“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes. I can’t be sure. But I know when they arrived. It was shortly before five. I was about to leave for choir practice.”
“Did they talk among themselves?”
“Yes, but not in any way I could understand. My Arabic is classical, mainly for reading. Modern Arabic speech is very different. I could make out some words, some of them about whether I was lying, whether they should gag me and how they’d be unable to hear what I had to say if they did. That was all. There were some words about a Jewish farm and another group they called the soldiers.”
A knock came on the door, and a nurse entered to tell them their time was up. When Dumesnil said he was fine and could continue, she took his pulse, checked the drip in his arm and then wrapped the black bandage around his arm to measure his blood pressure.
“Were you the nurse who remembered to tell us about warning the professor in Paris?” Bruno asked.
She nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t check sooner that the doctor had passed on the message. Is he all right?”
“He’s been under guard since about ten minutes after you spoke to us,” J-J said. “And thank you for doing so.”
“The patient’s pulse is fast and I’m not happy about his blood pressure,” she said. “Just one or two more questions and then you’d better go.”
“Okay,” said J-J and turned back to Dumesnil. “Did they say anything at all that might give an indication of where they were staying, any place-name or road directions?”
“Not that I recall, except for the phrase about the Jewish farm,” said Auguste. “Please convey my profound regrets to Horst and Clothilde that I cannot make the wedding and give them my best wishes.”
“Of course,” Bruno said. “When they showed you the newspaper, did they seem to know who Horst was?”
“Well, yes. I’d talked about Horst and Clothilde and their dig at Commarque when Leah and al-Husayni had come to see me earlier. I even told them about the wedding because I said they might need to talk to them before they went off on their honeymoon. Do you think I might have put them in danger?”
“That’s enough,” said the nurse. “He’s getting upset.”
Outside the hospital, which perched on one of the hills that surrounded Sarlat, J-J paused to gaze around the countryside. Bruno assumed that his friend was thinking of the vastness of this region and the thousands of empty farms and ruined barns, the great mass of vacation homes and rental properties that were closed up waiting for the tourist season. It was a great place for terrorists to go to ground. And with much of the countryside thickly wooded, the helicopters would have trouble seeing through the spring foliage that grew thicker each day.
“During the war, the Germans brought in an entire division of troops who’d learned about fighting a guerrilla war in Yugoslavia, against Tito’s partisans,” Bruno said. “They were experts, but they still couldn’t find the Resistance fighters. It’s easy country to hide in.”
“What on earth are they doing here?” J-J said quietly, as if speaking to himself. “Whatever can be their target? This is a big operation for them and I just can’t see what makes it worthwhile. Not even in symbolic terms.”
“There was nothing symbolic about those cafés and restaurants, and the nightclub the jihadists shot up in Paris,” said Bruno.
“Yes, but it was the night of that big soccer match, France against Germany. There’s nothing like that here, except maybe Lascaux, and that’s now well guarded. They even have sniffer dogs in the parking lot.”
“Just as well,” said Bruno. “Horst and Clothilde have arranged a special visit there for their wedding guests this morning. Raquelle is going to be the guide and explain how they did the painting.”
“Come on, I need a coffee and a croissant,” said J-J, leading the way to his car. They drove down into Sarlat, parking on the boulevard Eugène le Roy and strolling down to one of the cafés on the rue de la République. J-J ordered a double espresso, a croissant and a pain au chocolat. Bruno took a simple coffee.
“If it was me, I’d send suicide bombers or gunmen into Notre-Dame,” said J-J. “Or into the lines of people waiting to go into the Louvre or into Galeries Lafayette or the place du Tertre in Montmartre, somewhere where they could be sure to hit lots of tourists. Or one of the big train stations or airports or even the Métro. Remember they killed eight people that way in Paris back in ’ninety-five and look what they did at the airport in Brussels. Those are what I’d call targets. I just can’t make sense of their being down here, torturing harmless historians and asking about archaeology.”
Bruno’s mobile rang. It was just after eight-thirty. He answered and heard the count’s voice.
“Sorry to bother you, Bruno. I’ve just heard from the château. I’m on my way there, my daughter driving me. There’s somebody standing on the battlements and threatening to throw himself off. He says he wants to talk to the police officer in charge of the pedophile case, so I called you to find out where I could reach him.”
“He’s right here with me,” said Bruno, handing over the phone, gulping his coffee and putting down a five-euro note to pay the bill. J-J listened, rose, finished his coffee and stuffed the remainder of the pain au chocolat into his mouth, picked up the croissant with the other hand and began walking quickly back to the car, grunting occasionally into the phone.
Within fifteen minutes they were at the château, J-J risking the suspension of his car by driving too fast down the rutted road, past the bridge over the stream that fed into the River Beune. He parked, and Jean-Philippe, the kiosk worker, ran down the wooden steps from the big wooden gate to the château, shouting, “This way.”
From the main gate, he led the way through the gatehouse, then left past the ruined chapel, up the slope to the barbican, right to skirt the ditch and past the main living quarters into the stone tower of the donjon. As they raced, Bruno considered the military cunning of the medieval builders, forcing any attacker to turn, double back and then remain in a killing ground for archers before they could get to the defended core of the building.
The tower was now occupied by a single figure, a man dressed in a gray suit.
He stood on the highest possible point, a gap between two of the battlements, a hand resting on the stone to each side of him. He turned to see Bruno, the first arrival, panting his way up the stairs. J-J was some way behind, and Bruno could hear his friend’s labored breathing as J-J paused to rest before attacking the final steps.
“You might have to wait a bit. The commissioner is not a young man anymore,” he told the man on the tower. “The poor guy is racing up here. He might have a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry,” said the man in the suit. He turned and Bruno could see he was wearing a white shirt and a wide dark tie that Bruno recognized as the fashion of the 1980s. The trouser legs were two or three centimeters too short, and the jacket had been made for a much-slimmer man.
“I see you’ve dressed up for this,” Bruno said. “That’s your best suit. You take care of your clothes.”
“I always have, the nuns taught us that,” the man said in a local accent. He turned back to look across the valley. “Put your trousers under the mattress to keep the crease and say your prayers before you sleep.”
“I remember,” said Bruno. “I was brought up the same way. I still hang my clothes up before I go to bed.”
The man turned at that to look at him.
“You must be the policeman from St. Denis, the one called Bruno. I suppose you’re here because you think you can rescue me.”
“If you’d been a kid, maybe,” said Bruno, desperately trying to recall some item of paperwork he’d received, notes on dealing with suicide attempts. “But you’re a grown man. If you want to end it all, then as far as I’m concerned you have a right to do so. I’m just worried for the pompiers, the guys who’ll have to scrape away what’s left of you once you hit the ground below. They’re volunteers, you know, not really trained for it. They won�
�t be able to sleep for weeks.”
“I don’t want to be a bother. I’ve already caused a great deal of trouble to people.”
“How do you mean?” Bruno used his question to climb two of the last steps, but the man wasn’t even looking at him anymore. He was staring across the valley again.
“I’ve brought shame and guilt onto innocent people who never did me any harm,” he said.
“You mean the people at the orphanage?” Bruno took the last step onto the floor of the tower. The wind was strong up here, shifting direction and coming in sudden, unpredictable gusts, some of them fierce enough to blur the man’s words but not quite strong enough to make a full-grown adult lose his footing. He was in his forties with thinning brown hair and was freshly shaved.
“That’s right. The Mussidan orphanage. I was at Mussidan until I was sixteen, and then they found me a job in an office, dealing with bills and invoices. I was good at that. At least the nuns taught me to read and do math.”
“What’s your name?” Bruno spoke the question loudly while waving J-J to stay back. The brochure on dealing with would-be suicides said that only one person should establish contact and should then try to maintain the emotional link that might enable him to talk the person down.
“Francis. They named me after the saint. I was left in a basket outside the orphanage soon after I was born.”
“Just like me. I was left at a church,” said Bruno. Making sure that Francis was still looking away, Bruno pulled out his phone and turned on its recording function.
“I just stayed there, year after year, watching other children going away to foster families. I suppose I was an ugly child. Nobody ever wanted to take me.”
“Maybe the nuns thought you were too useful, Francis,” Bruno said, recalling that the brochure had recommended using the person’s name to establish personal contact. “You probably helped with the younger kids.”
“I don’t know. I don’t trust my memories anymore. I don’t trust any memories, not after I heard the radio this morning. And now I don’t trust Madame Duteiller.”
“Are you still working at the office, Francis?” The brochure had said to change the subject whenever the victim began to focus on the reason for taking his own life.
“I was at Gaz de France before I got sick. But they’re very good, they kept me on for quite a while. Thanks to them I have a disability pension.”
“I didn’t know you’d been ill, Francis. Was that recent?”
“Two or three years ago now. It was after I’d wanted to get married. I was a bit lonely, and somebody told me to try the Internet and I found this nice woman, at least I thought she was nice. She was from Ukraine, but she wrote very good French. We corresponded for a while and then I sent her money to come to France to join me, but then she had this problem with the father of her child. He wanted money before he’d sign the papers to let his daughter leave Ukraine.”
The poor, innocent bastard, thought Bruno, falling for that old trick.
“Then her mother fell ill and needed money for the operation, and I sent that, but that was all I had. I never heard from her again. That was when I got my depression and they sent me to the clinic where I met Dr. Duteiller.”
“What happened then, Francis?” Bruno knew he had to keep repeating the man’s name.
“She said the hypnosis would help in cases like mine, and she tape-recorded what happened when I went under, her questions about the orphanage and my replies. Then she brought me around, she played it all back, and I was very surprised at the way my voice sounded.”
“How often did this happen, Francis?”
“Twice a week, sometimes more. She said we were really making progress. I remember thinking that I knew from her questions what she wanted me to say and I wanted to please her because she was very nice, like a friend. So I said all those things that I was supposed to remember, but I didn’t, not really.”
“You made it up to please her?”
“She was the first person who’d ever taken much interest in me. But now I know it was all pretending. Once I’d heard on the tape recorder the things I’d said, I couldn’t back down. She said they were real memories, but they weren’t. And then it all began, the police coming, the questions and the statements, the court case. Then she played me recordings of what the others had said, and she brought in the terrible old woman who’d been a nun at the home, the one who used to beat me when I wet the bed.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Francis,” said Bruno, advancing quietly toward the battlements. “She wasn’t a very good doctor, and she did some bad things.”
“I know that now, but I said all these dreadful things about the priest and the director, she had them on tape. She played the tapes back to me and insisted that what I’d said was the truth and if I tried to deny them I’d be guilty of perjury and go to jail.”
“She was wrong, it wasn’t your fault, Francis.” Bruno was almost close enough. Two more steps and he’d be able to grab the man.
“But it was my fault that those men were accused. I couldn’t look at the old director when Madame Duteiller brought him in. It was so I could confront him with the truth, she said. But that awful old nun was there and I couldn’t say a word. I wet my trousers when I saw her. I was so ashamed.”
He raised his hand to his eyes, and Bruno leaped forward. He caught Francis above the knees, twisted so that his back and shoulder bounced off the stone battlement and then fell backward to bring Francis tumbling down onto him, the wide tie flapping into Bruno’s mouth. Then J-J was there and they were secure.
Chapter 26
The brigadier was in a better mood when J-J and Bruno returned from the hospital after entrusting Francis to the psychiatric wing. Despite the pain in his shoulder, Bruno drove so that J-J could dictate his notes of the interview with Dumesnil and his statement on the attempted suicide and e-mail the sound file to Isabelle, with a copy to his secretary back in Périgueux to be typed up. They had then changed roles so Bruno could do the same. Once in the gendarmerie, they saw on the desk before the brigadier a thick sheaf of printouts of photographs. Two of them had been extracted and were now being pinned by Isabelle to the corkboard on the wall.
“Isabelle’s hunch paid off,” the brigadier said by way of greeting. “She thought the second of the two unknowns that al-Husayni mentioned might have done time in prison, since that’s where most of them seem to get radicalized these days. So she downloaded prison mug shots of all Muslims released over the past couple of years and persuaded al-Husayni to look through them. There they are.”
The first portrait posted on the wall was of Demirci, the man identified from his fingerprints. The caption to the second portrait listed his name as Idris Lounis, born in Paris, released after serving three years of a five-year sentence for armed robbery. He had been in Fleury-Mérogis, Europe’s largest prison, where two-thirds of the four thousand inmates were now Muslim. Most of France’s terrorists had served time and been radicalized there, including the Kouachi brothers, who had attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices; Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four hostages and a policewoman in the siege at the Porte de Vincennes; and Djamel Beghal, who served ten years for his part in an attempt to bomb the U.S. embassy in Paris.
“How in hell do we let this happen in our prisons?” J-J said bitterly. “They commit crimes, we arrest them, they go to jail, and they come out as terrorists. We’re doing something wrong here.”
“We’re working on it,” said the brigadier, tiredly.
Isabelle rolled her eyes and then explained that all relatives and known associates of the two men were now being questioned, and their phones and credit card records were being checked. Their photos were now being run through a new facial recognition search engine that was processing dozens of digital surveillance cameras of the kind found increasingly in banks, gas stations and shopping malls. All that was routine, but they had one promising lead. One man Demirci had known in prison, who now lived in Limoges and ran a u
sed-car business, was also being questioned, and his inventory of vehicles and bank accounts had been examined.
“Two cars that were logged into his books when he bought them are no longer on his premises, and there is no evidence of any sale, so we are circulating their details,” she added.
“Have you checked for any robberies of tabacs?” Bruno asked. “They wanted cigarettes, and they didn’t get the ones al-Husayni bought.”
“Good idea, I’ll get onto it,” said J-J, tapping the screen of his phone.
“I’m waiting for prison mug shots from the Belgian police,” Isabelle said. “Yveline is printing out French prison photos for men released the previous year; we’ll show them to al-Husayni, as well.”
She then explained that they had some traces on phones from cell-tower analysis that might belong to the terrorists. But Mustaf’s team was highly disciplined, usually keeping their phones turned off and batteries removed. They only turned their phones on for brief periods and usually when they were moving between two and three cell towers in dense areas, so they had become hard to track.
“That means they are still mobile, so we are concentrating on these new vehicles we think they got from this old prison contact in Limoges,” she added. “But they could be using motorbikes or even mountain bikes. That’s all we have at this moment.”
While listening to Isabelle, one part of Bruno’s mind was thinking that she was skilled at this, keeping calm while coordinating a complex operation and bringing together different strands of information, never letting the routine stop her from thinking of new ways to drive the process forward. She was good with people and with keeping up morale, brisk without being brusque, efficient without being cold. Curious, he thought, to have at once an impersonal admiration for a female colleague, while at the same time mourning the end of their affair and knowing that his love for her was not just dormant but eager at the slightest encouragement to blaze into flame again.
“Did you get anything out of al-Husayni about possible targets?” J-J asked, looking up from his phone. “He told us Mustaf and the others didn’t trust him or Leah and refused to discuss anything about their mission.”
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