Crimes of Winter

by Philippe Georget

  He didn’t let go.

  The young drug dealer slammed heavily onto the street. He hadn’t had the benefit of well-informed advice and didn’t know how to break his fall. Sebag clearly heard a bone break.

  He got up first. Looked for the knife, roughly turned over the kid, who was writhing in pain on the pavement. His nose was spurting blood. Sebag grabbed his right arm, moved up to the hand, and found the knife planted in the boy’s thigh.

  Not a serious wound.

  He got out his handcuffs, attached the kid’s hands behind his back, and searched him. He had no other weapon, but he did have a big roll of bills, a mobile phone, and his driver’s license. His name was Corentin Jacquet; he was twenty-four and lived in Cugnaux.

  “Where is that?”

  “In the suburbs of Toulouse,” the young man gasped, breathless.

  Sebag had already caught his breath. He called Sergis.

  “It’s OK . . . You can stop everything. I’ve got our guy. I’m taking him to Place Arago, meet us there. It’ll be easier. I’ll also call the emergency medics.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Thanks for your confidence! No, it’s the other guy who broke his nose as he fell. He also cut open his thigh trying to play with a knife. He’ll need a little care before they take him away.”

  Sebag took his prisoner to the Place Arago, which was accessible to vehicles. Sergis arrived within five minutes, followed by the emergency medic’s van. The doctor had the drug dealer get into the van, but before following him he pointed to Sebag’s forehead.

  “Did you hurt yourself when you fell?”

  Gilles ran his hand over his bump.

  “Huh? No . . . it’s nothing.”

  “I think in fact you don’t require hospitalization,” the doctor joked. “And your client, shall I examine him with his handcuffs on?”

  “Does that bother you?” Sergis asked.

  “Not especially, given the nature of his wounds.”

  “Then it’s more prudent to do it that way.”

  The two policemen had just enough time to smoke a cigarette before the door of the van opened to reveal the doctor.

  “The nose is broken, but there is no deviation of the septum. I inserted cotton to stop the bleeding, and I’m leaving him to you. There’s nothing more to do, the fracture will repair itself. As for the thigh, I disinfected the wound and bandaged it.”

  “So we can take him away?” Sergis asked.

  “Absolutely, he’s all yours.”

  Sergis put the prisoner in the back of their car and sat down at the wheel. Sebag got in alongside him.

  “Not worth the trouble to bother with this one, Franck. You’ve finished your shift, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No problem.”

  “Are you up to it?”

  Gilles was not unhappy to be dealing with this case rather than handling the consequences of Christine Abad’s murder.

  “You should take off before I change my mind.”

  “You’re right! I’ll owe you one, Gilles. This really works for me. My vacation started fifteen minutes ago and I was counting on taking a little nap to be in shape for Christmas Eve. My parents, my sister, and her children are coming down from Cahors late in the afternoon. What about you? You’ve got family, too, I suppose?”

  “Only my wife and children. Afterward they’re going to be with my in-laws.”

  “Without you?”

  “I didn’t take vacation time this year.”

  “You wanted to escape the fatigue duty?”

  Sebag replied with a smile. He got along well with his in-laws, but there were always too many people at their home over the holidays. Friends, uncles, distant cousins. He didn’t like that. Too much noise, too much small talk. And then every time people asked his opinion on cases that had been in the national press, about which he usually didn’t know any more than what he had read in the newspaper. Not to mention that among that multitude, there was always somebody who would suggest or even insist that he denounce this or that abuse of police power. Although he was often the first to criticize, internally, the way the police functioned, on these occasions he felt obliged to defend colleagues he didn’t even know and who might not even be defensible.

  This year, he regretted missing this rendezvous even less than he had in previous years.

  After dropping Sergis off at police headquarters, Sebag took the wheel to deliver his prisoner to the regional customs authority. Captain Marceau, who was responsible for customs investigations in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales, received him in a large room where a dozen agents were bustling about. He turned Corentin Jacquet over to a customs agent, who immediately took him away. In a corner of the room three agents were piling brown bricks on an enormous scale. The cannabis resin had been found in the second vehicle of the Go-Fast, a powerful, luxurious 4x4. When they had finished weighing it, a customs officer announced in a loud voice:

  “Seven hundred and fifty-three kilos.”

  Captain Marceau made an approving face. To minimize the commercial and judicial risks, in recent months drug dealers had considerably reduced the quantities brought in on each trip. Today’s take was the largest of the year.

  “And we arrested five people,” Marceau added. “Almost everybody.”

  “Almost?”

  “We thought there were two people in the BMW that you intercepted. The customs men who spotted the group in Boulou saw a passenger sitting alongside your guy. He must have gotten out somewhere before arriving in Perpignan. He’ll be the only one of them to have a good Christmas Eve. There’s not much chance of our catching him beforehand.”

  “Good work all the same,” Sebag commented.

  “We’ve had that group in our sights for a long time, and tapped some of their phones. It wasn’t very hard, in the end.”

  “They didn’t use prepaid phones for this operation?” Gilles asked in surprise.

  “Sure, of course. But one of them used his phone to call his wife to ask how their sick child was doing. Since his landline was tapped, we got the number of his mobile and we were able to geolocate it.”

  “What a moron!”

  “That happens more often than you’d think. Fortunately. But we’re not obliged to tell the public about that stroke of luck.”

  “You’re going to talk about it?”

  “We’ll take some photos that we’ll send to the journalists. During the holidays, they don’t have much to write about, and I hope that they’ll embroider on it as much as possible.”

  Sebag spent the whole morning with the customs agents. They lent him a computer and he wrote his arrest report on the spot. The coffee they offered him on several occasions was of more than acceptable quality. Around 10 A.M. he received a message from Claire asking him for news. She also wanted to know whether he was planning to return home that night, or whether she should tell the children something. After weighing his words at length, he replied in two short sentences: “I’ll be there. I love you.” She immediately answered with a simple “Thanks with all my heart.” During the night, messages saying “Never forget that I love you” had been interrupted only between 2 A.M. and 6 A.M.

  CHAPTER 9

  François Ménard was having lunch with Jacques Molina at the Carlit. Located across the street from police headquarters, the restaurant offered a decent and copious daily lunch special at a reasonable price. And the boss regularly gave policemen a cup of coffee or even a quarter-liter of red wine at no extra charge. In exchange, the policemen waved away with their magic wand the fines that the distracted Rafel was always forgetting to pay before the deadline. Ménard consented to close his eyes to these “habits” that he found inappropriate but which had existed long before he arrived in the department. In private, however, he constantly criticized these
“Mediterranean customs.”

  They were starting in on the plat du jour, an eel with aioli, when Sebag made his appearance in the restaurant. Molina spontaneously stood up and applauded. Ménard limited himself to raising his glass of mineral water.

  “Bravo! We followed your exploit with a slight delay, but it was grandiose,” Jacques said to him.

  Seeing Gilles’s astonishment, he explained:

  “We were at the video-surveillance center this morning, and the guys showed us your chase and your final tackle.”

  Ménard and Molina had in fact spent the morning examining the municipal police’s surveillance tapes. The city of Perpignan had about a hundred video-protection cameras, scattered through the city, which filmed the streets 24/7. The policemen at headquarters often requested these images for use in their investigations.

  “There was a camera ideally placed on the Rue Mailly,” Molina went on. “Really, what a tackle! I’m not sure I ever made a better one, even in my glory days . . .”

  Ménard laughed.

  “What glory days would those be?”

  Sebag didn’t leave Molina time to respond.

  “What were you doing at the municipal police’s video center?”

  “We were looking at images of Abad,” Jacques replied. We were able to follow part of his itinerary. He parked in a handicapped space at the end of the Rue Foch and the Rue des Augustins, the only parking space available. He got out of his car with his rifle in its case and then went to the Place des Poilus, where he stayed to observe . . .”

  “To observe?” Sebag interrupted. “Well, what was he waiting for?”

  Gilles frowned. Ménard had also found the husband’s behavior strange, but he had paid it no more attention.

  “He must have been waiting for the lover to come out. But what’s strange is that after Balland left, he still took the time to smoke a cigarette before deciding to go into the hotel.”

  Ménard paused to observe Sebag’s reaction, but his colleague’s face remained blank. He seemed to be elsewhere.

  “Afterward, on the other hand, things moved fast. Abad remained in the hotel for less than ten minutes, and then he returned to his car with the rifle back in its case. He took the Quai de Lattre de Tassigny, turned right at the light toward the Place de Catalogne, passed the Arago Bridge, and took the northern expressway. We lost sight of him after that.”

  “And we have no idea where he went,” Molina added. “Conclusion: in the end, we’re right where we started.”

  Rafel put a plate in front of Sebag. Gilles spread his napkin on his lap and picked at the eel with the tip of his fork.

  “I hope you aren’t planning to conclude your Christmas Eve with a torrid night,” Molina said, amused. “There are things more erotic than aioli to spice up an evening . . .”

  Sebag smiled wanly.

  “What about you, aren’t you afraid of driving away your English girl?”

  “All she has to do is chalk it up to discovering the local sexual customs and practices.”

  Ménard let this facetious parenthesis pass and redirected the conversation toward their investigation:

  “And you, Gilles? We haven’t yet had time to talk about our interview yesterday with Abad’s son. I suppose you asked him if he had any idea where his father might have taken refuge.”

  “Julie thought of that, yes.”

  Sebag put down his fork and took out his notebook. His memory, for once, failed him.

  “Abad’s family is mainly from over by Aspres, and most of his friends are in Perpignan and the surrounding areas. No trace of his car, I suppose?”

  “None. We called the gendarmes.2 Nothing to report. It’s as if he’d disappeared into thin air.”

  “We’ll eventually catch him.”

  “I hope we won’t find his body rotting somewhere a couple of weeks from now.”

  “François, I recognize there your legendary optimism,” Jacques remarked before turning to Gilles. “By the way, is it true that you spent all night in the office?”

  Sebag evaded the question.

  “François is right: we can’t reject the hypothesis that Abad committed suicide after killing his wife.”

  “Oh, great!” Molina chuckled. “Is it the idea of spending the holiday with your family that puts you in such good humor? I barely escaped it, in the end . . .”

  “You don’t have your children with you?” Ménard asked.

  “No, never. That’s the prerogative of my dear and loving ex-wife. Same as every year. As a result, I’m on duty for Christmas and for the following weekend.”

  After the meal and coffee, the three policemen got up to pay the bill at the counter. Next to the till, Rafel had placed a crèche. He did that every year. It was partly a tradition, but mainly a provocation. Among the classic characters of the Nativity, the Catalans always add an unusual character: the caganer, a famous man or woman shown defecating. A symbol of luck and fertility, the caganer was supposed to remind people that at certain times of day, the human condition remains the same for all, no matter what their rank, title, or fame. Molina bent over the crèche.

  “So, what did you put there this year? Ah, yes, of course!”

  Ménard bent down in turn, to examine a tiny figure with black hair and a white beard crouched over a magnificent turd.

  “Who is it?”

  “Rajoy,” Rafel replied, shrugging his shoulders.

  A determined opponent of an independent Catalonia, the Spanish prime minister had managed to unite all the Catalonian activists against him.

  “I should have known.”

  Whereas Sebag and Molina went back to their office with the intention of having a little nap before dealing with current business and going home, François Ménard plunged into the first reports on the Abad case. He reread attentively the transcript of the interview with Éric Balland, and then the forensic team’s report. At the end of the day, he called the gendarmes back and gave them his mobile number so they could inform him first if they had anything new on the husband.

  It was not very good form to try to short-circuit one’s colleagues, but knowing Molina well, he feared that only Sebag would be informed in the event of a new development over the long Christmas weekend. And that would be unfair! He, Ménard, had been there since the beginning of this case, he was the one who had carried out the interrogation of the lover, and it was also he who had had to perform the boring task of viewing the municipal police’s video recordings. It was really time that Superintendent Castello, their superior, notice that there was more than one cop at the Perpignan headquarters who could conduct a criminal investigation all the way to its completion.

  And because Sebag loved proverbs, Ménard had one of those ready to use as well, a nice hot one that he’d learned from his maternal grandmother. He recited it out loud in his Picard dialect: “El vertu, é boin pour chès tchurés vius qu’is n’puettë pus.”3

  2In France, there are two main police forces: the Police nationale and the Gendarmerie nationale. The former is civilian and is primarily responsible for cities and urban areas. The latter is part of the military and is responsible mainly for small towns and rural areas as well as military installations, airports, etc.

  3“Virtue is fine for curés and old men who can’t do it anymore.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The man was walking rapidly despite his corpulent physique. No time to exercise, he had to get home. Tonight was Christmas Eve, and the girls would be there as they used to be.

  When they were still a real family.

  On the Quai Vauban, he had to slow down. The crowd was preventing him from moving forward. Latecomers were thronging around the Christmas market’s little lighted stands. People essentially looking for a last-minute gift. Merchants and customers were smiling. Despite the crush, it was a genuinely festive
atmosphere.

  He wasn’t looking where he was going and bumped into a man wearing a red costume. Santa Claus turned around and smiled at him. Unsticking the white beard from his pale cheeks, he used his hands to put it back in place. A father thrust a terrified infant into his arms and he stepped back toward a stand decorated with a snowy nighttime mountain landscape. He whispered a couple of words in the child’s ear in the hope of eliciting a smile. A flash lit the scene. Santa Claus kneeled to put the child down, then stood up again with difficulty. He pushed up the sleeve of his coat and looked at his watch. Impatient. Santa Claus was expected for Christmas Eve and had no intention of working overtime.

  He finally got to the end of the Quai Vauban and leaned on the railing of the Magenta Bridge, just behind an advertising poster. He looked up and smiled: he knew that the halo of Christmas garlands protected him from indiscreet eyes.

  He took a mobile phone out of his backpack and put a battery back in it. He also had a gift to give.

  To give himself.

  He wrote a text message. Only a few words. Carefully considered. A first contact. Just to worry the receiver.

  It was time to get ready to fire the second stage of the rocket. Liftoff in a few days.

  Merry Christmas!

  CHAPTER 11

  The Sebag family lived in Saint-Estève, a large community northwest of Perpignan. Before opening the door to the house, Gilles took a deep breath.

  Claire was bustling about in the kitchen and Séverine was in the living room, wearing headphones as she watched a police series on television. The big room faced south and looked out on the sunlit terrace. The wind was blowing dead leaves from the apricot tree onto the blue tarp that protected the swimming pool from November to April. Claire often left the outside lights on. On evenings when she was in high spirits, she said the view of the garden expanded the living room with the promise of the spring to come.

  Gilles came up to his wife. She was wearing a gray-and-yellow sheath dress that sensually emphasized her hips and her firm bust. The dress was a gift he’d given her the preceding Christmas. He found his wife beautiful, marvelously beautiful. But he couldn’t help wondering if she had already worn that dress for the other man as well.