Camille

by Pierre Lemaitre

  “Perhaps he needs money in a hurry . . .”

  Camille steels himself, determined not to show how much it pains him to have to stoop to chicanery. He is leading an investigation; the end justifies the means. So he looks up at Buisson as though intrigued.

  “Word has it Hafner is seriously ill . . .” Buisson says slowly.

  When you choose a stratagem, it is wise to stick with it to the end.

  “Good, I hope he dies,” Camille says.

  “But don’t you see?” Buisson triumphantly retorts. “The reason he is acting out of character is because he’s staring death in the face. He’s involved with a slip of a girl . . . A vulgar whore who had copulated with half the city by the time she was nineteen. She obviously likes turning tricks, I can think of no other explanation . . .”

  Camille wonders whether Buisson is brave enough – or reckless enough – to see his thought through. And he does.

  “But despite her failings, it would appear that Hafner is infatuated with this girl. Love, commandant, is a powerful thing, is it not? It is a subject about which you know a thing or two, as I recall . . .”

  Though he does not show it, Camille is devastated. He feels utterly broken as he sits here, allowing Buisson to gloat about the murder of Irène. “Love, commandant . . .”

  Buisson must sense something because a last flicker of self-preservation suddenly extinguishes his exultant smirk.

  “If he is terminally ill,” he goes on, “perhaps Hafner wants to ensure his paramour is free of financial worries. One comes across the most generous instincts even in the blackest souls . . .”

  Louis had already mentioned these rumours to Camille and, though it cost him dearly, the price he paid to confirm them has been worth it. Camille can suddenly see a light at the end of the tunnel. His palpable relief is not lost on Buisson, a man so twisted that he is already trying to work out why this matters so much to Verhœven, why Hafner is so important that the commandant has been reduced to coming here. His life has only just been spared and already he is calculating how he might profit from this situation.

  Camille does not give him the time.

  “I want Hafner, and I want him now. You’ve got twelve hours.”

  “Th—that’s impossible!” the piteous wail dies in Buisson’s throat. As Camille gets to his feet, he sees his last chance of survival disappear. He feverishly pounds his fists on the armrests of his wheelchair. Camille’s face is expressionless.

  “Twelve hours, not a second more. I find people do their best work when they have a deadline.”

  He taps on the door. As the guard comes to open it, he turns back to Buisson.

  “Even when this is over, I can still have you killed any time I want.” It is enough for him to say the words for both men to realise that he needed to say it, but it was not true. That Buisson would already be dead if it were going to happen. That for Camille Verhœven, ordering a killing is incompatible with who he is.

  And now that he knows that his life is no longer in danger, that it was probably never in danger, Buisson decides to find the information Verhœven needs.

  As he steps out of the prison, Camille feels both relieved and overwhelmed, like the sole survivor of a shipwreck.

  *

  9.00 a.m.

  I’m finding the cold almost as tough to cope with as the tiredness. You hardly notice it at first, but unless you keep moving, it seeps into your bones until you’re frozen to the marrow. It’s not going to make it easy to get a shot. But at least this place is quiet. The studio is a broad, squat building with a high roof, but there’s only one storey. There’s an unobstructed line of sight in front. I station myself in a tiny lean-to at the far end of the yard that looks like it was once a rabbit hutch or similar.

  I stow the sniper rifle, take the Walther and the hunting knife and brave the great outdoors to do a little reconnaissance. It’s crucial to know the terrain. Cause only as much collateral damage as necessary. Go for a clean hit. Precise. What do they call it? Oh, yeah, a “surgical strike”. Using the Mossberg here would be like using a roller to paint a miniature. Surgical entails making precise holes in very precise places. And since the vast picture window seems resistant to most things, I’m glad I settled on an M40A3 with telescopic sights; it’s a very accurate piece of kit. And it takes armour-piercing bullets.

  Just to the right of the house there is a sort of hillock. The soil has been partly washed away by the rain, revealing a heap of building rubble, plaster, breeze blocks that builders were probably supposed to clear away but never did. It’s not an ideal position for a sniper, but it’s the only one I’ve got. From here, I have a view of most of the main room, though only at an angle. I’ll have to stand up at the last minute before I fire.

  I’ve already seen her a couple of times, but she was walking past too quickly. I’m not bothered, no sense rushing things. Better to do it right.

  *

  As soon as she got up, Anne went to the door to make sure Camille had double-locked it. The house has been burgled more than once, which is hardly surprising given the isolated location, so he installed reinforced doors. The double-glazed bay window is fitted with toughened glass which could probably take a hammer blow without so much as cracking.

  “This is the code for the alarm,” Camille had said, handing her a page torn from a notepad. “Press hash, then this number, then hash again. That’ll set off the alarm. It’s not connected to the local police station and it only lasts a minute, but take my word for it, it’s a powerful deterrent.”

  The numbers are 29091571; Anne did not want to ask what they meant.

  “Caravaggio’s date of birth . . .” Camille said apologetically. “It seemed like a good idea for a security code. Not many people know it. But as I said, I guarantee you won’t need it.”

  Anne also checked the rear of the building. There is a laundry and a bathroom. The only external door is reinforced with steel, locked and bolted.

  Then she went and showered as best she could. It was impossible to wash her hair properly; she considered removing the splints but decided it would be too painful, she had to stop herself crying out merely touching her fingers. She will simply have to make do. Picking up the slightest thing with these bear paws has become a feat. She does most of the work with her right thumb since the left is sprained.

  The shower is a blessed relief after having spent all night feeling grubby and smelling of hospital disinfectant. She allowed the scalding water to enfold her gently for a long moment, then opened a window to feel the delicious, invigorating chill.

  Her face seems unchanged. In the mirror, it looks just as it did the previous night, perhaps even uglier, more swollen, the motley blue and yellow bruises, the broken teeth . . .

  *

  Camille drives carefully. Too carefully. Too slowly, especially since this stretch of autoroute is short and drivers tend to ignore the speed limits. His mind is elsewhere, he is so preoccupied that even on automatic pilot he slows to a crawl: the car limps towards the Périphérique, dropping from seventy kilometres per hour to sixty, to fifty trailed by the howl of car horns, shouted insults, flashing headlights. His confusion was triggered by a single thought: he has just spent the night with this woman in the most hallowed place in his life, but what does he know about her? What do he and Anne truly know about each other?

  He quickly assesses what Anne knows about him. He has told her the most important things: Irène, his mother, his father. His life is a simple one. With Irène’s death, he suffered one more tragedy than most people suffer.

  He knows little more about Anne: work, marriage, a brother, a divorce, a child.

  As he comes to this conclusion, the car veers into the middle lane as Camille takes out his mobile, connects the charger to the dashboard power socket and opens a browser. The screen on the mobile is tiny, and the device slips from his hands as he fumbles for his reading glasses, and he finds himself rummaging for it under the passenger seat – no easy feat for
a man who is four foot eleven.

  The car drifts into the slow lane, half straddling the hard shoulder and crawls along while Camille recovers the phone, but all the while his brain is working overtime.

  What does he know about Anne?

  Her daughter. Her brother. Her job at the travel agency.

  What else?

  His internal alarm manifests itself as a tingling between the shoulder blades.

  His mouth is suddenly dry.

  Having finally succeeded in retrieving the mobile, Camille keys “Wertig & Schwindel” into the search engine. It is a difficult name to type, but he manages.

  He nervously drums his fingers on the steering wheel, waits for the company website to load – a picture of palm trees and beautiful beaches – as an articulated lorry overtakes him with a deafening roar. Camille swerves a little, his eyes still focused on the tiny screen: “ABOUT US, A WORD FROM OUR C.E.O.” – who gives a shit? – finally, he comes to a diagram of the company hierarchy. General Manager, Jean-Michel Faye, in his thirties, overweight, balding, but with a typical managerial smugness.

  As he joins the Périphérique, Camille is scrolling through the long page of contact details searching for Anne. Thumb pressed firmly on the forward arrow, he flicks through a series of photographs, somehow manages to skip the letter F and by the time he has scrolled back, he can hear a siren behind him. He pulls over as far as he can, the police motorcycle passes and signals for him to turn off the motorway. Camille drops his mobile. Shit.

  He pulls over onto the verge. Cops are a fucking pain in the arse.

  *

  The studio is a bachelor pad, with none of the accessories a woman might expect: no hairdryer, no mirror. There is no tea, either. Anne finds the mugs and chooses one bearing a Cyrillic inscription:

  Мой дядя самых честных правил,

  Когда не в шутку занемог

  She finds some herbal tea, long past its best-by date and utterly tasteless.

  Almost immediately she realises that in this house, she has to rethink every gesture, make a little extra effort in order to do the simplest thing. Because in the home of a man who is four foot eleven, everything is a fraction lower than expected: the door handles, the drawers, the light switches . . . All around her are tools for climbing – stairs, stools, stepladders – because, strangely, nothing is quite at Camille’s height either. He has not dismissed the possibility of sharing this space with another person and so everything is positioned midway between what is comfortable for him and what would be acceptable to someone else.

  This realisation is like a knife in her heart. She has never pitied Camille – that is not the kind of response he evokes in people – no, she feels moved. She feels guilty, she feels it more here than elsewhere, more now than ever, guilty of monopolising his life, of dragging him into this business. She struggles not to cry; she has decided she is done with tears.

  She needs to get a grip. She tips the herbal tea into the sink, angry at herself.

  She is wearing her purple tracksuit bottoms and a polo-necked jumper; they are the only things she has here. The blood-stained clothes she was wearing when the paramedics brought her in have been taken away, and Camille decided to leave the things he brought from her apartment in the wardrobe at the hospital so that if anyone noticed her absence, it would look as though she had just popped out for a minute. He had parked next to the emergency exit of the A. & E. department, Anne had slipped out behind the reception desk, got into the car and lay down on the back seat.

  He has promised to bring her some clothes tonight. But tonight seems an eternity away. This is the question that must have haunted soldiers who went to war: am I going to die today?

  For all Camille’s fine promises, she knows the man is coming. The only question is: when? Ever since Camille left, ever since she has been pacing this room, she has been drawn to the looming presence of the forest.

  In the dawn light, it looks almost surreal. She turns away, goes into the bathroom, but each time she is drawn back to the forest. A ridiculous image flashes into her mind: Drogo in The Tartar Steppe, staring from the remote forward outpost across the desolate wasteland, waiting for the enemy.

  How does anyone come out alive?

  *

  Cops are not stupid.

  When Camille gets out of the car (he has to launch himself, legs extended, like a child getting down from a booster seat), the motorcycle officer immediately recognises him as Commandant Verhœven. He and his partner are patrolling a specific area but he offers Camille an escort as far as Porte de Saint-Cloud – though not before issuing a warning: “You do realise that using a mobile telephone while driving, regardless of the reason, is extremely dangerous, commandant. Being a detective with the brigade does not give you licence to endanger other motorists, even in an emergency.” The police escort saves Camille almost half an hour. He carries on jabbing at the keypad on his phone, though more discreetly. He is approaching the banks of the Seine when the officer gives him a wave and drives off. Camille immediately puts his glasses on, and though it takes him ten minutes, he discovers that the name Anne Forestier is not on the list of employees at Wertig & Schwindel. Then again, when he looks more closely, he realises that the web page has not been updated since 2005, at which point Anne would still have been living in Lyons.

  He pulls into the car park, gets out of the car and is climbing the stairs to his office when his mobile rings

  Guérin. Camille turns on his heel and heads back outside to take the call; he does not need anyone overhearing his conversation with Guérin.

  “Thanks for getting back to me,” he says, trying to sound cheerful.

  He is brief and to the point, no need to panic his colleague, but better to be honest: the reason I called is because I need a favour, let me explain, but there is no need, Guérin already knows the story, Commissaire Michard has also called and left a message, probably for the same reason. And in a few minutes he will call her back, at which point he will have to tell her that there is no way he could have been the one to tell Camille about the robbery at the Galerie Monier:

  “I’ve been on holiday for the last four days, buddy . . . I’m calling you from Sicily.”

  Jesus fucking Christ! Camille could kick himself. He says thanks, no worries, it’s nothing serious, yeah, you too, and hangs up. His mind is already racing ahead, because Guérin’s call did nothing to stop the prickling sensation between his shoulder blades or the dry mouth, which in him are clear signs of professional agitation.

  “Good morning, commandant!” It is the examining magistrate.

  Camille comes down to earth with a bump. He feels as though he has spent the past two days inside a giant spinning top whirling at terrifying speed. This morning he is all over the place, the spinning top is behaving like a free electron.

  “Monsieur le juge . . .”

  Camille flashes the broadest smile he can summon. Anyone else in Juge Pereira’s shoes might assume that Camille has been desperately trying to get in touch, that he was at this moment coming to find him and that his sudden appearance is a huge relief; flinging his arms wide, Camille nods enthusiastically at this fortuitous meeting of great minds.

  The great mind of the judiciary does not seem quite as enthusiastic as Camille. Pereira coldly shakes his hand. Camille is swept along in the wake of the spindle-shanked magistrate, but already it is too late, the juge strides solemnly onward and mounts the stairs, it is obvious from his attitude he does not wish to discuss the matter.

  “Monsieur le juge?”

  Pereira stops, turns and feigns surprise.

  “Could I speak to you for a moment?” Camille says. “It’s about the robbery at the Galerie Monier . . .”

  *

  After the balmy heat of the bathroom, the chill air in the living room marks a return to the real world.

  Camille reeled off extremely detailed, highly technical instructions about the wood-burning stove w
hich Anne promptly forgot. Picking up a poker, she lifts off the cast-iron lid to toss in more wood, but one of the logs is too big and by the time she has forced it in, the room is filled with acrid smoke. She decides to make a cup of instant coffee.

  She cannot seem to get warm, the cold has seeped into her bones. Her eyes are drawn back to the forest as she waits for the water to boil . . .

  Then she settles herself on the sofa to leaf through one of Camille’s sketchpads – she is spoiled for choice, the room is littered with them. Faces, figures, men in uniform, she is startled to recognise a fat gendarme with a bovine expression and dark circles under his eyes, the man who was standing guard outside her hospital room, the one who was snoring loudly as she made her escape. In the drawing, he is on guard duty. With three deft strokes, Camille has captured him perfectly.

  The portraits are moving and yet unsentimental. In some, Camille reveals himself to be a gifted caricaturist, sketches that are more cruel than comical and stripped of all illusion.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a sketchpad lying on the glass coffee table, she sees herself. Pages and pages of drawings, none of them dated. Her eyes well with tears. For Camille, imagining him alone here, spending whole days recreating from memory the moments they have shared. And for herself. These portraits bear no resemblance to the woman she is now, they are relics of a time when she was beautiful, before the bruises and the broken teeth, before the scars on her cheek and around her mouth, before the vacant eyes. Though Camille merely hints at the setting with a few quick pencil strokes, Anne realises she can remember the circumstances that inspired almost every drawing. Anne having a fit of the giggles at Chez Fernand the day they met; Anne standing on the pavement outside Camille’s building: she has only to turn the pages of the sketchbook to retrace the story of their relationship. Here is Anne at Le Verdun, the café where they went that second night. She is wearing a hat and smiling, she looks astonishingly self-assured and – to judge from Camille’s thumbnail sketch – she had every reason to be.