AN EXTRAORDINARY CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION FOR THE PARIS POLICE
Paris. September 2017. Lauriane Emans, a master’s student in law at La Sorbonne, is savagely attacked at her home, on Soufflot Street. She will only be saved at the last minute thanks to the intervention of one of her ambulance drivers. Alternatively, a few days after this emergency rescue, the latter disappears without anyone in his close circle being able to provide an explanation for this situation quickly qualified as a “worrying disappearance” by the investigators.
Could these two short news items be linked? This is what probably the most investigation groups of the Third Judicial Police Department will have to find out, as they are responsible for each district where these two sufferers respectively lived. Alternatively, because of an unhappy coincidence, within the Third Judicial Police Department, a young judicial police officer, Yanaël Marceau, recently graduated from the Police Academy, finds himself on the front line carrying out this double investigation, right through which he will be put to the test.
Indeed, the main victim, Lauriane Emans, is a non-ambulant person, who, before being assaulted and despite her disability, carried out a lot of activities. Consequently, because of its unusual nature, this short news item stirs up the media and moves even the highest level of political power. The pressure on this young and inexperienced police lieutenant will thus only increase.
Moreover, since initial traditional police investigations don’t produce any concrete leads, Yanaël Marceau will quickly realise that everything he learnt at the Police Academy is of no use in solving this extraordinary investigation, which will take him into the depths of the human soul.
He won’t escape unharmed.
And you, Dear Readers, will you escape unharmed? It’s not certain.
EXTRACT
THE SAME EVENING of the attack on Lauriane Emans, the Paris Public Prosecutor perused the report of the emergency medical service doctor, who had arrived at the crime scene after the first-aid workers, and the report of the doctor who had examined her on her arrival at the Forensic Emergency Department. Given the seriousness of the facts, the Public Prosecutor opened a flagrante delicto investigation for attempted murder on a vulnerable person and acts of barbarism by damaging the property of a vulnerable person. As the events had occurred in the 5th District, the investigation was a matter for the jurisdiction of the Third Judicial Police Department.
Informed of these unusual events by the Minister of the Interior right through the night, the President of the French Republic had published a tweet to express, “the strengthen of the French people for the family of the victim of these dreadful acts which bring disgrace on our Republican values.”
That morning, when he was woken at 7 a.m. by the Radio Classique morning programme, Yanaël was immediately immersed in the case he had worked on the day before: it was broadcast in a loop across all the media, except for the daily press, which had already put to bed the next-day’s edition of the newspapers when this information had reached the newsrooms at 11:50 p.m., coming from the press office of the Batignolles Judicial Complex.
This case, now commonly known as The Soufflot Street Case, was a hot topic of discussion: at every radio or television station, a self-proclaimed police-justice analyst was speculating on why such barbaric acts could have been committed against such a vulnerable person. To look more intelligent than they truly were, some of these speakers were at every turn repeating the famous quotation that the level of civilization of a society can be assessed by its remedy of its most vulnerable members.
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