“Why me?”
The man smiles slowly. Those invisible lips …
“Because you’re the one I want to watch die, you filthy whore.”
He says it as though stating the obvious. He seems satisfied he has answered her question.
Alex squeezes her eyes shut. Tears trickle down. She wants her life to flash before her, but nothing comes. It is no longer simply her fingertips touching the wooden crate; her whole hand grips it to stop herself collapsing.
“Go on …” he says, exasperated, and nods towards the crate.
When she turns back, Alex is no longer herself; it is not she who steps into the box – there is not a shred of her in this body that curls up inside it. She squats, feet apart to balance on the slats, arms wrapped around her knees as though this crate is her sanctuary and not her coffin.
The man approaches, gazes at the image of the naked girl huddled at the bottom of this crate. Eyes wide with delight, like an entomologist studying some rare species. He looks jubilant.
6
The concierge left them to it and went to bed. She snored like a pile-driver all night. They left her some money for the coffee and Louis left a note to say thank you.
It is 3.00 a.m. The various teams have all left now. It has been six hours since the abduction and the evidence they have collected so far would fit in a matchbox.
Camille and Louis are out on the street, each heading home to take a quick shower before meeting up again.
“You go ahead,” Camille says.
They’ve arrived at the taxi rank. Camille isn’t taking a cab.
“Don’t mind me, I’ll walk part of the way.”
They go their separate ways.
Camille has sketched her over and over, this girl, as he pictures her, walking down the street, waving to the bus driver; constantly starting again because there was always some trace of Irène about her. Even the thought makes Camille feel sick. He walks faster. This girl is a different person. This is what he needs to remember.
Especially the one terrible difference: this girl is alive.
The street is deserted; cars go by every now and then.
He tries to think logically. Logic is what has been worrying him from the start. People don’t kidnap at random; more often than not they abduct someone they know. Maybe not very well, but well enough to have a motive. So the kidnapper must know where she lives. This thought has been running through Camille’s mind for the past hour. He quickens his pace. And if he didn’t snatch her from home or from outside her house, it has to be because it was impossible. He can’t think why, but it must have been impossible, otherwise he wouldn’t have snatched her here in the street, with all the risks that that entails. Yet that’s precisely what he did.
Camille speeds up and his thoughts keep time.
Two possibilities: either the guy is following her or he’s waiting for her. Could he have followed her in the van? No. She didn’t take the bus, and the idea of her walking down the street with him driving behind in slow motion waiting for the right moment to pounce is completely preposterous.
So he must have been waiting.
He knows her, knows the route she takes; he needs a place where he can wait, somewhere he’ll be able to see her coming … and be able to rush out and snatch her. And that somewhere has to be before the spot where he actually abducted her, since this is a one-way street. He sees her, she walks past, he catches up, snatches her.
“That’s the way I see it.”
It’s not unusual for Camille to talk to himself out loud. He hasn’t been widowed long, but it doesn’t take long for the habits of the single man to set in again. This is why he didn’t ask Louis to walk with him. He’s no longer used to being part of a team – he’s spent too much time alone, too much time brooding and hence thinking only of himself. They would only have ended up arguing. Camille doesn’t much like the man he has become.
He walks for a few minutes mulling over these thoughts. He’s looking for something. Camille is one of those people who seem stubbornly wrong-headed until the evidence proves they were right all along. It’s an irritating weakness in a friend but an important strength in a policeman. He walks past one street, and then another, but it triggers nothing. Then, suddenly, a lightbulb flickers on in his head.
Rue Legrandin.
A cul-de-sac that can’t be more than thirty metres long but is wide enough for cars to park on both sides. If he were the kidnapper, this is where he would have parked. Camille walks on a little then turns to look at the street.
At the junction there’s a building with a pharmacy on the ground floor.
He looks up.
Two C.C.T.V. cameras are trained on the shop front.
*
It doesn’t take long for them to find the footage of the white van on the tape. M. Bertignac is deferential to the point of sycophancy, the sort of man who revels in the thought of “helping the police with their inquiries”. The sort of person Camille finds vaguely irritating. They are in the dispensary at the back of the shop. M. Bertignac is sitting in front of a huge computer monitor. He doesn’t look much like a chemist, but he certainly has the character traits. Camille is quick to spot this since his father was a chemist. Even after he retired, he behaved like a retired chemist. He died just over a year ago. Camille can’t help but think that, even in death, there’s something of the chemist about his father.
M. Bertignac is eager to help the police and so was more than happy to get out of bed at 3.30 a.m. and open the door to Commandant Verhœven.
Nor is Bertignac a man who bears grudges, even though the Pharmacie Bertignac has been robbed five times. With the rise in drug dealers targeting pharmacies, he turned to technology. After every break-in, he bought a new camera. There are five now: two outside covering the pavement, the other three inside. The tapes are kept for twenty-four hours; after that they’re automatically erased. And M. Bertignac loves his gadgets. He didn’t need them to get a warrant before showing off his equipment; he was only too happy to oblige. It took only a few minutes to bring up the section of the tape covering the cul-de-sac. There’s not much to see: just the wheels and the lower part of the vehicles parked against the footpath. The white van arrives and parks at 21.04, inching forward so the driver has a sidelong view of the rue Falguière. For Camille, it is not enough to have his theory confirmed (though he is happy about that, he loves to be proved right), he would have liked a better view of the vehicle, because in M. Bertignac’s freeze-frame all that is visible are the front wheels and the lower section of the bodywork. He knows more about the M.O. and about the timing of the abduction, but not about the kidnapper. Nothing happens on the tape. Absolutely nothing. They rewind.
Camille can’t quite bring himself to leave. Because it’s infuriating to have the kidnapper right there while the camera is focused on some trivial unimportant detail. At 21.27, the van pulls out of the cul-de-sac. And it’s at that moment it happens.
“There!”
M. Bertignac bravely plays the studio engineer. Spools back the tape. There. They peer at the screen; Camille asks if it’s possible to enlarge. M. Bertignac twiddles various knobs. Just as the van pulls out of the parking spot, it’s obvious from the lower part of the bodywork that it has been repainted by hand, leaving part of the lettering still visible. It’s impossible to read what it says. The characters are barely legible and besides, they’re cut off along the top edge of the screen, out of shot of the C.C.T.V. camera. Camille asks for a printout and the chemist obligingly gives him a U.S.B. key onto which he’s copied the whole sequence. At maximum contrast, the pattern looks something like:
It is like Morse code.
The van has clearly scraped against something and there are small traces of green paint.
More work for forensics.
*
Camille finally makes for home.
The evening has shaken him somewhat. He takes the stairs. He lives on the fourth floor and on principle never t
akes the lift.
They’ve done what they can. What comes next is the worst part. The waiting. Waiting for someone to report a woman missing. It could take a day, two days, maybe more. In the meantime … When Irène was kidnapped, she had been found dead within ten hours. Half that time has already elapsed. If forensics had found anything useful, he would know by now. Camille is all too familiar with the sad, slow melody of cross-checking evidence, this war of attrition that takes ages and leaves your nerves shot.
He broods over this endless night. He’s exhausted. He barely has time to take a shower and knock back a couple of coffees.
Camille sold the apartment he once shared with Irène; he couldn’t bear to live there – it was too difficult seeing her everywhere he looked. To stay on would have required a strength of will better expended elsewhere. He wondered whether to go on living after Irène’s death was a matter of courage, a matter of will. How was it possible to carry on alone when everything around you had dissolved? He needed to check his own fall. He knew that this apartment was dragging him down, but he couldn’t bear to give it up. He asked his father (who could always be relied on to give a straight answer) and then Louis who had said: “To hold on, you have to let go.” It’s from the Tao, apparently. Camille wasn’t sure he understood what it meant.
“It’s like ‘The Oak and the Reed’, it you prefer.”
Camille preferred.
So he sold up. For three years now he’s been living here on the Quai de Valmy.
He steps into his apartment and Doudouche immediately comes to greet him. Ah, that’s something else. Doudouche, a little tabby cat.
“A middle-aged widower with a cat …” was Camille’s reaction.“It’s a bit of a cliché, don’t you think? Or am I being over the top?”
“I suspect it depends on the cat, doesn’t it?” Louis said.
And that’s the whole problem. Out of love, or a desire to fit in, through unconscious mimicry or a sense of propriety – who knows? – Doudouche has remained incredibly small for her age. She has a sweet little face, bandy legs like a cowboy, and she’s tiny. It’s a mystery so profound even Louis had no theory to propose.
“You think maybe she’s a little over the top too?” Camille said.
The vet was embarrassed when Camille brought the cat in to ask about its size.
No matter what time he gets in, Doudouche wakes up and comes to greet him. Tonight – this morning – Camille just gives her a quick scratch on the back. He doesn’t really feel like opening up. The day has been somewhat overwhelming.
First, the woman being kidnapped.
Then, meeting up with Louis again, especially in these circumstances. It’s as though Le Guen deliberately engineered things …
Camille freezes.
“The bastard!”
7
Alex climbs into the crate, bows her head, huddles up.
The man puts the lid back on, screws it into place and then steps back to admire his handiwork.
Alex is bruised from head to foot, her whole body shaken by spasms and tremors. Though it feels utterly absurd, she cannot deny the fact that inside the crate she feels somehow more at ease. As though sheltered. She has spent the past few hours constantly picturing what he might do to her, but aside from the brutality of the abduction itself, aside from the beating … It’s hardly nothing – Alex’s head is still throbbing from the force of the blows – but now here she is, in the crate, in one piece. He hasn’t raped her. He hasn’t tortured her. He hasn’t killed her. “Not yet,” says a little voice, but Alex doesn’t want to listen; as far as she is concerned each second gained is a second gained, every second yet to come is yet to come. She tries to take deep breaths. The man is still standing, frozen – she can see his heavy work boots, the bottoms of his trousers. He is staring at her. “I want to watch you die …” This is what he said; it’s almost the only thing he has said. Is that it? He wants to kill her? He wants to watch her die? How is he planning to kill her? Alex is no longer wondering why, but how? When?
Why does he hate women so much? What is this guy’s story that he could set this whole thing up? Could beat her so brutally? The cold is not too bitter, but what with the exhaustion, the beatings, the fear, the darkness, Alex feels frozen stiff. She tries to shift her position. It’s not easy. She is sitting hunched up, head resting on the arms hugging her knees. As she lifts herself to try and turn round, she lets out a scream. She’s just managed to drive a long splinter into her arm, high up near the shoulder, and has to use her teeth to pull it out. There’s no room. The wooden crate is rough, makeshift. What can she do to turn round? Rest her weight on her hands? Swivel her pelvis? First she will try to move her feet. She feels terror well up in her belly. She starts to scream, shifts this way and that; she’s terrified of injuring herself on the rough-hewn planks, but she needs to move, it’s enough to drive her mad. She thrashes about but succeeds only in gaining a few centimetres. Panic grips her.
The man’s large head suddenly appears in her field of vision.
So suddenly, she jerks back and bangs her head. He has crouched down to look at her. He smiles broadly with his missing lips. A grim, joyless smile that would be ridiculous if it were not so threatening. From his throat comes a sort of bleating sound. Still no words, he nods as though to say: Do you get it now?
“You …” Alex begins, but she cannot think what she wants to say to him, to ask him.
He goes on nodding his head, smiling that moronic smile. He’s mad, thinks Alex.
“You’re c— crazy …”
But she doesn’t have time to say more; he has just backed away, he is walking away – she can’t see him anymore so she trembles even more. As soon as he disappears, she panics. What is he doing? She cranes her neck; she can hear noises coming from a little way off – everything reverberates in the vast empty room. Except now, she’s moving. Imperceptibly the crate has begun to swing. The wood makes a creaking sound. Out of the corner of her eye, if she swivels her body as much as possible, she can see the rope above her. It is attached somehow to the crate. Alex twists her body so as to slide her hand up over her head and between the slats: there is a steel ring to which is attached a thick rope; she grips the huge, tight knot.
The rope shudders and tenses, the crate seems to shriek as it rises, lifts off the floor and begins to rock, to spin slowly. The man appears in her field of vision again, some seven or eight metres away, standing near the wall where, with sweeping movements, he tugs on the rope connected by two pulleys. The crate rises very slowly, and for a moment it seems as though it might topple. Alex doesn’t move; the man stares at her. When the crate is about a metre and a half off the ground, he stops, ties off the rope then goes and rummages in a pile of things next to the gap in the far wall and comes back.
Face to face, at the same height, they can look each other in the eye. He takes out his mobile phone. To take a photograph of her. He looks for the right angle, shifts to one side, steps back, chicks the shutter once, twice, three times … then checks the images, deletes those he’s not happy with. Then he goes back over to the wall and the crate rises again; it’s now two metres from the floor.
The rope now tied off, the man is visibly pleased with himself.
He slips on his jacket, pats his pockets to make sure he’s forgotten nothing. It’s as though Alex doesn’t exist anymore – he hardly glances at the crate as he leaves. Satisfied with his handiwork. As though leaving his apartment to go to work.
He’s gone.
Silence.
The crate swings heavily at the end of the rope. A blast of cold air whirls around her, lapping against Alex’s body, which is already frozen to the marrow.
She is alone. Naked. Trapped.
Only now does she understand.
This is not a crate.
It’s a cage.
8
“You fucking bastard …”
“Mind your language … ,” “I’ll thank you to remember I’m your super
ior officer,” “What would you have done in my shoes?” “You should improve your vocabulary, your bad language is getting tedious.” Over the years, Divisionnaire Le Guen tried everything with Camille – or almost everything. These days, rather than rehashing old arguments, he no longer responds. This rather cuts the ground out from under Camille, who now simply storms into his office without knocking and stands glowering at his boss. At best, the divisionnaire gives him a philosophical shrug; at worst, he looks down, pretending to be contrite. Not a word is spoken; they’re like an old married couple, which is something of a no-win situation for two men pushing fifty, both of whom are single. Or rather, neither of whom has a wife. Camille is a widower. Le Guen racked up his fourth divorce last year.
“It’s strange how you keep marrying the same woman,” Camille said at Le Guen’s last wedding.
“What can you do?” Le Guen quipped. “Old habits die hard. I mean I always have the same witness at my weddings – you!” Then tetchily he said, “Besides, if I have to have a new wife, I might as well marry the same one,” whereby proving that when it comes to fatalism, he’s a match for anyone.
The fact that they no longer need to say anything to understand what the other is thinking is the primary reason Camille does not tear a strip off Le Guen this morning. He brushes aside the petty manipulations of the divisionnaire who could obviously have put someone else on the case but pretended there was no-one. It dawns on Camille that he should have realised straight off, but he completely missed it. This is strange; in fact it is rather worrying. The other reason is that he hasn’t had a wink of sleep, he’s exhausted, and he doesn’t have the energy to waste because he has a long day ahead of him before Morel takes over.
It’s 7.00 a.m. Dead beat officers move from office to office yelling to each other, doors slam, people shout, dazed civilians wait in corridors; for the station, this is the fag-end of a sleepless night like any other.
Alex Page 5