Over the next three hours, Dupont told him everything he knew.
He had received the shipment a week before Voldemort's downfall.
The recipient was a French potioneer named Hugo Bados, whose license had been revoked by the French Ministry of Magic over illegal experiments more than a decade ago. Since then, he had been smuggling contraband between Britain and France.
"Where is this Bados now?" Lin Ze asked.
"I don't know." Dupont shook his head.
"He's very cautious. Apart from meeting him once for the first deal, every delivery afterward was arranged by owl. He never showed his face. But I heard he has a hideout near the Old Port, in what used to be an abandoned fish cannery."
"What does Bados look like?"
"In his fifties, balding, with a scar on his neck running from just below his left ear to his Adam's apple. Supposedly, a Hippogriff clawed him when he was young."
Lin Ze wrote all of this in his notebook, then stood up and pushed the confession in front of Dupont. "Sign it."
Dupont looked down at the blank confession, then took the quill Lin Ze offered and scrawled his name in the designated spot.
Lin Ze picked up the confession, checked the placement of the signature, then put it together with the asset-freezing order.
"You said you'd help me keep my sister's house... will you keep your word?"
Lin Ze walked to the door and said without looking back, "Of course..."
The interrogation room door closed behind him, leaving Dupont alone under the pallid light.
But as he shut the door, Lin Ze muttered under his breath, "Not... I don't have the authority to let you keep those things. If the French authorities won't let you keep them in the end, there's nothing I can do."
In the corridor, Mr Delacour leaned against the wall with his arms folded. He gave a slight nod as he watched Lin Ze emerge from the interrogation room.
"Faster than I expected. You do have some ability. But that condition you agreed to..."
"Hmm? What condition? Did I agree to any conditions?" Lin Ze looked at Delacour blankly.
His expression left Delacour utterly bewildered.
It took a long while for Delacour to react. "You little brat, that's deceiv-"
"It's not like I lied to a good person. You big shots spend all day thinking about this kind of justice and that kind of justice. In the end, not only do you get nothing done, you let people run rings around you and leave you fuming. Sometimes a lie can solve the problem, but you insist on making it so complicated." Lin Ze shrugged.
Mr Delacour stared hard at Lin Ze for a long time, then let out a long breath.
"It seems I really am getting old..."
"Back to business. I've heard the name Bados before."
"That case caused quite a stir here more than a decade ago. He secretly tested a new potion on living people and nearly turned a Muggle into a gecko. He vanished after that. I never expected he'd been working for the Death Eaters all along."
"The abandoned fish cannery in the Old Port." Lin Ze opened his notebook and showed Mr Delacour the address he had written down.
"Dupont said Bados might have a hideout there."
Mr Delacour took the notebook and examined it carefully before handing it back. "I'll have someone check this address. Go get some rest. I'll let you know when there's news."
Lin Ze nodded and headed for the hideout's lounge.
He had barely pushed open the lounge door when Richard, the heavily bearded Auror, came over.
"Well? Get him to talk?"
"Yeah." Lin Ze rubbed his temples and sat on the bench against the wall.
Three straight hours of intense interrogation had left his head feeling swollen, but his body was responding in an extremely subtle way.
He knew this feeling all too well. After every battle, that subtle circulation of magic would become a little smoother than before.
He hadn't expected this golden finger to reward him for interrogating prisoners, too.
"What did the guy say?" Richard asked.
"Well... he gave up his downstream recipient, a man named Hugo Bados."
"Bados?!" Richard looked deeply shocked.
"You know him?"
"I've heard of him. My mentor took part in hunting him down back then." Richard sat beside Lin Ze.
The bench creaked beneath his burly frame.
"That guy's a complete lunatic. Supposedly, after his potioneer's license was revoked, he kept working on something called the 'Shadow Potion.' Drinking it makes a wizard's magic swell rapidly, but the side effect is that prolonged use makes people lose their minds."
"People buy that stuff?"
"Maybe. Those dark wizards would probably go for it. They live on a knife's edge, after all." Richard shrugged.
Lin Ze leaned against the wall thoughtfully.
He had seen this "Shadow Potion" mentioned once in the materials he had gone through at the Records Management Office. At the time, he had merely skimmed it as an odd curiosity. He hadn't expected it to be connected to the current case.
"Richard, could you do me a favor?"
"Go ahead."
"Help me look up the old case files on Bados. The more detail, the better."
"Leave it to me." Richard thumped his chest, stood up, and headed out of the lounge.
Lin Ze leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and let his mind go blank.
About an hour later, Richard returned carrying a stack of yellowed files.
"It's all here." Richard thrust the files into Lin Ze's hands.
Then he lowered his voice and added, "Oh, while I was looking through the files, I heard someone spotted Bados in the Old Port this morning. They couldn't be sure it was him, though. He's a desperate outlaw, after all. Nobody wanted to go up and check."
Lin Ze sprang to his feet, nearly scattering the files all over the floor. "Where did that information come from?"
"The people in the records room said an old wizard reported it. The general location was an abandoned fish cannery near Saint-André Gate."
Richard rubbed his stubbly chin. "But that cannery's been abandoned for almost ten years. It's long since become the territory of homeless people and cats..."
"The more unlikely a place seems, the safer a hideout it makes." Lin Ze rose, grabbed his coat, and strode out.
"Hey! Should I report this to Mr Delacour? Have him send a few people with you?"
"There's no time." Lin Ze waved without looking back.
"Let Mr Delacour know for me. I'll treat you to seafood when I get back."
"Seafood in Marseille isn't cheap!" Richard shouted after him, but Lin Ze had already pushed open the hideout's back door and disappeared into the sunshine of Marseille's old town.
The streets in the Old Port were narrow.
Buildings of uneven heights crowded together on either side, their outer walls faded to gray by decades of sea wind.
Clotheslines crisscrossed haphazardly above the alleys, with a few shirts washed pale swaying in the sea breeze.
Following the street signs, Lin Ze made his way through the maze of alleys.
Years of damp had left a thin layer of moss on the stone paving beneath his feet. It was slippery underfoot, and several times he nearly fell flat on his back.
At last, amid a derelict industrial area, he spotted the abandoned cannery.
It was a low cluster of factory buildings, with a large section of its rust-covered sheet-metal roof torn away by the sea wind.
The iron barred gate in the perimeter wall stood ajar, a large lock long since rusted solid hanging from its hinge.
Lin Ze turned sideways and squeezed through the gap in the gate.
The factory building was spacious inside, its air filled with a strange mingling of rust and rotten seafood.
Sunlight slanted through the broken skylights, casting several shafts of light onto the floor, fine dust drifting within them.
He made a circuit of the building without seeing anyone.
But there were plenty of footprints on the floor.
Fresh footprints, as clear as signposts in the thick dust, led all the way to a half-open iron door deep inside the building.
Lin Ze drew his wand and walked softly toward the iron door.