La Pute

5

"Fontaine?"

"That's a name I haven't heard around here before. You must be from the city then. Welcome to Marseille", the Sergeant spoke in a gruff voice. Even by just looking at his face, Fontaine could have guessed the kind of voice he had. He had a crooked, strong nose and heavily hooded grey eyes. His beard was sloppily shaved, but what caught Fontaine's attention were his unusually bony hands that didn't even look like they belonged to him.

"Roche, I'm Sergeant Roche", the man introduced himself as he sat down behind his desk. Fontaine already knew who he was, but upon meeting him she could tell that he was ex-military. Probably not someone that had been deployed abroad, but someone that had seen battle.

"I've heard about you before, Fontaine, now that I think about it. You were behind the arrest of that Sardinian cartel."

Fontaine frowned. She had expected word to have spread to Marseille about the incident, but it was still something she didn't want to be reminded about. Though, the Sergeant didn't seem to know more about the matter, at least not about Bonneville.

Silva Bonneville.

It was year 1968 when Fontaine first heard that name. She was a woman with an unknown background who seemed to drift from place to place as naturally as the seasons changed. At the time she was still just a teenager who had been freshly recruited by a notorious Sardinian drug lord. Fontaine was new on the force and knew nothing. The sea was her dream.

By some chance she was appointed as part of an operation to monitor the sea routes used to transport illegal goods between the islands, and ultimately, expose the parties involved. So, at the age of 27, Fontaine left Paris behind and settled on a small island not far from the coast of Sicily, where a market port was rumored to harbor the local cartel's merchant boats.

During her time surrounded by the sea, Fontaine still learned nothing.

She watched from afar as ships docked and left the port, disappearing and reappearing one after another. The ocean was always blue, it never rained and the southern wind had a pleasant smell to it. In 1969 she met Bonneville for the first time in a small café by the harbor. At the time Fontaine did not think about many things apart from trying to imagine the face of the woman she was trying to track down. She imagined the face of a rat that had been hiding in the sewers and walls to survive all its life. It survived by staying out of sight.

But what she saw was not a rat at all.

"Fontaine?"

She flinched upon hearing an unfamiliar voice call out her name with such ease. Turning around in her chair, she came face to face with a woman from the sea. With the tips of her hair slightly wet and sweat trickling down her face, only her clothes remained dry. The woman - no, the girl - sat down across from her and crossed her legs. If Fontaine hadn't been there first herself, she would have been mistaken for the one intruding.

"You look like you've made yourself at home", She continued and looked left to where two windows aligned at the right angle to spare a small view of the ocean.

Fontaine made no effort to ask her anything, but that was only because the entire time she sat stiff in surprise. It was the first time anyone had approached her on the island. "You can follow me, but you'll never get to him". It was all that she told her on their first meeting and she was correct. The force never managed to trace the drug lord behind Bonneville, yet Bonneville herself did not seem intent on hiding. It was as though she had nothing to hide. And for a year everything continued as it had, and just like those ships Bonneville also disappeared and reappeared in Sicily.

A year later new orders came from Paris, and Fontaine was instructed to detain Bonneville; there was enough evidence to convict her. Fontaine did not understand the purpose of the orders, there was still no information on the cartel leader, all that had been discovered so far was a name he went by, "Antonio". Did they plan to torture information out of Bonneville or cause disruption in Sicily? It all seemed like part of a bigger plan, which Fontaine decided not to question.

The next time Bonneville arrived at port, she was erased from Sicily.

As it turned out, Fontaine's hunch had not been mistaken. Although she lost sight of Bonneville after handing her over to her superiors, she occasionally heard about her in scattered reports from Paris. Supposedly she had been taken into custody as a witness and was kept in a safehouse on the countryside. After three months of unsuccessful interrogations she was instead moved to a prison. The woman with no background was lost in the dark gap between society and the underworld.