EPILOGUE
The bar was a dim cavern favoured by gamblers, taxi drivers and off-duty detectives at the end of the night shift. Emmanuel and Inspector Luc Moreau stood shoulder to shoulder at the counter, three drinks into the celebration of Johnny Belmondo's arrest.
'Long after the war has ended,' Inspector Moreau said, 'this fight against injustice and cruelty will continue. This is how the world is rebuilt, Major Cooper, with one small victory at a time.'
The barman, an amateur boxer with cauliflower ears and a surly mouth, poured shots. Luc Moreau lifted his glass.
'To Simone Betancourt. May she rest with the angels.'
'To Simone Betancourt.' Emmanuel downed the whisky and motioned for another round.
The sun was rising and as the neon lights of Montmartre flicked off one by one, a bright river of sunshine began to flow over the cobblestoned streets. Two young prostitutes in high heels and low-cut silk dresses stopped to light candles at a roadside shrine to the Virgin Mary.
Inspector Moreau lifted his glass again. They had an unspoken agreement that this morning they would hammer the bottle. 'To the other woman whose unjust death gave you a thirst for justice.'
'What?' Emmanuel put his whisky down.
'To the woman whose memory brought you onto this case,' Moreau said. 'The dead cannot be honoured if they are not named. Even the unknown soldier has a marked grave, does he not?'
To honour the dead and have no fear of them . . . well, that was easier said than done. To bring them into the daylight and speak their names was dark magic. In a dim Parisian bar, half a world away from South Africa, Emmanuel conjured her into flesh: a silky-haired woman with green eyes and an easy laugh, careless with her beauty. Tired from working long hours but certain that her son would break free of Sophiatown and inhabit a world that she had only dreamed of.
'To my mother,' Emmanuel said.