Hello everyone. I’m James and I’m your pretend Vicky for the evening. With a bit of luck, you’ll barely know the difference.
There’s solid progress for the good guys this week with the multiple pieces of the double-murder puzzle finally locking into place. Laure’s crew seem very close to apprehending the killer, particularly now Gilou is back in the game. It is nonetheless an unusually violent week, with a fatal beating, a rape and a rottweiler attack. It wouldn’t be Spiral if you didn’t despair for humanity at some point.
The double murder
As Roban passes the bad news about Lucie’s paternity to Jaulin, he learns about the parcel Sandrine received from prison on Lucie’s birthday at a time when Zac was not incarcerated. He and his crew were living it up in Casablanca at the time of the killings, which means Zac is in the clear for that at least.
Tintin meets Bensimon to organise the printer-cartridge deal. He’s not quite got Gilou’s scuzzy underworld air, but he comes through well enough. Zac calls for Karen and Laetitia to get the time and date of departure for the lorry carrying the cartridges. In the course of getting the info, Laetitia’s last-minute replacement, Kim, gets raped by Pascal, the warehouse creep. The scene felt gratuitous at the time, but if it’s foreshadowing Pascal as the killer then at least it serves some purpose. He went from zero to rapist in seconds – it’s safe to say he’s a danger to any woman.
The raid on the lorry is a bust as Zac is a no-show and Bensimon scarpers into the woods. Zac has a pretty good excuse – getting beaten to death by Topknot’s biker gang. There’s a lesson: always keep on top of your debts. When prints from Zac’s piece of paper match the print on Lucie’s slipper, it’s a huge break in the case. If Kim picked up the paper in the office, then it’s just about plausible Pascal could have got prints on it. That’s my theory anyway.
The plates on Kim’s car eventually lead them to the Étoile estate and Kim’s mother, Clara. As the cops question her, Kim lays low with Karen. But when Kim makes a break for it, Karen sets attack dogs on her; we finish on an unconscious and mauled Kim. At least the cops now have the familiar name and face of Karen Hoarau to look up. They’re closing in.
Gilou
It looked bad for Gilou, what with the police having him on tape persuading Serge, and with Servier, the union rep, unwilling to help. There’s a lesson: always keep on top of your union subs. The good news is that Joséphine fights his corner after Laure pays her the sweetest compliment, calling her a pitbull. Her advice to drag his bosses down with him is typically high risk. He might stay out of prison, but it’s career suicide.
So it’s left to Herville, that unlikeliest of heroes, to ride in on his charger and save the day. His meeting with Lenoir and Foucart seems a straightforward, mutual arse-covering, backscratching affair. They offer him the bait of the Armed Response Unit command yet he gallantly refuses to throw Gilou under the bus. “Getting promoted for shafting an officer ...” he says. “I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the mornings.”
Herville has a little smile to himself as he leaves. Who knew doing the right thing could feel good? The case against Gilou is thrown out.
Ziani
Plenty of machinations here this week, demonstrating why white-collar crime is always the hardest to prosecute. When Edelman has Joséphine go after an envelope seized in the search, Roban sees what she’s up to – but Carole won’t jeopardise her case by reading the contents. No such problem for Roban, who discovers a “bank transfer of staggering proportions” inside.
That’s just the beginning. Edelman tells Joséphine about a transaction due that week that will allow French corporations to set up in Libya. It’s worth hundreds of millions. Ziani is the middleman in deals between France and Libya, pocketing backhanders along the way. With his funds frozen, the transfer can’t go through. Ziani must miss the good old days of Gaddafi’s reign, when his family made their fortune embezzling public funds. Beating your staff silly with an iron is more problematic than he ever imagined.
He goes awol, missing the confrontation between him and his staff, and violating his judicial supervision in the process. Roban plans to smoke him out by making the bank transfer public. He goes to Regis, an old friend, another maverick who hates Machard. He happily adds the new indictment and it seems to do the trick. Joséphine shows up at Roban’s office offering a deal – Ziani comes in if they unfreeze the accounts. You can’t help feeling that money will do the talking as the endgame plays out in this one.
Thoughts and observations
- It looks like Tintin’s marriage is over despite Laure’s best efforts. He needs this news like a hole in the head. (And this is a man who actually has had a hole shot in his head.)
- “You scared me, you little bugger.” The placental abruption still plagues Laure’s pregnancy, but what’s clearer than ever is how emotionally attached she is to her unborn child. It’s equally clear that if she doesn’t slow down, she might lose it. Have you ever seen Laure slow down?
- I loved Roban’s new assistant, Jean-Luc, hiding the scissors when Jaulin walked in. He’s heard the stories.
- Edelman’s associates don’t seem to realise what they’ve got in Joséphine. They are ready to dump her the moment she drags Ziani out of the hole he’s been enthusiastically digging for himself.
- Tintin creating a distraction while Laure hacked Servier’s computer was top-notch underhand policing, which they enjoyed far too much.
- “Solidarity among widows.” Joséphine’s response to Gilou when he demands to know why she is representing him. The respect between Joséphine and Laure seems to be growing into affection. I never saw that coming.
- “With all due respect you’re living in a dream world. If we did every case by the book, we’d close about five a year.” Gilou and Herville repeat the necessity of having to bend the rules to get things done. The bosses put pressure on the rank-and-file to cut corners and then run for the hills when one of them gets caught. How many professions does this apply to?
