Nuno Carvalho

Nuno Carvalho is 51 and head of the cold room at Salaisons Delsol. Portuguese by birth, he came to France young and has worked the same shift for twenty years. Quiet and loyal, he calls his boss Mr. Armand and fears losing his job, a fear he carries along with his thermal coat.

His day begins at three in the morning. He receives the trucks, sorts the chambers and at six empties the dock compactor. At eleven he goes home. He lives in a small ground-floor apartment in a village near the factory, with an oilcloth on the table, a ceramic rooster painted black and red on top of the fridge and a pot of kale soup always on the stove. He sleeps in the afternoon with the shutters closed.

He has a square face weathered by sun and cold, a thick gray mustache and short black hair with white strands escaping from his navy-blue wool cap. His quilted thermal coat is blue, his thick leather gloves live stuffed in his pocket and his nose is always red. His gaze is wary, that of someone who learned to expect the worst and not to complain.

About lot 4712, his account is that of someone describing his own trade. It arrived on a refrigerated truck with Dutch plates, on Tuesday the 15th, at four in the morning: forty pallets of frozen blocks of twenty-five kilos, which he unloaded into chamber 3, as always. Twenty years like this, he repeats, and says sir in every sentence, even to those half his age.

When the question suggests he was the one who swapped the labels, Nuno answers that he carries boxes, he doesn't touch paperwork, and asks not to be put in that. He stuffs his gloves into his pocket and lowers his gaze, and the detective is left weighing what he sees: the fear of a loyal employee or the fear of someone with something to lose?