Bram Coppens

Bram Coppens is 24 and spends his days among wheels, inner tubes and a shop counter. Born in Aalst, in Flanders, the son of a bus driver and a hairdresser, he met Lotte at school, in a gym class where she ran past him around the court and then waited for him at the finish line. He works as a mechanic at a bike shop in town and is her training partner on his mornings off.

He lives in a two-room apartment above a laundromat in Aalst, full of bike frames hung on the wall for lack of space, a sagging sofa and a coffee maker that beeps when it's done. The fridge has a magnet from every city where Lotte has raced, which he buys from afar and without telling her. On the shelf, cycling magazines and a wristwatch with a cracked strap. He says he likes fixing things because fixed things don't leave.

He is tall and thin, with curly brown hair sticking out from a gray wool beanie, a scraggly beard and the air of someone who apologizes before speaking. He wore an olive-green parka open over a sweatshirt with the shop's logo, jeans stained with grease at the knees, and wet sneakers. Gentle and hesitant, he has a habit of checking his phone when he doesn't know what to say, and of saying Lotte's name with a respect he doesn't hide.

About the afternoon of the race, his account is simple: he drove in just to watch her win and followed the race from the pit fence, the best spot for the swaps. He says he is her training partner and friend, that he rides with her on his mornings off, and that he cheered like anyone else. When the conversation reaches the tablet, he seems genuinely shocked and says he only came to cheer. With the mud, the rain and the chaos of the bike swaps, nobody can say for certain what each person was doing on each lap.

Bram knows a shop mechanic who is the champion's friend is the kind of name a federation underlines. When the detective presses him, the hesitation grows and his sentences die halfway. It could be the shyness of a young man who has never been in an interrogation. It could be someone who weighs every word because of something else he knows. The detective will have to decide which.