Joris Verlinden

Joris Verlinden is 52 years old and has spent thirty of those years in cyclocrosscyclocross Bike racing on a looped course of mud, sand and grass, with sections where riders dismount and run carrying the bike. pits. Born in Lier, Belgium, the son of a tinsmith, he learned to tighten a bolt before he could read fluently. He started out washing team bikes at 20 and rose to head mechanic because he never forgot a tool and never let a kid cut in front of someone waiting in line. He speaks in short sentences, and the longer ones are usually curses in Flemish.

He lives with his wife and an old dog in a red-brick house on the outskirts of Lier, with an attached garage that is tidier than the living room. Inside there is a dark wooden workbench, tools hanging in painted outlines on the wall, a battery radio that only picks up race broadcasts, and a dented thermos he fills with black coffee at five in the morning. He has two daughters in college and says, without complaint, that their tuition is the reason he still goes out in the cold.

He has broad shoulders, a shaved head, a short gray beard and thick hands, always black with grease no matter how hard he scrubs. He wears the team's navy waterproof jacket, a black rubber apron and rubber boots, with an Allen key hanging around his neck on a cord. He treats bicycles like daughters: he names some of them, distrusts anyone who calls them equipment, and has looked after Lotte's since she was fifteen.

About the afternoon of the race, his account is that of a tired professional: he was in the pit, as at every race, and when the commissairecommissaire In cycling, an official who enforces the rules and inspects equipment during a race. ran the tablet over the spare bike he was right there, in his apron, watching. He says that in thirty years in the workshop nobody ever called his work cheating, and that if anyone thinks you can hide anything in a frame inside the pit of a world championship, they should explain how, with so many people around. 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.

Joris knows the pit mechanic is the first name the federation writes down when a tablet pings. When the detective suggests he fitted something to Lotte's bike, the answer is a short grunt and an order to ask properly. It could be the pride of an old professional who has been insulted. It could be someone who would rather cut the conversation short before it reaches another subject. The detective will have to decide which.