Camille

by Pierre Lemaitre

  Don’t say: they’re putting a uniformed officer outside the door for the day, but I can tell you now it’s a waste of time because as long as this guy is on the loose, you’re in danger. He’ll stop at nothing.

  Make no mention of the guys who broke into her apartment, the stolen papers, the determined efforts they have made to track her down. Or the fact that the resources at Camille’s disposal are almost non-existent. Which, in large part, is his fault.

  Say: everything will be fine, don’t worry.

  “I know . . .”

  “You will help me, won’t you, Anne? You will help?”

  She nods.

  “And don’t tell anyone we know each other, alright?”

  Anne agrees, and yet there is a wary look in her eyes. An uneasy silence hangs over them.

  “The gendarme outside my room, why is he here?”

  She spotted him in the corridor as Camille came in. He raises his eyebrows. Camille either lies with consummate ease or he babbles shamefacedly like an eight-year-old. He can shift from best to worst in a breath.

  “I . . .”

  A single syllable is enough. For someone like Anne, even this syllable is superfluous. From the flicker of hesitation in his eyes, she knows.

  “You think he’ll come here?”

  Camille has no time to react.

  “Are you hiding something from me?”

  Camille hesitates for a second and by the time he is ready to answer, Anne knows that she is right. She stares intently at him. In this moment when they should be supporting one another, he feels utterly helpless. Anne shakes her head, she seems to be wondering what will happen to her.

  “He’s already been here?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  This is not the response of a man who honestly does not know. Anne’s shoulders begin to shake, and then her arms, blood drains from her face, she looks towards the door, glances around the room as though she has been told that this is the last place she will ever see. Imagine being shown your own death bed. Ham-fisted as ever, Camille adds to the confusion.

  “You’re safe here.”

  The words are like an insult.

  She turns towards the window and starts to cry.

  *

  The most important thing now is that she gets some rest, builds up her strength, it is on this that Camille focuses all of his energy. If she does not recognise anyone in the photographs, the investigation will go off a cliff. But if she can give them a thread, a single thread, Camille feels confident he can find his way through the maze.

  And deal with this. Quickly.

  He feels dizzy, as though he had been drinking, he feels a crackling in his skin, the world seems to be reeling.

  What has he got himself into?

  How will it end?

  *

  12.00 noon

  The officer from identité judiciaire is Polish; some call him Krystoviak, others Kristowiak; Camille is the only one who can correctly pronounce it: Krysztofiak. He has bushy sideburns and looks like an ageing rockstar. He carries his equipment in an aluminium flight case.

  Dr Dainville has given them one hour, assuming it might stretch to two. Camille knows it will take four. Krysztofiak, who has conducted thousands of photo line-ups as a forensic officer, knows it could take six hours. Spread over two days.

  In his folder are thousands of mugshots from which he has to make a careful selection. The objective is not to show the witness too many since, after a while, faces begin to merge and the whole process becomes pointless. Buried among hundreds of pictures is Vincent Hafner and three of his known accomplices together with photographs of everyone in the police database of Serbian origin.

  He leans over Anne.

  “Bonjour, madame . . .”

  He has a nice voice. Gentle. His movements are slow, precise, reassuring. Her face still swollen, Anne is sitting up in bed, propped up on pillows. She has had one hour’s sleep. To show willing, she gives a faint smile, careful not to part her lips and show her shattered teeth. As he opens his aluminium flight case and lays out various files, Krysztofiak reels off the usual pat phrases. He has had lots of time to polish this routine.

  “It could be all over quickly. You never know, sometimes we get lucky.”

  He flashes a broad, encouraging smile. He always tries to bring a light touch to the procedure because when he is called on to present a photo array it is usually because someone has been beaten or has witnessed a sudden, savage attack, the woman may have been raped or may have seen someone being murdered, so the atmosphere, unsurprisingly, is rarely relaxed.

  “But sometimes . . .” he goes on, his tone serious and measured, “. . . sometimes it takes time. So if you start to feel tired, just tell me, O.K.? We’re in no rush . . .”

  Anne nods. Her troubled eyes seek out Camille; she understands. She nods again.

  This is the signal.

  “O.K.,” Krysztofiak says, “let me explain how this works.”

  *

  12.15 p.m.

  Suddenly, though he is no mood for such things, Camille tries to think of a joke, of one of Commissaire Michard’s idiocies, anything but the serious matter at hand. The gendarme sent to stand guard is the same one Camille met yesterday at the Galerie Monier, the tall, raw-boned man, his eyes ringed with blue circles like something that has just crawled from the grave. If he were superstitious, Camille would see this as a bad omen. And he is superstitious, he knocks on wood, throws salt over his shoulder, he is petrified by signs and omens and when he sees this hulking zombie standing guard at Anne’s door, he finds it hard to remain calm.

  The gendarme makes to salute, but Camille stops him.

  “Verhœven,” he introduces himself.

  “Commandant!” the officer replies, proffering a cold, skeletal hand.

  About six foot one, Camille reckons. And organised. He has already commandeered the most comfortable chair from the waiting room and brought it out into the hall. Next to him, against the wall, is a small blue knapsack. His wife probably gives him sandwiches and a flask of coffee. But what Camille notices is the smell of cigarette smoke. If this were 8.00 p.m. rather than noon, Camille would send him packing on the spot. Because the first time he pops downstairs for a crafty cigarette, someone will be watching, timing this little ritual; the second time, the killer will confirm his schedule, the third time he has only to wait until the gendarme emerges before he can sneak into Anne’s room and blast her. Michard has sent the biggest officer, but he may also be the dumbest. Right now, it is not much of a problem since even Camille cannot imagine the killer coming back so soon, and certainly not in broad daylight.

  The night shift will be critical and he will deal with that when the time comes. Even so, Camille issues a warning.

  “You don’t move from that spot, is that understood?”

  “No problem, commandant!” the gendarme says cheerfully.

  The sort of response that makes your blood run cold.

  *

  12.45 p.m.

  At the far end of the corridor is a small waiting room which is permanently deserted. It is in an impractical location and Camille cannot help but wonder why it is there at all. Florence, the charge nurse who wants to kiss life full on the lips, explains that there were plans to turn it into an office, but they were vetoed. There are regulations, apparently, so the waiting room is still there, useless. Those are the rules. It’s something to do with Europe. And so, since there is a shortage of space, the staff use it to store supplies. Whenever there is a security inspection, everything is piled onto trolleys and taken down to the basement only to be brought up again afterwards. The security inspectors are happy and duly rubber-stamp the form.

  Camille pushes piles of boxes back against the wall, pulls two chairs up next to the coffee table. Here, he sits down with Louis (charcoal grey suit by Cifonelli, white shirt by Swann & Oscar, shoes by Massaro, everything made to measure. Louis is the only officer at the brigade criminelle
who wears his annual salary to work). Louis brings Verhœven up to speed on their current cases: the German tourist’s death was suicide; the driver in the road-rage incident has been identified, he is on the run, but they will track him down within a day or two; the 71-year-old killer who has confessed, he was jealous. Having dealt with this, Camille comes back to what is really worrying him.

  “If Madame Forestier identifies Hafner as—” Louis begins.

  “Even if she doesn’t identify him,” Camille interrupts, “that doesn’t mean it’s not him.”

  Louis takes a breath. His boss is not quick-tempered by nature. There is something not right about this case. And it will not be easy to tell him that everyone has worked out what it is . . .

  “Of course,” Louis agrees, “even if she can’t pick him out of the line-up, it could still be Hafner. The fact remains that he has disappeared off the face of the earth. I’ve been in touch with the officers who dealt with the raid last January – who, by the way, would like to know why this case wasn’t assigned to them . . .”

  Camille makes a sweeping gesture, he could not give a damn.

  “No-one knows where Hafner has been since January. Oh, there are rumours – that he skipped the country or that he’s on the Riviera. With a murder charge hanging over him, and given his age, it’s hardly surprising that he would go to ground, but even those closest to him don’t seem to know anything . . .”

  “. . . don’t seem to know?”

  “Yes. That was my first thought. Someone must know something. People don’t just disappear overnight. What is really surprising is him doing a job now. You would have thought he’d want to stay in hiding.”

  “Any potential leaks?”

  The question of information is wide open. Small-time crooks holding up shops are two a penny, but genuine professionals only do a job when they have solid information, when the expected haul is worth the effort if things go wrong. And the source of that information provides the first line of inquiry for the police. In the case of the Galerie Monier, the girl who turned up late for work has been eliminated as a suspect. And therefore it stands to reason . . .

  “We will have to ask Madame Forestier what she was doing at the Galerie Monier,” Camille says.

  The question will be asked as a matter of form, knowing he is unlikely to get an answer. Camille will ask the question because he has to, because under normal circumstances, this would be his next question. He knows very little about Anne’s timetable, he does not know which days she spends in Paris, he barely registers her trips, her meetings, he is happy just to know that he will see her tonight, or tomorrow night – the day after tomorrow is anybody’s guess.

  But Louis Mariani is a first-rate officer. Meticulous, intelligent, more cultured than he needs to be, intuitive and . . . and suspicious. Bravo. One of the cardinal virtues of a good officer.

  For example, when Commissaire Michard questions whether Hafner was in Anne’s hospital room, she is simply sceptical, but when she asks Camille what the hell he is playing at and demands his daily report, she is suspicious. And when Camille wonders whether Anne might have seen something important apart from the faces of the robbers, he is suspicious.

  And when Louis is dealing with a case in which a woman was attacked during the course of a robbery, he asks himself why she was in that particular place at that particular time. On a day when she should have been at work. Just as the shops were opening up. When there would have been few passers-by and no customers except her. He could have asked the question himself, but for some unexplained reason Verhœven is the only officer who has questioned the woman. As though she were spoken for.

  And so Louis did not question her directly. He found an indirect approach.

  Camille has raised the issue, protocol has been respected and he is about to move on to the next point when he is distracted by Louis bending down and rummaging for something in his briefcase. He takes out a piece of paper. For a little while now, Louis has taken to wearing reading glasses. Presbyopia usually doesn’t develop until later, Camille thinks. But then again, how old is Louis? It is a little like having a son, he can never quite remember his age, he asks the question at least three times a year.

  Louis holds up a photocopy bearing the letterhead of Desfossés Jewellers. Camille puts on his own glasses and reads “Anne Forestier”. It is a copy of an order for a luxury watch, eight hundred euros.

  “Madame Forestier was there to pick up something she ordered ten days ago.”

  The jeweller asked for ten days to complete the engraving. The text to be engraved has been noted down in block capitals to avoid making a mistake on such an expensive gift . . . Just imagine the customer’s face if a name were misspelled. In fact, Madame Forestier was asked to write it out herself so there could be no arguments if there was a problem later. Camille recognises Anne’s large, graceful hand.

  The name to be engraved on the watch: Camille.

  Silence.

  Both men take off their glasses and the synchronicity serves only to heighten their embarrassment. Camille does not look up, he gently pushes the photocopy across the table to Louis.

  “She . . . she’s a friend.”

  Louis nods. A friend. Fine.

  “A close friend.”

  A close friend. Fine. Louis realises that he is playing catch-up. That he has missed several episodes in Camille Verhœven’s life. As quickly as he can, he reviews the extent of his lacuna.

  He thinks back to four years ago: he knew Irène, they got along, Irène called him “mon petit Loulou” and made him blush by asking questions about his sex life. After Irène’s death came the psychiatric clinic, where Louis visited regularly until Camille said he would rather be alone. For a time, they saw each other only from a distance. It took Le Guen’s most Machiavellian machinations to force Camille, two years later, to rejoin the serious crime squad investigating murders, kidnappings . . . and Camille asked that Louis be reassigned to his team. Louis has no idea what had been going on in Verhœven’s private life since his time in the clinic. But in the life of a man as punctilious as Camille, the sudden appearance of a woman should be obvious from countless little details, differences in behaviour, changes in routine, precisely the sort of things Louis generally notices. And yet he saw nothing, sensed nothing. Until today, he would have dismissed the notion of there being a woman in Verhœven’s life as idle speculation, because in the life of a widower who is by nature a depressive, a serious romantic relationship would be a seismic event. And yet this feverishness, this exaltation today . . . There is something contradictory about it that Louis cannot quite grasp.

  Louis stares at his glasses on the coffee table as though somehow they might help him see the situation more clearly: so, Camille has a “close friend”, her name is Anne Forestier. Camille clears his throat.

  “I’m not asking you to get involved, Louis. I’m up to my neck right now and I don’t need anyone to remind me that what I’m doing is against regulations, that’s my business and nobody else’s. And I wouldn’t ask you to take that kind of risk, Louis. [He looks at his assistant.] All I’m asking for is a little time. [Silence.] I need to close this thing down, and fast. Before Michard finds out that I lied in order to have a case involving someone very close to me assigned to my team. If we can arrest these guys quickly, none of that will matter. Or at least it can be dealt with. But if we don’t, if the case drags on and this thing comes out . . . well, you know what Michard’s like, there’ll be hell to pay. And there’s no reason for you to have to pay it too.”

  Louis is lost in thought, he does not seem to be here, he glances around him as though expecting a waiter to come and take his order. Finally, he gives a sad smile and nods towards the photocopy.

  “Well, this isn’t going to help the investigation much, is it?” he says. His tone is that of a man who thought he had discovered treasure only to be deeply disappointed. “I mean, Camille is a pretty common name. There’s no way of even knowing if it refe
rs to a man or a woman . . .”

  And when Camille does not respond:

  “What do you want us to do with it?”

  He fiddles with the knot on his tie.

  Pushes his hair back with his left hand.

  He gets to his feet, leaving the piece of paper on the table. Camille picks it up, crumples it into a ball and stuffs it into his pocket.

  *

  1.15 p.m.

  The officer from identité judiciaire has just packed away his things and left.

  “Thank you, Madame Forestier, I think we did some good work,” he said as he went. It is what he always says, regardless of the result.

  Despite the fact that it makes her dizzy, Anne got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She cannot resist the temptation to look, to survey the extent of the damage. Now that the bandages around her head have been removed, she can see only her short, lank hair and the twin shaved patches where she needed stitches. Like holes in her head. There are more stitches along her jawline. Her face seems even more swollen today. It’s normal, they tell her over and over, the swelling is always worse in the first few days, she knows, she’s been told, but no-one told her what it would actually look like. She has swollen up like a balloon, her face has the flushed complexion of an alcoholic. A battered woman looks a little like a bag lady. Anne feels a fierce sense of injustice.

  She brings her fingertips to her cheeks, feels a dull, diffuse, insidious pain that seems rooted there for ever.

  And her teeth, my God, it gives her a pitiful air, she does not know why; it is like having a mastectomy, she thinks, she feels utterly violated. She is no longer herself, no longer whole, she will have to have dental implants, she will never recover from this ordeal.

  Now, here she is. She has just spent hours reviewing dozens of photographs. She did as she was asked, she was meek, obedient, unemotional, when she recognised the man, she pointed with her index finger.

  Him.

  How will it end?

  By himself, Camille cannot protect her. Who else can she count on, given that this man is determined to kill her?

  He probably wants this ordeal to be over. Just as she does. They both, in their different ways, want it to end.