Maud Valette had learned to recognize the clients who wanted someone found and those who wanted a bearable version of the story returned to them. At first glance, Jean Renaud belonged to both categories.
He had arrived at the Garel agency twenty minutes early, umbrella closed despite the rain, a cardboard folder held against him like a medical file. By five to nine he had already refused two coffees, moved his phone three times on the table, and asked whether the interview room door locked.
“It does,” Maud said. “But we don’t use it.”
He looked up at her.
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t keep anyone here.”
She sat opposite him and placed a blank notebook between them. Behind the glass partition, the agency was waking with its Monday slowness: a printer scraping a sheet, a kettle, Luc Garel’s voice on the phone. On the investigation wall, three cases from the previous week remained pinned up, each reduced to what survived the accounts: dates, movements, invoices, images, names whose sources were known. Maud liked that wall for the same reason she disliked overly tidy reports. It resisted.
Through the glass, she saw Luc place a familiar kraft envelope on her desk. **Partnership proposal** was written on it in his hand. For two months he had been talking about selling her a minority stake in the agency, enough for her to stop being merely the person sent out into the rain and start signing some files in her own name. Their appointment with the accountant was set for Friday. Luc did not mention it in front of clients; neither did Maud. Still, she had noticed herself paying more attention to invoices, deadlines, and complaints since her name might end up on the door.
Jean Renaud opened his folder.
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