The Winner Stands Alone

"Next line."

There was no need for her to say that. Gabriela was going to continue anyway.

"We'd better go and see a doctor. I think you need help."

"No," said the woman in glasses, who was playing the part of the boyfriend.

"OK, no doctor, then. How about a little walk, and you can tell me exactly what's going on. I love you, you know, and even if no one else in the world cares about you, I do."

There are no more lines. Another silence. A strange energy fills the room.

"Tell the other girl out there she can go," says the woman in the glasses to one of the other people present.

Does this mean what Gabriela thinks it means?

"Go to the marina at the end of Boulevard de la Croisette, opposite Allee des Palmiers. A boat will be waiting there at 1:55 prompt to take you to meet Mr. Gibson. We're going to send him the video now, but he always likes to meet the people he might be working with."

A smile appears on Gabriela's face.

"I said 'might,' I didn't say 'will be working with.'"

The smile remains. Mr. Gibson!

1:19 P.M.

Lying on a stainless steel table between Inspector Savoy and the pathologist is a beautiful young woman of about twenty, completely naked. And dead.

"Are you sure?"

The pathologist goes over to a stainless steel sink, removes his rubber gloves, throws them in the bin, and turns on the tap.

"Absolutely. There's no trace of drugs."

"What happened, then? Could a young woman like her have had a heart attack?"

The only noise in the room is that of running water. The pathologist thinks:

"They always come up with the obvious: drugs, a heart attack..."

He takes longer than necessary to wash his hands--a little suspense never goes amiss. He applies disinfectant to his arms and throws away the disposable material used in the autopsy. Then he turns round and asks the inspector to study the body.

"No, really, take a good look. Don't be embarrassed. Noticing details is part of your job, isn't it?"

Savoy carefully examines the body. At one point, he reaches out to lift one of the girl's arms, but the pathologist stops him.

"No need to touch."

Savoy runs his eyes over the girl's naked body. He knows quite a lot about her now--Olivia Martins, the daughter of Portuguese parents, currently going out with a young man of no fixed profession, who is heavily into Cannes nightlife and is, at that moment, being interrogated at a police station some way away. A judge issued a search warrant for his apartment and they found some small flasks of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the main hallucinogenic element in marijuana, and which can be taken dissolved in sesame oil, which leaves no smell and has a far stronger effect than when the substance is absorbed through smoke). They also found six envelopes, each containing a gram of cocaine, and some bloodstains on a sheet which is now on its way to a laboratory for tests. He's probably, at most, a minor dealer. He's already known to the police, having spent a couple of spells in prison, but never for physical violence.

Olivia was lovely, even in death. Her dark eyebrows, that childlike air, her breasts..."No," he thinks, "I mustn't go there. I'm a professional."

"I can't see anything," he says.

The pathologist smiles, and Savoy finds his smugness slightly irritating. The expert points to a small, purplish, almost imperceptible mark between the girl's left shoulder and her throat. Then he shows him another similar mark on the right-hand side of her torso, between two of her ribs.

"I could begin by giving you the technical details. Death was caused by obstruction of the jugular vein and the carotid artery while, simultaneously, similar pressure was being applied to a particular sheaf of nerves, but so precisely that it caused the complete paralysis of the upper part of the body..."

Savoy says nothing. The pathologist realizes that this is not the moment to show off his knowledge or to make jokes. He feels rather sorry for himself. He works with death on a daily basis and spends each day surrounded by corpses and grave-faced people. His children never tell anyone what their father does, and he has nothing to talk about at supper parties because people hate discussing what they perceive to be macabre topics. He sometimes wonders if he hasn't perhaps cho