The monument had always aroused a lot of opposition. Ever since it was erected in 2003, every June 7th an extremist association of Pieds-Noirs tried to organize a ceremony in honor of the OAS’s former combatants, invariably provoking a call for a counterdemonstration. To avoid any incident, on each occasion the prefect issued an order forbidding both the ceremony and the demonstration. Sebag thought he also remembered that the monument had already been the object of vandalism. But at the time that act had not been preceded by a man’s murder.
However, did that mean that this new defacement was necessarily connected with Martinez’s murder? Sebag thought again about Albouker’s recent statements. The president of the Pied-Noir Circle had wondered whether the community of former French of Algeria wasn’t the real target of this murder. Gilles had immediately rejected that notion. Perhaps a little too quickly, he now said to himself.
Officer André Ripoll, his hands full of stakes, stood at attention in front of him:
“Where should we put them?”
“Cordon off a space of thirty square meters around the monument and that will be fine.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ripoll said, scratching his skull under his cap.
Sebag added in an ironic tone:
“Let’s say, a space about six meters by five.”
Ripoll went away mumbling a few words, half in French, half in Catalan. Sebag had annoyed him, he was well aware of that and fully satisfied by it. God alone knew why, the old officer irritated him and he took a malicious pleasure in needling him every time they met. These were the only times in his life when he abused his hierarchical position that way, but it always relieved him.
With the help of another policeman, Ripoll quickly set up a few stakes and then attached the traditional yellow tape to them, making use of a few nearby tombs as well. He came back toward Sebag.
“What I especially wanted to tell you a little while ago is that this cordon of yours isn’t going to be of much use. With all the rain that fell tonight and is still falling, the forensic guys are not likely to find many clues here.”
“That’s possible, but it’s our job. Now you can go back and stay dry in your car.”
Ripoll looked at his soaked uniform and then murmured:
“Stay dry, stay dry, it’s a little late for that . . . ”
Another car came down the lane and parked near the others. Despite the mist on the windows, Sebag recognized Elsa Moulin’s cheerful face.
The young woman got out of the car dressed in a banana-yellow oilskin zipped up to her chin and strawberry-red plastic boots. As soon as she emerged, she put her curly hair under an apple-green cloche. She looked like a mischievous little girl.
“Hi!” she cried out joyously.
He thought Elsa looked splendid, and told her so.
“I thought I wasn’t going to see the sun today.”
Elsa seemed surprised. Sebag was usually very reserved with women. She smiled and her eyes lingered on him for a few moments. Then she walked over to the monument.
“You’re not wearing your usual outfit?”
She replied as she looked at the monument.
“It would be better but I’m not sure it’s waterproof.”
“By the way, is Pagès still on leave?”
“Until the end of the week, yes.”
She returned to her vehicle and opened the trunk. First she took out an umbrella that she opened and balanced on her shoulder. Then she hung her camera around her neck.
“First a few pictures . . . ” she said when she came back to Sebag. “Could you hold my umbrella for me, please? It’s mainly to keep the camera dry.”
He obeyed with pleasure. Together they began by backing up to take general views of the traffic circle. Then they approached the monument little by little. Medium-range views and then close-ups. Elsa even went so far as to almost glue herself to the monument to photograph the impact of the hammer blows in detail. Sebag conscientiously held the umbrella over the young woman and the camera. Water was running off the plasticized fabric and onto his soaked cap. A few drops occasionally ran down his neck.
When Elsa had finished taking her pictures, they returned to the car. Sheltered by the umbrella and by the open trunk lid, the young woman carefully put away her equipment in a bag. Then she took out a heavy case.
“Could you help, me, please? It’s what I’m doing that has to be protected. My sweet little face doesn’t matter.”
He went with her to do the tedious work of collecting evidence. His thoughts very quickly turned elsewhere. If Castello had sent them here so rapidly, it was because he didn’t want to think it was a coincidence. But how could this act of pure vandalism be connected with a cold-blooded murder? For Sebag, that didn’t make sense. At the same time, the proximity of the two events couldn’t be completely random.
Elsa’s work took a good hour. At one point, she held her tweezers before his eyes. She’d just found a white hair on the gravel. They grimaced simultaneously.
“This isn’t yours, is it?” Elsa joked.
“Not yet.”
She put the hair in a plastic bag that she labeled in the shelter of the umbrella. Despite his raincoat, Sebag felt soaked to the skin. His shoes had long since ceased to be waterproof and every step he took was accompanied by a ridiculous sucking sound. After Elsa left, he went back to the police car. As he approached, Ripoll rolled down the window, revealing his shriveled, anxious face.
“I think you can go now,” Sebag told him. “Leave the area cordoned off at least until tomorrow and keep a man at the entrance to the cemetery to watch for any suspicious movement.”
Ripoll nodded, reassured. He was the leader of their group and he had already decided to delegate the work to the youngest member while he went to dry out his uniform in front of the radiators at headquarters.
“I’d like the man who remains here to be experienced,” Sebag added treacherously. “I want you to do it, Ripoll.”
The old policeman’s face shriveled up again. His mouth and nose came closer as if they were going to fold inward, and his eyes half closed. Ripoll gave a military salute laden with cold hostility. Sebag walked away, a smile on his lips. He really didn’t understand the sick pleasure he took in tormenting this poor cop. But he didn’t care. He felt no remorse. He felt good. Relaxed. And he didn’t even feel annoyed when he once again stepped in a hole full of icy water as he was getting into his car.
He started the car and turned the fan on maximum to clear the fogged windows. He drove slowly as far as the gate to the cemetery but stopped there to talk to the caretaker. The man had fallen sound asleep, lulled by the beating of the rain on the roof of his lodge. He’d discovered the damage early in the morning, when he’d taken advantage of a brief letup in the rain to make his daily rounds through the tombs. Sebag saw that he wouldn’t learn anything from the man, and didn’t linger.
Before starting down the avenue to the hospital, he took out his cell phone and punched in a number. His day was going to be entirely occupied by this new event, and he had to cancel the appointment he’d made for the afternoon in connection with his investigation of Mathieu’s accident. Too bad. Sévérine would just have to wait a little longer. He left a message on the cell phone of the witness with whom he was supposed to meet and suggested that they postpone the interview until the following morning.
On his way to headquarters, he made a detour to stop at his home. He changed clothes, but the only footwear he found was running shoes. With slacks and a raincoat, it wasn’t the look he would have chosen. Considering himself in the mirror, he thought he looked almost ridiculous. Oh, well, just once won’t matter, he told himself philosophically.
Pascal Lucas, the driver of the van, called him on his cell phone while he was alone in his office, writing a report on the destruction of the monument.
“Hello, Inspector. I’ve just remember
ed something important. The car, the Clio, had Spanish license plates!”
The driver’s voice was vibrating with excitement, but his slurred voice left little doubt that he had been drinking.
“That could be an interesting detail,” Sebag said coolly. “Assuming that I can really count on it. Tell me the truth, Mr. Lucas, have you drunk quite a bit today?”
“No more than usual,” the driver said sullenly.
“But no less, either.”
On the other end of the line, Pascal Lucas replied, almost inaudibly, “No.”
“And how did you come to have this . . . revelation?”
“I was watching a series on TV and there was a car with a Spanish license plate, and that was what made me think of it.”
“Fine, fine, I’ve noted that down, Mr. Lucas. I’ll see what I can do with it.”
Sebag hung up, puzzled. Could alcohol have the same effect on memory as hypnosis? Could it also make thoughts we assumed had been erased reemerge from the black abyss of our brains? He remained skeptical, but he had hardly any choice but to pretend to believe it.
He realized that his witness hadn’t yet called back. He dialed his number again, and this time immediately got him. The guy could talk with him the following morning, and they agreed to meet at the site of the accident.
“But watch out, Lieutenant,” the man warned him amiably, “if you have to cancel this time it will be several days before I can talk to you. I have to go to Spain for my work.”
Sebag crossed his fingers as he hung up. He hoped that there wouldn’t be another unexpected impediment. Too many days had already passed since the tragedy, and the longer it was, the more memories were likely to fade.
He thought again of Lieutenant Cardona’s rage and glimpsed for a moment the malicious pleasure his colleague would take if he failed to find a new lead. And above all, he imagined Sévérine’s disappointment. Gilles could handle anything but that.
That white Clio had to exist.
He had to prove it.
He had to identify the driver.
“Well, gentlemen, we really didn’t need that.”
Castello’s tone was not in any way facetious. He’d abruptly left his summit meeting of superintendents in Paris to catch the first afternoon plane.
“Since the ministry is already not very happy with us, I can tell you they’ll be keeping a close eye on us. Moreover, I expect the arrival of the director of the prefect’s cabinet any minute now.”
In the meeting room, Sebag, Molina, Llach, and Lambert were physically present, while Ménard was participating via conference call from Marseille.
“Where are Raynaud and Moreno?” Castello said with concern.
Without waiting for an answer, he picked up the telephone in front of him and asked his secretary to call the two members of the team who were late.
“Tell them that if they aren’t here in five minutes, I’ll cancel all their overtime pay for the last month.”
He hung up angrily.
“Normally, I like to begin our meetings by laying out the facts and the first evidence collected by the investigation, but just for once I would like to begin with conclusions. Before the cabinet director arrives, I want to take up right away the question that seems to me essential: Should we connect the act of vandalism against the OAS monument with Martinez’s murder? Gilles?”
Sebag had been expecting Castello to ask him to speak first. He’d thought about it all afternoon.
“The coincidence is disturbing, I have to admit, but I have a hard time imagining that the same individual is responsible for these two acts. A murder and an act of vandalism have nothing in common. And then the timing doesn’t work, either. If everything was planned by a single individual, I think the acts would be committed in ascending order. Here, we start off with a murder . . . ”
Sebag looked at his boss and then at his colleagues. His arguments hadn’t hit home. They all remained perplexed. He wasn’t surprised. He himself probably wouldn’t have been convinced. He always had trouble putting into words what he felt regarding certain investigations.
Joan Llach spoke up:
“All the same, ‘OAS’ written on a door at a crime scene and a couple of days later, the destruction of a monument erected in honor of that organization is disturbing, to say the least.”
“That’s true, but we could very easily explain that coincidence by the fact that the murder of Martinez might have aroused hostilities between the Pieds-Noirs and their opponents,” Sebag replied.
“We could . . . if we’d mentioned that ‘OAS’ was written on Martinez’s door. But I remind you that we didn’t release that information. We didn’t give it to the media.”
Sebag rejected Llach’s argument.
“Right, but we all mentioned the OAS when we talked with the people close to Martinez. And also in our interviews with the left-wing activists we met. In a little city like Perpignan, information travels fast.”
“The leftists were very tetchy yesterday,” Molina pointed out. “Besides, on that subject . . . ”
The door of the meeting room opened, interrupting Molina.
Raynaud-Moreno, the brotherly duo, made an entrance they would have liked to have been more discreet.
“Good evening,” Moreno said in his barely audible, sepulchral voice. Raynaud limited himself to making a vague sign with his hand.
“Finally!” the Superintendent said angrily. “May I ask what you were working on today that made you so late?”
The two inspectors sat down, taking care not to make their chairs squeak. They glanced at each other as they always did, and it was Moreno who spoke for both of them.
“We’re still working on the holdup at the pari-mutuel bar on Rue Foch.”
Three weeks earlier, two armed and hooded individuals had held up a bar, seriously wounding the manager. Probably the same ones who had then engaged in several other holdups in the neighboring department of Aude.
“And are you making progress?”
The two acolytes of the “laughing brigade”—that was the nickname the other inspectors sometimes gave them—exchanged glances again.
“Not much,” Moreno recognized.
“Then for the moment you’ll put that case on ice and, for once, you’ll work in the team. I mean ‘team’ in the broad sense—I’m not referring to you two.”
The two men reluctantly acquiesced. Castello turned to Sebag.
“Do you have anything else to say about what we were talking about?”
“For my part, no.”
“Does anyone else want to say something?”
A metallic voice rose in the room. All eyes converged on the flying saucer that had been set on the table. Ménard was speaking from Marseille.
“Are we completely giving up the idea that the two crimes are connected?”
“We never exclude anything, you know that very well,” the superintendent replied. “And, unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll have a choice this time. Everyone is going to push us in that direction. The Pied-Noir community is going to be indignant, even worried, and more than ever we’re going to be walking on eggshells. We need to make rapid progress.”
“Exactly . . . ” Molina began.
Two loud knocks on the door interrupted him. Castello got up immediately. He opened the door and stood aside to let a woman enter. She was as young as she was severe-looking. Sebag, who had already met her, knew that she was only twenty-five years old, and had just graduated from the ENA.9 The post as director of the cabinet of the prefect of Pyrénées-Orientales was her first, and if she lacked a sense of humor and flexibility, she had already shown herself to be very efficient. She smoothed out her straight skirt before sitting down.
Castello introduced her to his men more out of politeness than necessity:
“Mlle. Sabi
ne Henri, who is representing the prefect here.”
The young woman took the time to look carefully at each of the inspectors. She wore glasses with rectangular lenses and black frames.
“Good evening, gentlemen. I won’t conceal the fact that the prefect is very concerned about the turn these events have taken. He fears that the situation will degenerate very quickly, and demands rapid results.” The inspectors silently nodded their assent. They were being respectful and docile, but none of them was fooled: they knew that a police investigation requires work, rigor, and sometimes luck, but it always requires patience. Results couldn’t be produced by a movement of her chin.
Castello took the floor again.
“Before you arrived, we were talking about the vandalism at the monument in Haut-Vernet. Lieutenant Sebag was there this morning. Lieutenant?”
Sebag circulated the photos Elsa Moulin had taken.
“The forensic team didn’t find much around the monument. No fingerprints, no footprints. It has to be said that the surfaces in the cemetery—mainly asphalt, with some gravel here and there—don’t really favor prints. The weather conditions didn’t make their task any easier, either. Despite everything, however, they did find a white hair on the gravel.”
While he was giving this last bit of information, he’d given Molina a little kick under the table to warn him not to make any inappropriate jokes. His partner got the message and limited himself to repressing a groan of pain. Sebag went on:
“The initial observations suggest that the instrument used to damage the monument was a sledgehammer of the usual size, the kind that can be found in every home improvement store in the region.”
The cabinet director was listening and observing him neutrally.
“The gate to the cemetery is closed at night, but the perimeter wall is not even two meters high,” Sebag explained. “Thus, it would be easy to get over. On the west side, it is sheltered by a row of trees that can be climbed without anyone noticing.”
Sebag stopped abruptly. He didn’t know what else to say. The young woman’s smooth, oval face came to life. Her delicate lips opened.
Autumn, All the Cats Return Page 11