Autumn, All the Cats Return

by Philippe Georget

  “My legs are so numb I can’t tell if they’re still there,” she complained as she took off her running shoes.

  “Well, I can tell that your feet are still there,” Gilles said, pinching his nose.

  He had a shoe thrown at his head as a reply.

  Sunday was passed in a pleasant and restful ambiance.

  Gilles grilled pork chops on the barbecue and prepared fennel to go with them. The whole family ate on the terrace, probably for the last time that year. Unfortunately, the winter cover had already been put on the swimming pool, which no longer cast bluish reflections on the surrounding trees. As they ate their dessert, the Sebags unanimously adopted Claire’s proposal. After having a quick coffee, they would all go together to the North Perpignan Cineplex. Claire and Sévérine chose Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film, while Gilles went with his son to see a famous and aging American actor confront a series of terrible catastrophes. When the words “The End” appeared on the screen, the star had just saved the world for the umpteenth time, but one observation was ineluctable: he hadn’t been able to do anything to save his career.

  In the late afternoon, Claire and Gilles sat down together on the living room sofa. They surfed the satellite channels and finally chose a news commentary show. A report on the situation in the Near East had caught their attention. Gilles had never understood the quarrels in that troubled region. This was a chance to learn something about them.

  Despite his good intentions, Gilles was repeatedly distracted by thoughts about his work. He lost the thread of the report. That part of the globe was definitely going to remain a mystery to him. Nevertheless a few sentences suddenly grabbed his attention.

  The journalist was interviewing some Israeli extremists, guys who were ready to set the whole region afire and who not only rejected any kind of peace treaty but even seemed to have a deathly fear that one might be signed. “Peace means the assimilation and disappearance of our people,” these fellows said. “Although war kills Jews every year, peace would be the end of all of us.” According to them, Israel, in a peaceful Near East, would be in danger of nothing less than the loss of its soul and its identity. So that Jews might remain proud of their religion and their values, they had to live forever in a hostile environment, like that they had known during two thousand years in diaspora. If over all those years, the Jewish community had not aroused animosity and sometimes hatred among the surrounding peoples, it would have been assimilated and would now have completely disappeared. The same trap was awaiting Israelis today. The trap of peace combined with that of globalization. The Jews could survive only in the context of eternal war. “That is the burden of the chosen people,” these cranks maintained.

  These notions elicited a strange resonance in Sebag’s mind, but he didn’t understand why.

  After the documentary, Claire and Gilles watched the local news. France 3 simply reported Servant’s arrest, and the rest of the Sunday broadcast resembled the Dukan diet: sports, sports, and more sports, a protein-rich menu without any gustatory interest. Claire suggested that they’d be better off watching Michel Drucker’s talk show. Gilles switched to France 2 and got up to make the evening meal. He put soup on to heat and washed a head of lettuce.

  Gilles went to bed early and quickly fell asleep. He was still behind on his sleep.

  But in the middle of the night, disturbing thoughts started interfering with his recuperation. He got up and poured himself a glass of water in the kitchen. He drank it slowly, standing in front of the picture window that looked out onto their terrace. The shadows of the palm fronds were silently dancing on the tarp covering the swimming pool.

  All of a sudden, he understood.

  CHAPTER 43

  Do you really think that he can still tell us something important about the attack?”

  Jacques Molina didn’t conceal his skepticism. He saw no point in calling in a victim early on a Monday morning. Especially a victim who had already been questioned several times.

  “He told us everything, that fellow.”

  Molina was annoyed by his colleague’s silence.

  “Do you think he knows his attackers and isn’t telling us their names?”

  Hiding behind the local newspaper, Sebag was reading the whole page devoted to the arrest of Jean Servant and the solving of the triple murder case. Each time, Jacques’s questions made him lose track of the article. Molina got up to have a look at his concentrating face.

  “Oh, when you’re like that, it’s because you’ve got something brewing,” he said. “A hypnosis session, is that it? Do you think a hypnotic trance is going to help the guy give us information that his subconscious is repressing?”

  He crushed his empty paper cup and threw it in the wastebasket. Then he tried a different tactic to cheer up his colleague.

  “Do you know what they call the process of curing sexual problems through hypnosis?”

  Sebag gave Molina a vacant look. Jacques, smiling, was undeterred.

  “A trance-sexual!”

  Sebag, defeated, granted him a vague smile.

  “Well, finally!” Jacques exclaimed with relief. “It takes a lot of work to get a sign of life out of you on a Monday morning.”

  “Don’t tell me that to produce that kind of joke you had to make a great effort.”

  “You should know . . . ”

  The telephone on Sebag’s desk rang. He picked up the receiver.

  “Hello? Who? Have him come up, please.”

  Sebag hung up and turned to Molina.

  “I’m going to need your help.”

  “At your service.”

  Sebag quickly explained to Molina what he wanted him to do.

  “Understood?”

  “I understand what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t know why. You weren’t real clear about the reasons.”

  “Naturally, I didn’t say what they were.”

  “Oh, that’s why . . . And were you planning to tell me?”

  “Not really.”

  Two knocks on the door of their office allowed Sebag to evade Molina’s questions.

  “Come in!”

  The ruddy, puffy face of Sergeant Ripoll appeared in the doorway.

  “You’re expecting someone, it seems?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “He’s here.”

  The sergeant stepped aside to let Guy Albouker come in. The president of the Pied-Noir Circle shook Sebag’s and Molina’s hands one after the other. The bags under his eyes had grown so large that they looked like a second pair of cheeks. Sebag pointed to a chair and Albouker sat down, pressing his hand to his stomach.

  “Is the wound still painful?” Sebag asked.

  “A little, yes.”

  “Not sleeping well at night?”

  “No, every time I turn over it wakes me up.”

  “The wound should have begun healing over a week ago.”

  “According to the doctor, the wound is healing properly, but it’s still painful.”

  Molina got up and went over to put his hands on Albouker’s shoulders in a familiar way.

  “I was once shot in the side, and it was just like that. Even though during the day the pain seemed to be decreasing, it seemed to me that it came back during the night and was just as strong as ever.”

  “That’s more or less how it is, yes.”

  Sebag gave him a friendly smile.

  “And all the worries caused by this whole business haven’t helped, right?”

  “No, they really haven’t.”

  Guy Albouker’s voice had become increasingly monotone, mechanical. The president of the Pied-Noir Circle was well aware that he hadn’t been asked to come to police headquarters to talk about his health; he was waiting to find out the real reason.

  “I wanted to talk to you about our case and its successful co
nclusion,” Sebag reassured him.

  “I read about it in the newspaper, you needn’t have taken the trouble.”

  Molina moved away toward the door. Before going out he winked at his partner. Sebag was still smiling at Albouker.

  “I wanted to keep you up-to-date. You treated us so well during this investigation . . . That couscous, my word . . . My wife and I will remember that for a long time.”

  “You’re welcome. We’d be glad to have you again . . . ”

  Sebag thanked him and then told him about Jean Servant’s confession. He elaborated on the newspaper article and provided a few explanations regarding the perpetrator’s life, but gave no additional detail regarding the essence of the case. The press had not mentioned the matter of the white hair, and Sebag was careful not to do so, either. When he had finished his account, he stood up and started pacing up and down the office as Albouker watched him with a worried look.

  “Our problem, as you have probably already understood, is that Servant absolutely denies any implication in the vandalism, the threats made against your treasurer, and, of course, the attack on you.”

  Guy Albouker cleared his throat.

  “I was attacked by two young men wearing hoods, I never mentioned an old man. And on the basis of what I now know about the motives for the murders, I don’t see how this attack could be connected with them. It’s clear that these people were trying to take advantage of this case to sow panic and confusion . . . ”

  Sebag sat down in front of him.

  “That’s exactly what we think!”

  “I know: you told me so.”

  “The problem is: who? Who could have wanted to sow panic?”

  Guy Albouker crossed his legs.

  “The Pieds-Noirs have no lack of enemies.”

  “Enemies?” Sebag said, astonished. “I recognize that colonization and the Algerian War remain sensitive topics in our own time, but the term ‘enemies’ seems a little strong.”

  “Every one of our initiatives and our commemorations provokes counterdemonstrations.”

  “At most about fifty left-wing militants—always the same ones—who are very worked up, I grant you, but entirely harmless.”

  “Every camp has its fanatics.”

  “Certainly.”

  Sebag pretended to scribble a few words on a piece of paper. Albouker uncrossed his legs and then crossed them the other way. He put his hand on his knee.

  “We can’t exclude the possibility that the young men who attacked me come from left-wing milieus, but are rather . . . uh . . . well . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t like casting aspersions on people like that, I . . . Above all, I wouldn’t want to appear racist . . . But I might have been attacked by young Algerians. Fanatics, as I said.”

  “Hmm, hmm.”

  Sebag made an exaggeratedly skeptical face.

  “It seems to me that young Algerians don’t give a damn about that time. They were born thirty years after independence. Everything that still seems so important to you is prehistoric for them!”

  “For Algerian youth in general, that’s true, but as I was saying, it takes only a few fanatics.”

  “Hmm.”

  Sebag deliberately made a pause. He gave Albouker a friendly glance and smiled at him distractedly. He drew out this moment as if he were reflecting on what they would talk about next. He knew what he had to do, but considered it useful to let things ripen before putting his cards on the table. He had a phony trump card up his sleeve that he had to turn into a winner.

  He took a deep breath, opened a drawer, and took out a plastic bag that he threw on the desk. Albouker couldn’t help moving closer to look at it. Sebag said nothing.

  “What is it?” the president of the Circle finally asked.

  “A hair.”

  “I see that.”

  “A white hair.”

  Albouker ran his index finger and thumb over his fleshy lips. Then his fingers pushed down the corners of his mouth, unconsciously making him look disillusioned.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We found this white hair in the Haut-Vernet cemetery. At the foot of the vandalized monument. Contrary to what we’d thought, it does not belong to Jean Servant. But we have every reason to think that it belongs to the person who destroyed the monument.

  Guy Albouker uncrossed his legs and put both feet on the floor.

  “So it wouldn’t be young people . . . ”

  “So it seems.”

  “That gives you a larger number of potential suspects . . . ”

  Sebag deliberately did not take the cue. Looking straight into his interlocutor’s eyes, he dropped the little bomb he’d prepared.

  “So far as I’m concerned, I see mainly one suspect.”

  Albouker’s black eyebrows shot up over his eyes.

  “Now I don’t understand you at all.”

  “I have to say that I had trouble understanding you, too.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Albouker furtively ran his finger over the narrow space between his mouth and his nose, on which a drop of sweat had formed.

  “Can you explain, Lieutenant Sebag?”

  The inspector put his left elbow on the desk and rested his chin on his upright arm.

  “You understood me, Monsieur Albouker. I think you are the person who destroyed the OAS monument. I think you faked the attack on yourself, and put a threatening letter in your treasurer’s mailbox.”

  Albouker leaped out of his chair, holding his stomach with both hands.

  “What’s wrong with you, are you crazy? You think I stabbed myself in the stomach? You’re taking me for a madman.”

  “Sit down, please,” Sebag replied calmly. “No one’s crazy. Neither you nor I.”

  Albouker was stamping his feet. He had removed one of his hands from his stomach and was waving it in the air.

  “Listen, I have no desire to listen to your wild imaginings. I thought we had sufficient esteem for one another, and here you are speaking to me as if I were a criminal . . . ”

  “Calm down, Monsieur Albouker. I’m well aware that the criminal in this case is Jean Servant. You’ve committed only a few misdemeanors.”

  “I’ve heard enough, I have no further business here.”

  Albouker turned on his heel and headed for the door.

  “I won’t say goodbye to you, Lieutenant Sebag.”

  “I won’t say goodbye to you either, Monsieur Albouker, because you’re not going to leave. Not immediately, at least.”

  The president of the Circle turned around and faced Sebag.

  “Are you going to stop me?”

  “The sergeant who brought you here is waiting on the other side of the door. He has instructions not to let you leave this room.

  Albouker took two steps toward the desk. He’d gone pale.

  “Am I to understand that I am in police custody?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then you don’t have the right to hold me . . . ”

  “Monsieur Albouker, you’re going to sit down willingly and listen to me.” He put his hand on the receiver of his telephone. “Otherwise I’m going to call the prosecutor and ask his authorization to put you in police custody.”

  “You’re crazy, you don’t have anything on me.”

  Sebag smiled. The clumsy formulation sounded like the beginning of a confession.

  “I recognize that for the moment I don’t have much. That’s why I’d prefer to wait to put you in police custody. But I should have something new any second now, so if you’ll oblige me . . . ”

  Albouker consented to sit down.

  “What is this information you are about to receive?”

  “And then, as decent people, we ought to be able to dispense with
this rather onerous procedure. Put you in police custody? Frankly, if I can avoid . . . ”

  A profound silence followed. Albouker did not dare reformulate the question that was on the tip of his tongue and that the inspector had just evaded. Everything in his attitude confirmed Sebag’s suspicions. The president of the Circle had pretended to be indignant whereas he should have responded only with amused surprise. He’d agreed to sit down again instead of playing out the trial of strength all the way to the end. And above all, for the last few seconds a damp, stale air had filled the room. Sebag recognized the smell of fear.

  He knew he’d scored a hit.

  But he still had to play a subtle game because his file was empty. Desperately empty. He had only presumptions and no proof. He turned his chair around to face his computer and began to write up a report.

  “Last name, first name, age, and occupation?”

  Albouker looked at him feverishly for a few seconds before replying. Instead of writing down what he said, Sebag was writing a quick e-mail that Molina was waiting to receive on his iPhone. He sent the message and continued his questions.

  “What were you doing in the wee hours of last Wednesday night?”

  “That’s a long time ago . . . I was probably sleeping.”

  “Can your wife confirm that?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Does she have a good memory?”

  “In general, yes.”

  “So she’ll remember very well the night you were sleepless last week?”

  “ . . . ”

  “You don’t recall that? She talked to us about it during that lovely couscous dinner at the Circle’s offices . . . According to her, it was Martinez’s murder that had upset you.”

  “I remember that now. It’s true that I sometimes have trouble sleeping.”

  “She told us that you went out that night . . . ”

  “That’s possible . . . I do that occasionally when I can’t sleep at all.”

  “As you did last Wednesday night?”

  “I don’t remember for sure.”