The Darwins Are Out - 21
 

1 November 2009, Belgium

Policemen received a desperate call from a man who had been attacked on a motorway near the town of Liege. The 37-year-old man was named Thierry Blues. When the policemen arrived, he was lying dead on the ground, his body stabbed, his car burning. Witnesses had seen a big truck driving away.

But there was no evidence of fighting or struggling around the body-only the knife wounds on his shoulder and neck. Puzzled, inspectors analysed his cell phone calls. He had recently reconnected with an old friend, a fact that intrigued Inspector Closeau. I mean, Commissioner Lamoque. Childhood friend, lost sight of for ten years, back in touch? Lamoque asked the 42-year-old friend in for a chat about the roadside aggression.

The dead man was aggrieved regarding insurance money he felt was owed, but never paid, after his restaurant burned two years before. He asked his old friend to bring him a knife and a jerrycan of fuel, and leave him alone on the motorway, a man with a plan to get the insurance money one way or another.

The "victim" then set his car on fire, called police, and stabbed himself, accidentally cutting an artery in his neck. By the sime his simulated act of violence was over, he was over too, face against the ground ten yards from his burned car. Roll credits on this little staged drama...