“What are you going to call him?” his father asked.
“We’re not sure. We talk about it, argue about it, we make up our minds and then change them …”
“Your mother named you after Pissarro. And she loved the name long after she stopped loving the artist.”
“I know,” Camille said.
“We’ll talk about you later, first tell me how Irène is.”
“I think she’s getting bored, being stuck at home.”
“It’ll be over soon … I thought she looked tired.”
“When?”
“She dropped by last week. I felt ashamed. Given her condition, I should have been the one to make the effort, but you know me, I never seem to get out of here. Anyway, she just popped round unannounced.”
Camille pictured Irène struggling up the four flights of stairs, stopping at every landing to catch her breath, hands clasped over her swollen belly. Her impromptu visit was more than it seemed; it was a message to him, a reproach. By visiting his father, she was supporting Camille, while he had not been supporting her. He wanted to call her straight away but realised that he didn’t want to apologise, he simply wanted to share his pain, to tell her how he felt. He loved Irène more than life itself, and the more he blundered and failed to show that love, the more it pained him.
The polite ritual followed its usual course until Camille’s father, with feigned casualness, said:
“Kaufman … do you remember Kaufman?”
“Pretty well, yes.”
“He came to see me a couple of weeks ago.”
“Must have been quite some time since you saw him last.”
“Yes, I only saw him once or twice after your mother’s death.”
A vague, almost imperceptible shudder ran through Camille. The sudden panic he felt was caused not by the mention of one of his mother’s artist friends – a man whose work he had always admired – but by the tone of his father’s voice. There was something embarrassed, something forced about his studied indifference.
“So, what did he want?” Camille said encouragingly, seeing his father dither.
“Listen, Camille, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t even mention it. But he insisted I talk to you.” His father’s voice rose as though defending himself against an accusation.
“Go on.”
“I’d say no, but it’s not entirely my decision to make … Kaufman is giving up his studio. His lease isn’t up for renewal, but the place is too small for him – he’s working on large canvases these days.”
“And …”
“And he asked if we were planning to sell your mother’s.” Camille had always feared this moment would come, but perhaps because he so dreaded the idea, he had grown used to it.
“I know what you’re going to say, and—”
“No,” Camille interrupted him, “you don’t know.”
“Alright, then, I don’t. But I can guess. In fact I told Kaufman, you would never agree to the idea.”
“But you brought up the subject anyway …”
“I’m talking to you about it because I promised him I would! And, anyway, I thought, given the circumstances …”
“What circumstances?”
“Kaufman is offering a fair price. With a baby on the way you might be thinking of moving, getting a bigger place, I don’t know …”
Camille was surprised by his own reaction.
Monfort was a hamlet, the last vestige of a village that had once stood on the edge of Clamart forest. These days, the area was ringed by housing developments and grandiose mansions and the forest no longer felt like the untamed wilderness Camille had known when he had gone there with his mother as a child. The studio was the old gatehouse of an estate which, through the mismanagement of a succession of heirs, had gradually disappeared until all that remained was this lodge. His mother had knocked through all the partition walls to create one big space and Camille had spent long afternoons there watching her work, in the swirling fumes of paint and white spirit, sometimes sketching on a little table she had set up for him next to the wood stove which, in winter, radiated a heavy, sweet-smelling heat.
The studio itself had little charm. The walls were whitewashed, the terracotta tiles on the floor wobbled underfoot and the glass roof through which light streamed was covered in grime for much of the time. Now, once a year, Camille’s father would air the place; he would try to dust, but he would quickly lose heart and sit in the middle of the studio like a castaway, gazing around him at these few relics of a wife he had loved dearly.
Camille remembered the last time he had been there. Irène had always wanted to see Maud’s studio but, sensing his reluctance, had not insisted. Then one day, passing near Monfort as they drove back from a weekend away, Camille had suddenly asked: “Do you want to see the studio?”
In fact, as they both knew, it was Camille who wanted to go there, so they made the detour. To ensure the place was secure and the garden kept tidy, Camille’s father paid a small stipend to a neighbour who nevertheless evidently did not do much. Camille and Irène stepped around the clumps of nettles and, with the key that had been kept under the flower pot for years, opened the door, which creaked dully.
Stripped of its furniture, the studio seemed bigger than ever. Irène poked around casually, merely glancing at Camille if she wanted to turn over a canvas or take a painting to the large picture window to see it in the light. Camille simply sat, unwittingly, in the very spot where his father sat when he came here alone. Irène commented on the paintings with a precision that surprised Camille, and stared for a long time at one of her later works, a composition of dark reds hurled onto the canvas with a sort of fury. She was holding it at arm’s length, and Camille could only see the back of it. In her large, open hand, Maud had written in chalk “Savage Pain”.
One of the few paintings to which she had ever given a title.
As she set the canvas down, Irène saw that Camille was crying. She wrapped her arms around him and held him for a long time.
He had not been back to the studio since.
*
“I’ll think about it,” Camille said at last.
“Whatever you like,” his father said draining his cup. “The money will go to you in any case. For your son.”
Camille’s mobile phone chirruped – a text message from Louis: Lambert not in his lair. Stake out? Louis.
“I have to go,” Camille said, getting to his feet.
His father gave him the same surprised look he always did, apparently astonished that time had passed so quickly. But for Camille it was always the same: at some point a signal would go off in his head. Once it did, he found he could not sit still, he had to leave, had to get out of there.
“That thing with the reporter …” his father said, getting up.
“Don’t worry about it.”
The two men embraced and moments later, Camille was in the street. Looking up, he was not surprised to see his father leaning over the balcony and giving that little wave. Sometimes Camille reflected that one day he would see it for the last time.
8
Camille called Louis.
“We’ve found out a bit more about Lambert,” Louis said. “He went straight home as soon as he was released on parole. That was on the 2nd. From talking to his associates, he seemed in good spirits. One of his cronies, Mourad, a snot-nosed kid who deals drugs for him in Clichy, said that Lambert was planning a trip, he was due to leave on Tuesday. One of his henchmen, Daniel Royet, was supposed to be going with him. We haven’t been able to track him down either. Since then, there’s been no news. I’ve arranged for a 24-hour watch on Lambert’s place.”
“Gustave had better keep his head down. We’ve got two days to sort this. After that, Lambert is likely to disappear for a long time …”
They discussed the teams who would stake out places where Lambert was likely to show up. Two key locations had been identified. By some miracle – or by dint being nagged – Le Guen, w
ho knew Camille did not have the resources to cover the operation, provisionally assigned two teams which Louis was tasked with coordinating.
9
He set the pile of books on his desk: Brown’s Requiem, Clandestine, Killer on the Road, then Suicide Hill, Dick Contino’s Blues, then the L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz, lastly American Tabloid.
He picked one up at random. White Jazz. It was not an entirely random choice. On the cover was the portrait of a woman resembling the one on The Black Dahlia. Her style and general appearance were similar, though on White Jazz the face was rounder, the hair fuller, the make-up heavier and the model was wearing earrings. Abandoning the more spontaneous style he had adopted on The Black Dahlia, the illustrator had opted for a slightly sleazy Hollywood vamp. Camille had not previously considered whether his three victims looked alike. Though it was not too hard to draw comparisons between Évelyne Rouvray and Josiane Debeuf in Courbevoie, what could they possibly have in common with little Manuela Constanza in Tremblay?
On his desk blotter he scrawled three words, added “Louis”, and underlined them twice.
“It seems rather an arduous task …”
Arduous? … Louis’ use of vocabulary was a mystery to Camille.
“That’s your pile,” he said. “This one here is mine.”
“Ah.”
“We’re looking for a scene with a large apartment, two women who have been raped and dismembered. We should be able to skim read.”
The early books had a somewhat “classic” feel. Private detectives, their desks piled high with unpaid bills, mouldered in grubby offices sipping coffee and munching doughnuts. Out of the blue, crazed killers unleashed their psychopathic tendencies. But gradually the style evolved, it became more savage, more visceral as Ellroy began to trade in inhumanity at its most elemental. The seediest districts of the city became a metaphor for a desperate, disillusioned humanity. Love took on the acrid taste of urban tragedy. Sadism, violence, cruelty, the dregs of our wildest fantasies were made flesh and with them came injustice, revenge, women battered and bloody murders.
The afternoon flew past.
As he grew tired, Camille was tempted to skim the few hundred pages remaining, hunting only for certain key words and phrases … but which words, which phrases? He quickly abandoned this idea. How many times had he seen an investigation drag on or founder because procedures had been hurried or were insufficiently systematic? How many anonymous killers owed their freedom to the carelessness of weary officers?
Every hour, Camille stepped out of his office and, on the way to the coffee machine, paused in the doorway of Louis’ office and watched him poring over the books with the diligence of a theology student. Neither of them said a word, a look was enough for each to confirm that what had seemed such a promising lead was now a dead end, that what few notes they had would likely prove irrelevant when the passages were reread, that in all likelihood this would still be the case when the books and the men were exhausted.
Camille made notes on slips of blank paper. The tally was profoundly depressing. A teenage girl asphyxiated with a pair of panties soaked in acetone; a naked woman hung by her feet above her bed, another dismembered with a hacksaw after being shot through the heart; a third who was raped and then stabbed to death … A universe of carnage, peopled by impulsive psychopaths, shady deals and old scores settled in ways that seemed utterly different to the methodical work of whoever had committed the murders in Courbevoie and Tremblay. The only unsettling parallel was the one Camille had first noticed, but there was a yawning gap between the way the Tremblay murder precisely mirrored the scene in The Black Dahlia and the vague similarities he had found in certain passages to elements of the Courbevoie killings.
Louis had drawn up his own list. When he appeared in Camille’s office to go through them, Camille shot him a questioning look and immediately realised Louis had fared no better than he. He glanced at the notepad on which Louis, in his ornate handwriting, had jotted down his thoughts: gunshot wounds, stab wounds, knuckledusters, rapes, another hanging …
“O.K.,” Camille said, “I think we’re done here.”
10
At six o’clock, the team reassembled in Camille’s office for the final briefing of the day.
“Who wants to start?” Camille said.
The three men looked at each other. Camille heaved a sigh.
“Louis, you go first.”
“We’ve had a quick look through a number of other novels by James Ellroy, because the patron here thinks …” He bit his tongue. “Sorry.”
“Two things, Louis,” said Camille with a smile. “First, since I am your ‘patron’, thanks for correcting yourself – you know how I feel about that word. Second, as far as the books are concerned, try and make it sound positive.”
“Fine,” Louis said, returning the smile. “To put it simply, we’ve been through pretty much the complete works of James Ellroy and have found nothing to substantiate the theory that the murders are being copied from his books. Is that O.K.?”
“Perfect. Louis, you’re a gentleman. I would add that we both wasted half a day on that theory. And it’s bullshit. I think that covers it …”
The three men smiled.
“Come on then, Maleval, what have you got for us?”
“What have you got if you haven’t even got ‘nothing’?”
“Nothingness?” Louis said.
“Nada?” chimed in Armand.
“O.K.,” said Maleval, “in that case, I have a nothingness of nada. The faux cowhide has no label that would allow us to trace where it was bought or made. The black and white wallpaper in the bathroom did not come from a French factory. I’m expecting a list of the main foreign manufacturers tomorrow morning. There’ll be five hundred at the very least. I’ll try an international search, but I’m guessing our guy didn’t buy the wallpaper in person and hand over a copy of his I.D.”
“You’re right, it’s not very likely,” said Camille. “Next?”
“At the Mercure Hotel where Évelyne Rouvray first met her client – the man who would kill her – the room was paid for in cash. No-one remembers anything. As for forensics, the lab haven’t managed to decipher the serial numbers on the stereo, the T.V., the C.D. players, etc. The makes and models are commonplace, hundreds of thousands of these things have been sold. The trail stops there.”
“Right. Anything else?”
“One more dead end, just for a change …”
“Go on …”
“The video is a clip from an American weekly T.V. show that’s been running on U.S.-Gag for the past ten years. It’s a popular programme. The clip on the tape was broadcast four years ago.”
“How did you find out?”
“I called T.F.1, they bought French rights. The show is so shit they stopped running it, but they sometimes use the best clips to plug gaps in programming. The one of the dog peeling an orange was broadcast last on February 7. Our man might have recorded it then. As for the matchbook, it’s obviously a mock-up. The blank matchbook itself is standard issue, you can get them at any tobacconist. Le Palio’s logo was added using a generic colour printer, four hundred thousand of which have been sold in France. The paper used is widely available, as is the glue.”
“Sounds like the name of a club …”
“Probably, or a bar. Anyway, it’s irrelevant.”
“You’re right. It’ll get us nowhere.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“That’s not quite true,” Louis said without looking up from his notepad.
Maleval and Armand turned to look at him. Camille stared at his feet and said:
“Louis is right. It is relevant. In the staging of the crime scene, it falls into a different category. There are two types of clue: those commercially produced objects whose source we are unable to trace, and those that were carefully and deliberately created as set dressing. It’s a bit like your Jap
anese sofa,” he said, glancing at Armand.
Caught unawares, Armand fumbled for his notepad.
“Yes, I suppose, except that we haven’t managed to identify this Dunford guy. Bogus name, payment by money order, delivery to a self-storage warehouse in Gennevilliers in the name of …” He flicked through the pages. “Peace. And then the trail goes cold.”
“Peace?” Maleval muttered. “As in ‘world peace’? Our guy must think he’s a comedian.”
“Hilarious,” Camille said.
“But why does our man use foreign names?” Louis said. “It is a little strange …”
“My guess is that our man’s a snob,” Maleval said. “So, what else?” Camille said. “What we found out about the magazine is a little more interesting. Though only a little … It’s the March issue of GQ, a British men’s magazine …”
“American,” Louis corrected.
Armand checked his pad.
“You’re right, it is American.”
“And in what sense is that interesting?” Camille said irritably.
“The American edition is sold by a very few English bookshops in Paris. I phoned three of them and got lucky. About three weeks ago a man ordered a back issue from Brentano’s on the avenue de l’Opéra, specifically the March issue.”
Armand went back over his notes, clearly determined to give a blow-by-blow account of his investigation.
“Keep it short, Armand,” Camille said, “keep it short.”
“Hang on. Right, the woman at the bookshop is certain that it was ordered by a man. He came in on a Saturday afternoon, their busiest time. He ordered the magazine and paid cash in advance. The girl doesn’t remember any identifying features, ‘a man’ is all she would say. A week later – same day, same time – he came back to pick it up. The girl working that weekend doesn’t remember him at all.”
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