Duval being hired to perform a menial and seemingly pointless administrative task, working alone in an empty office space, is very similar to the establishing plot of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League", in which pawnbroker Jabez Wilson is hired by the fictitious League to daily attend an otherwise empty office and copy out pages from the Encyclopedia Britannica by hand.
The jigsaw puzzle that Duval (François Cluzet) is seen doing, is of Rembrandt's 'Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem'.