The Collector Grate

Nice, Monday, July 20, 1976, 9:00 am. At 8:30, the manager of a large bank on the main avenue, Edmond Varenne, could not open the vault room door: it was jammed from the inside by a welded iron brace.

Inside, 317 safe deposit boxes lay open and empty, with the remains of a picnic and a hole in the floor at the back, leading to a timber-shored tunnel that drops to a sewer gallery.

On the wall, hand-painted: "No weapons, no hatred, no violence". The loss tops 46 million francs, and the room's alarm never rang all weekend.

Three people knew this room from above or from below. One of them knows where the contents of the boxes went.

Vault room of a Nice bank in 1976, with the boxes forced open and a hole in the floor.