Exhibit 1 — Inventory Report
Box 4417 weighs eleven point two kilos. I know because I weigh all of them: it's the first line on the form, before the number itself. Management wants figures; I want to know what sixteen years of silence weigh when you lift them.
Maëlle Verrier. Twenty-three. Pharmacy student. Boarded night train 5741 at Paris-Bercy on 14 November 2009 at 10:52 p.m., car 14, berth 63. Never got off at Lyon-Perrache.
That's all the cover says. The rest is inside, and the rest shouldn't interest anyone anymore.
The box contains:
A 412-page investigation file, held by three rubber bands, one of them snapped. Thirty-six photographs. A passenger list, with twenty-two names highlighted in yellow and a single one in pink. A train ticket. A photo-booth receipt. A USB stick (2 GB, unreadable, labeled "platform 3 camera — empty"). And the exhibit inventory, on which, at position 7:
Cabin suitcase, navy fabric, brand illegible, no luggage tag. Contents: see Annex C.
There is no Annex C.
There is no suitcase.
I read it twice. I turned the box over, shook the rubber bands, checked that the annex wasn't glued to the bottom by sixteen years of damp. Nothing. The suitcase had existed long enough to be logged, and then it had stopped existing.
It happens. Seals get lost, annexes come loose, people retire with boxes in the trunk of their car. I know. I fill out a form for that too.
What doesn't happen is what I found on page 388 of the file, between two interviews with ticket inspectors.
A sheet folded in four. White grid paper, not yellowed. Black ink, not faded. Round, careful, almost childish handwriting I didn't recognize.
She got off at Dijon. Look at photo 19. And stop weighing the boxes.
Dated September 3rd. This year. Last week.
I looked at the archive room door. Closed. I looked at the camera above it. Red. I looked at my hands on the form, and in the "Observations" box I wrote the first honest sentence of my career:
Someone was here before me.