Black Diamond

turning away from his new phone call.
    “The very one.” Bruno looked again at his notebook, thumbing back through the pages. “Yiren Guo, age twenty-two, Chinese nationality, claiming to be a student but on an overstayed tourist visa. Pleaded guilty and agreed to self-deportation.”
    “So this time it’s a prison term for sure,” said J-J. He turned back to his phone and read out the motorbike’s license number. “There’s more,” he continued into the phone. “I want the court record for the case of Yiren Guo, pleaded guilty to charges of assault and immigration offenses inPérigueux. Poincevin was his lawyer. I need to know how much the fine was and who paid it and the terms of his deportation order, and I don’t care what you have to do to get it.”
    “There’s no paint on this one’s hands,” said Bruno. He walked behind the chair where Guo sat and bent down to sniff the bound hands. “Gasoline.”
    “And I want a forensics guy down here,” J-J said into his phone. “It looks like we’ve got one of the petrol bombers.”
    “Why not run a DNA check on him?” suggested Bruno. “See if you get a match to those tissues you found in that abandoned Mercedes after Hercule’s murder.”
    “Worth a try,” said J-J.
    Isabelle was searching the pockets of the young Chinese. They were empty, except for a thin wad of euros, a mobile phone and a telephone charge card and a slip of paper with a telephone number. Bruno checked his notebook. It was the number for the law offices of Poincevin in Périgueux.
    “Maître Poincevin will have some explaining to do,” Bruno said. “And I have a fine witness in St. Denis who saw some Asians putting rats into Vinh’s home. I want to put this guy into a lineup for her.”
    “Wait,” said Isabelle, pulling off Guo’s shoes and frisking his ankles. “I’ve been lucky like this before.” She pulled out a BNP bank card from the young man’s sock, held it up triumphantly and read out a different name. The prisoner closed his eyes.
    “Chan Kang-ying,” she said. “It doesn’t sound at all like Guo. But with the bank account, we’ll get an address and an ID card number along with a paper trail. And that should give us enough to get a whole lot more information from this lawyer of his, starting with who paid the legal fees.”
    “I imagine that whoever hired this guy isn’t going to behappy that he got caught, and even more angry that he was foolish enough to be carrying the bank card,” said J-J. “So we’re going to have an interesting conversation about what he should tell us in his own self-interest.” He ruffled the prisoner’s hair, almost affectionately.
    “What happens now?” asked Bao Le.
    “We wait for the forensics team, get this man formally booked and charged and locked up overnight, take his bike to the police garage and start looking into his bank account,” said J-J. “But most of that can be handled by the Bordeaux police, who are on the way.”
    “Three motorbikes and six men,” said Isabelle. “And somebody had to reconnoiter this place so they knew about the cars blocking the street, and they brought paint to blind them so they couldn’t be followed. It’s quite an organization that can put all that together with a couple of hours’ notice.”
    “I can’t work out what they were trying to do, beyond send us a message that they knew we were meeting,” said the brigadier. “It was a lot of effort just to toss one Molotov cocktail at the door.”
    “It could have been more serious if it had gone through the front window,” said Isabelle. “But I see what you mean.”
    “What worries me is how they knew we were meeting here,” said Bruno. He turned to Vien and Tran and Bao Le. “Could there be a leak on your side?”
    Vien shrugged. “It’s always possible, but I doubt it.”
    “Or could they be tapping some of our phones?” suggested Bao Le. Like Bruno, he was watching Guo for any sign of reaction. “Perhaps we should change them all, just in case.”
    “If they’re tapping mine, they’ve broken the best encryption system in France,” the brigadier said. “And I don’t think they’re that good—yet.” He picked up Guo’s mobile phoneand opened the phone log, and then scanned through the text messages. From a distance came the sound of a police siren.
    “It’s in pinyin, Chinese with Roman letters, and I can’t read it. But it looks like somebody was sending him this address. The message