On the mornings that followed such insomniac nights, Mangin meticulously combed his greying temples. He smiled contemptuously at his mirror image, preparing himself for yet another useless day. That smile was a morning ritual: an acknowledgment that his self still existed in spite of the night.
Before going to the office, he took the knuckle-duster out of his coat pocket and stared at the hidden weapons it contained.
iiiTonight, Mangin wasn’t going to venture to the back alleys of the City of Lights. His left hand was sweaty in his coat pocket. A woman’s face seemed to bob along with his strides like a pale balloon. In twenty-two years, that face seemed to have become barely older.
It’s her. This was the unrelenting thought he had tried to suppress since he had left Proveron’s office. T
