Camille takes the call.
Louis tells him about the explosion on the rue Joseph-Merlin.
“Yeah, I heard,” Camille says.
He is looking for a parking spot, passes the building where Anne lives and is about to drive around the block again.
“The ministry is all over the place, the Préfecture is . . .”
“Come on, spit it out,” says Camille.
He is nervous because he has just spotted an empty parking space ahead, and the prospect of parallel parking while juggling his mobile phone . . . He slows down, turns on the hazard lights.
“There’s a man here,” says Louis. “He’s insisting on speaking to you.”
“And that’s why you’re calling me? You deal with him.”
“He says he’ll only talk to you. He says he planted the bomb.”
Camille stops. The car behind him flashes its headlights.
“Listen, Louis, there are always guys who . . .”
But Louis does not give him time to finish:
“He started filming the site of the blast a full minute before the explosion, so there’s not much doubt. If he’s not the bomber, he’s bloody well-informed.”
This time, Camille does not hesitate, he rolls down the window, sticks the siren on the roof, turns on the flashing lights and floors the accelerator.
“It’s me,” he says to Anne. “About tonight . . . I think we’ll have to postpone.”
7.45 p.m.
The police force was thrown into turmoil by the bombing, the Brigade Criminelle was frantic; news of the arrival of the young man who claimed to have planted the bomb on the rue Joseph-Merlin has spread like wildfire.
On the ground floor, Camille runs into Basin, the guy from the Crime Lab. They know each other, they have worked a couple of cases together, they get along well.
“The explosion was definitely caused by a 140 mm shell,” Basin explains, walking Camille to the stairs.
“But . . . they’re huge, those things.”
Basin spreads his hands, as though indicating the size of the pike that got away.
“About 50 centimetres by . . . say, 14? No, not particularly big. Pretty heavy, though.”
Camille mentally notes the information.
“And as far as damage is concerned, what do we know?”
“There are a number of factors.” Basin reels off a list: “The presence of the scaffolding, the wooden walkway, the barrier created by façade of the building, the depth at which the bomb was planted – that curbed the scope of the blast and the shockwave. But for these factors, the death toll could have been considerable. Imagine if he’d planted the shell under a cinema and set it to go off at nine o’clock, you’d be dealing with twenty fatalities.”
He seems to reconsider, changes his mind.
“Make that thirty.”
Basin turns and leaves, Camille heads on towards his office where he comes upon a young woman sitting in the corridor. Petrified. Two guards deployed, just for her.
“This is the only witness,” says Louis, “Clémence Kriszewckanszki. I’ve arranged a lineup.”
Camille goes into his office.
“O.K., Louis, tell me everything.”
“His name is Garnier.”
Holding his elegant notebook, his elegant pen, Louis pushes his fringe back with his right hand.
“Why the hell does he want to talk to me?” Camille says irritably, “Why not someone else?”
“He says he saw you on T.V.”
“That gives us some idea of his intelligence . . .”
Louis does not rise to the bait and carries on:
“He’s got no police record, but we’ve got one on his mother, Rose Garnier. She’s been on remand for the past eight months, charged with murder.”
“That gives us some idea of the family dynamic.”
Camille takes the piece of paper Louis has proffered. A perfect, thirty-line précis. Camille can never remember which of the grandes écoles Louis was accepted to – E.N.A. or Normale Sup’ – but it hardly matters since he didn’t go to either, he joined the police force. Thirty lines outlining the case of mother Garnier. There is nothing on the son.
On his desk, photos of the attack taken a few minutes after the explosion. An apocalyptic scene. Images from the past resurface in Camille’s mind, the terrorist attack on the rue des Rosiers, the one on the rue Copernic. What year were the Paris métro bombings? He never did have a good head for dates.
He lingers over the bewildered little boy sprawled on the pavement, his face covered in blood, one cheek pressed against the tarmac, in his hand a gaping, empty clarinet case.
It is the child victims Camille finds most upsetting, he feels a sort of kindred spirit with them, because of his height.
Then again, he has always been the sensitive type. The sort of cop who is easily moved to tears.
7.55 p.m.
Camille figures he must be about thirty.
“Twenty-seven. Last June,” Jeans corrects him, as though somehow it is important.
His eyes flit about the room, unable to settle. Hands between his knees, he slowly rubs his palms together, but this means nothing. Most people are embarrassed when they see first see Camille, standing four feet eleven tall, having to stoop to look him in the eye, or see him sitting on a chair, his feet dangling inches off the floor. This young man knows Verhœven, to him, he is “as seen on T.V.”, but face to face with the real Verhœven is a different matter.
And despite looking like a farm labourer, the boy is timid.
“Garnier, John,” Camille announces.
“Jean!”
The young man starts forward, this detail seems important to him. Camille sceptically peers at the I.D. card, as though deciphering a foreign language:
“Sorry, to me it reads ‘John’.”
The young man glares at him.
“Alright, O.K.,” says Camille, “it’s spelled John but pronounced Jean. Well, now, Jean (Camille stresses the word), so you planted the bomb on the rue Joseph-Merlin.”
He folds his arms.
“Tell me about that.”
“There were roadworks. I planted the bomb before they refilled the hole.”
Camille offers no reaction. In circumstances like these, suspects talk, they ramble on, contradict themselves, sometimes they fall apart. The best thing to do is let them talk.
“The mortar shell,” Jean corrects himself. “I planted it at night.”
Camille raises an eyebrow, sceptical. Jean (or John) has a deep voice that falters after the first few words, as though scattering full stops everywhere, resulting in rudimentary sentences, subject-verb-object.
“They were laying pipes. The road was up for a couple of days. There was a barrier. So no-one would fall into the hole. I went there one night, threw a tarpaulin over the trench, climbed down and worked under the tarp. I dug into the wall of the trench, planted the shell fifty centimetres below street level, rigged the detonator – it was an alarm clock – set it and then filled in the hole.”
There’s no mystery with this guy. On the contrary, he is happy to explain every detail, you have only to ask.
Louis is staring at his computer screen. A quick glance from Camille and he confirms: new pipes were laid on the rue Joseph-Merlin last month.
“And why did you do it?” Camille asks. “What do you want?”
But Jean does not respond to questions. He is prepared to tell all, but in his own time, things have to play out exactly as he imagined. He is meticulous.
“The mortar shells . . . I planted seven of them. There are six more. One explosion every day. That’s how they’re rigged.”
“But . . .” Camille is dumbfounded. “What is it you want?”
Jean wants his mother (who is on remand) and himself (he is about to be taken into custody) to be released.
“Put us in, you know, in some sort of ‘witness protection programme.’”
It is foolish, but Camille’
s first reaction is to laugh. Jean is utterly impassive.
“You give us new identities,” he continues. “You get us to Australia, give us money, enough to get us settled. I was thinking five million. As soon as we land, I’ll tell you the location of the other six shells.”
“That sort of thing happens in the United States.” says Camille, “Not here! You’ve been watching too many American cop shows. This is France, and we . . .”
“Yeah, I know (Jean makes a sweeping gesture, clearly irritated), I know! But if they can do it over there, we can do it here. Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s been done before. For spies and mafia informers and people like that, check it out. Not that it matters, that’s the deal, take it or leave it . . .”
The young man may be naïve and he is obviously immature (running off to Australia is the sort of thing a kid might dream up), but he is far from stupid. And if the threat is genuine, the potential damage is incalculable.
“Alright,” Camille says, getting to his feet. “Let’s take that again from the top, if you don’t mind.”
No problem.
Jean is happy, the clearer things are, the sooner it will all be resolved.
“About the money, I could drop it to four million. But that’s as low as I’ll go.”
He does not seem to have the slightest doubt.
8.05 p.m.
Stepping out of the interview room, Camille comes face to face with the girl with the unpronounceable name. He smiles and approaches her.
“Are you alright?”
She simply nods.
“We’re going to need your help,” Camille explains. “After that, you can go home.”
She nods again. O.K.
Just before they go to do the lineup, Camille takes Louis aside.
“Go and pull Garnier out of there . . .”
Louis pushes back his fringe, a sign of embarrassment. This is not protoc–
“Yeah, I know, Louis,” Camille cuts him off. “But I don’t give a shit. If he’s our guy, whether we’ve followed protocol will be the least of our worries. Shift it.”
And so, as young Clémence looks though the one-way mirror at the five men with no belts, no laces, no ties, young men, old men, five officers from various branches of the force, she shakes her head, she is sorry, but honestly . . .
“It’s not one of them,” she says confidently.
Her voice is charming, soft-spoken, she forces a smile, she would have liked to help, she wishes she had been able to recognise the young man . . . She is asked to look at them again but, no, the man she saw on the café terrace is not there.
Camille shrugs as if to say, oh well, can’t win them all.
Then he opens the door and, naturally, as soon as she steps out into the corridor, Clémence turns to the commandant as though about to run the other way. She jerks her thumb behind her, signalling the boy sitting on the bench between two plain-clothes officers, the three of them looking like patients in a doctor’s waiting room.
“That’s him!” She hisses between clenched teeth. “That’s him!”
This is both good news, and the beginning of his problems. Camille asks one of the plain-clothes officers to take Clémence home.
Before he goes back to his office, he calls the switchboard and asks to be put through to Basin. Around him, everyone falls silent, the presence of the man who claims to have carried out the attack has everyone electrified, they are waiting for confirmation.
“So?” Basin’s voice on the other end of the line.
“I don’t want to say too much,” Camille whispers, “but I think this could be really serious. I need you to come and hear him out . . . to tell me . . . from a technical viewpoint.” Camille walks towards the window, trying to collect his thoughts. “He says there are six more bombs. One explosion every day.”
However much he says the word, “explosion” is like “tsunami” or “earthquake” – you know it implies carnage but unless you are actually there, it remains an abstract concept.
8.15 p.m.
Jean Garnier watches Camille come back into the office. He is accompanied by a tall, broad-shouldered man with oddly feminine hands who takes a chair, sits behind him and folds his arms. It does not seem to bother Jean.
They start again from the beginning.
“So you’re saying you bought seven mortar shells?”
“No,” Jean says. “I didn’t buy them. I collected them along the Souain-Perthes road, near Sommepy. And in Monthois.”
Camille looks over Jean’s shoulder and Basin gives a curt nod. It is an area in eastern France, he will later explain, near Châlons, in the département de Marne. Dozens of shells from the First World War turn up there every year; farmers leave them by the roadside for bomb disposal experts to collect.
Camille is poleaxed.
This man simply picked up mortar shells by the roadside.
“And how did you transport them?’
Jean turns towards Louis’ desk where they laid out the contents of the sports bag he was carrying when he arrived. He stretches his arm out, points to a sheaf of receipts held together by a paperclip.
“I rented a car. The receipt is in there.”
When Basin speaks, Jean does not turn, he remains focused. Basin wants to know the technical details. It is one thing to find a mortar shell, a very different thing to set it off.
“A detonator and an electrical relay,” Jean says as though it were obvious. “It’s not rocket science.”
He points to a digital calendar-clock.
“I rigged all the bombs with one of those. €3.99 on the internet.”
Louis takes a receipt from the sheaf; Garnier paid by debit card, the card is in his wallet, there can be no doubt. This is the first time they have ever seen a criminal bring receipts to prove his guilt.
Jean gestures to a box filled with detonators, slim tubes about the length of a cigarette.
“I stole those from Technic’Alpes,” he explains. “They provide materials to public works contractors in Haute-Savoie.
Louis keys the name into a search engine.
“They only have one part-time security guard,” Jean says. “It wasn’t particularly difficult.”
“The company exists,” Louis confirms, looking at his monitor, “their headquarters are in Cluses.”
“The headquarters might be,” says Jean, “but the warehouse is in Sallanches.”
Everyone in the room is beginning to feel extremely uneasy.
If he is telling the truth about the bomb on the rue Joseph-Merlin, he is probably telling the truth about the others. The six mortar shells still out there. Basin obviously believes this and is nodding constantly at Camille. As far as he is concerned, there is no doubt. Technically, the guy is completely capable.
Basin gets up, walks around Jean Garnier’s chair and stands, staring down at him.
“The reason people turn up mortar shells from the First World War is because they haven’t exploded. Only about one in four is actually operational.”
Jean’s brow furrows. He does not understand.
“I mean,” Basin explains patiently, “that your threat is only a threat if the shells are functional. Do you understand?”
Basin talks as though speaking to a simpleton or a deaf-mute. It is hard to fault him for this; Jean Garnier does not have a face that radiates intelligence.
Basin continues, pedantically:
“You cannot be sure that your shells will explode. Therefore, your threat . . .”
“First off,” Jean interrupts, counting on his fingers, “the first one worked pretty well. And secondly: that’s why I planted six more, to allow for the ones that won’t explode. And thirdly: if you’re happy to take that risk, that’s fine by me.”
Silence.
Basin tries to regain his composure.
“Everything you used is here?”
“The electrical relays, the wiring, I bought all that at Leroy-Merlin,” says Jean.
No-
one reacts, but Jean does not care, he has decided to tell all.
“Oh, yeah . . . You won’t find a computer at my place, I dumped it. I know that you can recover data even if the hard drive has been erased, so . . .”
The same goes for his mobile phone, he cancelled the contract months ago.
Camille is having trouble taking everything in. He needs to review the situation with Basin and Louis.
He leaves Jean in the custody of an officer, he could just as easily leave him on his own; they all agree there is no danger.
They step out into the corridor.
“Fucking hell . . .” says Camille as the door swings closed. “You’re telling me it’s possible to terrorise a whole city with alarm clocks bought online, some wiring from Leroy-Merlin, and a bunch of mortar shells picked up on the side of the road?”
Basin shrugs.
“Yeah. Easy. During the Great War, more than a billion shells were fired and one in four of them was buried in the ground without exploding. They’re still rising to the surface like dead fish, you only have to bend down and pick them up. We’ve recovered twenty-five million, in other works, fuck all. If we carry on at this rate, it would take seven hundred years to recover the rest of them . . . Most are inoperative, but then again, there are a hell of a lot of them. If you have seven, then, statistically, there’s a good chance you have at least one or two that are still functional. If you’re lucky, you might have three, four, even five. Obviously, if they’re all functional, you’ve hit the jackpot.
“He used a digital alarm clock as a trigger, but anything capable of producing an electrical pulse could be used as a detonator: a doorbell, a mobile phone . . .”
This is all news to Camille.
“People assume that terrorism is sophisticated,” says Basin. “Actually, it’s not.”
8.45 p.m.
Bustle is followed by commotion. While information filters through the tortuous channels of state hierarchy, the Brigade Criminelle does not hang around, they get to work.
Divisionnaire Le Guen, a pachyderm of Shakespearean proportions simply in terms of weight, but one with a razor-sharp intelligence, contacts the juge d’instruction appointed to oversee the case. They are agreed on one thing: Commandant Camille Verhœven will lead the investigation “until the requisite special measures can be put in place”.
Rosy and John Page 3