Inside The Mind Of A Killer

by Jean-Francois Abgrall

  I made my way back to Rennes, with a heavy heart, while as far as Major JR was concerned, Heaulme was off the hook. I felt disappointed, and was still wondering what had really happened.

  Four hours later, I was in Quimper. I went straight to the cardiology ward and asked to see the senior cardiologist. He appeared at the end of a long corridor, accompanied by two nurses. The doctor had already been informed of my investigation. He was holding Francis Heaulme’s medical records. I told him of my serious doubts about Heaulme’s presence on 14 May. He listened to me politely, and brought out a temperature chart that put an end to our conversation. There was an entry: ‘Francis Heaulme, 14 May 1989, 5 p.m.’ It stated that the patient had no temperature at 5 p.m., the time of the murder. The alibi was rock-solid. How on earth could it be possible?

  The only thing left for me to do was to find Henri L with whom Francis Heaulme had spent his time before the murder. A few hours of inquiries in the Brest area, and my suspicions had been confirmed.

  3

  On the trail of

  the killer

  Back at the gendarmerie in Le Relecq-Kerhuon, I wanted a full report on my desk as soon as possible so that an analysis of the findings so far could be handed over to the investigators. My two colleagues, Jean-Claude and Jean-Paul, had listened attentively to my account of my interview with Francis Heaulme. They warned me that this case risked damaging the unit’s reputation, it seemed such a cock-eyed line of inquiry. We decided to organise a meeting with all the teams of investigators.

  That day, there were some new faces among the familiar ones. All the top brass from Brest central police station had turned out – a sign that things were going to be difficult. In a tense atmosphere, the discussion began.

  Jean-Claude and Jean-Paul went over the different areas of Aline Pérès’s life, point by point. Their method of working reminded me of the slow advance of a steamroller: they sifted through her work life, family, acquaintances and love life. One by one, they cited the witnesses who had been close to the victim and listed those still to be followed up.

  The further their statement went, the less convinced I was that this was the right way to go. The answer lay elsewhere. Aline Pérès had led a quiet life. This murder had no apparent motive. Had it been a gratuitous act or that of a maniac? Or was it premeditated? Impossible not to go over it again … In my head I could still hear Francis Heaulme’s blank, monotonous voice … That stilted voice forming the words one by one, counting them out like something precious, and then suddenly falling silent. Words interspersed with strange silences heightened by an intense, fixed gaze.

  I could not accept that all the things he had told me were mere coincidence. And the same question kept rearing its head, all the more insistently as I felt more and more that I was the only person seeking the answer. Who was Francis Heaulme? Who was this odd character?

  It was the turn of Bertrand’s team to speak. They were still looking for new witnesses in Le Relecq-Kerhuon. Tireless in their efforts, they had managed to find some others. The local weather forecast of 14 May helped establish the time that visitors had started arriving on the beach, for on that day it had not turned really sunny until 3 p.m. Thus, one by one, the pieces of the jigsaw began to fit together. Each individual could be situated in relation to the others, against this background surround ing the scene of the crime. A few grey areas still remained. One in particular: who was the man that several witnesses had seen sitting on the rocks above the victim? The investigations had also confirmed that residents from the Emmaüs communities did hang around the beach, but we had too little information to identify them. The fact was, we barely knew who they were.

  François, the boss of the investigation brigade, went on with his report. The leads had all gone cold. The local delinquents had nothing to say on the matter. The ex-convicts released before the attack had been tracked down, and rumours of all sorts that had been going round the town had been refuted. When we reached the case of the Brest castle attacker on the evening of 14 May, who was still at large, my colleagues’ expressions made it clear that many of them thought he was our man.

  Then it was my turn. I could tell that some people were just waiting for me to slip up so that they could take me off the case. A few minutes were enough to summarise my meeting with Francis Heaulme, which had been surprising to say the least. I went over every detail. I had barely finished before the reactions began. Those who knew me shot me questioning looks. They hoped that I had judged the situation accurately. Others were sceptical and said so. But still I insisted: we had to draw up a proper work plan. Retrace every step of the suspect’s movements in Brest, of course, but also track down other regulars from the beach, identify new vagrants and locate the men who had been staying at the Emmaüs community on 14 May. I concluded by informing them of my decision to return to Quimper hospital. There was certainly one detail that had escaped me. The atmosphere was downright hostile.

  The meeting over, I was summoned by the company commander of the Brest gendarmerie, who was highly critical of my leadership of the investigation.

  ‘I don’t understand why you don’t involve all the investigators in finding the Brest castle attacker. There’s no doubt he’s the murderer!’

  His tone was brittle. This was a man with a short fuse. I pointed out to him that the suspect in question was being sought by the city’s police force and that the victim had lodged a complaint. I added, ‘It is a related incident, which is being taken into consideration. There’s a team of investigators on the case. Furthermore, we have an interesting lead with Francis Heaulme.’

  ‘You call that a lead!? I think we’d better work separately!’

  Clearly annoyed, he concluded the conversation with, ‘From today, the number of men at your disposal will be cut to the minimum!’

  Lack of understanding of the workings of an investigation, defence of his patch, or professional jealousy? To this day, I find it hard to understand the real reasons behind his decision. In any case, it was final. From the next day, at the Relecq-Kerhuon gendarmerie, the number of men melted like snow in the sun.

  Fortunately, my status of investigator allowed me to bypass the hierarchy. The number of men had been cut, but the main teams were still in place. We would pursue our investigations with or without the help of our colleagues in Brest.

  We now had a photograph of Francis Heaulme which was routinely shown to the witnesses interviewed. Bertrand then informed me that there had never been a Henri L at the Emmaüs community. I also learned that our suspect had been declared unfit for service and that he had never been in the army. Furthermore, the nature of the blows to the victim had not appeared in the press. That was a start. But Heaulme’s hospital alibi still stood up.

  I returned as planned to the Laënnec hospital in Quimper. After several days, although the ice had not been completely broken, my relations with the staff had thawed a little. They were cagey at first, but gradually they opened up, eventually disclosing a few little secrets. The arrival of Francis Heaulme on 13 May 1989 had not gone unnoticed. Brought into casualty on the Saturday evening by the fire brigade, after he had passed out on the public highway, he was admitted to the cardiology ward.

  ‘The fact is, he needed rest, not treatment … In other words, there was nothing wrong with his heart. He’d had a bit to drink … I remember, we put him in Mr K’s room,’ a nurse told me.

  This patient, a retired teacher, was still in hospital. Would he remember the man in the next bed? Might he have noticed anything?

  I visited him in his room. The sixty-five-year-old man lying on his bed looked frail, but he greeted me with a smile. Inevitably, I was reminded of the school teacher he had been. I pictured him calm and attentive towards his students.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr K,’ I said. ‘I’m Chief Abgrall from the Rennes gendarmerie. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

  He replied with a smile, ‘Not at all. Do come in!’

  His voice was warm and assured
. This interview was going to be helpful.

  ‘My job is to check the movements of a particular person on 14 May last. A long weekend. Do you remember?’

  ‘I think so. I’ll do my best to recollect … What do you want to know?’

  I asked him to look at the identity photo that Francis Heaulme had given me while I set up my typewriter.

  ‘I remember this man,’ he declared, pointing at the photo. ‘He shared my room. He was tall. He only stayed here the weekend of 13 to 15 May. He told me he came from Lorraine and he talked about the Emmaüs communities.’

  ‘Do you remember if this man stayed here in the room all the time, or whether he went out for a while?’

  ‘I think he stayed here,’ he went on after a moment’s thought, ‘but I’m not certain. I think that if he did go out, it wasn’t for long. He spent his time sleeping, or reading the magazines I lent him. On reflection, I remember discussing his departure with one of the nurses, because she’d found sand under his bed. Then we talked about the murder committed in Brest that weekend.’

  The man weighed his words, as if sensing the importance of his evidence.

  ‘If you talked about the murder, it was because he’d been out, wasn’t it?’

  ‘As I told you, as far as I remember, if he went out, it was only for a short while!’ he rapped.

  His reply was categorical, but he couldn’t remember which nurse he’d had the conversation with. So he was not in a position to give an accurate appraisal of the length of time his room mate had been away. Once again, it struck me that the key to this case was in the unspoken, the hints and silences.

  Pursuing our conversation, I then asked him about the routine for checking the patients’ temperatures. Without showing any surprise at my question, he provided an answer which was a vital key:

  ‘At the weekend it’s different from weekdays … Our temperatures are taken at around 4 to 4.30 p.m. by the nurses. They write down the temperature shown on the thermometer placed on the bedside table …’

  Placed on the bedside table! … Which implied that the patients were not always present when their temperature was noted. At that point, I saw a glimmer of hope. I went on, ‘If someone is away from their bed when the nurses come by, what do they do?’

  ‘The thermometer is placed on the bedside table at around 1 p.m.,’ he explained. ‘If the patient isn’t there when they come round, they write down the temperature shown, even if the patient isn’t present.’

  That was it! If this information were confirmed by a nurse, Francis Heaulme’s temperature chart could no longer be considered a definite alibi. I immediately asked to see the nurses’ rota for 14 May. Unfortunately, each interview proved fruitless. None of them remembered, or wanted to remember, the 14th of May. There was a certain unease, and no wonder …

  A nurse told me, ‘You won’t find anyone who’ll admit that a temperature was taken in the patient’s absence. It’s enough to lose you your job … The doctors take that very seriously. But, I can tell you, it does happen … Especially in cases like yours, the patient who wasn’t really ill. It was a kind of respite care for him … On the other hand, I can assure you the rooms are cleaned every day. There’s no way sand would stay under the bed for more than a day.’

  That was a big step forward. The truth seemed within my grasp, but it was still elusive.

  In Brest, the investigating magistrate had been following the progress of the inquiry step by step since the first hour. On my return from Quimper, we met for lunch. We are the same age. He is from Brest and was surprised at the unusual nature of this murder. In a little restaurant in town, over salad and a bottle of mineral water, I told him my feelings about this case.

  I kept nothing from him. The man was attentive, one of the only people, so far, who seemed to give some credence to my investigations. I felt a measure of relief. However, he was adamant: there were no grounds for arresting the vagrant who had been admitted to hospital as a casualty.

  It was already August. Two months had gone by since Aline Pérès’s murder, and we had got nowhere, or next to nowhere. The days went by, and no further important information had come in. ‘We must widen the search and go straight to the source …’ Jop, my former partner would often say …

  Within the gendarmerie, people often say, ‘listen to the voice of experience.’ I took this motto to heart and went off to install myself at number 1, Boulevard Théophile-Sueur in Rosny-sous- Bois, in Seine-Saint-Denis, just outside Paris. This is the home of the gendarmerie’s forensic research centre and archives. I knew no better source of information. All the crimes and offences committed in France are recorded and archived here, and requests for information on individuals all pass through this office. Perhaps I might find records of a case resembling the murder on the beach, with similarities or parallels that the computer check had not identified.

  Serge L, one of the heads of department, was used to seeing me come in and go through the archives with a fine-tooth comb; this wasn’t the first time that I had made this move in an investigation. He greeted me with a smile and said cheerfully, ‘Your office is ready!’

  Having expressed our pleasure at meeting again, we quickly went to the heart of the subject. I had barely finished when he brought me a telex.

  ‘Look what I’ve just received,’ he said. ‘It’s a request for information from the Avignon gendarmerie concerning an individual called Francis Heaulme. There’s been an unusual murder in the area.’

  This time, luck was on my side.

  Two phone calls and a few hundred kilometres later, I was in the Vaucluse region, heading towards Courthézon accompanied by the chief of the Avignon gendarmerie, who had offered to drive me there. His case was indeed odd: the body of a sixty-year-old man had been found in the undergrowth beside a river lying by a footpath that led to an Emmaüs community. His skull had been battered with a rock.

  Emmaüs … an extraordinary coincidence …

  The car pulled up. We set off on foot down a shrub-fringed path running through a coppice to the banks of the Ouvèze. Soon we caught sight of the parched river bed.

  ‘The body was discovered over there, under that tree. He was killed on the shingle. The victim had no trousers on. But we did find a pair of jeans ten metres away. They would fit a very tall person and were bloodstained. In a pocket was a scrap of paper with only six figures of a phone number on it … You can see the brutality of the attack from the photos. I don’t understand what happened.’

  The body had already been lying there for twenty-four hours when it was discovered. The man, formerly in the Foreign Legion, had been living in the area for years. He was single and led a quiet life.

  The crime scene reminded me of Moulin Blanc beach. A man attacked beside water, a road nearby, an Emmaüs community not far away, and the extraordinary violence of the attack.

  And then, while we were driving, the chief came out with a significant piece of information:

  ‘You know, Courthézon is near the place where the man called Francis Heaulme was stopped. The day the body was discovered, he was wearing a pair of Bermudas.’

  There was one major difference however: the victim was a man.

  At the Avignon gendarmerie, I told my colleagues about the investigation being conducted in Brest. The chief reckoned the similarity between the two cases was interesting, but he added, ‘Heaulme had just come from Marseille, where he’d been in hospital. So he’s in the clear this time. That means I’ve got nothing to ask him.’

  ‘Yes, but each time he’s supposed to be in hospital, somebody dies in the vicinity of an Emmaüs community … In any case, you could always ask him to try on the jeans found near the victim!’

  My last argument struck a chord. The chief decided to add Heaulme’s name to the wanted list. He promised to let me know as soon as he’d been located. We parted company on these words.

  Before returning to Brittany, I had to carry out two final checks. Stepping through the porch of the Emmaüs co
mmunity in Bédarrides, I saw, across the courtyard, a single-storey building bathed in light, with all the windows open wide. It was a welcoming place. Heaulme was not on the register. ‘We usually write down the names of all the visitors in the register. Occasionally we forget, for someone who only stays one night,’ explained the director.

  At the Marseille-Nord hospital, Francis Heaulme had not been seen since the morning of Saturday 7 August. Precisely the date when the retired legionnaire had been murdered.

  Meanwhile, the investigation in Brest had made some headway. Evidence of Francis Heaulme’s presence had been found. The captain of the army recruitment centre had seen all sorts wanting to enlist, but he had been particularly struck by our suspect’s application.

  ‘It was back in May, around the 15th …’

  ‘He kept insisting, telling me he lived in a hostel, that he was hard up and that the army was his only way out … He told me he wanted to kill. After a pause, he added: “For France.” It was that afterthought that struck me … What really shocked me was his eagerness to kill.’

  Once again, clues, odd coincidences, but no proof.

  The months went by, and Francis Heaulme was still at large somewhere in France. The summer was over, and winter was already in the air. I felt as though I was wasting time and the investigation was stagnating.

  It was 1 p.m. on Sunday 19 November when I received a call from the chief of the Avignon gendarmerie. ‘Francis Heaulme has just been stopped in Meurthe-et-Moselle. He’s being held at the gendarmerie in Blainville-sur-l’Eau. I’m getting the first train out. I’ll meet you there.’

  A call to the officer on duty in the criminal investigation unit and I was on the road again. It was raining buckets and the weather was cold. The journey seemed endless.

  10 p.m. It had been dark for hours when I finally reached the gendarmerie. The chief had just arrived, and was visibly exhausted from the long train journey. He hadn’t yet seen Francis Heaulme, who was being kept in another room. We briefly filled each other in on the progress of our respective investigations. Nothing new. I ventured one last warning. ‘Above all, don’t go by his physical appearance, he takes advantage of it. Don’t underestimate him, he’s manipulative.’