“It’s because William was the son of the house’s former owner, Mme. Maurel.”
Ingrid put her lighter down slowly, and looked at him hard. Clearly, she had not known the truth. She looked away. He saw that her eyes were shining.
“I didn’t want to shock you, but I think I owe you the truth.”
She undid her hair and let it tumble down, still damp, onto her golden shoulders. Then she folded her hands over her chest with a gesture of self-protection and squeezed hard.
“I’m not blaming you. That was the real problem with William. He hid so much from me. I think you can now understand … life with him wasn’t easy.”
She stood up and paced toward the swimming pool. Her dark shadow undulated over the blue surface.
“It was Bérard who told you that, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“He knows a lot of things about my husband.”
“Yes, it would seem so. I think you should go and see him.”
Suddenly, she looked fragile. She trembled. A wrinkle appeared on her forehead. She stubbed out her cigarette.
“I … stay here tonight, Michel. This … this isn’t an invitation, it’s a demand. Do me this service …”
“I don’t want you to consider it as a service.”
“In my world … I mean, in my … Um … I feel really clumsy this evening.”
She put her hand back onto her cigarette case and took out another, which she lit and dragged on deeply. De Palma realized that he did not like seeing her smoke. It made her seem too familiar. He looked away.
“One day, I was summoned to what we call the scene of the crime. It was years ago. When I’d just joined the force. I was in Paris. And I can remember it like it was yesterday.
“Her name was Isabelle Mercier. She was sixteen. Blond … a beautiful girl. Or rather, I didn’t know that till later, if you see what I mean. When I saw the photos and films that her father agreed to show us.
“I’ve searched for a long time. A very long time. Without ever letting up. I have entire books full of notes and statements. Ever since, I’ve been out to get the person who made her suffer what she went through … And I might die like this! But I’ll never stop searching. I’ll construct a thousand different scenarios. I may never find the right one, but that’s just too bad. You know, it’s rather like an endless quest.”
She drew heavily on her cigarette then stubbed it out in the ashtray.
“She looked like you, Ingrid. The resemblance is terrible. Terrible.”
“Stop it, Michel, you’re scaring me.”
She crossed the living room then stopped in a doorway that presumably led to what she called her “private domain.”
“Goodnight, Michel. You’ll find your room on the first floor, opposite the lounge you’re already familiar with. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She let her arm drop down beside her, then vanished into her own quarters.
Morini tried to lift himself up on his arms, but failed. His muscles had melted away. His legs were barely responding any longer.
He remembered the voices that he had heard the day before, or just now. This morning or last night. It made no difference.
The voices had been so distant it was as if they were being filtered through thick layers of cotton. He remembered yelling out, but he wondered if his voice had not remained stuck to his lips, or in the depths of his burning throat.
After that, he had drunk his urine and his thirst had eased off for a while. But only for a while. Before long, an acidic slime had built up in his mouth and on the edge of his tongue.
But he could clearly remember the voices. One had said: “Everything’s been cleaned up here,” or something like that. And the other one: “There are still some traces in the water.” They were two men who did not know each other very well, to judge by the way they spoke.
Of that he was sure.
He fell asleep, exhausted by this effort of recall. An enormous racket woke him up. A sound of splashing in the water, just on the other side of his prison wall.
And then a song surged up into the darkness. As high-pitched as a child’s voice.
“Lagadigadeu, la tarasco, lagadigadeu …”
And then a second, far deeper voice. Like the cry of a farmer calling in his herd.
“Laïssa passa la vieio masco … Laïssa passa que vaï dansa …”
The two voices then blended into a strange duet:
“La tarasco dou casteu, la tarasco dou casteu …”
This chant brought back fond memories. It was the song that the Knights of the Tarasque sang when pushing their papier-mâché monster through the streets of Tarascon, before charging the terrified crowd.
And him, Morini, in the pure white uniform of the Knights, with a musketeer’s hat. He had been a little boy the first time he had seen the Tarasque, raised on tiptoe, his chin resting on the windowsill.
He swore that if he ever got out of this alive, then the amusement park would be named after the Tarasque. He was Le Grand. The person everyone listened to. Whom everyone obeyed.
He would have liked to remain a Knight of the Tarasque … if prison hadn’t interfered with his fate. Since he had left the monster, there had been a void in his life. That was why he had put so much effort into the Big South.
The park must carry the stamp of the monster. Or at least its image. With entertainments wholly devoted to it. His father would have liked that idea. Not his mother, but he did not care about that.
The ceiling of the prison opened suddenly. Earth fell down onto his face.
A fierce light struck his eyes like a slap. A superhuman force seized him and dragged him up into the dark sky.
De Palma woke early. The farmhouse was deserted. He went out onto the patio and savored the fading freshness of the morning. The farm workers had gathered around a huge tractor in the garage and were discussing the coming day’s work.
An intense light surged up between the breasts of the Alpilles. In under an hour, La Balme would be inside the furnace.
He looked at his watch and found that it had stopped during the night; it still said 11:30, the time he had gone to bed.
He took out his mobile, switched it on and found that he had nine messages. The recorded voice told him that the first message had been left at eighteen minutes past midnight.
“M. de Palma, Christophe Texeira. I’m sorry to bother you so late, but the voices are back again. Call me back as soon as you get this message.”
He cursed himself for having turned off his telephone while in Ingrid’s company.
He listened to the others. They were all from Texeira, who had tried to contact him all night at various times; the last message had been at 2:19 a.m.
He telephoned him back at once.
“I heard them around midnight.”
“Midnight?”
“Yes, that’s right. The same routine in Provençal again. But this time I had a great idea: I recorded them.”
“How’s the result?”
“Come and listen!”
De Palma did not wait to say goodbye to Mme. Steinert. He got into the 205 and made straight for La Capelière.
There was thunder in the air. Clouds were drifting up from the sea and gathering over the vast meadows of La Crau and the swamps of the Camargue.
When he turned into chemin de la Capelière, heavy drops exploded onto the Peugeot’s dusty bonnet.
Texeira was waiting in the little museum’s doorway. De Palma ran over to him.
“Good to see you, M. de Palma!”
“Good to see you too!”
“Let’s not waste any time, come inside.”
Texeira placed a small tape recorder on his desk, of the kind the Baron had often seen in old-fashioned listening devices.
“It’s a Nagra,” Texeira said with a hint of pride in his voice. “And here’s the magic microphone.”
He showed him a long mike, rather like the ones used by the police during stakeouts. It h
ad SENNHEISER printed on its body in chrome letters.
“It’s old, but when used with this parabola the results are quite extraordinary. We use it to record birdsong.”
“Great,” said de Palma, who was losing his patience.
“An ancient piece of kit, but effective! And here’s what I recorded.”
He pressed “play.”
The first sounds were of footfalls and breathing. Like someone in a big hurry.
“That’s me, running to get as near to the voices as possible.”
Then, suddenly, the footsteps stopped … Texeira’s panting could still be heard, then nothing. The biologist had presumably turned the mike in the opposite direction.
“Here we go.”
At first, there was the sound of a heavy tread through fairly deep water. Someone or something was going through the marsh at a distance that de Palma couldn’t estimate. Then the sound stopped, just a faint splashing before the first voice started up. It was so sharp and strange that de Palma recoiled from the machine:
“Lagadigadeu, la tarasco, lagadigadeu …”
There was a loud noise of water, as though something was stirring in the depths of the swamp, followed by a second far deeper voice:
“Laïssa passa la vieio masco … Laïssa passa que vaï dansa …”
The two voices joined together like a terrifying choir in the middle of the night and the marshes.
“La tarasco dou casteu, la tarasco dou casteu …”
There were other sounds that de Palma could not really identify. It sounded like footsteps in mud, but he wasn’t sure.
The two voices rose again in the night.
“La tarasco dou casteu, la tarasco dou casteu …”
De Palma noticed that the two men had apparently moved; their voices had grown muffled. They had moved away from the mike, either going into the undergrowth or behind a wall.
“They went into the hut,” he exclaimed.
“You think so?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Hang on, the worst is yet to come.”
Texeira turned up the volume.
“This microphone can often pick up things that are inaudible to the human ear.”
There was a strangled cry. It was barely discernible, but de Palma knew it at once: the last screams of a man being put to death.
Texeira stopped the tape. His hand was trembling.
“That’s all. There’s nothing after that.”
“Can you play the last minute again?”
The Baron listened with his eyes closed. He mentally reconstructed the scene, as captured by the mike in the darkness of the swamp.
“Christophe, have you been back to the hut?”
“No, I remembered what you told me.”
“I think that you’ve just saved your life.”
“Really?”
“One hundred percent sure.”
Texeira looked him up and down.
“I suggest we take a look at the hut. Do you have time?”
“Not really. But I must admit that I’m dying with curiosity.”
For over an hour, the sea breeze had been driving the stink of the cellulose factory on the Rhône back up toward Tarascon.
Despite the few drops of storm rain, it was still hot. The heat seemed trapped in a bag that nothing could penetrate.
When he saw the crowd that had gathered, Marceau quickly wiped the sweat from his forehead. He had some trouble making his way through the onlookers before finally reaching the heavy doors of Saint Martha’s church.
The officer who opened them for him was looking suitably grim. Once inside, an old veteran whom Marceau had known from the territorial brigade pointed to where the action had happened.
At the far end of the apse, the forensic team had stretched a yellow tape across and placed a few markers. The gate leading to the crypt was open. Marceau noticed blue glimmers rising from the underground depths of the church: the technicians were using a CrimeScope to scan the scene on wavelengths invisible to the naked eye.
Marceau kept his distance, allowing the forensics team to finish its painstaking work.
“Oh, you’re here!” Larousse said, looking as rough as he always did when something important had happened. “We’ve managed to limit the damage in the press.”
“What have you told them?”
“That a visitor had discovered the lifeless body of a tourist, and for the moment the police are pursuing their investigations.”
“Why, isn’t that true?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I was on leave yesterday.”
Larousse took Marceau by the arm and drew him to one side.
“It’s the same scenario as last time.”
“Christian Rey?”
Larousse nodded.
“The body was discovered by a visitor, just after opening time. A Danish tourist called Thomas Nielsen. But this time we’ve got a really big fish on our hands. Morini. How does that grab you?”
“Morini!”
“Indeed. After Rey, his lieutenant, we now have the boss himself. Who’s going to be next?”
“So you think we’ve got a serial killer on our hands?”
“What would you call it?”
Marceau glanced round at the crypt. Larousse turned toward him.
“Where are you at with Rey?”
“We’ve got the D.N.A. results.”
“And?”
“Unknown D.N.A. on the wounds.”
“And so?”
“So we have some totally unknown D.N.A.”
“What do you mean by that?” Larousse snapped.
“I mean that it is traces of saliva that were found.”
Larousse stared up toward the ceiling of the church. He took a deep breath.
“And you have made all the necessary comparisons with other D.N.A…. I don’t know, say …”
“Saliva on a wound generally indicates a bite.”
“Do you realize the size of the wound, Marceau?”
Jean-Claude raised his hands before letting them drop again.
“I called Nantes last night. They do very good work, but this time they have no idea. No idea at all.”
“What about the genetic records?”
“Nothing doing either. D.N.A. unknown.”
A member of the forensic team appeared in the entry to the crypt. He took off his gloves and mask and threw them into a yellow box. After that, he beckoned to Larousse and Marceau.
“Hi, Jean-Claude, how are things?”
“I’m getting by. How about you?”
“It’s not a pretty sight down there. Jesus, I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“Can we go down?”
“Right away. We’ve just finished.”
Larousse and Marceau put on their gloves and overshoes then walked through the Gothic door.
As they went down the steps, Marceau felt the stench grip his throat. He stopped and put on the gasmask that the technician held out to him.
“What a fucking stink.”
Larousse was behind Marceau and squinting over his mask, which gave him a pig’s snout.
A little lower down, the photographer was taking several pictures of a bloodstain on the railings of the tomb of the chevalier Jean de Cossa.
When they got to the crypt, Marceau stopped dead.
Morini’s body was placed in front of the sarcophagus that contained the remains of Saint Martha. His head lay with its left cheek pressed against the flagstones, looking toward the monument with bulging eyes. The bottom of his torso and his legs were missing. Marceau’s gaze was liquid and brimming with anger.
“Have you got anything to tell me?” he asked the technician.
“Sure, where would you like me to begin?”
“Tell me about the wound. I’ll read the report for the rest of it.”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a wound like that,” the technician replied, shaking his head. “Ju
st look.”
They bent over the body.
“You get the impression that the flesh has been torn away. The inner organs have gone. It’s a completely empty torso.”
Marceau pointed at a whitish gleam on the blood.
“And what’s that?”
“It looks like either saliva or sperm, I can’t tell yet. But I’d say it was saliva.”
Larousse was standing to one side and looking away from the body. Marceau stood up slowly and stared at Saint Martha laid out on her deathbed: her fine, delicate figure draped in marble. Her face was spattered with blood and her body crisscrossed with brown marks, as though the madman who had desecrated the shrine had tried to scratch the stone.
“The death certainly occurred last night. I think the body was left here early this morning. Probably between eight and nine o’clock.”
“Are you sure?”
“Almost. Some of the bloodstains aren’t quite dry yet.”
“Not coagulated?”
“Yes, coagulated, but not completely dry.”
“Which means that the body was brought here just after the murder. At most thirty or forty minutes later. Otherwise, the blood would already have coagulated and there wouldn’t be all these stains.”
“I completely agree.”
“Also, he transported it in a bag or something like that. There are no traces anywhere else.”
“Good point,” said Larousse. “So what’s your conclusion?”
“I don’t have one,” Marceau said, gravely. “Nothing at all. Morini must have been slaughtered not far from here, then his body was brought here and staged like this. Where’s the priest?”
“He’s in the sacristy. Delmastro is questioning him.”
“I want to see him at once.”
Above the saint’s head, the inscription Sollicita non turbatur had been crossed out with several streaks of blood.
“Sollicita non turbatur?” Marceau read. “Does anyone know what that means?”
“I lost my Latin years ago,” Larousse replied.
“But it seems to have meant something to him. Look at how he crossed out the words.”
“Whatever happens, not a word to the press for now,” said Larousse. “I don’t want to see a single hack in the vicinity.”
The Commissaire turned on his heels and went back upstairs. Marceau stepped back and observed the entire scene. This was a vision like none he had ever witnessed before. Morini had been left like a sacrifice at the feet of a saint who was particularly loved in Tarascon. This staging must contain the answer to this slaughter.
The Beast of the Camargue Page 22