“Commissaire, allow me to introduce you to Lieutenant Diament from the B.R.I. Varappe Division, isn’t it?”
The officer straightened even more, clearly proud to belong to this legendary elite squad, whose officers abseiled down the sides of buildings, dangling from their ropes as they sprayed bullets into the hideouts of hardened gangsters. Given the size of this officer, Capestan had some sympathy for both the ropes and the gangsters.
“Yes, Monsieur le Directeur.”
“I gather that you, lieutenant, are tasked with ensuring clear communications between the B.R.I., Crim. and Capestan’s squad, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, his voice quieter this time.
“Pleased to meet you, lieutenant,” Capestan said, giving him a friendly smile and holding out her hand.
The man shook it and nodded, studiously avoiding eye contact with the commissaire. Aside from the irritation at being subjected to these tedious pleasantries, Capestan also detected a hint of sadness in the lieutenant’s eyes. Probably something unrelated to the job in hand, she guessed.
“As soon as the crime scene investigator has finalised his report, the lieutenant will forward you a copy. He will keep you up to speed as the various enquiries develop, and you will share any findings with him too, commissaire. For this case, I want the head honchos at number 36 to cooperate with complete transparency. Can I count on you? Lieutenant? Commissaire?”
Diament consented with a martial nod of the head. As for Capestan, she shrugged cheerily to show her agreement.
After the lieutenant had taken his leave, Capestan, who was rarely one to let things drop, returned to the question of why she was there.
“So,” she said, turning to Buron. “Why us?”
The directeur motioned to her to follow him. They headed towards the body, which was now covered with a canvas sheet, and tugged on some paper overshoes. Perched on a ladder, a forensics officer was lifting fingerprints from a street sign. His colleague waited at the bottom, screwdriver in hand. The sign no longer read “rue Gassendi”, but “rue Serge Rufus, 1949–2012, Bastard Commissaire”.
Suddenly it was clear why Buron had called her.
3
Paul’s turn in the limelight had not lasted. It had hardly been a long time ago, but he was still starting to get the impression that his star was fizzling out. Maybe it had already well and truly faded and no-one had bothered to tell him, leaving him like the spouse who is the last to find out when their partner cheats on them. At least that was how the unexpected call from a production company had left him feeling. A reality T.V. show was on the cards. Reality T.V. Next stop: oblivion.
Of course he had wavered, if only for a second. A long, humiliating second. Any prospect of a return to the big time held a powerful, Kaa-like allure. But Paul had quit the profession, that side of it anyway. True, the idea of a comeback appealed from time to time – if a real opportunity presented itself, no doubt he would handle things differently. But for now, he had a theatre to run and an army of stand-up comedians to keep in line.
Rolling up the sleeves of his beige shirt, he sat down at his desk to check his emails. There was a deluge from Hugo, one of his new recruits, whose desperation for praise could only be construed as part of a broader existential crisis. He bombarded him with messages. Paul sat deep in his chair, savouring a moment’s peace before picking up the telephone. He rubbed his cheek and jaw with a mechanical motion to see whether his morning shave had been up to scratch.
As it so often did, his focus turned to the framed poster on the wall in front of him. He was twenty years younger. At his side were his two childhood friends and fellow members of The Donkeys, one of the most popular comedy trios of the 1990s.
They had shot to fame, some might say deservedly, through a blend of talent, hard work and luck. At the time, their success had seemed assured – eternal, even. It was the logical consequence of their teenage years, where the correct jeans and a few missing buttons had been enough to cement their cool-kid status. The comedy scene was essentially about replacing your pals, who would laugh at your jokes no matter what, with the paying public. A television deal followed, and before long it was all about the partying. Fame obeys its own rules. Little did he know that he would spend the rest of his life wondering what might have been if his fifteen minutes had only lasted a bit longer.
The Donkeys captured the spirit of the times. But the times changed, and before they knew it, it was all about stand-up. The trio split up. Paul had invested in a theatre, in the belief that he would always need a venue to perform in. Not so. He could barely cover his costs. People recognised him in the street; they just no longer paid to watch him perform. They would bang on about his old sketches, which they always seemed to get mixed up with other acts anyway. Audiences are like that – you think they love you, but their memory is short. Proof that, deep down, they don’t really care at all.
Gradually, Paul had started booking undiscovered comedians, and one thing led to another. Even if they did remember which way their bread was buttered, the young bucks had a habit of looking down on him, convinced that their material was startlingly new, original and relevant. He had been exactly the same at their age.
Paul snapped out of his reverie. Time to call Hugo, that little brown-noser. At least his shows brought in a bit of cash. As Paul leaned forward to pick up his mobile, a text flashed up on the screen: Hi. Are you at home? It was his wife. His ex-wife, rather.
His eyes welled with unexpected tears. He sank back in his chair and caught his breath, trying to gather himself and make them go away. His jaw was clenched and the guilt came flooding back. He could not help glancing back at the mobile, staring at it as if it might talk to him and explain, as if it could make everything go away, or promise him another life.
When he left his wife a year earlier, he had cast off his last lifeline, his last friend. His rock. The only person he had ever loved.
Her absence haunted him, while her presence in the city tormented him. Her sweetness, her strength, her calibre; and then of course her face, her body, their nights together.
Leaving her had been harder than losing all his past glories. Before, he had felt overwhelmed by the currents; now, he was gasping for air on the sand.
He unlocked his telephone and with an uncertain, almost superstitious, motion he typed: Yes.
Then he waited.
When the three notes of the doorbell sounded, he could not suppress his smile.
4
Standing before the door, Capestan clenched her fists in the shelter of her pockets, almost willing it to stay shut. Of course, the news had to come from her. She had made no attempt to duck out of it, however hard she had to try to block out the untimely surge of anger inside her. Luckily, her sadness and empathy were overruling it for now.
So, she was about to see him again. And she was also about to see his new place (when he left her, he had played the true gentleman and let her keep their flat). To be fair, he had not played the true gentleman; he had been the true gentleman, as always. She knew full well that this apartment represented the final slice of a chunky – though depleted – family fortune. Paul had taken only his grandparents’ furniture, along with the washing machine and the dishwasher. Not hard to read between those lines: I was the only one who used them anyway.
But then he had taken off at the first sign of trouble, citing a whole load of convenient, moralistic prattle. It was the day she had shot that scumbag dead – she had let off her weapon before, but only to injure – leaving her career in tatters. She had shown no remorse and refused to pass comment, reluctant to justify her actions, least of all go into detail about what had actually happened. A few minutes later, Paul had left.
Capestan heard the sound of footsteps. She tensed up. Everything around her faded away.
The door opened to reveal the most handsome man she had ever seen. Her husband. Paul was dazzling. It was as if all the light in the city radiated out from within him. H
e was a firework, while all around him were L.E.D.s. His mother had never been able to conceal her pride when she saw him: “His father and I weren’t too far off: we chose Newman’s first name, but he ended up a dead ringer for Redford!” To which his shady father would say: “Yup, he sure looks like an actor.” Soon enough, the compliments subsided and the pride was notable only by its absence.
The very same father who had died earlier that day. Murdered. And it fell to Capestan to pass on the news.
Paul’s smile, as he opened the door, vanished the moment he saw her stony expression. She was only there as a messenger and the news she brought was deathly serious. The long-awaited reunion was to be cool and heavy.
“Hi. Can I come in for a minute?” she said, breaking the ice.
He hesitated momentarily then made as if to kiss her on the cheek, before Capestan’s stiffness made him reconsider. Instead, he moved aside to let her through in silence. She squeezed past him, noting the familiar musk of his Kiehl’s aftershave.
“Thank you.”
Capestan stepped into the apartment and – more as a matter of pride than politeness – resisted the urge to make a sweeping glance of his new digs.
“It would be better if we sat down, if you don’t mind.”
Something about her tone and the unusual nature of this first encounter in a year reinforced Paul’s suspicion that something was up. He knew his wife well enough to be absolutely sure that she was not playing with him. He offered her the sofa and took the armchair opposite. Capestan sat down without taking off her coat. As she clasped her hands together, her eyes darted down to the scar on her left index finger.
She was looking for a way in, for the right phrase. Her line of work meant she was no stranger to these sorts of situations. But never with Paul. He was watching her patiently, with an almost military air about him. He looked resigned and hardened, ready to absorb any shock. Capestan felt awful for him. She heard her voice working of its own accord, harsher than she would have wanted:
“I have some terrible news, Paul. Your father . . .”
She looked down for a second, and when she raised her eyes, Paul already knew. He was just waiting for confirmation. She gave it to him.
“He was murdered this morning.”
Paul sank back in his chair and stared at a point beneath the coffee table. The palm of his right hand stroked the brown leather of the armrest. Drifting between the effect of the news, his regrets and the need to keep a strong front, he refrained from reacting at all. His legs were shaking slightly. Capestan pretended not to notice.
To avoid watching her husband suffer, or pressurising him with eye contact, she took her chance to check out the decor. As expected, the apartment was warm, masculine and cheerful. An enormous oak bookcase dominated one wall of the sitting room, full to bursting with books, comics, D.V.D.s, rugby trophies, action-figures and small drawings, mainly seaside scenes, scattered around at random. There was no table in the dining area, but a relatively tidy desk, and behind it a well-appointed open-plan kitchen.
Despite the solemnity of the situation, Capestan was still a police detective. A sort of automatic probe was retrieving information, scanning the surroundings and analysing the data. And nothing in this large room suggested the presence of a woman, nor a newborn or soon-to-be-born. No indication that he was even receiving visitors. Paul seemed single. Capestan felt a strange joy flood into her stomach and flush out the bitter remnants of her anger. It would be back soon enough. She resented this joy. She hated herself for feeling it in the first place.
In the kitchen, the corner of a back-to-front frame poking out from behind the big dresser caught her attention. She recognised it from a past so distant that it seemed improbable. It was a collage she had made for Paul’s thirtieth. It was one metre by two, and 3D. A compilation of photographs, cinema tickets, pebbles, concert stubs, seagull feathers and other little tokens of their jaunts together. Back then, he was a star who wanted for nothing, and presents had ceased to excite him. But this unhangable object had rooted him to the spot. It had made him so happy. No-one had ever made him anything. Fifteen years later, Anne still wondered why he had been so taken by it. Both of them were bashful in the extreme and would never have dreamed of advertising their relationship in such a way, so the collage had spent years in hiding in their various apartments. But they could never bring themselves to chuck it, or even put it in the cellar.
In spite of everything, she felt herself softening, and looked back at Paul. His golden locks flopped down over his honey-coloured eyes.
He was not crying.
If she had been in his shoes, she would not have shed a tear for that man either. Yet his features were drawn with grief and his jaw was clenched.
Perhaps Anne was meant to say something. Perhaps she should have consoled him; perhaps she wanted to. But she stayed where she was, choosing to hold back.
He stared at her, seeming to search for a word or phrase before giving up too. In the end, he heaved himself out of his chair and headed for the kitchen where he filled up the water in his machine and grabbed two cups.
“Coffee?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Silence was clustering around the room, stifling the space and putting up barricades between them. The vestiges of their love flitted about like ghosts. They could not find the words because the words no longer existed.
Paul set the cup down on the coffee table in front of her along with half a sugar lump and a teaspoon, before returning to his chair to drink his own.
After a long while stirring his coffee, he took the initiative.
“You’re not leading the investigation?”
The underlying aggression, along with the resignation, in his tone did not escape the commissaire. She kept it brief.
“Yes.”
He let out a short sigh and drained his coffee.
“You didn’t like him.”
The circumstances demanded a degree of tact, but there was no point denying an undisputable truth.
“No.”
“Don’t dishonour him.”
Capestan instinctively nodded in agreement, then regretted it straight away. Keeping that promise would be impossible.
5
Capestan had no intention of dragging her feet over this case, much less letting another team solve it on her behalf, leaving her the honour of turning up at Paul’s in her jackboots to reveal the murderer’s identity, which would inevitably involve sharing a long catalogue of his father’s enemies and misdemeanours.
She was already thinking about the crime scene, or more precisely her analysis of it. The body on its side, knees bent, bullet wound to the forehead, arms behind his back. The murderer had made Serge Rufus kneel before looking him in the eye and shooting him. Zero pity. Proof of a hunger for power and revenge, or was it the cold indifference of the sociopath? Then there was the sadistic embellishment of the street sign.
They were looking for a dangerous, determined killer.
Back at the crime scene, Capestan had also registered the many police officers milling around, ready to pick them apart later. Dozens of them, all with enormous archives at their disposal, computers loaded up with the latest software, and easy access to warrants. They had the bit between their teeth and a B.R.I. legend to avenge. Capestan was going to have to rally her troops like never before.
The clack of the door when she entered the commissariat chimed perfectly with the sound of the cue ball striking a red. But not everyone was idling in the snooker room; some were through in the sitting room, where Rosière was instructing Lebreton and Lewitz as they erected a two-metre-high Christmas tree next to the fireplace. She was being indecisive, and had been for some time if the weary expressions of her hauliers were anything to go by. Merlot, slumped on the sofa with a magazine in one hand and a glass in the other, was encouraging their industriousness with a series of carefully thought-through remarks.
“The base is wobbly, my friends, shore it up, shore it
up! I have a good eye for this. Must my sense of decorum suffer – ”
“Suffer?! If only it suffered in silence from time to time,” Rosière muttered, her head tilted to one side to gauge the effect of the branches in the mirror. “There, that’s perfect! The lights will reflect and it’ll look magnificent.”
“Precisely as I said,” Merlot said. “Hold fire, I have here an article of the utmost interest on the – ”
“Excuse me, Merlot,” Capestan interrupted. They did not have any time to lose. “Something’s come up. Lewitz, can you gather the troops, please?”
Lewitz headed to the door into the snooker room and poked his head inside:
“Team meeting.”
He returned alongside Dax and Évrard, with Torrez following a few steps behind.
“So what’s the news?” Rosière said, her chubby fingers counting the patron saint medals that were resting on her sizeable upper body. “A transfer to the back of beyond? An opportunity to stand in for the moving targets down at the shooting range?”
The commissaire waved at Rosière to rein in the sarcasm.
“There was a murder this morning in the fourteenth arrondissement, and we’ve been given partial control of the investigation.”
A guilty rush of misplaced glee ran around the officers. Sure, a man was dead; but then none of them knew him, and a fresh case would do their status no end of good. Only Rosière applied any scrutiny to Capestan’s words.
“What do you mean by ‘partial’?” the capitaine asked.
“Crim. are taking the lead and the B.R.I. are helping out. We – ”
“ – we’re the dogsbodies who get made to feel like traitors all day long. Fine, I see how it is. I’ll sit this one out, thank you,” Rosière said, before scooping up a cardboard box full of baubles.
“Eva . . .” Capestan started.
“She’s right,” Lebreton said with a resigned shrug.
“Plus when we do start investigating, it’ll turn out to be another inside job . . .” Évrard said, smiling sadly.
Stick Together Page 2