Chapter 1: 雨夜理赔单

Rain is the only judge in Cannes. It is brutal and impartial, shattering the neon lights of Croisette onto the black marble pavement until they burst into thousands of trembling, fractured spots of light, only to be swallowed by sewage and flushed into the drains—just as it mercilessly washed the last trace of color from Mary-Clair Beranger’s face. I had stood outside the cordon on the west end of Promenade du Paillon for forty minutes. Rainwater seeped unapologetically up the collar of my waterproof jacket, pooling against my spine until the sheer volume would have been enough to sustain a small tropical fish. The cold clung to my vertebrae, leaching the last reserves of body heat. The technical team had long since withdrawn; the ambulance with its flashing blue and red lights had disappeared into the rain curtain, leaving only the body alone on the cobblestones. A gust of sea wind lifted a corner of the white sheet, then let it fall again, repeatedly exposing her left hand—the one that bore no wedding ring—pale as bleached paper.

A thirty-six-year-old female tycoon. Sum insured: 14 million euros. I mentally scanned the clauses, the corner of my mouth twitching in a cold smirk. Buried in fine print was a single clause: in the event of death by falling into the sea, the payout would be doubled.

“Ms. Defour.” A young man in uniform ran over, rain streaming from his cap brim. He clutched a transparent evidence bag tightly in his hand, his knuckles white with the cold. “This was found in her pocket. Take a look.”

I took the bag. Inside was a silver badge, shield-shaped, bearing a bas-relief of a double-headed eagle, with the inscription “Lacombe” engraved at the base. The rain had polished the metal surface to a mirror shine, reflecting a sharp, cold light. It looked as fresh as a newly minted coin, carrying an aura of newness that felt jarringly out of place with the corpse.

“Why was she carrying this?” I asked, my voice thin against the wind and rain.

“Her mother was from the Lacombe family,” the young man gasped, his eyes darting away. “The family used to control the old town in Cannes, holding vast tracts of land.”

I nodded, though I felt nothing inside. The Lacombe family had bankrupted in the seventies due to scandal. The deceased’s mother had died when she was twelve, and the insurance company’s claim application contained no mention of family inheritance or trust funds. I clenched the badge tightly. Through the plastic, it felt heavier than silver—more like lead, or a headstone.

At two in the morning, I waited for the autopsy report at the police station by the port. Rain hammered against the glass, a monotone and urgent rhythm. Antoine Vayan sat on the bench opposite me. His suit was immaculate, his shoes polished to a mirror finish that reflected his silhouette, creating an absurd dissonance against the damp, dim surroundings. Nominally, he was a shareholder in this insurance company. In reality, he was the only direct client of my current investigation—and the only one who made me uneasy.

“Laya.” He finally spoke, his voice low, like aged whisky. “You should read the report before deciding whether to suspect. Some conclusions are established facts.”

“I’m already suspicious,” I cut in, staring at his flawless face.

“Suspicious of what?”

“Of why that badge was on her body. Of why she walked alone to the sea on a rainy night instead of going home. And of why she wasn’t wearing shoes. What traces would bare feet leave on a beach covered in wet, slippery cobbles? Or, perhaps, would they leave no traces of struggle at all?”

Antoine smiled. The lines around his eyes deepened as he laughed, like the cliffs of the Mediterranean—elegant, but dangerous, carrying a tone of superior scrutiny. “You shouldn’t worry about the shoes,” he said. “Ms. Beranger was the daughter of a ship’s washer. She lived in Cannes for over twenty years and never left. Her death is an accident. A lonely person, on a lonely night, chose a lonely sea.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“The contract is signed. The payout will be wired to her brother tomorrow. That is procedural justice.”

I stared at him for two seconds. Antoine was the type of person who always thought about money first, but he would not stand outside the cordon for forty minutes in a stormy night just to process a claim. His presence here, and his persistence, indicated he cared about this case. Cared to the point of sleeplessness, to the point of risking exposure of his own presence.

“When will the report be ready?” I asked.

“Forty minutes.” He glanced at his pocket watch—a habit of his. No matter where he went, time was a variable he kept under control.

“Then you go back. I’ll wait.”

Antoine did not leave. He simply stood, walked to the window, and gazed out at the misty harbor. His hands were clasped behind his back, fingertips tapping lightly against his wrist—a habitual motion when he was thinking. I had seen it three times before, and each time it meant he was calculating a massive game.

Forty minutes later, Claire Perret walked in with the report. She was a records assessor, responsible for archiving documents from the police and insurance companies, but her specialty was forensic paperwork—she could find missed stitches in dense tables of data.

“The conclusion is death by falling into the sea,” she said, spreading the report open. Glare from her glasses obscured her eyes. “Drowning after entering the water. Significant impact injury to the left shoulder, consistent with falling from the breakwater and hitting rocks. No signs of a fight, no suspicion of homicide.”

I studied the scene photographs attached to the end of the report. Mademoiselle Belange lay on her back on the cobblestones, a bruise of deep purple and blue on her left shoulder, her lips cyanotic, her eyelids half-lidded. Everything conformed to the official conclusion. But as I looked at the photos, my gaze was pinned to a single detail: a fine scratch, so faint it was nearly invisible, ran across the palm of her right hand, cutting across the lifeline, its edges white and raw.

“Claire, zoom in on the right hand.”

She magnified the image. The mark was there. About three centimeters long, incredibly thin, as if skinned by something with a sharp, yet slender, edge. The autopsy report made no mention of it.

“What is that?” I asked, my finger hovering just above the wound.

Claire pushed her glasses up her nose, her brow furrowing slightly. “It’s an incision. Shallow, barely piercing the dermis. It could be from brushing against a shell or coral when she went in the water.”

“Shells and coral don’t leave marks like that,” I said. “It’s a straight line. Clean edges. Like a blade. And if it were an accidental scrape while falling into the water, there would be sand and grit embedded in it. This is clean.”

“She didn’t have a knife with her,” Claire said, her tone laced with confusion.

“But what if someone, before she fell, on the boat or in the shadows, had drawn a blade across her palm? Not to kill her. To mark her. Or to... warn her.”

The police station fell silent. Only the rain howled outside the windows. Antoine turned from his spot by the window, his gaze settling on my face. He said nothing, but his expression had shifted, the focused intensity of a hunter spotting distant tracks, his pupils constricting slightly.

I picked up the badge and looked again at the photo of the dead woman’s hand. The wings of the double-headed eagle on the silver shield had sharp, defined edges—sharp enough to create that precise, linear cut.

“Claire,” I lowered my voice so the wind wouldn’t carry it. “The Belange and Lacombe families married into each other in the seventies. When her mother died, the family estate was liquidated. But if she was still carrying something belonging to the Lacombe family, then that money—the part overlooked in the initial liquidation—would be worth far more than fourteen million.”

Claire was silent for a few seconds. When she finally spoke, her voice was so low only the three of us could hear: “You’re saying she was killed for that forgotten fortune?”

“I don’t know.” I closed the report, my fingers unconsciously rubbing the cover. “But I know this badge shouldn’t have been in her pocket. It’s too heavy. Heavy enough to change the fate of everyone involved.”

The rain outside intensified. Antoine walked over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder, his gesture unexpectedly gentle. “Laya, you always find what others can’t. That’s good. But don’t forget, sometimes what you find isn’t the truth. It might just be bait.”

“Then what is the truth?”

He didn’t answer. He simply turned and walked toward the door, his leather shoes making dull thumps against the floor. At the threshold, he stopped, his back casting a long shadow in the dim light. “Tomorrow, you see Colette. She can tell you things about the Lacombe family.”

“Who is Colette?”

“A member of the Old Book Dealers’ Guild. She was young during the liquidation in the seventies, but her father was the last head steward of the Lacombe family. He knew which items were never accounted for.”

Antoine left, abandoning me and Claire in the empty duty room. I placed the badge back into the evidence bag and looked out the window. The rain continued to fall. On the pitch-black sea beyond the port, a ship with its lights on drifted slowly into the distance, like a giant eye watching the sleeping city with cold indifference.

“Claire,” I said. “Run something for me.”

“What?” She closed her folder, her eyes wary.

“Mademoiselle Belange’s bank accounts.”

“She’s dead. The accounts are frozen.”

“I know. But I want to see the transactions from the week before her death. Look for large expenditures or unusual transfers.”

Claire hesitated, her fingers tapping against the desk. “That would require a court order or cooperation from the family. It’s going to be difficult to get.”

“I know. But think—whose name would appear frequently in her account in the week before she died? Someone who wasn’t on the estate’s beneficiary list?”

She didn’t answer. She just looked at me, and for the first time, I saw anxiety in her eyes. A tremor born of facing the abyss.

Raindrops hammered against the windowpane, like countless fingers beating on a door, urgent and despairing. I looked down at the badge. Under the light, the edges of the double-headed eagle’s wings gleamed with fractured reflections.

It wasn’t the natural sheen of silver. It was scratches. Someone had drawn a new mark across it, either to hide an old wound or to leave a new signal.

I zipped up my jacket, pushed open the iron door of the police station, and stepped into the rain. The cold wind instantly pierced my clothing, but it sharpened my mind. Tomorrow, I would go to the old town to find that woman named Colette. Then I would figure out who this badge truly belonged to, who it was engraved for, and why it was found in the pocket of a dead woman, serving as her final silent witness. The rain kept falling. The night in Cannes seemed endless, and I walked into the darkness, the door closing behind me with a dull, sighing thud.