23The French Rugby championship competition.
CHAPTER 29
On the road that led to Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque, François Ménard was jubilant. The forensic team’s analyses had validated his hypothesis. What a triumph! On the strength of these results—and the complaint against an unknown person filed by Abad’s son—the prosecutor had just decided to open an official investigation of the corbeau. Superintendent Castello had personally congratulated him and given him a blank check. He was the one who was going to head the investigation.
On the passenger seat, Sebag was keeping his mouth closed. Ménard’s brilliant colleague was trying to put up a good show, but he was failing. His face was grim and wore a fixed smile. He hadn’t said a word since they got in the car.
Ménard found a parking place close to the village house occupied by Dominique Barrache, the guard who had been fired at Cantalou-Cémoi. He’d finally managed to contact him. The suspect had gone home and was waiting for them there.
He rang the doorbell. A round, bearded face appeared in a second-floor window.
“Come up, it’s on the second floor.”
The two policemen took a steep, narrow stairway and came out in a small room that served as living room, kitchen, and office all at once. In one corner, another staircase led to the upper level; in another, a laptop hummed on a small table. The screensaver was a photo of Le Canigou. The mountain’s summit was covered with glazed sugar that stood out against a pink sea of peach trees in bloom.
“Did you take the picture?” Ménard asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you take many photos?”
“It’s my passion, in fact. My only vice.”
Ménard gazed at the man facing him. An odd physique for a guard. Dominique Barrache stood hardly 5’3” tall and his waistline looked more like an inner tube than a chocolate bar. The cop even wondered if carrying a telephoto lens on his camera wouldn’t be too strenuous an exercise for him.
“Please, sit down.”
The guard pointed to chairs around a table topped with Formica in an imitation wood pattern.
“Would you like some coffee?”
Ménard followed Sebag’s glance at the coffeemaker sitting next to a sink overflowing with dirty dishes. It was half-full of cold, weak coffee. Barrache had been gone for several days and the coffee looked like it dated from before his departure.
“You wouldn’t have anything else?” Sebag asked.
“Orange juice?”
“Perfect,” Ménard answered after glancing at his colleague.
Barrache pulled three glasses from the pile of dirty dishes and summarily washed them before putting them on the table, which was covered with crumbs.
Then he took an open bottle from the refrigerator and filled the glasses.
“Do you live alone?” Ménard asked, even though the answer was obvious.
“Yes,” the guard replied, playing with his wedding ring.
“But you’re married?”
“My wife left with the children two months ago. We’re going to get divorced.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“It’s all right. Probably better this way.”
Barrache said nothing more about it. He took a swallow of orange juice. He was waiting to find out the reason for this visit. On the telephone, Ménard hadn’t told him anything.
“Do you know why we’re here?”
“I have an inkling.”
This enigmatic and promising response made the hair on Ménard’s forearms stand on end.
“I suppose it has something to do with my being fired?”
“In a way . . .”
“And in what way does that concern inspectors from the Perpignan police? I made a stupid mistake, OK, but I didn’t steal anything.”
Ménard took a drink of the orange juice. It was so sour that it must have been open for a week at least. A joke occurred to him. For once! He said:
“Attempt to poison a policeman. That’s going to get you ten to fifteen years.”
Barrache, without smiling, sipped his orange juice again.
“Still tastes good to me.”
“It’s just that we’re not used to drinking it all by itself,“ Sebag joked. “The last times, it was with vodka.”
This time Barrache was kind enough to give a half-smile. Enough! It was time to get to the heart of the matter.
“You heard what happened to Stéphane Abad?”
“Of course.”
“Did his problems give you joy?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Let’s just say that I didn’t feel a lot of pain for him. On the other hand, it’s too bad about his wife. May her soul rest in peace.”
“Were you really angry with Abad?”
“Naturally. I’ve never understood why he wanted to get me in trouble. I never did anything to him. And it wasn’t his job to monitor the guards.”
“What exactly did you do?”
“You don’t know?”
“Yes, we do. But we’d like to hear it from you.”
Barrache put his hand on the table and started collecting the scattered crumbs. They weren’t bread crumbs, probably cookie crumbs.
“One night when Abad had forgotten something in his office, he returned and I didn’t see him coming. He caught me classifying my photos on my laptop. From that time on, he tried several times to trap me. And he finally succeeded. He snitched on me and the management started keeping a close eye on my work. They noticed that I didn’t always make the rounds I was supposed to make.”
“You didn’t contest these accusations?”
The guard shrugged.
“People who think what I did or didn’t do is a fault have never spent a whole night looking at surveillance screens on which nothing ever happens. To keep from falling asleep on the job, everyone finds something to do. Some of my colleagues watch porno films or play games online. I work on my photos.”
“What about the rounds?”
“There too I must not be the only one who doesn’t always follow the schedule. They make us do ridiculous things. Who’s going to burgle a chocolate factory at night? There’s nothing to steal there!”
“But all the same, you’re paid for that.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But I was guarding that place all the same! In any case, the company is trying to outsource the guard service, and so first they have to fire the old guards. They jumped on the opportunity.”
Barrache swallowed a big gulp of orange juice. Ménard didn’t touch his glass again, and Sebag’s was still full.
“What are you doing now?”
“I have a job for two months working the night shift at a security company. Even though I don’t like this job, I don’t know anything else.”
“You don’t have a degree?”
“I left school at fourteen to get certified as a pastry cook, but I failed the exam. Then I enlisted in the army.”
Ménard looked again at Barrache’s feeble physique and wondered what assignment the French army had been able to give him. Certainly not in the special forces. A cook or warehouseman at most . . .
“But you have a talent for photography?”
“Maybe.”
“What do you photograph?”
“The beauty of things: landscapes, animals, flowers.”
“People too?”
“Rarely. I don’t like people much. That’s also why I work nights.”
After that skillful digression—in fact it was a way of preparing the way for further questions—Ménard returned to the main subject.
“What about Valls, did you know him, too?”
Barrache’s face darkened.
“What are all these questions about?”
“You must have some idea, don’t you
?”
“I . . . uhh . . . no.”
More than uneasiness, it was fear that Ménard saw in the guard’s eyes.
“What was your relationship with Valls?”
“Uhh . . . he was the accountant. Except that he signed my paycheck every month, I didn’t have much to do with him.”
The guard was lying, that was clear. Ménard rubbed his hands.
“You didn’t have any reason to be angry with him?”
“Well . . . no!”
Ménard gestured toward the computer sitting on the small table.
“Are all your photos on your laptop?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“And you’re sure that you never take photos of people?”
“Well . . . no, I mean yes. As I told you . . .”
“You never photograph couples leaving or entering a hotel? Couples having an illicit affair?”
Barrache’s eyes and mouth opened wide at the same time. He was doing a good job of pretending to be surprised. Ménard took out the photos he’d gotten at Abad’s house, and after clearing the crumbs off part of the tabletop, laid them on it.
“You didn’t take these photos, Monsieur Barrache?”
“Uhh . . . no.”
“Are you sure?”
“Abs . . .absolutely!”
“Why did your wife leave you?”
Ménard liked to use opposite techniques. By moving unexpectedly from one to the other, he sometimes succeeded in getting the suspect to entrap himself in his own lies. Barrache drank his glass dry.
“Irreconcilable differences.”
“What else?”
“We had been together for fifteen years. Well . . . together is a big word. I worked nights, she’s a nurse, so she doesn’t really have a schedule. We met only occasionally. We both found it hard, but when I was unemployed again we realized that it was also the reason we had remained together so long. Once I was home all the time, we had one argument after another. But the worst thing, I think, was that except for these arguments, we had nothing to say to one another. As I told you, she left two months ago.”
Barrache was more inclined to talk about his wife than about his photos. Ménard pointed to the photos, which were still lying on the table.
“If we examine your computer, we won’t find photos like these?”
The guard looked at him for a long time before answering. He had trouble following.
“Well . . . no!”
“You never take ‘pictures of people’ you said. Even your children?”
“Well . . . yes. But that’s not the same thing.”
“Have you missed them since they left?”
“Yes and no . . . Since we were never there, Chloé and Alexis grew up mainly with their grandparents, my wife’s parents. When I was home, I wanted to have them with me, but I think they were less happy. Their mother went back with them to live with her parents in Millas.”
“Monsieur Barrache, we’re going to take your computer with us to examine it.”
The guard opened his mouth as if to speak but couldn’t say anything. He ran his hand through his sparse beard.
“But . . . There are very personal things on it. Letters exchanged with my wife.”
“Where were you these last few days? I was unable to contact you.”
“I was in the Spanish Garrotxes,24 taking photos.”
“Is there someone who can confirm that?”
“Well . . . no. I was alone. As I told you, I live alone now.”
“Too bad for you. So you’re going to come with us to police headquarters.”
“But why?”
“Because we have good reasons to think that you took pictures of Christine Abad and her lover, and that to avenge yourself on Abad and on Valls, you sent them anonymous letters revealing their wives’ infidelities, and that you were thus indirectly responsible for a murder and a suicide.”
The guard’s pudgy body slumped. Ménard was unsure. He always was always unsure at times like this.
“For the moment, we’d just like to question you at somewhat greater length. But if you refuse to go with us, you will be placed in police custody immediately.”
24A remote valley in the Pyrenees.
CHAPTER 30
Rafel set four dishes of tapas on the table in front of Sebag and Molina.
“Pa amb tomaquet, bunyols de baccallà, polpets à la planxa, et pata negra!”25
The owner of the Carlit was doing them a favor. When he got to the restaurant, Molina had complained loudly about the daily special, coq au vin with vegetables. He’d ribbed Rafel about his cooking, which, despite all his talk about Catalan identity, was moving farther and farther away from Catalan values. Rafel had succeeded in calming him only by promising him some local tapas.
“I also gave you a little wine from the Terrats wine co-op,” Rafel explained as he opened a bottle. “A Terrassous 2011, a blend of carignan, syrah, and grenache noir. You’ll like it.”
He filled their glasses with a very appetizing blood-red wine. Jacques and Gilles tasted it in silence, found it supple and fruity, and then clicked their tongues in approval. Satisfied, Rafel headed back to the kitchen.
“So, is the guard the right suspect?” Molina asked.
Sebag frowned; he didn’t share Ménard’s enthusiasm. When asked probing questions, Barrache had seemed surprised—just as much as necessary—and offended—just as much as he should have. He wasn’t overacting, he seemed sincere. Or else he was an excellent thespian.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Ha, ha, Ménard wants to play with the big boys and he’s going to fall on his face.”
Gilles didn’t share Jacques’s Schadenfreude either. In fact, he didn’t share anything. He was still in a bad way, he couldn’t seem to get a grip on himself. On the way back, he’d received an SMS from Claire with a nice little note. The kind of words that people exchange for years without really thinking about them, such as salutations or even simple punctuations, and that one day suddenly take on all their meaning. At first he had just replied, “See you this evening,” but then added a more affectionate “I can’t wait!” But as he was putting away his phone he thought again about the other man—he kept returning to him, he couldn’t help it. The words that man had exchanged with Claire had never had time to become banal. They had been powerful, weighed, shared.
So who was this guy who had been able to seduce his wife? And what did he have that Gilles didn’t?
It took him a few seconds to notice that Molina was looking at him with a spark of curiosity in his eyes, and another spark of impatience. His partner had something to tell him, but he was letting it come. Jacques gulped down a slice of pain à la tomate. Then he licked his fingers and began.
“Do you remember the little idea I had after our interview with Balland?”
“I especially remember that you didn’t want to tell me more about it. If you’ve changed your mind, I’m listening.”
“It occurred to me that the photos we found at Abad’s place looked like they were taken by a professional. But not by a professional photographer . . .”
He paused before going on to explain:
“But rather by a professional detective.”
The idea surprised Sebag.
“I see what you mean so far as the nature of the photos is concerned, but they weren’t delivered the way a private agency would. Abad and Valls received anonymous calls and letters. That has nothing in common with a file provided by a detective agency.”
“Objection, Your Honor!”
At that moment Rafel arrived with two steaming plates.
“Messieurs, el gall!”26
“Even presented in Catalan, it’s still a French dish,” Molina grumbled, digging his fork into the meat. “Damn! Fre
nch but delicious.”
Sebag let him swallow his food before urging him to explain.
“Valls received anonymous calls,” Jacques said. “We know that, we have a transcript. But so far as Abad is concerned, we have no proof concerning the calls. On the other hand, we have the photos . . .”
“So you still think we have to separate the two cases? You really don’t want Ménard to be right, do you?”
“You’re the superhero, not him!”
Sebag almost burst out laughing.
“And so in your opinion the fact that Abad and Valls both received unidentified calls from the same part of downtown Perpignan is a mere coincidence?”
“Why not? I did a little investigating yesterday and it seems to me that the head of one of the agencies didn’t tell me the whole truth. Imagine that one of the detectives is using a throwaway phone. The agency is located in more or less the same part of downtown as Abad’s mysterious caller . . .”
“Aha . . .”
Molina took another forkful of coq au vin. Then he wiped his mouth on his napkin.
“Have I already talked to you about Àvia Maria?”
“Who?”
“Àvia Maria . . . in Catalan, àvia means ‘grandmother.’”
Molina downed a big swallow of red wine.
“Àvia Maria runs the Catalan Detective Agency, the oldest agency in Perpignan, with a dozen investigators. She was born near Barcelona in 1934. She is descended from Spanish Republicans. She came to France during the Retirada.”
In February 1939, almost half a million people fled the advance of Franco’s troops in Spain. Soldiers and also whole families of civilians crossed the mountains on foot to find refuge in France. In Pyrénées-Orientales, they had been parked in hastily constructed camps, notably on the beaches at Argelès and Saint-Cyprien, and then also at Rivesaltes. This period is known to history as the Retirada, which means “retreat” in Spanish.
“In the 1950s, Maria married a Catalan from around here, Jaume Borell, who had just opened this agency. Since the death of her husband from leukemia more than twenty years ago, she’s been keeping the place going. An iron hand in a velvet glove, as they say.”
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