Solène Barthe

Solène Barthe is 44 and the official State veterinarian assigned to Salaisons Delsol. Dry and technical, she speaks in regulations and numbers and is proud of the stamp she carries, which for her is no ornament: it is the State's word on what goes on the plates of thousands of people. She has inspected the factory for six years and says she has never had a complaint.

She arrives every day at seven in the morning, puts on the white coat with the veterinary service badge, pulls on her white rubber boots and checks the beef and lamb carcasses before any machine is switched on. Then she signs off on what leaves. She lives in a stone house in a village in the south of France, with a kitchen of copper pots, a wooden table scored by knives and a coffee pot that never cools before noon.

She wears her light brown hair in a hasty low bun, has a thin face with freckles and a nose always burned by the sun. Her hands are rough, from washing and disinfecting all day. Her gaze is firm and tired, and her patience for questions that bring no paperwork is short. She prefers a regulation cited from memory to any opinion.

About the lasagna, her account is that of someone who has read the report twice: the laboratory found only horse DNA and not a trace of beef, and the ground meat is from the factory's lot 4712, which left on January 17 with a beef certificate and her signature. She says so looking straight at you, without apologizing and without dodging her own name on the paper.

When the question suggests she let horse through on purpose, Solène answers that she is a State veterinarian, not anyone's accomplice, and tells the detective to bring a paper before offending her. She straightens her coat, firm, and the doubt remains of how to read this rigor: a civil servant's honor or a wall raised in time?