“What do you mean ‘what’? Move them on, then that’s that.”
Diament answered without thinking. A reflex response to a simple command.
“Negative.”
There was so little defiance in the lieutenant’s tone that his superior opted for leniency.
“Diament, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. It’s your first shift, so let’s start from the top. When it comes to Roma, for the sake of the inhabitants, the tourists, the city’s image and all that, we can’t let them settle. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So get on with it.”
“No. No, I don’t want to.”
“No-one wants to, lieutenant, no-one. But we have to.”
No. Plenty of people and police officers must have passed by today without seeing them, so why could they not let them have their four square metres of pavement tonight? Diament stared at the girl. He had not trained for hours on end and built up kilos of muscle so he could wake up children.
There was no way. Enough was enough.
Basile swallowed. His head seemed to pound with the impact of all the digs, all the tears that had built up, threatening to break out. His eyes burned. He took a deep breath. He had bottled it for six years – he just needed to resist a little longer, a few more hours. He could not stumble now; in fact he had to lean on the anger and the revulsion, not give way to exhaustion and despondency. To sadness. Burn-out, as the docs call it. Basile rallied himself.
“No. I didn’t see them, I’m done here.”
“That’ll do, Diament. What is this, politics? You all pro-migrants or something?”
“No, it’s nothing to do with that! I couldn’t give a damn about politics. It’s just that – I won’t do it.”
Ignazio was understanding enough. He was not a bad guy, he was only doing his job. Maintaining order, keeping the juniors in line. Deterring the Roma. He wanted to bring Diament round, not realising that the way into his head was barred.
“It’s no biggie!” he said. “You know it won’t be a family, they probably barely know each other. It’s their job. And its ours too. You know what the deal is – we shake them up a bit, they go ten metres down the road, wait for us to go, then they start over.”
Diament suddenly did not want to do his job. The tremors were starting to overwhelm him. Months, years of bullying, of humiliation, and now this? Displacing a little girl. Where was he supposed to draw the line? What next? If he was certain of one thing, it was that there and then, the answer was no. He tried to speak. One last try. After that, he would let go. He would let his body take control. He was not even thirty, but screw it. His mother would understand. Maybe he was old enough not to be her son any more.
“Honestly, what is that going to achieve? Look at that kid. She’s just got herself to sleep. They’re finally settled and you’re asking me to turf them out?”
To his right, Diament saw one of his colleagues was trying to get past him to put an end to this whole kerfuffle, either that or to make a good impression on Ignazio. The lieutenant stood in his way, shifting all of his two metres and one hundred and twenty kilos between the officers and the mattress.
“Not you either. No-one’s going to do anything. Let’s move along.”
“Or what?” the man asked, pushing the button of the walkie-talkie attached to his left shoulder.
“Come any closer and you’ll find out.”
Having come this far, Diament began to relish the idea of taking a gallant last stand, only for an unmarked car to pull up next to them. Frost, the B.R.I. commandant, lowered the window, a malicious smile playing across his lips.
“You win this time, my boy. Consider yourself transferred.”
35
Capestan had to stretch her ears to make out the doorbell, an almost ultrasonic buzz that was over before it had begun. Buron had called to give her the heads up: He’s a big guy but you don’t even know the half of him. I think deep down he’s damaged. Fix it if you can, please, commissaire.
Diament made the cardboard box look no larger than a packet of breakfast cereal. The lieutenant stood in the doorway with a frown and a worried look in his eye. His height and his bulging muscles seemed to shrink everything around him.
Despite their poor track record, Capestan kept her sarcasm to one side.
“Welcome, lieutenant. I’m not sure we’ve got any offices for a man of your size, but we’ll see what we can do. Come in.”
“Keep out of the games room! No offence, stud-muffin, but I’ve become very attached to that snooker table,” Rosière said, unlit cigarette in hand as she followed Pilou’s wiggling hindquarters out to the terrace.
“Ever since she started winning . . .” Lebreton said. “There are two small offices at the back – we could always knock through the partition wall.”
“Why not? Or here in the sitting room?” Capestan said.
“He might block out our natural light.”
“Sorry if we’re making you feel like an oversized wardrobe,” the commissaire said to Diament, who was following the conversation without daring to intervene.
“Indeed, even my own enrolment sparked less interest,” Saint-Lô said with a tinge of bitterness.
A loud discussion from the direction of the terrace drew them away from their confab. Capestan made for the kitchen, followed by Saint-Lô, Lebreton and Diament, after he had found a spot for his cardboard box.
Merlot and Rosière were at loggerheads again. But this time there was no hint of pleasure – it was a proper argument.
“I’ll say it again, I think he killed Ramier,” Merlot asserted.
“No, you’re wrong – he said it wasn’t him. Plus a policeman wouldn’t have sprayed a whole magazine around the park before eventually slamming a slug into the target.”
“Not sure I agree, Eva,” Évrard said. “Orsini never practises his shooting, but he’s cool-headed too. Maybe he missed a few on purpose. I’m with Merlot – I think it was him.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! If he’d wanted a 100 per cent hit rate, he would’ve taken himself off to the range! I’m telling you, it wasn’t him.”
“Yes it was. This is a murder, for heaven’s sake. We’ll have to notify the I.G.S.,” Évrard said resignedly.
“No, no, dear girl, I’m not with you on that front,” Merlot said with an reproachful wag of the finger. “Of course he may have strayed from the straight and narrow, but I can’t condone snitching on him. We’ll have to settle the matter amongst ourselves, keeping the cursed authorities out of it,” he added, determinedly avoiding eye contact with Lebreton.
The debate had been raging since the day before, prompting a subtle division of the squad into rival factions: pro- and anti-Orsini. Or, to put it less radically, those who believed him and those who did not. Two further sub-groups were in even hotter dispute: those in favour of a proper inquiry; and those who preferred to keep things casual. Capestan had remained neutral until now, finding that she was in agreement with everyone; clearly not an ideal stance from a leadership perspective.
She was hoping for some burst of wisdom to emerge from the turbulent, murky depths of her imperfect conscience. Most of all she feared that the issue would damage the squad’s now-brittle cohesion. Cracks were starting to form. Since Lewitz’s accident on the Porsche bonnet, Torrez was in a new, not just self-imposed, exile. As for Orsini, he was still stalking the corridors, maintaining a silence as icy as a Norwegian glacier. No-one could accuse him of appealing to people’s compassion. Whenever he went by, conversations would peter out before taking a more congenial turn.
“There’s nothing to settle,” Rosière said. “We’ve got to find the real shooter before the B.R.I. or some other load of thugs come and grab one of our colleagues by the plums.”
Dax and Lewitz, who had abandoned the conversation after not managing to get a word in, let out a collective “Oh my God!” as they leaned out over the street.
“Quick, quick
, come and see!” they said, twirling their arms at their colleagues.
The team tore across the terrace as one. Down below, a gathering stampede was brewing like a thunderstorm, causing panic-stricken heads to appear at windows all around the square.
It had begun. The invading hooligans surged up the métro escalators as if they had been vomited from the Forum des Halles shopping centre, before spilling into the surrounding streets and rallying on rue Saint-Denis where, for some mystifying reason, they were prowling back and forth like a barbarian horde in sponsored shirts. Within a split second, all the locals knew the score: Paris Saint-Germain were hosting Chelsea that evening.
The fans bellowed with overexcitement, pumped up on beer and beef hormones. At the head of the cortège were three guys with sweat-soaked hair brandishing bangers as big as sticks of dynamite, which they were lighting and chucking at the shops lining the street. The owners lowered the metal shutters as quickly as they could, while café waiters rushed to bring in their chairs from the pavements.
One bloke, who was clearly even more hammered than his pals, grabbed a table from outside one of the bars and, despite its hefty weight, hurled it at some passers-by. A cluster of his brainless comrades adopted the ingenious idea and began throwing chairs and advertising signs in all directions, without the least consideration for the nearby men, women, children, prams and grannies.
“Let’s go down,” Lewitz said, picking up his crutch.
Capestan nodded and the whole squad hurried back into the apartment. Ratafia weaved in and out of their feet, blazing ahead to scout out the area. As they went, they all grabbed their jackets and slipped on their red “Police” armbands. Just as Rosière made to follow, Capestan stopped her.
“You stay here and call the riot police, the préfecture and anyone else.”
The capitaine hung back with a disappointed Pilou and a stunned Diament, whose gaze was switching between the chaos in the street and his determined colleagues.
“You must be out of your minds!” he said. “You can’t go out into that mad crowd without any kit! You’ve got no vests, no truncheons, no tear gas, no helmets . . . Wait for back-up from the pros! Tell them,” he said to Rosière.
The capitaine simply shrugged – she knew her colleagues.
“The bystanders don’t have much kit either . . . We’ve got to help them.”
Diament stared at her for a second as if she were mad, then swivelled on his heel and followed the others downstairs.
*
They fanned out on reaching the square, spreading their arms and calling for calm. Their pleas fell on deaf ears – it was clear that any respect for the vaunted ‘bobby’ had been left at the border. Emboldened by their superior numbers and het up after the long journey, a few of the more malicious supporters sensed a good opportunity for a scuffle and unleashed an endless torrent of provocations, insults and gob.
They needed to be contained. The officers had to stymie this destructive energy somehow, even if that meant absorbing it themselves.
One bare-cheeked youth, who clearly had his sights set on being pack leader, started hassling Évrard, shoving her by the shoulder. Without a second’s hesitation, Dax punched him full in the face, knocking him out. That was their cue.
Saint-Lô, impetuous as ever, his head lowered like a furious mountain goat, shot forward into the centre of the sweaty, deafening column that had been drifting aimlessly forward. Merlot, Lebreton and Dax rushed up the flanks to pick off the scattered individuals who were vandalising the property and intimidating the pedestrians pressed up against the walls of the buildings. It did not take long for Lebreton the athlete and Dax the boxer to subdue these men, so surprised were they to come up against any resistance, and too drunk to react in time. Merlot, despite being less well-equipped for physical exertion, made up for it with boldness. He went straight into the fray, issuing stealthy yet powerful jabs into the mob’s midriffs, while Ratafia created some helpful diversions by nibbling their heels.
Capestan turned to Évrard, Diament, Orsini and – one rank behind – Torrez. She motioned towards the men carrying the bangers and the officers, acting like a single body, swooped into the mass with a view to neutralising these linchpins.
For Évrard, who was the lightest, it was like running into a brick wall. As she was splayed on the ground, one hooligan grabbed her by her jeans and windbreaker and sent her flying into a newspaper kiosk. She lay there slumped and stunned, half-unconscious beneath a pile of magazines.
They were too powerful, too fanatical and too numerous, raining fists down on the meagre squad and making it seem like a suicide mission. No sirens and no sign of the long, black C.R.S. coaches full of riot police. Without the cavalry, this was turning into a rerun of the Alamo.
Orsini’s face was already covered in blood. His eyebrows, nose and mouth were all gushing, but the capitaine still staggered forward with glazed eyes, launching himself chaotically into the blue and white shirts around him. He was clearly no brawler. His cravat was still in place, but the rest of his garb was stained with grubby boot marks.
At the rear, Lewitz was doing his best to trip people up and dent a few skulls, but his dodgy balance left him defenceless when one of the men took hold of his crutch and yanked it, knocking the brigadier over, before letting off a salvo of kicks into his stomach with a mate.
Diament was like a raging wrestler dropped into the crowd, locking any head within range in his giant arms, sometimes three at a time. He was screaming even louder than his adversaries, convulsing his torso in a manner worthy of the haka, and flattening noses that were a good thirty centimetres lower than his own. He fought with the fierce joy of a man who was fed up with punchbags, relishing the sweet crack of bones and the heat of the blood on his knuckles. It was as if he was the only person on the battleground, which was soon the case as a wide area opened around him as his challengers fell back, forcing him to go off in search of prey further afield. He had forgotten all about his new squad – at last he could let rip without restraint, free of codes and protocols. Lost in his own world, he snapped out of it when he heard Lewitz’s cries and ran over to help. Diament seized the biggest of the brigadier’s assailants, hoisted him into the air and flung him into his fellow thugs, like a weightlifter dropping his personal best to the ground, before delicately picking up his colleague and carrying him to safety.
Torrez was on his own in the fray too, scouring the nearby streets to save his colleagues from his ruinous presence, which was now more shadowy and ominous than a flight of circling vultures. Despite flying solo, his courage was bolstered by the knowledge that the odds were not in favour of his opponents.
The pain of the first blow had set Capestan ablaze with fury. Redder in the face than the devil himself, she had swung blindly, desperately putting to use the hand-to-hand combat techniques that had been etched into her muscles during training. Now her vision was blurry and the ground swayed beneath her feet. There was no way she could have predicted that someone would attack her from behind and attempt to strangle her. The man squeezed and squeezed and only loosened his grip when she was on the brink of asphyxiation. Capestan collapsed onto the pavement, only to feel Dax take hold of her arms and ferry her to the foot of a building, where Merlot and Évrard were already slouched against the rough wall. The lieutenant was a thoughtful stretcher-bearer, placing the wounded at a safe distance but still facing the mêlée.
Two men were holding Orsini’s arms while a third pummelled him with a succession of blows. His cravat was finally askew. Capestan watched as members of both the pro- and anti-Orsini factions ran to his side. Saint-Lô’s services were not required – Lebreton was closer and snatched the back of the attacker’s strip, stretching it right back. He spun him round and delivered a fearsome headbutt that sent him crashing to the canvas. The other two, their courage vanishing, let go of the capitaine and melted into the throng of their pals.
Rosière pushed open the heavy front door of their building. Sh
e had put on a pair of trainers that were better suited to the task than her six-inch heels, even if they did clash with her emerald-green satin dress. She brought with her a thick first-aid kit and a police dog hell-bent on revenge, who started snapping at the enemy’s calves the moment he stepped outside.
Dax collected Orsini and deposited him next to Capestan. After a fit of coughing and before Rosière could tend to him, he turned his swollen face towards the commissaire and placed his fingers gently on her forearm to get her attention. Capestan leaned in until she could feel Orsini’s breath on her ears. He let out a groan before the words came:
“I’ve found something. I think I know who killed Ramier . . .”
“What? Who? Someone we know?”
Orsini nodded with difficulty.
“Later, later . . . After all this,” he said, pointing to the square that was still in complete turmoil.
At the start of the conflict, the squad had been outnumbered three hundred to ten. Now they were reduced to five, while the mob seemed to be gathering apace. The fountain’s stone nymphs surveyed the carnage, smiling nonchalantly throughout.
Saint-Lô was in a bind as three hefty chaps bore down on him. He was backing into the wall to avoid a rear attack. In the corner of his eye, he saw Lewitz struggling to pull himself up on a downpipe to come to his defence. Saint-Lô shook his head and shouted:
“No! Just the crutch!”
Holding the crutch aloft like a javelin, the brigadier launched it at Saint-Lô, who caught it mid-flight. His teeth flashed as he grinned broadly. He tested the weight of the long instrument with an expert gesture and, when he had found the optimal balance, he tightened his grip, flipped the two semi-circular pieces of plastic to the outside, and brandished it with an air of gleeful self-confidence.
Stick Together Page 20