Jacques Guillaume: Business deal gone bad

 Jacques Guillaume: Business deal gone bad

Jacques Guillaume still wore the same coat he had worn when he left the Police Judiciaire. Paris had not changed the way he walked or the way he listened more than he spoke.

The client was a mid-level importer named Moreau who had signed a warehouse lease and a letter of credit that both looked clean until the containers arrived empty. Moreau swore the Italian partner had taken the goods and the money. Guillaume did not argue. He asked for the original contracts and the names of the two men who had witnessed the signing.

He spent three days in the 11th arrondissement and one evening in a café that still served the same bitter coffee he remembered from the old days. The witnesses were not witnesses. They were cousins of the Italian partner. The letter of credit had been drawn on a bank that existed only on paper. Guillaume found the real goods sitting in a bonded warehouse under a different company name—one registered to Moreau’s own brother-in-law.

Guillaume did not call the police first. He called Moreau and told him to bring the brother-in-law to the same café. No raised voices. Guillaume laid the documents on the table, closed the folder, and left them there. The deal was already dead. The only question left was how much of the family money Moreau was willing to lose to keep it quiet.

Guillaume walked home along the canal. He did not look back. The case was finished the moment the papers were on the table.