Part one

The victim’s husband had a way all his own of smoothing his tie. Two fingers, top to bottom, slowly, then a sharp little tap on the tip, as if to make it stand to attention.

He did it three times during his testimony, before the Paris Assize Court, on the third day of the trial. The third time, I felt my hands go cold on my knees.

I had seen that gesture before. Just once in my life. One night in March, two and a half years ago, in first class, on the last TGV from Lille.

And that night, as he had just sworn under oath, this man was asleep in a hotel in Lille.

I should explain how a retired railwayman from the 18th arrondissement ends up sitting in judgement on a man.

One day, I got a letter from the town hall: my name had been drawn at random from the electoral roll. Then another, from the court office: a summons to the Palais de Justice, on the Île de la Cité, for the September session. Odile, my wife, laughed. She said, “Bernard, you can’t even choose between two cheeses.”

On the first morning, there were about thirty of us in a wood-panelled room, waiting for our names to be drawn from an urn. Mine came out fourth. Neither the defence nor the prosecutor challenged me. I sat down in the fourth chair, beside the judges. Juror number four. Sixty-one years of ordinary life behind me, and suddenly the right to send a man to prison for twenty years.

I was a ticket inspector with the SNCF, the French railways, for thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years of saying “Good evening, tickets please”, of punching, then scanning, of issuing on-board fares, of calming people who had missed their connection. I retired on a 12th of March. My last service was the 9:58 p.m. from Lille to Paris. My colleagues had hung balloons in the staff room at Lille-Flandres. Odile was waiting for me at the Gare du Nord with a bottle of crémant.

The accused was called Joël Kerbrat. Fifty-two, originally from Brittany, sleeping rough for nine years. He lived in a tent beside the Bassin de la Villette, on the Quai de la Loire. He had been arrested on the morning of 13 March, sitting on a bench, with the handbag of a thirty-nine-year-old woman at his feet: Sabine Morvan, found dead in her flat on Rue de Crimée. Struck on the head. On the bag, her blood. In Kerbrat’s pocket, her bank card.

He said he had found the bag in a bin on Rue de Crimée at around one in the morning, while he was looking for cans. Nobody believed him. Neither did I, at first. He looked the way you expect a guilty man to look: the beard, the shifty eyes, the hands that shake when there’s no drink. His answers missed the point. He kept saying, “I don’t remember.” He had two previous convictions, for theft.

His lawyer, a young woman appointed by the court, fought as best she could. But there was nothing except the bag, the blood, the card, and that poor man on his bench.

At lunchtime, the jurors ate together in a small room above the courtroom, with trays under cling film. We weren’t allowed to talk about the case before deliberations, so we talked about other things: the Métro, grandchildren, the rain. But I could see in the others’ eyes that it was already decided. A woman was dead. A man had her bag. Somebody had to pay, and that somebody was already in the dock.

On the third day, we heard from the husband.

Thierry Morvan. Forty-four, sales director at a packaging company. Navy suit, white shirt, a wedding ring he sometimes turned with his thumb. He talked about Sabine, about how they had met, about the child they had been hoping for. He cried at the right moment, not too much. Several jurors cried with him. The woman on my left, a nurse from Belleville, took out a handkerchief.

He described his night. He had been in Lille for a trade fair. Dinner with clients until 9:30 p.m., at a brasserie on the Grand-Place. Then back to his hotel, near the station. He had gone to bed early, exhausted. The next morning, at 7:15, he was having breakfast; colleagues had seen him. That was where the police had called him.

The investigators had checked. The hotel bill. The clients at the dinner. His badge at the fair, at 9 a.m. It all fitted. He had never been suspected. Why would he have been? There was Kerbrat.

“I went to bed at about ten,” he said. “I turned my phone off. I will never forgive myself.”

And he smoothed his tie. Two fingers, top to bottom. A sharp little tap on the tip.

I remember my last night at work the way you remember a wedding. Every minute of it.

The 9:58 TGV was almost empty. In coach 1, there was only one passenger. A man in a suit, no luggage, staring at the black window. No ticket. He had got on “at the last minute”. I issued him a fare on my terminal, with the on-board surcharge. He took a card out of a wallet, hesitated, put it back and took out another. A green bank card, in the name of a company.

I remember what I said to him. I was emotional, a bit silly; I had had a glass of something with my colleagues.

“You’re my last passenger, monsieur. Thirty-eight years in the job, and you’re the last one.”

He didn’t look up. He smoothed his tie. Two fingers, top to bottom. A sharp little tap on the tip. As if to say the conversation was over.

That had stung. You don’t forget what stings on the night you retire.

That train got into the Gare du Nord at 11:02 p.m. Rue de Crimée is a quarter of an hour away by taxi.

According to the pathologist, Sabine Morvan had died between 11:30 p.m. and 1 a.m.

I watched that man weeping in the witness box, and I no longer had any doubt.

He had been on my train.