“I’m on my way. Who is this lady?”
“Mme. Vidal. She wanted to see Lieutenant Llach, but he has gone home. I was able to reach him on his cell phone, but he told me it would be good if you could talk to her yourself.”
Sebag was about to reply that he didn’t know this lady and that he preferred to postpone the conversation when he remembered: Josette Vidal was Bernard Martinez’s woman friend. He walked faster and was soon crossing the headquarters’ threshold.
A small brunette lady was waiting for him in the lobby. She stood straight as an arrow on her high-heeled shoes. Her dyed hair and her made-up face made her look a good ten years younger than she was. She held out an emaciated hand. Rather than take her to his office, Sebag decided to have her sit down in a cubicle near the lobby where the policemen received complaints. He introduced himself and sat on the corner of the desk.
“With my colleague Joan Llach, I’m working on the murder of Bernard Martinez. May I ask what brings you here, Mme. Vidal?”
“I can’t figure out who owns Bernard’s apartment.”
Her velvety Catalan accent attenuated the dryness of her tone.
“It’s very annoying, I’ve got piles of papers to deal with and I don’t know what to do,” she explained. “And moreover, I thought he owned it. I wouldn’t want someone to demand back rent from me a few months from now. With my little pension I couldn’t pay it, and what Bernard left me certainly isn’t enough. Poor fellow! He didn’t have much to live on . . . ”
“You must have found receipts for rent payments among his papers?”
“No, otherwise I wouldn’t be here bothering you.”
“And you’re sure that he wasn’t the owner?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. The notary told me, and the building manager confirmed it.”
“But the building manager must know who owns it.”
Sebag felt himself getting irritated. He didn’t see how all this was his concern. Josette Vidal was also beginning to get annoyed as she saw the policeman’s indifference to her problems.
“The manager referred me to some kind of corporation whose telephone number and address I don’t have. Just a post office box in Spain. I wrote to it giving my contact information, but I’ve still had no response. So I’m getting worried. Will Inspector Llach be here tomorrow? He was very nice . . . ”
Unlike you, Sebag understood.
He huffed for a long time. He’d always hated paperwork. At home, Claire took care of it. He didn’t see why he should take an interest in Josette Vidal’s administrative problems on the sole pretext that she was the girlfriend of a murder victim. This business of the apartment was not in the jurisdiction of the police, but rather in that of the notary and the property manager. He was about to send Josette Vidal away with all the politeness and respect owed to her age when she laid down before him the paper on which she had written the name of the company that owned the apartment.
Sebag saw it. He grabbed the paper and feverishly reread the name. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He abruptly stood up. He suddenly took a passionate interest in Mme. Vidal’s problems. The old lady noted with pleasure and surprise the policeman’s sudden change of heart. Sebag politely accompanied her back to the lobby and told her in a reassuring voice:
“Don’t worry, Mme. Vidal, I’ll take care of everything.”
CHAPTER 28
Sebag was drinking his morning coffee on the terrace of his house. Dead leaves covered the tarp protecting the swimming pool. They came from their apricot tree and the neighbors’ cherry tree. The north wind was making them fall and then blowing them into a corner of the garden. A pile of leaves was already forming near the fence, and would have to be cleaned up the following weekend. Everything was a matter of timing. In Catalonia, the caprices of the wind made Sunday gardeners fatalistic and lazy.
Gilles shivered.
He glanced at the thermometer. It was still above 14 degrees, despite the advance of autumn, but that was only one indicator among others of the mildness of the weather. The north wind also had something to say about it. And it often expressed it. This morning, it was even shouting at top volume.
Gilles wrapped his hands around the hot cup of coffee and closed his eyes to listen to the wind’s lament.
It was humming in hoarse, powerful gusts through the heavy branches of the cedar that bordered their garden on the west, alternating deep silences with thunderous blasts. It was carrying in its nets the sounds of the neighboring subdivision: Gilles could hear a car door slam, the screech of a shutter being rolled up, and then the crying of a child on his way to school. Sometimes the wind conveyed to him, through the opening of a door or window, the empty chatter of a television set.
When the wind came off the sea, it produced a different music. Blowing out of the east, it slipped through the frail stalks of the bamboo, whistling a merry air despite the humidity that it brought along with it. The sea wind blew toward Sebag’s house the heavy, metallic noise of the Saint-Estève industrial zone. Not to mention the annoying beeping of trucks backing up.
Gilles heard the sliding door open behind his back. He recognized Claire’s walk.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asked
“No. So long as the coffee’s hot . . . ”
He knew, before she asked it, what the next question would be.
“What are you thinking about?”
He slowly turned around and began a smile.
“I’m not thinking, I’m daydreaming.”
Claire’s delicate eyebrows rose.
“I don’t see the difference.”
He sipped his coffee before explaining.
“When you’re in a canoe, letting yourself be carried along is not the same as paddling.”
Claire agreed with a movement of her head that made the beads on her earrings tinkle. Hmm, he’d never seen those before. She must have bought them recently. Or someone had given them to her. A farewell gift, perhaps.
Claire moved her slender neck toward him and offered her lips. Gilles made her drink a sip of his coffee. A drop of coffee slid down her round chin. He wiped it away with a finger that he then put in his mouth. Claire smiled at him with her shining green eyes bordered in black.
She was wearing a belted dress and black stockings. He found her beautiful. Too beautiful to be happy. He finished his coffee in a single gulp.
“I’d have liked to have some more,” Claire complained pleasantly.
“I can make you some more.”
“I’m going to be late.”
“It won’t take long.”
“Let it go—it won’t have the same taste. I’ll have one when I get to school if there’s time.”
“From the machine?”
“Yes, it isn’t as good as yours but it’s not bad, either.”
“Pouah, you disappoint me . . . ”
“I know, my love, I know . . . ”
His cell phone clamped between his shoulder and his ear, Sebag wrote down a name in his notebook. At the same time, through the open door to the meeting room, he was watching the superintendent, who was sitting in his usual place, reading the reports from the day before and in particular Sebag’s presentation at the prefecture. His hand, nervously tapping on the table, betrayed his impatience. Sebag, who knew him well, was aware that he always came back in a very bad humor from these consultations with the upper hierarchy of the police establishment. So he tried not to make the conversation any longer than necessary.
“Thanks, Didier, for this information. I don’t doubt that it will be of great help to us. Call me if you find out anything else, O.K.?”
Sebag hung up and went into the meeting room. Standing near the window, Joan Llach was looking at the snowy slopes of Le Canigou. Up there, the north wind was blowing the snow, making a plume for the sacred mountain. Molina, Julie Sadet, a
nd Lambert made their appearance and sat down around the table, spreading around them effluvia composed of tobacco smoke and perfume.
Castello gathered the papers scattered around him and surveyed his troops.
“As usual, Raynaud and Moreno are not here,” he observed grumpily. “Where have those two clowns gone now? This time, it’s too much. I’m canceling their overtime pay and I’m giving them a warning. Enough is enough.”
He took the pile of papers and tapped them on the table to make a neat stack.
“I’ve read your reports, but I’d like you to sum them up here in person. That’s often clearer and more precise.”
Sebag discreetly signaled Julie to encourage her to speak up first. The young woman explained the research she’d done the day before, her intuition, and its results. She received the superintendent’s warm congratulations:
“Bravo. I knew we had to inject a little new blood into this team. And a little feminine intuition, too.”
Llach spoke next. Between calls to car rental agencies, he had also examined the calls Roman had made on his cell phone, a task that had been assigned to him at the outset but which he hadn’t yet had time to carry out.
“Up to now, I’ve looked at the calls for just one week. I didn’t notice anything abnormal. Except that André Roman had a mistress.”
“I don’t see anything abnormal about that,” Molina commented.
“All the same . . . at his age,” Lambert remarked.
“Precisely! Maybe he thought that at his age, it was time to live a little.”
“Molina, we can do without your commentaries,” the superintendent broke in. “Go on, Joan.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have anything else.”
“Too bad.”
Castello nervously scratched the end of his nose before continuing.
“I don’t think it would be very useful to contact that woman or even to mention this affair to his widow. For the moment, we’ll let that subject alone. Thierry, you go back to studying Roman’s calls, you never know. Joan’s plate is going to be full today. He’s the only one of us who’s trilingual.”
Castello bent over toward the flying saucer that was still sitting on the table.
“And you, François, anything new in Marseille?”
Lieutenant Ménard’s voice filled the room with a metallic echo.
“Maurice Garcin still hasn’t returned to his retirement home. His sons are beginning to get worried and have requested that a search for him be organized. But our colleagues there aren’t very eager to do that.”
“I imagine they’ve got other things to do up there,” Castello said. “Uh . . . what did you say, François?”
Ménard hadn’t heard the superintendent’s interruption and had continued to talk.
“I was saying that I’d found a few of Garcin’s hairs on his comb in the bathroom. But I don’t know what to do with them.”
“Just mail them to us, that will probably be the simplest way to go.”
“The simplest way isn’t necessarily the fastest way. I was thinking that I might be back before the package arrived.”
Castello immediately threw cold water on his lieutenant’s hopes.
“I still need you to be there. First of all, in case Garcin suddenly reappears. And also because we haven’t yet found all the surviving barbouzes. Have you asked your historian whether the name Manuel Esteban means anything to him?”
“Not yet. But I’ve got an appointment with him early this morning. As for the rest, I was thinking . . . there’s a midafternoon train, and I was hoping I could take it.”
“What a homebody you are, François! The administration offers you a free stay in Marseille and you think only of coming home to Perpignan. For a native of Normandy, you’re sure acting like a true Catalan.”
A protest garbled by static followed:
“ . . . from Picardy, Superintendent . . . not Normandy.”
Castello shook the flying saucer.
“This thing works when it wants to . . . It’s a little like Dario Moreno . . . uh . . . I meant to say like Raynaud and Moreno. Why did I say Dario Moreno? Who was that guy, anyway?”
“An actor and an operetta singer, I think,” Llach replied.
“He was big in the first half of the twentieth century,” Molina added. “He had some famous hits, like ‘If You Go to Rio’ and ‘Coucouroucoucou.’”
“Ah yes, I see. Someone else who helped create the great French song tradition, so to speak.”
Castello was gradually recovering his spirits. For him, contact with work in the field was always the best mood regulator.
“I’m glad to see that my cops have culture,” he joked. “Apart from that, anything else, François?”
“Just a little medical detail that might be of some importance. At Gilles’s request, I questioned the retirement home’s doctors about the way in which they arrived at a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. In fact, there is no single test for that illness, and the doctors render their verdict on the basis of a set of neurological tests and clinical and radiological evidence. Although they acknowledge that diagnostic errors occur from time to time, they doubt that someone could fake it.”
“In short, Maurice Garcin is not a very credible suspect, but he still can’t be crossed off the list?”
“More or less, yes—to my great regret, moreover!” Ménard sighed.
“I understand, François,” Castello assured him. “No need to push too hard. I promise you a humanitarian repatriation as soon as possible, but I’d like you to remain there a little longer. We’ll talk about it again tomorrow.”
“As you wish . . . ”
Castello sat up and massaged his neck. He saw Sebag raise his hand but didn’t immediately give him the floor.
“Just a minute, please. With his complaints, François almost made me forget the DNA analysis of the hairs. I still haven’t read Pagès’s report.” He picked up the telephone and asked his secretary to find the report and bring it to him. Then he turned back to Sebag.
“Did you have something to say?”
“I’ve let everyone sum up their work so that we could see things more clearly, but I think I’ve got something new. Something important.”
He told them about his conversation with the late Bernard Martinez’s woman friend and showed them the piece of paper, which he had kept. Alongside the number of a post office box, Josette Vidal had written the name of the corporation that owned Martinez’s apartment: Babelo, Inc.
“Babelo . . . ” the Superintendent repeated out loud.
“Like the pseudonym of the head of the OAS commando, yes. Obviously, last night I tried to find out more about that corporation but I wasn’t successful, so I entrusted the research to a colleague in the financial unit in Montpellier. He’s the one I had on the phone just before the meeting. He hasn’t yet been able to locate the box exactly—we know it’s in Spain—but he did discover the name of its manager—a certain Georges Lloret.”
“Georges, are you sure?” Joan Llach asked.
“Yes, why? Do you know him?”
“No, not at all, but ‘Lloret’ is a Catalan patronym and since the guy seems to live on the other side of the Pyrenees, I’m astonished that he has a Gallicized first name. The name ought to be Jorge if the guy is Spanish, or Jordi if he’s Catalan.”
“Unless he’s actually of French origin,” Sebag suggested. “A former Pied-Noir who went to live in Spain after the war, for example. It’s not necessarily too much to think that the owner of that company is none other than the former head of the commando . . . ”
Llach was astonished.
“A Pied-Noir with a Catalan name?”
An incomprehensible spitting sound replied.
Castello shook the flying saucer vigorously
“Could you repeat th
at, François? We couldn’t understand you.”
“I was saying that contrary to what most people think, . . . . crhcrh, the majority of the Pieds-Noirs did not come from France. crhhch . . . many Spaniards crhhch . . . and thus necessarily also Catalans . . . crhhch . . . independence, some preferred . . . crhchr . . . the country of their origins. Especially since . . . crhhch Franco’s régime . . . crhhch . . . Gaullist.”
“That’s enough, François. We have a very bad connection. We’ll continue this history lesson later. If you have nothing more to say that is indispensable for the investigation, we’ll let you go.”
“ . . . crhhch . . . crhhche . . . ”
“Right. You have a good day, too!”
Castello slammed the audioconference box down on the table. He pushed on a button to turn it off.
“If I understood correctly what François was trying to say, we can imagine that after the war, this Georges Lloret preferred to return to Franco’s Spain rather than to France under General de Gaulle.”
The superintendent turned over one of the sheets of paper lying in front of him and took a few notes on the back. Then he looked up.
“So, what does all that tell us? Decidedly, it’s still toward Spain that we have to turn our attention if we’re to have any hope of completing this investigation successfully. But we’re not going to limit ourselves to hoping that our colleagues will be quick and efficient, we’re going to move ahead by ourselves. We’re going to find out if this Georges Lloret has a police record, and whether he has a residence or even some kind of position in France. We’re also going to find his telephone number so we can warn him as soon as possible. And then . . . ”
Castello suddenly interrupted himself to stare at Julie, who had been bent over her phone for several minutes.
“Is everything O.K., Mademoiselle Sadet, I’m not bothering you, am I?”
Julie, surprised, quickly raised her head.
“No, not at all . . . ”
Autumn, All the Cats Return Page 26