Camille

by Pierre Lemaitre

  These corpses were Camille’s first glimpse into the vicious mind of Philippe Buisson.

  Inexorably, this series of sadistic murders led to the murder of Irène, though Camille could not have known that when he first saw the bodies.

  Camille remembers Maryse Perrin, the young woman in the next photograph. Buisson clubbed her to death with a hammer. Camille moves on.

  The young foreign girl who was strangled. It had taken some time to identify her. The body was discovered by a man called Blanchet or Blanchard, the name escapes him, though, as always, Camille perfectly remembers the face: the grey thinning hair, the rheumy eyes, the mouth thin-lipped as a knife wound, the pink neck beaded with sweat. The girl had been found half buried in mud, her body had been unceremoniously dropped onto the canal bank from the bucket of the dredging machine in which it had been dumped. A dozen people were watching from the pedestrian bridge – among them Buisson, who was determined to see the show – and, in a sudden surge of compassion, Buisson had covered the naked body with his coat. Camille cannot help but linger on the picture. He has sketched the pale, thin hand of the girl emerging from beneath the coat a dozen times.

  You need to stop this, he tells himself, just find what it is you’re looking for.

  He randomly grabs a large sheaf of papers, but fate, though it does not exist, is tenacious: he comes up with the picture of Grace Hobson. Though he has not thought about the case for years, he still remembers almost every word, every comma of the text: “She was partly covered by foliage . . . Her head was skewed at a funny angle on her neck, as if she was listening for something . . . On her left temple he saw a beauty spot, the one she had thought would spoil her chances.” A passage from a novel by William McIlvanney. A Scotsman. The young woman had been raped, sodomised. She had been found with every item of clothing intact, except one.

  This time, Camille is determined; he picks up the file with both hands, turns it over and, starting at the end, begins to work his way backwards.

  What he does not want is to happen on the photographs of Irène. He has never been able to face them. Moments after she died, Camille glimpsed the body of Irène in the blue flash of a police light for one flickering instant before he passed out, he remembers nothing more, this is the one image that has remained with him. The file contains other images, those taken by the forensics team, the photographs taken during the autopsy, but he has never looked at them. Never.

  And he is not going to now.

  In his long career as a serial murderer, Buisson had needed no help from anyone. He was terrifyingly efficient. But in order to kill Irène, in order to conclude his murderous spree with a grand finale, he had needed reliable information. Information he had obtained from Camille himself, after a fashion. From those closest to him, and from one of the members of his team.

  Camille comes back to reality, he glances at his watch, picks up his mobile.

  “You still at the office?”

  “Of course I am . . .”

  It is rare that Louis would say such a thing, it is almost a rebuke. His concern is usually expressed with a half-smile. Camille only has twenty minutes to get to his meeting with Michard and the contrôleur general, and from Camille’s first words, Louis realises that he is far away. Very far away.

  “I don’t want to take advantage, Louis.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I need Maleval’s file.”

  “Maleval . . . Jean-Claude Maleval?”

  “You know another one?”

  Camille stares at the photograph on the coffee table.

  Jean-Claude Maleval, a big man, heavyset but athletic, a former judoka.

  “I need you to send everything we’ve got on him. To my personal e-mail.”

  The photograph was taken when Maleval was arrested. His face is sensual, he must be thirty-five, perhaps a little older, Camille finds it hard to tell a person’s age.

  “Can I ask what Maleval has got to do with any of this?” Louis says.

  Dismissed from the police force after Irène’s death for feeding information to Buisson, Maleval had been unaware that the man was a murderer and so was not technically an accessory, something that was reflected in the verdict. But that did not change the fact that Irène was dead. Camille has dreamed of killing both Buisson and Maleval, but he has never killed anyone. Not until today.

  Maleval is behind all this. Camille is convinced of it. He has studied every detail of the case from the robberies in January to the raid at the Galerie. The only thing he does not know is how Anne fits into it.

  “Will it take long for you to pull the stuff together?”

  “No, about half an hour. It’s all on the system.”

  “Good . . . Can you keep your mobile on in case I need to get in touch?”

  “Of course.”

  “And take a look at the duty roster, you might be needing backup.”

  “Me?”

  “Who else, Louis?”

  In saying this, Camille is admitting that he is out of the running. Louis is shocked. He has no idea what is going on.

  Meanwhile, it is not difficult to imagine the scene in the fourth-floor meeting room. Slumped in an armchair, Le Guen is drumming his fingers on the table and trying not to look at his watch. On his right, half hidden behind a vast pile of paperwork, Commissaire Michard is hurriedly reading files, signing, initialling, underlining, annotating, her whole attitude declares that she is a very busy woman, that every second counts, that she is utterly in control of her . . . Shit!

  *

  “I’d better go, Louis . . .”

  Camille spends the rest of the time sitting on the sofa with Doudouche on his lap. Waiting.

  The case file is now closed.

  Camille simply snapped a picture of Jean-Claude Maleval with his mobile, then stuffed everything back into the folder and closed it. He even left it by the front door, by the exit.

  In Montfort and in Paris, Anne and Camille are both sitting in the gathering dusk, waiting.

  Because Anne did not call a taxi; the moment the telephone was answered, she hung up.

  She has always known that she would not leave. There is still a faint glow. Anne is stretched out on the sofa, clutching her mobile, every now and then checking the charge left in the battery, checking that she has not missed a call, checking she has a signal.

  Nothing.

  *

  Le Guen crosses his legs, his right foot idly kicking at the empty air. He seems to recall that Freud believed this nervous tic was merely a substitute for masturbation. What a fucking idiot, thinks Le Guen, who has racked up eleven years on the couch and twenty years of marriage. Surreptitiously, he glances at Michard who is rapidly checking her e-mail. Trapped between Freud and Michard, Le Guen does not rate his chances of surviving the evening.

  He feels terribly upset about Camille. There is no-one with whom he can share this feeling. What is the use of six marriages if you have no-one to talk to about such things?

  No-one will call Camille to ask whether he is simply running late. No-one will help him now. It is all such a waste.

  *

  7.00 p.m.

  “Turn it off, for fuck’s sake!”

  Fernand apologises, runs back and flicks off the light, mutters some excuse, he’s obviously relieved I’m letting him go back and help out in the restaurant.

  I’m sitting on my own in the little room where we were playing cards earlier. I prefer to sit in the dark. It helps me think.

  It’s waiting and not being able to do anything that I find exhausting. I need to be in the thick of the action. Idleness just makes me angry. I was like this even as a kid. And it’s not something that has improved with age. I guess I’ll have to die young.

  *

  A shrill beep rouses Camille from his thoughts. A flashing message on his computer screen informs him that he has an e-mail from Louis.

  The Maleval file.

  Camille slips on his glasses, takes a deep bre
ath and opens the attachment.

  At first, Jean-Claude Maleval had a distinguished service record. He graduated top of his class from the police academy, rapidly proved to be a promising officer and this led, within a few short years, to him being transferred to the section of the brigade criminelle led by Commandant Verhœven.

  This was the high point, working on important cases, doing rewarding work.

  What Camille remembers is not in the file. Maleval working relentlessly, constantly on the go, always coming up with ideas, an ambitious, intuitive officer who works hard and plays hard. He goes out a lot, begins to drink a little too much, becomes a womaniser, though it is not the women he loves so much as the act of seduction. Camille has often thought that working on the force, like working in politics, is a form of sexually transmitted disease. Maleval is a player, he is constantly seducing women, a sure sign of a deep-rooted anxiety about which Camille can do nothing; it is not his responsibility, and besides, they do not have that kind of relationship. Maleval is forever chasing women, including witnesses if they are female and under thirty. He begins to show up for his shift looking as though he has not slept a wink. Camille becomes a little worried about his rather dissolute lifestyle. Louis lends him money that is never repaid. Then the rumours start. Maleval is shaking down drug dealers a little more often than necessary and not always turning in all the evidence. A prostitute claims he robbed her, no-one listens, but Camille overhears. He takes Maleval aside, invites him out for dinner, talks to him. But by now it is too late. Maleval swears blind that he’s clean, but already he’s on the fast track to dismissal. The bars, the late nights, the whisky, the girls, the clubs, the dodgy company, the ecstasy.

  Most officers, when they are on this slippery slope, slide slowly and steadily, giving those around them time to adjust, to compensate. Maleval does not do things by half; his descent is meteoric.

  He is arrested for aiding and abetting Buisson, who has been charged with seven murders, but the authorities manage to contain the scandal. Buisson’s story is so bizarre, so baroque that it completely dominates the press coverage, it burns up all the oxygen, like a forest fire. Maleval’s arrest all but disappears behind the curtain of flames.

  Immediately after Irène’s death, Camille is hospitalised with severe depression. He spends several months in a psychiatric clinic staring out of the window, sketching in silence, refusing to see anyone. Everyone assumes he will never come back to the brigade.

  At the trial, Maleval is found guilty, but his sentence is covered by the time he has spent on remand, and he is immediately released. Camille does not know this because no-one dares tell him. When he finally does find out, he says nothing, as if too much time has passed, as if Maleval’s fate is no longer important, as if it does not concern him personally.

  Released on parole and dismissed from the force, Maleval vanishes. And then he begins to reappear, briefly, unremarkably. Camille comes across his name here and there in the dossier that Louis has compiled.

  For Maleval, the end of his career in the force coincides with the beginning of his career as a thug, something for which he displays a remarkable aptitude, which is perhaps why he had previously made such a good officer.

  As Camille quickly scrolls through the document, a picture begins to take shape. Here are Maleval’s first charge sheets: misdemeanours, minor offences. An investigation turns up nothing particularly serious, but it is clear that he has made his choice. Not for him the usual route of parlaying his time on the force into a job with a security firm, working in a shopping centre or driving an armoured van. Three times he is questioned and released without charge. Which takes Camille up to the summer of last year.

  This time, Maleval’s name crops up in another case.

  Nathan Monestier.

  Now we’re getting there, Camille sighs. Monestier/Forestier, it’s not much of a leap. It’s an old technique: the best lie is a half-truth. Camille needs to find out whether Anne had the same surname as her brother. Anne Monestier? Maybe. Why not?

  Reading on, Camille sees how closely they have stuck to the truth: Anne’s brother Nathan is indeed a promising scientist, a child prodigy with a whole alphabet of letters after his name, though he seems to have a nervous disposition.

  Nathan’s first arrest is for possession with intent to supply. Thirty-three grams of cocaine can hardly be dismissed as personal use. Nathan first denies everything, then he panics, then he claims that Jean-Claude Maleval supplied the drugs or introduced him to the dealer, in a vague and inconsistent statement which he quickly retracts. Pending trial, he is released on bail. And almost immediately turns up in hospital having been beaten to a bloody pulp. Unsurprisingly, he declines to press charges . . . It is obvious that Maleval’s solution to his problems is brute force. His penchant for violence foreshadows his taste for armed robbery.

  Camille does not have all the details, but he can guess. Maleval and Nathan Monestier are in business together. How does Nathan come to be indebted to Maleval? Does he owe him money? And how does Maleval go about blackmailing the young man?

  Other names begin to turn up in Maleval’s wake. Among them, a number of vicious thugs. Guido Guarnieri, for example. Camille, like everyone on the force, knows the man by reputation. Guarnieri is a loan shark who buys up debt cheaply and uses strong-arm tactics to recover the money. A year ago, he was questioned about a body discovered on a building site. The pathologist confirmed that the victim had been buried alive, had taken days to die and endured unimaginable suffering. Guarnieri knows how to make himself feared. Did Maleval threaten to sell on Nathan’s debt to Guarnieri? It’s possible.

  It hardly matters since Camille does not care about Nathan, he has never even met the man.

  What matters is that all this leads to Anne.

  Whatever the nature of her brother’s debt to Maleval, it is Anne who pays.

  She bails him out. Like a mother. “Actually, that’s what I’ve always been to him,” she told Camille.

  She has always bailed him out.

  *

  Sometimes, just when you most need something, it appears.

  “Monsieur Bourgeois?”

  Number withheld. Camille had allowed the mobile to ring several times until finally Doudouche looked up at him. On the other end, a woman’s voice. Fortyish. Working-class.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong number,” Camille says calmly. But he does not even think of hanging up.

  “Really?”

  She sounds surprised. He almost expects her to ask if he is sure. She reads something from a piece of paper.

  “It says here, ‘Monsieur Éric Bourgeois, 15, rue Escudier, Gagny’.”

  “As I said, you have a wrong number.”

  “Oh . . .” the woman says. “So sorry.”

  He hears her mutter something he cannot make out. She hangs up angrily.

  It has finally happened. Buisson has done the favour Camille requested. Camille can now have him killed at his leisure.

  But right now, this new information has opened a single door. Hafner has changed his name. He is now Monsieur Bourgeois. Not a bad name for a retired crook.

  Behind every decision lurks another decision waiting to be made. Camille stares at his mobile.

  He could rush to the meeting with Michard and Le Guen, tell them: this is Hafner’s address, if he’s there we can have him banged up by morning, let me explain the whole thing. Le Guen heaves a sigh of relief, though not too loudly, careful not to make Camille’s confession to Commissaire Michard sound like a triumph, he glances at Camille, gives an almost imperceptible nod – you did well, you had me scared for a minute – then says testily: “That hardly constitutes a full explanation, Camille, I’m sorry.”

  But he is not sorry, and no-one present is fooled. Commissaire Michard feels cheated, she was so happy at the prospect of hauling Verhœven over the coals, she paid for her ticket and now the show has been cancelled. Now it is her turn to speak; her tone is poised, disciplined.
Sententious. She has a fondness for categorical truths, she did not choose this profession for the good of her health, at heart she is a deeply moral woman. “Whatever your explanations might be, Commandant Verhœven, I should warn you that I am not going to turn a blind eye . . . To anything.”

  Camille holds up his hands. No problem. He explains the whole story.

  The whole scam.

  Yes, he is personally connected to the person who was attacked in the raid on the Galerie Monier, that is where it all started. There is a barrage of questions: how exactly do you know this woman? Is she implicated in the robbery? Why did you not immediately . . .?

  The rest is predictable. The most important thing now is to go and pick up Hafner a.k.a. Monsieur Bourgeois from his hideout, and charge him with grievous bodily harm, armed robbery and murder. They cannot spend all night quibbling about the details of Verhœven’s story, there will be time for that later. Right now, Michard agrees, they need to be pragmatic – it is one of her favourite words, “pragmatic”. In the meantime, Commandant Verhœven, you will remain here.

  He will not be involved, he will be merely a spectator. He has already provided the evidence and it is damning. When Le Guen and Michard get back, they will decide whether he is to be sanctioned, suspended or transferred . . . It is all so predictable that it is hardly worth the effort.

  This is what he could do. But Camille has long since known that this is not how things are going to play out.

  He has already made his decision, though he is not quite sure when.

  It relates to Anne, to this case, to his life, to everything. There is nothing anyone else can do.

  He thought he was being tossed about by circumstance, but that is not true.

  We are masters of our own fate.

  *

  7.45 p.m.

  France has almost as many rues Escudier as it has inhabitants, all leafy suburban streets lined with stone-clad houses featuring identical gardens, identical railings, and identical patio furniture bought from the same branch of IKEA. Number 15 is no exception: stone cladding, patio furniture, wrought-iron railings, garden, all present and correct.