tulle continues, whispering now, “I set up an alert while I did my search. Figured you’d want to know if any hot cases came in that would also fit the profile…”

  Evian’s breath catches. “You got a hit?”

  “Maybe. Yes. I think so.”

  “Who? Where? When?” Evian sets her phone down on the stairs, so she has both hands free to take notes. She flips her notebook to the next page.

  “I can’t—” Tulle takes a deep breath. “There’s something off with the case, but I can’t tell you about it. Boss’s orders.”

  “What!” Two spots of anger appear on Evian’s cheeks. “Who—”

  “But if you were to go look for the grave of Monsieur Larcher, say this afternoon around four? You might want to take a walk through the neighboring cemetery—Terre Cabade—about half an hour later. It’s not often you can see an actual funeral in such an old and overcrowded cemetery. Should be interesting. You know, since you’re a tourist in Toulouse, and all.”

  Tulle trails off while Evian stares at the phone, her mouth hanging open. Her lips form the word “tourist,” before she shakes it off and jots down everything Tulle just said.

  “Yes, I love taking strolls through cemeteries,” Evian says in a completely neutral tone. “I’ll jump at any occasion to compare them to Père Lachaise in Paris.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Tulle sounds relieved Evian doesn’t call her on her weird excuse. If anybody were to listen in on this conversation, a little scrutiny will make it obvious the women aren’t actually talking about tourist spots, but it’s still better than saying things outright.

  Evian thanks Tulle for her help and hangs up. Then she sits down on the stairs and uses her phone to look up the two cemeteries Tulle wants her to visit.

  I know them both well, they really are Toulouse’s answer to Père Lachaise—two very old, very big cemeteries, separated only by a narrow road, and located on one of the city’s rare hills, giving the dead a gorgeous view of Toulouse. I used to go there from time to time to take a stroll among the ancient tombs and clear my head.

  But that was before I became a ghost.

  I wonder if it would still be silent and peaceful now?

  Six

  The answer is a definite no. Walking through a huge cemetery when you can see the ghosts is not as peaceful as when you’re blissfully ignorant.

  Evian took the metro again, getting off at Jolimont. This way she’s already on the hill and we only have to walk a few minutes to get to the Salonique cemetery. With the sun bearing down from a clear, blue sky, and a funeral parlor behind us, we cross the tiny parking lot at the cemetery entrance. Only two cars; one blue sedan and one whitish Peugeot 106 that must have been parked there for several years already.

  Evian is sweating profusely. I think she has given up on trying to dry out her T-shirt. When we exited the metro, she bought a large bottle of water and has already drunk half of it. A small part went into her hair two minutes ago. I think she’s tempted to pour the rest down her front, but she might need it later. It’s not very common to find coffee shops inside cemeteries. Her sunglasses keep slipping down her nose and I have never been happier not to have a physical body.

  A cemetery like this one offers very little shade. Some of the tombs and statues are very big, and the main avenues are lines with pines and cypress trees, but none seem to throw a shadow a person can hide in. The graves are all gray and stern, most of the statues are missing appendages or faces, and one angel has a clipped wing. The lanes and paths are well-maintained and neat, but the responsibility of upholding a tomb falls entirely to the individual family. Like in our old cemetery, it is clear which families prioritize upholding appearances even in death, and which are keeping the plot because it has already been paid for.

  Evian has the location of Larcher’s plot on her phone. According to the map, it’s on the other side, just past the WWI memorial. With a sigh, Evian chooses the main path toward the center of the cemetery and sets off at a brisk pace.

  At first, I don’t notice the other ghosts. In my worry for Evian’s well-being, I sort of forgot to look for them. But we’re not even twenty meters inside the cemetery walls when Clothilde whispers, “There’s a girl on the left. And an old man down there by that broken headstone.”

  I follow her gaze. On our left, sitting on the steps of a narrow mausoleum belonging to the Albouy family, a girl of about ten looks up at us, wispy strands of hair pulled into two messy pigtails and torn trousers under a too-big man’s shirt. Her expression is hard to read. The curiosity fits with the ten-year-old body, but the knowledge behind the eyes feels unlimited.

  Evian is walking too fast for me to be able to stop for long, but I scan the names listed by the mausoleum door and find one Lisette Albouy, born August 1807, died March 1819.

  And she’s still a ghost.

 

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