大象传媒

In The Underwater Gendarme, writer and former lifeboatman Horatio Clare meets the Brigade Fluviale, the Paris river police, an elite team which for over a century has been saving lives and recovering bodies from the River Seine, along with murder weapons and criminal evidence.

This week, Horatio joins the Brigade a few kilometres downriver from the centre of the city in a quiet backwater of Neuilly-sur-Seine. They're here to investigate the disappearance of an elderly man from his houseboat and suspect that his body may be in the river nearby.

Today the Seine is calm and relatively warm but as the Brigade's diver searches the river bed, Horatio talks to the team about the difficulties of doing their job in strong currents, in waters close to freezing and zero visibility. And one diver reveals that as well as discarded bicycles and cars, lost mobile phones and keys, the bottom of the Seine is also littered with miniature models of the Eiffel Tower!