The Beast of the Camargue

by Xavier-Marie Bonnot

  “No, not about that gun. I’ve told you everything.”

  “So what’s Le Grand up to at the moment?”

  “No idea, boss. Honest.”

  “Try and find out, my son,” Maistre said. “We’re not here to hassle you. Respect, O.K.? Respect. But Le Grand is playing the fool right now. Tell us what you know, or else the shit will hit the fan. If we’re talking like this, it’s because that SIG was used to shoot someone.”

  “Who, boss?”

  “One of ours,” said de Palma. “And that’s really not good news.”

  “I don’t shoot cops, boss.”

  When they were back in the car on the motorway that passed by the port, Maistre and de Palma remained silent. Lornec had put them in their place. If he was telling the truth then a SIG had vanished either from police headquarters or from the clerks’ office after it had been seized. Apart from the enormity of the event, there was also the difficulty in following up this sort of lead.

  “I’m on duty at 5 o’clock, Michel. I’ll have to drop you off in town.”

  “Wherever you want, Le Gros.”

  “I’ll deal with the SIG.”

  13.

  Voices were rising from out in the darkness. Christian Rey could hear them intermittently. When he had completely woken up, the voices had melted into the reality that forced itself back once again.

  How many days had he spent without eating or drinking?

  His mouth was now no more than an open wound. His lips had split open from thirst. The stench of his guts filled his mouth, as if he’d swallowed barrels of putrid wine.

  His tongue had shrunk. He was sure of it. It felt like a little piece of black horn, as hard as a knife handle. It clattered against his palate each time he moved it.

  His eyes burned in their sockets, the final flames of life in his battered body; a timid blaze rising from the warm embers of a fireplace. He remembered how in his last dream he had called on death, but death had not come.

  Death does not come just like that. He had been its delivery boy often enough, too often, to know that.

  How many people had he killed? Gangland small fry, and big-time chiselers too. How many?

  Faces appeared. Faces compressed by the forceps of memory, distorted as though pressed behind a window. He remembered the number twelve. No more, no less. He obeyed the law of the jungle. There was no fixed price, despite what was said in the press and by experts on the box. He killed to order, and his rate ranged from nothing to a hundred thousand.

  The police had never found out about him. They just had their suspicions. Nothing more. All they knew about was the machines.

  “A big hello from uncle”—that was what he used to say before pressing the trigger of an anonymous .45. “A big hello from uncle.”

  “SAY HELLO TO HIM FROM US!” the voices out of the void seemed to yell back.

  He wanted to shout, release a little suffering from his guts, from the rubbish chute of his memory. But sounds no longer came: his throat was like a red-hot exhaust pipe.

  Half dead, he listened to the shadows that were smothering him.

  Someone or something was moving a few meters away. On the other side of his prison wall. A panting sound and banging. As though a heavy object was being dragged across the ground and a door or a cover being closed. It made a dull crack. He analyzed the sound and found nothing in his memory that might fit it. The sound was not sharp, like two objects banging together.

  Rey moved around as much as possible in order to make a noise: so someone might hear and bring help. He crouched on the ground like a limbless saurian and tried to wriggle over to the wall.

  But he could not. And behind it, just meters away, the sounds continued. Something was moving more and more. He thought he could even hear a human voice.

  There was a furious shifting and snuffling. Like the sound of an animal. He was sure of it now. It was long breaths coming from a huge maw, interspersed by the sound of feet running over what sounded like damp earth, possibly mud. A heavy, sucking sound.

  One last time, he tried to cry out.

  Then he flopped on the floor, beaten.

  He thought again of his childhood. He said to himself that so long as he had a spark of consciousness left, he should remember what had been sweet in his young life. But the images rebounded off each other, visions from nowhere, faces he had never seen, situations he had never imagined. Everything jumbled together, in close-up, behind his half-closed eyes.

  He realized that his mind was playing magic tricks on him before making its bow and allowing death to do its job.

  It felt as though he were appearing before the god of mobsters, the one who counts the ill deeds and buggers you if you interfere. The god of thugs, who had lost his place on the Capitol and was now doing overtime in the corridors of pain. The god of the lightless.

  For days now, Rey had been wondering when exactly things had gone wrong for him. He supposed that it must have been after his mother’s death.

  He was seventeen. Prison had followed. Then the years of pimping, of slapping around his meager herd and fucking them fast at night, after everyone else. The pimp always comes after everyone else.

  He had dipped his dick in the come of the customers of the two fat whores who worked for him. That was when things had started to go wrong. Really go wrong.

  The evening when Betty the brunette had told him about missing her periods, he had roughed her up more than usual. He remembered having got drunk and starting all over again. It wasn’t right, he knew it, but it had not bothered him. He had dumped Betty in a disused well between Maussane and Eygalières and then gone back to his bar and stuffed himself with khemia and pastis.

  The gendarmes had found the body, but that was all. Impossible to identify.

  Death was in him now. That would not really bother him, but he wanted to know WHO and WHY.

  On the other side of the wall, the din kept up. He heard a long clanking of iron and sheets of metal clashing together. It was a sound he knew, the kind that the door of the barn made on the farm where he had spent the only holidays of his youth. A big door mounted on a rail was being opened. He was sure of it. It brought back memories.

  Images surged up from his agony.

  And then a voice rose in the darkness. A high-pitched voice.

  “Lagadigadeu, la tarasco, lagadigadeu …”

  Then a second, deeper one:

  “Laïssa passa la vieio masco … Laïssa passa que vaï dansa …”

  The two voices joined together.

  “La tarasco dou casteu, la tarasco dou casteu …”

  Rey recognized that song from his distant childhood.

  *

  De Palma and Maistre made their way through the tourists who were congesting the rue Boulegon. When they reached place de l’Hôtel de Ville, it stank of melting sandals, redheads’ armpits and pavement deposits. De Palma spotted Le Grand in his lair: the Café des Deux Mondes.

  Standing a few meters from the entrance, he analyzed the scene with precision: minimal risk. Marc Morini alias Le Grand was quietly sipping a beer, his back to the door, with his bodyguard facing any possible danger. Just like all gangland bosses. And this morning, no one was expecting any danger. In Aix, the underworld feels at home.

  De Palma approached. The bodyguard stood up.

  “What’s your problem?” he said, taking off his Ray-Bans.

  De Palma produced his warrant card and stood in front of Le Grand. Maistre arrived behind him.

  “Police, sir,” said Maistre, his hand on his Beretta. “Keep your hands on the table and identify yourself.”

  “Vincent Lopez.”

  “L.O.P.E.Z.?”

  “That’s right.”

  Morini’s lips were blue and taut. He took a gulp of beer and put the glass back down firmly on the table.

  “Not in front of the customers, gentlemen,” said Morini.

  Maistre stared at him then told the three customers drinking at the bar to
get lost.

  “And who are you?”

  “Marc Morini, the owner.”

  “O.K., so do like your pal. Hands on the table.”

  De Palma went round the table and searched the bodyguard.

  “Just a second … lucky-dip time … and we win a Glock! This gentleman has taste. A brand-new 9 mm.”

  The Baron pushed Lopez down onto the table and slipped on the handcuffs.

  “How are things, Morini?”

  “I don’t know who you are, sir … or why you’re talking to me like that,” the mobster said, his cheeks and double chin wobbling. “Do you have a warrant?”

  “No one mentioned any warrant,” said Maistre, raising his hand. “Start by shutting the fuck up or I’ll blow your balls off.”

  Morini lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke like a bull about to charge.

  The Baron checked that the toilets were empty and that there was no one in the kitchen, before closing the door of the bar and drawing the curtains. He then went behind the counter and opened the drawers one by one. Just below the till he found a second gun: a loaded C.Z. 9 mm, with a bullet in the chamber.

  “Well now, Jean-Louis, this is starting to look like criminal conspiracy here, with the arsenal and all. Do you think we’ll find a little powder, or shall we wait a while longer?”

  “Why, have you got some with you?”

  De Palma went over to Morini and stared straight into his eyes.

  “So you’re the big boy round here! A simple bar owner in the center of Aix. The same old story: a little café, to justify the earnings, no messing … Look, Jean-Louis, there’s even a fruit machine!”

  “Yes, but then there’s everything behind it, and we’re no fools.”

  “So, now, all together, we’re going to the back of the bar. We’ve got things to talk about, lads. And you, the thug, we’ll put you in the kitchen.”

  Marc Morini mumbled something incomprehensible as he sat down on the plastic upholstery on the bench at the far end of his bar.

  “I’ll be brief,” said de Palma calmly. “Either you tell us a bit about your projects in the Camargue, or else we dip you seriously in the shit. I’m sure if we look hard enough we’ll find some dope. We’re here informally, but our friends at the commissariat will join us if we call them. And they’ll find whatever we choose to show them.”

  Morini’s head had sunk into his shoulders, like a boxer who knows that this round is not going his way.

  “Does S.O.D.E.G.I.M. mean anything to you?”

  Le Grand shook his head and exhaled through his nose.

  “What, lost your memory?”

  De Palma put two sachets of what could well have been heroin down on the table. Morini pulled back.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “It was a commissaire from Paris who taught me this trick. It goes back to the French Connection. In the report, these two bags will be what I found behind the bar, just next to the gun.”

  “Bastards …”

  The Baron shoved a finger into the flesh of Morini’s cheek.

  “No swearing, Morini, or things could turn nasty.”

  Maistre heard a noise from the kitchen. He stood up and drew his Beretta.

  “What’s all this about S.O.D.E.G.I.M? It doesn’t exist any more!”

  “There we go. And what about Philippe Borland?”

  Morini breathed in sharply then glared at the Baron, his tiny bright eyes full of fury.

  “O.K., O.K … he was a manager. I wanted to invest a little money, but as I can’t do it officially, I took him on.”

  “Fine. So nothing belongs to you, but everything is yours. Now tell me about that park in Provence, the Big South.”

  “I … dunno. What’s that?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Marco. The amusement park in Provence. How about a little cooperation?”

  “It’s completely on the level, boss. There’s nothing behind it, I swear.”

  “Nothing except your dosh, which stinks at long distance.”

  Maistre came back holding a mobile.

  “The little shit was trying to call his friends. So I gave him one. He’s sleeping now.”

  Morini had clasped his hands in front of him. He was looking toward the door of the bar and rocking his head from side to side, as though carrying out a clever calculation between what he could say and what he should conceal.

  “O.K., let’s continue. It was on the level, nothing behind it. Right?”

  “Exactly,” Morini said, without taking his eyes off the door.

  “The trouble is that there are people who get in the way. And I have the feeling that you decided to dissuade them from continuing. Have you been felling a few trees to get a clearer view by any chance?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Does the name William Steinert ring any bells?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know him and he has nothing to do with all this.”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “No, never.”

  “I know that he was at the drinks party for the launch of the Big South.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  De Palma stepped back and examined Morini, who had his chin cradled in his hands, and his elbows on the table. The gangster had his predatory senses on red alert. He only answered when the question concerned him personally. As for the rest, he knew he was running no risk.

  “For that business, I put up some cash, and that’s all. I don’t deal with anything, my name doesn’t appear. A real ghost!”

  “And you can say that honestly?”

  “I’m telling the truth, that’s all.”

  De Palma was beginning to have doubts. He sensed that Morini was stalling, and knew that he was capable of doing so for hours on end. But time was short.

  “O.K., I’m not going to beat about the bush. Steinert’s dead. Contrary to what was announced, an investigation is ongoing, and you’re right in our sights.”

  “You’ve got nothing on me!”

  “Oh yes we have. We dropped in on your pal, Jérôme Lornec, the gyppo.”

  Morini’s lips stretched so far that they finally formed a smile on his flabby face.

  “What’s he got to do with all this?”

  “It’s a long story. When he was a little thug, he used to use a SIG. And then this SIG vanished for several years. Then it suddenly resurfaced and took a shot at me while I was checking out William Steinert’s place. What do you say to that?”

  “I don’t follow you. The last time I saw Lornec was in prison, I think.”

  De Palma stood up and went behind the bar to pour himself a whisky. Maistre kept his eyes on Morini.

  “Right. I’ll tell you this one thing. I intend to find out who killed William Steinert, and I advise you to keep your filthy paws off my investigation. Otherwise it will be war. A war that you will lose.”

  “Now you listen to me, officer. I’m not at war with you. You can investigate Steinert all you want, but it wasn’t me or one of my lads. It’s quite true that I put a load of cash into that proposition for a theme park. I was born in Tarascon. It’s my region and I love it. I want to give it something beautiful. I’m ready to pay whatever it takes.”

  Morini banged on the table then lowered his head.

  “You’re almost touching when you try hard!”

  “You’re just trying to scare me with all this hoop-la,” Le Grand said, raising his stubby fingers in the air. “And to get me talking. But you’ve got it all wrong, lads. I’ve heard of Steinert because I live in Maussane, otherwise I couldn’t give a fuck about him.”

  Maistre moved toward the gangster, who instinctively recoiled into his seat.

  “Don’t play the wise guy with us, Morini. Or else I stick shit on your ass and tonight you’ll be sleeping in the can. Get me?”

  Morini only stared back at him with the eyes of someone who had not been scared for years.

  14.

  Tarascon was waiting f
or the feast of Saint Martha. That year, the day of the patron saint of housewives fell on a Tuesday. Tuesday, July 29.

  Out of the sun, between the paneled walls of the sacristy, Father Samuel Favier was putting the finishing touches to his sermon.

  From time to time, street noises reached him and broke his concentration. He was looking for an ending, a real conclusion that would make the faithful think. But all he could find were commonplaces, the kind of liturgical clichés he’d been taught in the seminary.

  On the cork noticeboard on the wall, next to the schedule of services, he had pinned up a simple drawing by a child in catechism classes. It was the picture of the week: Saint Martha as Terminator, overcoming a terrifying Pokemon. It was the version that he preferred of the miraculous Lazarus’s young sister, who had arrived on the beaches of the Camargue two thousand years before with a band of apprentice saints, ready to get to grips with the prevailing paganism.

  Martha, the patroness of housewives, but also of Tarascon.

  Martha, inseparable from the monstrous Tarasque, which was half man and half reptile. The saint had delivered the people of Tarascon from this spawn of the devil, quite simply by speaking to it. Martha had sweet-talked the beast with a few kind words and the help of the Holy Ghost. Then she had tied her belt around the monster’s neck and led it to the Rhône, where she made it promise never to terrorize the people again. The Tarasque had promptly vanished beneath the rock that now bears King René’s Castle.

  In his past life, Samuel Favier had been an emergency doctor, until he had met God on the battlefields of the former Yugoslavia. Saint Martha was his first parish, and his sermon about the Tarasque the first real obstacle that the Almighty had placed in the young priest’s path.

  He was trying to find something edifying to say about this legend dressed up as a religious thriller. The ex-doctor in him wanted to be high-brow, and talk about man’s reptilian brain, about the Tarasque that survives in all of us, ready to gobble up morality and common sense at the slightest disturbance of the ego. The Tarasque, that colorful version of the instinctive, raw, terrifying violence of the human race. That was what Favier wanted to highlight.

  And yet his predecessor, old Father Bessodes, as he gave him the keys to his church, had warned him not to risk a schism: “Don’t go too far with the Tarasque … they don’t like that! You’ll be taking a big risk. They’re very sensitive about their tale of a monster, and can’t stand it if you diverge from the official version. All that matters in this town is tradition. They’d be lost without their monster. If you tell them that the Tarasque is more a symbol than anything else, and that it never existed, you’ll expose yourself to the fury of good society, the mayor and the bishop. Remember that they’re all more or less cousins or friends, and they’re the people that run the place.”