Louis rushes over to where Camille is gingerly exploring the bruise on his temple.
“Get the fuck off me!” Camille growls, waving his hand as though shooing a wasp.
He struggles to his feet, then kneels down next to Brieuc. His face is pressed to the floor, he is having trouble breathing.
“Now you listen to me,” Camille says, barely controlling his rage. “Let me explain …”
“I … I didn’t do anything …” Brieuc manages to say.
Camille lays a hand on the man’s cheek, then nods to Fabrice who leans all his weight on his right foot. Brieuc howls.
“I said listen to me! There’s not much time.”
“Camille …” hisses Louis, but he is not listening.
“My name is Commandant Verhœven,” he explains, “and right now there’s a woman out there dying.” He takes his hand from the man’s face, crouches lower and whispers. “And if you don’t help me, I swear I will kill you.”
“Camille …” Louis says, louder this time.
“Now, you’re welcome to drink yourself to death,” Camille speaks in a low growl that causes everything in the room to shudder, “but not until I’ve left. First, you’re going to pay attention, and you’re going to give me some answers. Am I making myself clear?”
Unbeknownst to Camille, Louis has signalled to Fabrice who has gently removed his foot. Still, Brieuc makes no attempt to move, he lies on the floor, face pressed into the green lino, he stares at the little man kneeling beside him and in his eyes he sees a strength of will that terrifies him. He nods.
*
“We pulped everything.”
Back on the sofa, Brieuc is allowed a can of beer and drains half of it in a single gulp. More alert now, he listens as Camille succinctly explains what is happening. He does not understand everything, but he nods vehemently, and that seems to satisfy Camille. These men are looking for some book. This is all Brieuc manages to take in. Bilban. How long did he work in the warehouse at Bilban? Brieuc struggles to think. It was a long time ago. Was he working there when the company went bust? What happened to the stock? From Brieuc’s face, it is evident he is wondering why it matters what happened to a heap of shitty novels. Why it seems so urgent. And what the fuck he’s got to do with any of this. He tries to concentrate, but he can’t make head nor tail of it.
Camille does not attempt to explain. He sticks to simple questions, careful not to let Brieuc stray from the point. “All we need are the facts. Where are the books now?”
“We pulped the stock, all of it, I swear. What else were we supposed to do? The books were shit.”
Brieuc raises the can to finish his beer, but Camille deftly grabs his arm.
“In a minute!”
Brieuc looks around for support, but he sees only the grim faces of the three other officers. He feels a surge of panic and begins to tremble.
“Stay calm,” Camille says. “We can’t afford to waste any more time.”
“But I already told you—”
“Yes, I get it. But no-one ever gets round to pulping everything. Publishers have stock all over the place, sometimes returns come in after the books have been pulped. Try to remember.”
“We pulped everything,” Brieuc mumbles vacantly, staring at the beer can in his trembling hand.
“O.K.,” Camille says, overcome by an immense weariness.
He looks at his watch: 1.20 a.m. He feels cold, suddenly. Looking around he sees the windows are still open wide. He places his hands on his knees and gets to his feet.
“We’re not going to get any more out of him. Let’s go.”
Louis tilts his head as if to say that it’s probably for the best. Fabrice and Bernard head down the stairs, elbowing their way past neighbours who have come to see what is happening. Camille brings a hand up to his face. It feels as though the bruise on his temple has swollen. He steps back into the apartment. Brieuc is still sitting on the sofa, dazed, cradling his beer can. Camille goes to the bathroom where he stands on the wastebasket so he can see himself in the mirror. There is a large bump on the side of his head which has already started to turn blue. He runs the cold tap and splashes water on his face.
“You know, now that I think about it, I’m not sure …”
Camille whips round to find the pitiful figure of Brieuc standing in the doorway, his boxer shorts sodden, a tartan blanket around his shoulders, like a refugee from some disaster.
“I think I brought back a few boxes for my son. He wasn’t interested. They’re probably still in the cellar, if you want to have a look.”
*
The car hurtles dangerously through the empty streets. Louis is at the wheel this time. With all the swerving, braking and accelerating, and the constant shriek of the sirens, Camille cannot read. His right hand grips the door handle, and every time he attempts to let go to turn the page, he find himself thrown forwards or sideways. He manages to make out a word or two, the letters seem to dance on the page. Since he didn’t have time to put on his glasses, everything is blurred and he has to hold the book at arm’s length. After a few minutes of fruitless effort, he gives up and clasps the book against his knees. On the cover, a young blonde woman is lying on what looks like a bed. Her blouse is open to reveal a glimpse of her breasts and her swollen belly. Her arms are stretched out behind her head as though she is trussed. Her face is a mask of terror, her eyes are rolled back, her mouth open in a silent scream. Camille lets go of the door handle for a second and turns the book over. The back cover copy is white against a black background. He cannot make out the tiny print.
The car veers right and stops outside the brigade criminelle. Louis brutally yanks the handbrake, plucks the book from Camille’s hand and rushes up the stairs ahead of him.
*
The photocopier churns out hundreds of pages and, after an interminable interval, Louis reappears with four sets of copies in identical green folders to find Camille pacing the squad room.
“The book runs to” – Camille flicks to the back of a folder – “… 250 pages. If we’re going to find something it’ll probably be at the end. Let’s say after page 130. Armand, you start there, Louis, Jean and I will start at the end and work back. Doctor, could you take a look at the beginning just in case? We don’t know what we’re looking for. The smallest detail could be important. Cob, I need you to drop what you’re working on. Everyone else, when you find a search term that seems significant, shout over to Cob so everyone can hear, got it? Right, let’s go.”
*
Camille opens the folder in front of him. Scanning the last pages of the book, his eye is drawn to certain paragraphs, he skims them quickly, resisting the temptation to read, to make sense of the text he knows he needs to search. He pushes his glasses up his nose.
As he crouched down, Matthéo could just make out Corey’s body sprawled on the floor. Acrid smoke caught in his throat and he coughed violently. He lay on the floor and began to crawl. Holding the gun made crawling impossible. He struggled to engage the safety catch and slipped the revolver back into its holster.
Camille turned two pages.
It was impossible to tell whether Corey was still alive. He didn’t seem to be moving, but Matthéo could not see clearly. His eyes were stinging. In a …
Camille checks the page number then flicks back to page 181.
*
“I’ve got some character call Corey,” Louis calls out to Cob without looking up. He spells the name. “But I haven’t got a first name yet.”
“The girl’s name is Nadine Lefranc,” Le Guen shouts.
“There have to be three thousand girls by that name,” Cob mutters.
Page 71: Nadine left the clinic just after four o’clock and headed for the supermarket car park where she had left her car. From the moment she saw the ultrasound, she had been trembling. Suddenly, the whole world seemed beautiful, even the leaden skies, the chill air, the grimy streets …
It has to come later, Camille thought,
leafing rapidly through the loose pages, catching a word here and there, but nothing that seems relevant.
*
“I’ve got some cop called Matthéo, Francis Matthéo,” Armand says.
“He mentions an undertaker’s in Lens, near Calais,” Le Guen calls, “Dubois et Fils.”
“Slow down, guys,” Cob grumbles, typing as quickly as he can.
“The search results give me eighty-seven people named Corey – a first name would be helpful.”
Page 211: Corey took up position next to the window. Wary of being spotted by a passer-by, though the area was almost deserted. He had been careful not to clean the windows, which were encrusted with a decade’s worth of grime. Outside, in the faint glow of the only two streetlights that still worked, he could see …
Camille flicks back a few pages.
Page 207: Corey sat in the car for a long time, studying the derelict buildings. He checked his watch: 10 p.m. He went over his calculations in his mind and came to the same conclusion. Allowing time for her to dress, to go downstairs, to find her way here given her state of panic, Nadine would arrive in about twenty minutes. He opened the window a crack and lit a cigarette. Everything was ready. As long as …
He had to go back further.
Page 205: It was a long, low building at one end of a narrow road two kilometres from the outskirts of Parency. Corey had …
“The town is called Parency,” Camille calls out. “Actually, it seems to be a village.”
“There’s no undertaker called Dubois in Lens,” Cob says. “I’ve got four companies called Dubois: plumbers, accountants, a garden centre and a company that makes tarpaulin. I’ll print off the list.”
Le Guen got up and went to the printer to collect the pages.
Page 221: “Tell me anyway,” said Commissaire Matthéo.
Christian did not seem to hear.
“If I’d known …” he said in a whisper, “in the …”
“The girl works for a lawyer named Pernaud,” Armand says, “with an office on the rue Saint-Christophe in Lille.”
Camille stops reading. Nadine Lefranc, Corey, Matthéo, Christian, undertakers, Dubois, he mentally repeats the names but nothing comes to him.
Page 227: Finally, the young woman regained consciousness. She turned her head and saw Corey standing next to her, he was smiling at her strangely.
Camille feels cold sweat trickle down his back, his hands begin to shake.
*
“It was you?” she said.
Suddenly panicked, she tried to get to her feet only to find her arms and legs bound firmly. The ropes were so tight, they cut off her circulation, her hands and feet felt like ice. She wondered how long she had been here.
“Sleep well?” asked Corey, lighting a cigarette.
Nadine began to scream, thrashing her head from side to side. She howled until she had no air left in her lungs and when finally she stopped, breathless and hoarse, Corey had not batted an eyelid.
“You’re very beautiful, Nadine. You’re so beautiful … when you cry.”
Still pulling on his cigarette, he laid a hand on the young woman’s swollen belly. She shuddered at his touch.
“And I am sure that you will be still more beautiful as you die,” he whispered with a smile.
*
“There’s no rue Saint-Christophe in Lille,” Cob says, “And there’s no lawyer called Pernaud.”
*
“Fuck it,” grunts Le Guen.
Camille looks over at him and at the folder he is holding. Le Guen is also reading the last section of the book. Camille returns to his own copy of the novel.
Page 237: “Pretty, isn’t it?” said Corey.
Nadine could barely manage to turn her head. Her face was horribly swollen, her eyes now narrow slits that barely let in light, the bruises had already turned a purplish yellow. Though the cut on her cheek had stopped bleeding, thick, dark clots of blood still dripped from her mouth and trickled down her neck.
She struggled to breathe, her chest rising and falling fitfully.
Corey rolled up his sleeves and stepped towards her.
“Well, Nadine, don’t you think it’s pretty?” He nodded to something at the foot of the bed.
Through the blur of tears Nadine could just make out a wooden cross set on an easel. It was half a metre wide and looked like a smaller version of a church crucifix.
“It’s for the baby, Nadine,” he said in a tender whisper.
He pressed his thumbnail so hard into the base of Nadine’s breast that she howled in pain. He traced a line down to her pubis, the sharp nail digging a furrow in the taut skin of her belly as the woman screamed hoarsely.
“We’ll take him out through here,” Corey said softly as his nail dug into her, “A bit like a Caesarean, though you’re not likely to be alive to see him afterwards, but I promise you he’ll be beautiful, your baby, when he’s crucified. Christian will be happy. His own little Jesus …”
*
Camille springs to his feet, grabs the pages and frantically leafs back through them. “The cross …” he mutters. “The easel.” Page 205, nothing, 206, nothing, 207. He scans the page and stops. There it is:
Corey had put a lot of thought into choosing the place. The building, which for years had been a warehouse for the nearby shoe factory, was the perfect location. Latterly it had been used as a studio by a ceramicist, and was left derelict when she died …
Camille whips around and finds himself face to face with Louis. Feverishly, he flicks back through the pages.
“What are you looking for?” Le Guen says.
“If he mentions …” Camille does not look up, the pages flash past. Suddenly his mind feels utterly clear.
“The warehouse,” he says, brandishing the sheaf of pages. “He says it’s an old studio. An artist’s studio. He’s taken her to Monfort, to my mother’s old studio.”
Le Guen grabs his phone to call the rapid response unit, but Camille has already pulled on his jacket and grabbed his keys and is dashing for the stairs. Louis marshals everyone and begins to give orders. Only Armand remains seated, staring hopelessly at the folder in front of him. The officers divide up into teams. Le Guen barks into his phone, explaining the situation to the senior officer at R.A.I.D.
Just as they are heading for the stairs, Louis’ eye is caught by the one still, fixed point in all this chaos. Armand is sitting silently in front of his folder. Louis frowns and looks at him questioningly.
Running his finger under a sentence, Armand says dully, “He kills her at 2 a.m. precisely.”
All eyes turn to the clock on the wall. It is 1.45 a.m.
*
Camille reverses the car as Louis jumps into the passenger seat, and they set off. As the boulevard Saint-Germain flashes past, both men are imagining the same thing: the woman bound to the bed, beaten, screaming, as a thumbnail traces a line across her belly.
As Camille floors the accelerator, Louis glances at him out of the corner of his eye. What is going through the commandant’s mind right now? Maybe, behind this mask of cool determination, he can hear Irène screaming his name, maybe as he swerves to avoid the car stopped at traffic lights on the avenue Denfert-Rochereau he can hear her voice, as, white-knuckled, he grips the steering wheel so hard he might snap it in two.
Louis has a mental image of Irène screaming as she realises she might die here, bound and defenceless, a grim sacrifice.
Surely Camille’s whole life has telescoped to that single image of Irène with blood trickling down her neck as he heads down avenue Général-Leclerc at a frightening speed. Don’t get us killed now, Louis thinks, though it is for Irène’s life rather than his own that he fears.
The deserted streets streak past, racing back into the darkness of this night that might seem beautiful but for the horror that is unfolding. The keening sirens break the silence as the car exits the city by the Porte de Paris and pierces the sleepy suburbs like a stiletto, weaving between t
he cars and taking a turn so fast it almost pitches onto two wheels and hits the kerb. It’s just a bump, Louis thinks, although it feels as though the car has left the road and is flying. “Are we going to die here? Has the devil come to take us too?” Camille pumps the brake, the tyres screech. To their right, cars speed past. Camille swerves, accidentally grazing one, then another, there is a shriek of metal, a shower of sparks joins the flashing lights that strobe the darkness, the car rears, swerving wildly down the dark road. It veers dangerously close to the parked cars, clips one, rebounds and clips another, gouging paintwork, splintering wing mirrors while Camille applies the brakes, wrestling with the steering wheel and trying desperately to stop the car careering out of control. Finally, it comes to a juddering halt, mounting the pavement at the junction near Plessis-Robinson and hitting a bollard.
The sudden silence is deafening. The siren has died, the rotating light has become detached and is dangling by a side window. Camille, who was thrown against the door, has hit his head and is bleeding profusely. A car glides slowly past, eyes gawp, then it drives off. Camille passes a hand over his face and it comes away daubed with dark blood. His back aches, his legs ache, he is stunned from the collision. He struggles painfully to sit up straight, then gives up and slumps back in his seat. He tries to catch his breath, then makes a second attempt. Next to him, a half-conscious Louis rolls his head from side to side.
Camille shakes himself, lays a hand on Louis’ shoulder and shakes him gently.
“I’m fine,” Louis says, coming round. “I’ll be fine.”
Camille scrabbles for his mobile which must have fallen from his pocket. He gropes under the seats, but it is too dark to see. Nothing. Finally his fingers encounter something – his service revolver – which he manages to retrieve by contorting himself. He knows that in a quiet suburb, the noise of the collision will bring men stumbling into the street and women to their windows. He leans against the door, shoves hard and it opens with a piercing shriek of metal. He swings his legs out and stands up. He is bleeding badly, but cannot work out where he has been hurt.
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