Hugo Ferrand

Hugo Ferrand is 34 and drives for people who can't be late. He was born in Montreuil, on Paris's eastern outskirts, the son of a garage mechanic and an office cleaner, and learned to drive before he learned to dance, in empty Sunday parking lots. He worked as a courier, then as a taxi driver, and for four years has contracted to an executive car agency that serves people passing through the city. During fashion week, he is the man in the black suit waiting on the sidewalk.

He lives in a studio on the tenth floor of a housing-estate block in Montreuil, with a tiny balcony from which you can see the metro line. The fridge holds three yogurts and a jar of sauce, the bed is a single, and the only bookshelf holds car manuals and a collection of key rings from places he has never been. He gives free defensive driving lessons on Saturdays to the neighbors' kids. He phones his mother every Sunday and always says everything is fine.

He has short black hair with gel, a sparse, well-trimmed beard and the deep dark circles of someone who sleeps anywhere, any time. He wears a black chauffeur's suit without a tie over a white open-collared shirt, a big cheap watch on his wrist and a car key that he spins between his fingers all the time, as if counting the turns. He is overly polite, calls everyone sir and answers quickly, in a memorized tone, like someone who learned early that clients don't like pauses.

About the night of the robbery, his account is the professional's: car at their disposal, day and night, during fashion week, show, dinner, hotel. He took the assistant and the bodyguard to a nightclub near the Champs-ÉlyséesChamps-Élysées Famous avenue in Paris lined with theaters, cafés, clubs and luxury shops. at 12:30 a.m., after dropping Ms. Deane at the residence, and he is paid to stay at the club door all night. He says he drives, opens the door and hears nothing, and that a driver who hears is a driver who loses his job.

Hugo knows that the driver is the one who best knows the schedules of those he carries, and that this points to him without need of proof. When the detective asks how much he was paid, the answer comes quick and too polished, and the key stops turning. It may be the dignity of someone who lives on discretion. It may be someone who memorized the answer before hearing the question. The detective will have to decide which.