Marcel Tous has a meeting in office 44 in a tower block belonging to a multi-risk insurance company. He needs to pick up some keys there. His brain is fogged up with alcohol, and full of dark thoughts. Everything has been going badly since he retired, particularly with his wife who can no longer bear him.
While looking for this wretched office, Marcel Tous quickly ends up in the building’s basement. Is the alcohol suddenly giving him hallucinations? Why is there a man in long gloves and grey overalls pushing a trolley with a body covered in a sheet on it? Why were two old security guards waiting for him so menacingly? How and when will this nightmare end? The descent into hell has already begun for Marcel Tous, and it will only have an outcome when he resolves the enigma of a thousand questions, none of which remain unanswered.

Born in 1951, Nan Aurousseau spent all of his childhood in the Twentieth Arrondissement of Paris. Stock has also published his Bleu de chauffe (2005), a first novel that attracted considerable press attention, Du même auteur (2007) and Le ciel sur la tête (2009).