Camille

by Pierre Lemaitre

  *

  45, rue Jambier. The commissaire is already on her way. Camille will meet her there in fifteen minutes.

  The Operation Verhœven raids have produced results, though not the ones anticipated. Desperate to be left in peace – to prosper, to live or simply to survive – the whole Serbian community came together to track down Ravic. The search turned out to be child’s play. An anonymous tip-off gives his location as 45, rue Jambier. Camille had hoped to find a live body; he is sorely disappointed.

  At the first wail of a police siren, every adult in the building disappeared within seconds: there will be no witnesses, no-one to question, no-one who heard or saw anything. Only the children were left behind – there was nothing to fear and everything to gain, since the children will be able to tell them exactly what happened when they get back. Right now, uniformed officers have them corralled out on the pavement. The kids are eager and excited, laughing and catcalling. For children who do not go to school, a double murder constitutes playtime.

  Upstairs, the commissaire is standing in the doorway of the apartment, hands clasped in front of her as though she were in church. Until the forensic technicians from identité judiciaire get here, she will allow only Verhœven inside, no-one else. It is a perfunctory and probably futile precaution, so many men have traipsed through this hovel that the forensics team will probably come up with at least fifty sets of fingerprints, stray hairs and sundry bodily fluids. The crime scene will be documented, but it is merely a question of protocol.

  When Camille arrives, the commissaire does not turn, she does not even look at him, she simply takes a step into the room, her movements careful and deliberate. Camille follows her footsteps. Silently, each of them begins to detail the scene, to draw up a list of obvious facts. The girl – an addict and a prostitute – died first. Seeing her lying on her belly, turned towards the wall as though she is sulking, it is apparent that the duvet that discreetly covers Ravic’s body was jerked out from under her, hurling her against the partition. Were there only her pallid corpse, stiffening now with rigor mortis, there would be little to be said. They have witnessed this scene a hundred times. So many prostitutes die in circumstances such as these: an overdose, a murder. But there is another body which tells a very different story.

  The commissaire moves slowly, walking around the pool of blood seeping into the grimy floorboards. The ankle, a mass of splintered bone, is attached to the leg by ragged ribbons of skin. Hacked? Slashed? Camille takes out his glasses and hunkers down for a closer inspection, his eyes move over the floor until he finds the bullet hole, then back at the ankle; there is evidence of knife marks on the bone, a short blade, possibly a dagger. Camille crouches lower, like an Indian listening for an enemy approaching, and sees the deep groove where a blade was buried in the wood. As he gets to his feet, he mentally tries to reconstruct this part of the scene. The ankle first, then the fingers.

  The commissaire makes an inventory. Five fingers. The right number, but the wrong order: the index is here, the middle finger there, the thumb a little further away, each cut off at the second phalanx. The anaemic stump of the hand lies on the bed, the sheet is saturated with black blood. Cautiously, using a ballpoint pen, the commissaire lifts the hand away to reveal Ravic’s face. His contorted features speak volumes about the pain he suffered.

  The coup de grâce: a bullet in the back of the neck.

  “Come on then . . .” the commissaire says, her tone almost jubilant; she is expecting good news.

  “The way I see it,” Camille begins, “the guys came in . . .”

  “Spare me the bedtime story, commandant, anyone can see what happened here. No, what I want to know is what the hell you’re doing.”

  *

  What is Camille doing? Anne wonders.

  The nurse has left, they barely spoke. Anne was aggressive, Florence pretended not to notice.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  No, nothing. Anne gives a curt nod, but already her mind is elsewhere. As every other time, she finds looking in the mirror devastating and yet she cannot help herself. She comes back, goes back to bed, comes back again. Now that she has had the results of the X-rays and the M.R.I. scan, she cannot sit still, this hospital room troubles and depresses her.

  She has to run away.

  She summons the instincts she had as a little girl for running away and hiding. What she feels has something in common with rape: she feels ashamed. Ashamed of what she has become, this is what she saw when she looked into the mirror.

  What is Camille doing? she wonders.

  *

  Commissaire Michard steps back and leaves the apartment, carefully setting her feet in precisely the same places as she did when she entered. As in a well-choreographed ballet, their exit coincides with the arrival of the forensics team. The commissaire is forced to move along the hall in a crab-like fashion, given the size of her posterior, then comes to a stop in the doorway. She turns back to Camille, folds her arms and gives him a smile that says: so, tell me everything.

  “The four robberies in January were the work of a gang led by Vincent Hafner, a gang that Ravic was a member of.” He jerks his thumb back towards the room, now lit by a blaze of forensics spotlights. The commissaire nods: we know all this, get on with it.

  “The gang abruptly reappeared yesterday and robbed the jeweller’s in the Galerie Monier. The raid went pretty smoothly, except for one small problem – the presence of a customer, Anne Forestier. I don’t know exactly what she saw besides their faces, but something obviously happened. We’re still questioning her, insofar as her injuries permit, but we haven’t got to the bottom of it. Whatever it was, it was serious enough for Hafner to come after her and try to kill her. He even came to the hospital . . . [He raises a conciliatory hand.] I know, I know! We’ve got no hard evidence that it was him.”

  “Has the juge ordered a reconstruction of the robbery?”

  Camille has not contacted the examining magistrate since his first visit to the Galerie. By now, he has a lot to say. He will have to choose his moment carefully.

  “Not yet,” Camille says confidently, “but given how fast things have developed, I’m sure that as soon as the witness is able . . .”

  “So what happened here? Did he come to relieve Ravic of his share of the haul?”

  “Whatever Hafner wanted, he needed to make Ravic talk. Maybe about the haul . . .”

  “The case has thrown up a lot of questions, Commandant Verhœven, none of them more serious than the questions it raises about your own behaviour.”

  Camille tries to smile; he is prepared to try anything.

  “Perhaps I have been a little overzealous . . .”

  “Overzealous? You’ve broken every rule in the book, you tell your superiors you’re mounting a targeted operation and then turn half the city upside down without so much as a by-your-leave!”

  She is making the most of this.

  “You clearly exceeded the authorisation given you by the juge.”

  This moment was bound to come, but it is too soon.

  “And by your superior officers. I’m still waiting for that report I requested. You’re behaving like a free radical. Who exactly do you think you are, Commandant Verhœven?”

  “I’m doing my job.”

  “And what job would that be?”

  “To Protect and to Serve, isn’t that our motto? I’m pro-TEC-ting!”

  Camille takes three steps, repressing the urge to grab Michard by the throat. He composes himself.

  “You have grossly miscalculated this case,” he says. “It is not simply about a woman who was beaten to a pulp. We are dealing with a gang of experienced armed robbers who left one man dead last January. The leader, Vincent Hafner, is a vicious thug, and the Serbians he’s working with are certainly no angels. I may not know why, but Hafner is determined to kill this woman and, though I know you don’t want to hear this, I firmly believe he went to the hospital armed with a shotgun. And if this
witness is killed, someone is going to have to explain how it happened, and you’ll be first in line!”

  “Alright, you decide that this woman is of some vital strategic importance, so to neutralise a risk you cannot even prove exists, you round up everyone in Paris born between Belgrade and Sarajevo.”

  “Sarajevo is in Bosnia, not in Serbia.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Camille closes his eyes.

  “O.K.,” he concedes, “I haven’t followed procedure to the letter, I should have written up a report, I should—”

  “Oh, we’re well past that, commandant.”

  Verhœven frowns, his internal warning light is flashing faintly, he knows exactly what the commissaire can do if she so chooses. She nods towards the room where Ravic’s body lies in the glare of spotlights.

  “With your little barnstorming operation, you managed to flush Ravic out, commandant. In fact, you made things easier for his killer.”

  “There’s nothing to substantiate that.”

  “Perhaps not, but it’s a legitimate question. And a brutal raid targeting a specific immigrant community, conducted without the backing of your superior officers and in breach of the limited authorisation given you by the examining magistrate, that sort of ‘operation’ has a name, commandant.”

  This is something that Camille honestly did not see coming; his face grows pale.

  “It’s called racial profiling.”

  Camille closes his eyes. This is a clusterfuck.

  *

  What is Camille doing? Anne has not touched the food on the tray in front of her. The orderly, a woman from Martinique, clears it away: you got to eat, child, you can’t go lettin’ yourself waste away, it’s a cryin’ shame to waste good food. Anne suddenly feels a furious anger towards everyone welling in her.

  Earlier one of the nurses told her, “It’ll all be fine, you wait and see . . .”

  And Anne had snapped “I can see perfectly well right now!”

  The nurse was simply being kind, she was trying to help, it was wrong to dismiss her desire to do good. But even as she tried the classic device of counting to ten, Anne found herself snarling.

  “So, you’ve been beaten up, have you? You’ve had people pistol whip you, kick you, try to kill you? I suppose people fire shotguns at you all the time? Come on, tell me all about it, I’m sure it’ll help . . .”

  As Florence made to leave, Anne called her back, in tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

  The nurse gave a little wave. Don’t give it another thought. As though people are entitled to say anything they like to nurses.

  *

  “You wanted this case, you demanded it be assigned to you on the pretext that you had an informant who, so far, you have been unable to produce. And, while we’re on the subject, commandant, exactly how did you hear about the robbery?”

  “From Guérin.”

  The name just slipped out. The first name that came into his mind. Racking his brain, he could think of no other solution and so he trusted to providence. But providence is like homeopathy: if you don’t believe . . . it is a stupid mistake. Now, he has to call Guérin, who is not likely to help him if it means putting his own head on the block. The commissaire looks thoughtful.

  “And how did Guérin hear about it?”

  She stops herself.

  “I mean, why would he have mentioned it to you?”

  Verhœven can see what is coming and has no choice but to raise the stakes, something he has been doing since the start.

  “It just happened . . .”

  He has run out of ideas. The commissaire is visibly now curious about this affair. He could find himself removed from the case. Or worse. The prospect of a report to the public prosecutor or an investigation by the Inspection générale des services now looms on the horizon.

  For a split second, an image of five severed fingers hovers between him and the commissaire, they are Anne’s fingers, he would know them anywhere. The killer is on the move.

  Commissaire Michard manoeuvres her gargantuan derrière out onto the landing, leaving Camille to his thoughts.

  His thoughts are much the same as hers: he cannot exclude the possibility that his operation helped the killer find Ravic, but he had no other choice if he was to move quickly. Hafner is determined to dispose of all witnesses and protagonists involved in the Galerie Monier robbery: Ravic, Anne and probably the other stooge, the getaway driver . . .

  Anyway, Hafner is the key to the whole case, he is the man in charge.

  The I.G.S., the commissaire, the examining magistrate – Camille will deal with them in due course. For him, the most important thing is to protect Anne.

  He remembers something he was taught at driving school: when you miss a bend, you have two choices. The wrong reaction is to brake, since there is every chance you will skid off the road. Paradoxically, the most effective solution is to accelerate, but to do so, you have to curb the natural survival instinct screaming at you to stop.

  Camille decides to accelerate.

  It is his only way out of this dangerous bend. He tries not to think about the fact that accelerating is also what someone would do if they were determined to drive off a cliff.

  And, besides, his choices are limited.

  *

  6.00 p.m.

  Every time he sees the man, Camille cannot help but think that Mouloud Faraoui does not look much like someone called Mouloud Faraoui. Though his Moroccan roots survive in his name, any North African traits have been diluted over three generations of unlikely marriages and unexpected couplings, an incongruous melting pot that has produced surprising results. Mouloud’s face is a distillate of history: light-brown hair verging on blond, a long nose, a square jaw slashed by a scar that was obviously painful and gives him a bad-boy look, ice-cold, blue-green eyes. He is between thirty and forty, though his age is difficult to guess. Camille checks the police record, where he finds documentary evidence that Mouloud was an exceptionally precocious career criminal. It turns out that he is thirty-seven.

  He is relaxed, almost offhand, a man of few words and subtle gestures. He slides into the seat opposite, never taking his eyes off Camille, he seems tense, as though expecting the commandant to pull his gun. Mouloud is wary. Not wary enough, perhaps, given that instead of staying safely in his cell, he is here in the prison visiting room. Facing a twenty-year stretch, he was sentenced to ten, he will serve seven and has been inside for two. Despite his arrogant swagger, one look is enough to tell Camille that time has been dragging.

  Surprised by this unexpected visit, Faraoui’s natural mistrust is on red alert. He sits ramrod straight, arms folded. Neither man has said a word, but already they have exchanged a staggering number of messages.

  Verhœven’s very presence here constitutes a complicated message in itself.

  In prison, word gets around. Hardly has the prisoner set foot in the visiting room than the news has spread along the landings. What would an officer from the brigade criminelle want with a small-time pimp like Faraoui? Ultimately, it does not matter what is said at their meeting, the prison, like a giant pinball machine, is already buzzing with rumours that range from sober speculation to wild conspiracy theories, depending on the vested interests of those involved and the relative power of the prison gangs, creating a complex web of misinformation.

  And this is precisely why Camille is here, sitting in the visiting room, arms folded, staring silently at Faraoui. He need do nothing else. The work is already being done, he does not even have to lift his little finger.

  But the silence is uncomfortable.

  Faraoui, still sitting stiffly, watches and waits in silence. Camille does not move. He is thinking about how this little thug’s name popped into his head when the commissaire asked her point-blank question. Subconsciously, he already knew what he planned to do, but it took a while for Camille’s conscious mind to catch up: this is the quickest route to Vincent Hafner.


  If he is to reach the end of the path he has chosen, Camille is going to have to tough it out. He feels a suffocating panic well up inside him. If Faraoui were not staring at him so intently, he would get up and open a window. Just walking into the prison gave him the jitters.

  Take a deep breath. Another deep breath. And he will have to come back again . . .

  He remembers the way he confidently announced that there were “three known suspects”. His brain works faster than he can; he only realises what he has said after the fact. He understands now.

  The clock ticks off the seconds, the minutes; in the airless visiting room, unspoken words quiver in the air like vibrations.

  At first, Faraoui mistakenly thought this was a test to see which of them would crack first, a silent form of arm-wrestling, a cheap police trick. And it surprised him that an officer of Verhœven’s reputation would resort to such a ruse. So it must be something else. Camille watches as he bows his head, thinking as fast as he can. And since Faraoui is a smart guy, he comes to the only possible conclusion. He makes to get to his feet.

  Camille is expecting this, he tut-tuts softly without even glancing up. Faraoui, who has a keen sense of his own best interests, decides to play along. Still the time ticks away.

  They wait. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty.

  Then Camille gives the signal. He uncrosses his arms.

  “O.K. Well, I wouldn’t want you to think I’m bored or anything . . .”

  He gets up. Faraoui remains seated. The ghost of a smile plays on his lips, he leans back nonchalantly in his chair.

  “What do you take me for, a messenger boy?”

  Reaching the door, Camille slaps it with the palm of his hand for someone to come and open. He turns back.

  “In a sense, yes.”

  “And what do I get out of it?”

  Camille adopts a shocked expression.

  “What the . . .? You get to ensure that justice is served! What do you want, for fuck’s sake?”

  The door opens, the guard steps aside to allow Camille to pass, but he stands on the threshold for a moment.