“You’re going to leave me alone? All alone . . . ”
His features had sagged, his wrinkles deepened. He looked extremely tired. His eyes were empty. Sebag was aware of the risk.
“May I ask how you guessed?” Vernier asked.
“I didn’t guess anything. Nothing at all. I just managed to figure out what you no longer wanted to hide.”
“But if you came here, it was because you had an idea at the back of your mind.”
Sebag shrugged. He was not completely sure he’d acted for the right reasons. Under normal circumstances, the things that had bothered him in the gendarmes’ report would not have justified a trip of over five hundred miles. But the desire to take revenge had won out. He wasn’t proud of that.
“When I come back to get you, it would be good if you’d prepared a few things to take with you.”
He shook Vernier’s hand for a long time. As he walked past the piano, he pointed to the photo, which was still face down on the varnished wood.
“Don’t hesitate to take souvenirs you care about. They’re very helpful for getting through the hard parts. Especially since in the coming days your wife will be the only person not judging you.”
“She has already judged me,” retorted the enigmatic old man.
Sebag ate a chicken sandwich at the bar in a brasserie. He hadn’t found anything better. It was almost 3:00 P.M., and lunch was no longer being served. To wash down the sandwich, he made do with a bottle of sparkling mineral water. It was all he could allow himself after an almost sleepless night. Vernier’s whisky had already made him a little dizzy. His confessions too, perhaps.
The owner of the bar suggested a hotel in the pedestrian zone. Not very far away. The carpet was worn and the wallpaper faded, but the room was large and the bathtub clean. He set the alarm on his watch to let him sleep an hour and sat down in an armchair. He preferred not to fall into a deep sleep so that it would not be too difficult to wake up.
After his nap, he put on his running clothes and went out. The air was still warm; a little breeze was blowing off the river. Built on a hill alongside the Loire, Gien offered courageous runners a few steep inclines. He allowed himself little accelerations. His jersey was soon damp with sweat.
In a narrow, deserted street he came across a young woman. She was black. A Walkman headset on her head, she was clapping the beat on her generous thighs. The music she was listening to accentuated the natural swaying of her hips. After he had passed by her, he couldn’t help turning around. Running a few paces backward was a great way to build up your quadriceps.
He waited until evening to call Castello. He talked to him on his cell phone, and could hear the clatter of dishes behind their conversation. The superintendent started to get angry when he learned about what Sebag had done but, as Molina had foreseen, he rapidly calmed down when he found out the results. He set aside his reprimands and promised to do the maximum to legalize Sebag’s initiative.
“I’ll arrange matters with the gendarmes. I’m sure they’ll do all they can to smooth things out; they’ve allowed the perpetrator to get away and we’re bringing him in all tied up. I just need a little time. Officially, you don’t arrive until tomorrow. In the course of the morning, you can come to the gendarmerie with your suspect.”
Sebag sat down on the Loire levee. The sun was going down behind the nuclear power plant.
“Are you sure about your suspect?” Castello asked. “He’s not going to retract his confession between now and tomorrow?”
“No, I don’t think so. He was relieved to be able to confess. And then in any case, we can always use his fingerprints to prove that he did it.”
“Oh yes, that’s true, the fingerprints, you’re right to remind me of that. I’ll emphasize that detail in the event the gendarmes complain. If they’d done their work the way they should have, we wouldn’t find ourselves in this position.”
Sebag abstained from making any comments. It was easy criticize after the fact. To err is human. So human.
“One last thing, Gilles. Can I inform Lefèvre, or would you prefer to wait until you’re here and can do it yourself?”
Sebag chose to be generous.
“I think it would be better for you to do it. As you said the other day, we have to be able to move beyond personal quarrels.”
“If I’m not mistaken, that’s called an excess of zeal.”
Whether it was a matter of being generous or sucking up depended on your point of view.
He slept deeply. Nine hours of slumber without dreams or nightmares. When he awoke he allowed himself a half-hour workout on the worn-out carpet of his hotel room: stretching and ab exercises. After breakfast, he had the pleasure of receiving a telephone call from Séverine. She was fine, the weather was beautiful, her girlfriend’s parents were really very nice, they’d gone on a boat trip the day before, and on Sunday they were leaving for PortAventura. Everything was great. Séverine was even thoughtful enough to say that she missed her dear papa.
A delicious lie.
He checked out of the hotel and drove to Vernier’s home. Behind its closed shutters, the little house seemed to be still asleep. He rang the doorbell and waited.
No response. He rang again.
Bernard Palissy Street was calm. Sunny. A curtain moved, but it was behind the window of a neighboring house. He hardly had time to glimpse an old lady’s emaciated face.
Still no answer. He dialed Vernier’s number on his cell phone. He heard the phone ring inside the house. He counted to ten.
There was no answer.
He decided to open the gate. It was not locked. He walked through the yard. The earth was still damp around the flowers; it had been irrigated the preceding evening. Even the banana tree seemed to have gotten a few drops of water.
He went into the little veranda that served as a vestibule in front of the entrance to the house. He put his hand on the handle, but the door didn’t open. He put his shoulder against the wood and pushed. The door moved a little; it was not bolted.
He hesitated. He had a passkey but he’d already violated a lot of rules.
He put the passkey in the lock anyway. The door opened. Almost by itself. “It really did, I assure you.” He already saw the gendarmes laughing. He wouldn’t want to present things to them that way later on.
From the entry, he called.
His call faded away into the upper stories. On the low table, in the living room where they had talked, the bottle of Banyuls was empty. The photo had disappeared from the piano.
He looked in the kitchen, then in the study. There was no one on the ground floor.
He went over to the stairway. Called again. The wooden steps creaked under his feet. Even though he was climbing slowly.
On the landing, he found four doors. The two facing him must be those of the bedrooms that looked out on the street. He reflected. It was undoubtedly the curtain of the bedroom on the right that he’d seen move the day before when he’d rung the bell. He opened the door.
A bed occupied most of the room. It was covered with a yellow quilt decorated with blue birds. Between the two pillows, an old teddy bear without eyes was dozing while waiting for the impossible return of a child who had disappeared into maturity. At the foot of the bed, the quilt had preserved an imprint. Someone had no doubt recently sat down there. On the wall above the bed there was a poster. For Jean-Jacques Beineix’s film Diva. The Verniers had two or three children—Sebag didn’t remember exactly, the old man had mentioned only his daughter—and this bedroom had probably belonged to one of them. What would Séverine’s and Léo’s rooms look like after they had left home? He and Claire would certainly use one of them to set up a second study. The other would become a guest room. They would surely also leave, on the bed or elsewhere, a stuffed animal or a security blanket as a souvenir of a bygone period.
Th
e other bedroom belonged to the parents. Wallpaper with large flowers, lace curtains on the window, varnished furniture. On a bed made of dark wood, Robert Vernier seemed to be asleep. He’d lain down fully clothed; he’d taken off only his shoes, which he’d sensibly put at the foot of the bed. On the night table, next to the photo of his wife—the one that had been on the piano—there was a note and an empty container of sleeping pills. He took the old man’s pulse.
Robert Vernier had succeeded in forgetting his remorse.
Sebag went back down to the living room to telephone the gendarmes in Gien. It was high time to do so. Then he called his boss. Castello couldn’t hide his annoyance. Vernier’s suicide was going to cause the case to be prematurely closed and would leave questions unanswered. The family of the victim would certainly suffer from the absence of a trial.
Sebag knew all that, but he felt no regrets.
He sat down in the armchair where he’d sat the day before. He resisted the desire to pour himself a whisky. That wouldn’t have been right. Even to drink to Vernier’s health.
Three gendarmes came into the Verniers’ house, breaking the silence that reigned there. Sebag summed up the situation for two of them, one of whom was a corporal, while the third scrupulously examined the front door. They had been informed of his arrival this morning and were already familiar with the main lines of the Josetta Braun case. Sebag decided not to tell them that he’d visited Vernier the day before.
“He must have guessed that I suspected him. His remorse probably became unbearable. He left a letter upstairs.”
In this letter, Vernier clearly acknowledged his guilt. He said he was sorry to flee his responsibilities but explained his act by the desire to abbreviate his family’s suffering. Without a trial or a prison sentence, the shame wouldn’t be as great, he wrote. Finally, he begged the pardon of Josetta’s parents. Fortunately for Sebag, he did not mention their talk. He limited himself to saying that he felt relieved but knew that the feeling was temporary.
The corporal went upstairs with a gendarme. The gendarme who had examined the front door approached Sebag.
“Was the door to the house open?” he asked.
“Yes, of course, Sebag answered, trying to remain natural.
“And the gate and the veranda as well?”
“Yes.”
The gendarme studied him for a few seconds.
“That’s curious,” he commented.
Sebag pretended he hadn’t heard.
“Are there a lot of tourists in Gien?” he asked to divert attention.
“A few,” the gendarme answered after a long silence. “Mainly just passing through. People stop here for a day or two, hardly more than that.”
There was a lilt in his voice.
“You’re not from here, are you? Or else you’re from the southern part of the region.”
The gendarme gave him a brief smile.
“I’m from Bordeaux.”
Sebag tried to play the southerner card to get him on his side.
“You don’t find it too hard being here? As for myself, I lived a few years in Chartres. As the kids say: it’s not a lot of fun.”
“That’s for sure,” he replied in a resigned tone. “I’d really like to go back to the Bordeaux region. But my wife is from Normandy and my son was born here in Gien. They don’t really want to leave.”
The gendarme must have been about Sebag’s age. Maybe two or three years younger. He still had no gray hair, but his uniform couldn’t entirely conceal the beginning of a pot belly.
The corporal came back downstairs.
“It doesn’t get any clearer than that,” he said. “The note, the drugs. That completely closes the case. A little suddenly, perhaps, but our colleagues in Argelès will be happy.”
“They’re pretty overworked in the summertime.”
“That’s the impression I got on the telephone. We have a period like that ourselves. It’s terrible in May and June every year.”
“Tourists?” Sebag asked, not being able to resist glancing at the other gendarme.
“No, not here, as you can imagine. It’s just a meeting of gypsies. It’s a religious thing: at Pentecost they do baptisms. Their association owns a big piece of land in the country a couple of miles from Gien. There are about twenty thousand of them, after all . . . For a few days, the canton’s population increases by a factor of two or three and the number of crimes naturally follows the same curve.”
“And the number of gendarmes is the only thing that doesn’t change, I suppose?”
“We do receive a few reinforcements, but never enough. We have to hope that nothing very serious happens during that period.”
The gendarme from Bordeaux broke into the conversation. He hadn’t given up on his first idea.
“Do you have a passkey?”
“I do have one. Not on me, but in my car. Why?”
“No particular reason. I just wanted to know.”
The corporal understood the situation.
“Gérard, could you call Dr. Béraud? I asked him to come by to certify the death but it seems to me he’s being a little slow getting here. I’d like to wind this case up quickly.”
He’d emphasized the last sentence. Gérard reluctantly went away. The corporal addressed Sebag again.
“He’s the tenacious type. It’s a good quality for an investigator to have, but the problem is that he sometimes gets lost in details that aren’t important.”
Sebag smiled but took care not to thank him.
“Regarding details,” he said, “there are a few that we mustn’t forget even if everything seems clear. We absolutely have to take Mr. Vernier’s fingerprints. It’s the only material proof that we’ll be able to get.”
“The other colleague is still upstairs. He must be taking the prints right now.”
“That’s perfect.”
Sebag held out his hand. He was suddenly in a hurry to get out of the house.
Outside, he drew a deep breath. The day was only starting and Sebag still had a long drive ahead of him. But the hardest part was over.
The murder of Josetta Braun had been solved. Even though they had been deprived of the prospect of a trial, the young woman’s parents could begin their grieving. That was the most important point. The Perpignan newspapers would soon write the epilogue to the case, but with a little luck few people outside the department of Pyrénées-Orientales would read their articles. In Gien, the memory of Robert Vernier could remain intact, and once their sorrow had faded a little, his children wouldn’t have to bear an additional burden.
Sebag felt sad but relieved. Like a doctor after performing a euthanasia.
CHAPTER 28
Contrary to what Sebag hoped, the denouement of Josetta Braun’s murder was going to be covered in both the local and the national press.
The next day, in fact, the daily Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France, which still had not learned of the results of Sebag’s investigation, devoted its front page to “the serial criminal” who was attacking young Dutch women in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales. This time, the writer abandoned all precautions and in a sidebar whose tone was extremely violent, he strongly criticized the Perpignan police for its lack of effectiveness. As soon as the newspaper came out, the radio and television stations got involved, and so did the Dutch press. Police headquarters had been overwhelmed by demands for information and interviews. And within the pack, the local reporters, furious at having been scooped, were not the least aggressive.
A press conference was supposed to be held Monday morning, just before noon. Superintendent Castello was jubilant. All the more because the comparison of the fingerprints had supported Vernier’s confession.
“I’m going to give those assholes what for,” he exclaimed, abandoning polished language for once. “They won’t be disappointed
this time.”
Castello slapped the newspaper with the back of his hand.
“I’ll show them who the incompetents are!”
From the boss’s window, Sebag was observing a cameraman who was filming the headquarters.
“The whole national press corps will be forced to recognize the quality of our work. Of your work, Gilles.”
Sebag was savoring his return to grace. The morning had begun with an update in the boss’s office. Castello, Lefèvre, and himself. Bernard Petit, the cop from Montpellier, had joined them in the course of the meeting. The superintendent began with his usual song and dance about teamwork, personal quarrels, and efficiency. Then he gave Sebag the floor. The inspector told them about his weekend. First his deductions from the reading of the gendarmes’ report, then his trip to Gien, his meeting with Vernier, how he’d led him to confess his crime. He didn’t mention finding the corpse the following day. And no one asked him about it. The fact that the guilty party had committed suicide was now a mere detail.
Sebag had chosen his words carefully. He wanted his triumph to be modest. During his account, Lefèvre did not look up. He limited himself to taking notes in his electronic agenda. At one point, he swore under his breath: his battery had gone dead.
At the end of Sebag’s presentation, the two men had looked at each other for some time. Without hostility, but also without liking. Lefèvre had won a point in the Verbrucke case, and Sebag had just evened the score by solving the murder in Argelès. They were tied. What about the endgame?
“If I were you, I’d remain prudent in dealing with the media,” Lefèvre suggested to Castello.
“You would? Why?” the superintendent asked, visibly disappointed.
“We still have two cases to deal with. Two kidnappings by the same individual.”
“Two cases hardly make a series,” Petit objected.
“True, but the summer isn’t over yet,” Lefèvre replied.
“You think he might do it again?” Castello asked.
Summertime All the Cats Are Bored Page 26