Synopsis

Amsterdam, July 2012. In the offices of Seleksoft, a Dutch company specializing in the encryption of sensitive information, Mick Hendriks, a cryptographic analyst, is murdered. Nine months later, in Châtillon-sur-Marne, the accountant of a priory falls from the church bell tower at dawn. The suicide hypothesis doesn't convince Inspector Legrand, who leaves for Marseille, the employee's hometown. But his life and his investigation come to a halt behind the door of a third-rate hotel. Two deaths that seem to belong to different worlds. François Gérard, commissioner of the DCRI, the French intelligence agency, who is collaborating with the Dutch police on the Hendriks case, throws himself headlong into the alleys of Marseille in search of Legrand's killer, a longtime friend. But the puzzle is complex, the leads ambiguous, the clues contradictory. A young and beautiful Tunisian woman, Sahar, lives in Marseille. She fled Ben Ali's regime with Farid, the man she thought she loved. She works in a bookstore on the Quai and spends her evenings in the colorful and noisy bars of the Panier and Cours Julien. Then, one evening, her life suddenly changes. Lured into Farid's house by a trap, she finds a man with a smashed skull. She has no choice but to flee. All the evidence is against her; his fingerprints and blood are everywhere. Gerard and Sahar, for different reasons, are pursuing the same goal; their paths are parallel, brushing against each other but never crossing. Sahar, accused of killing the drug dealer, has only one way out: to find out who is trying to frame her. As she flees between France and the Netherlands, amidst traps and ambushes, disguises and erotic encounters, the woman deliberately or unknowingly leaves a trail of information along the way. Inspector Gerard is a wounded man. Since Michelle, the woman he loves, left his life, he's been left alone with his mutts, Dupin and Maigret, sheltered on the outskirts of Paris. But he's also a brilliant detective, refined and brilliant in his analysis, tenacious in following his intuitions. Chasing Sahar in search of Legrand's murderer, he discovers through her that behind the scenes there's a character who will give him a hard time until the very last moment, and whose name is known only to him: Garcia.