The trap is set, everything is ready; they’re waiting for him to get back so they can take him in for questioning. Plainclothes officers hole up and wait. Everything is going according to plan until the juge d’instruction – the investigating magistrate – turns up, accompanied by Le Guen.
The meeting takes place in one of the unmarked police cars parked several hundred metres from the main gate.
The magistrate is a guy of about thirty by the name of Vidard, the same name as Giscard d’Estaing’s secrétaire d’Etat or maybe Mitterrand’s – who is probably his grandfather. He is a thin, gruff man who wears a pinstriped suit, gold cufflinks and loafers. Details like this speak volumes. The fellow looks as if he was born in a suit and tie. Try as you might to focus on what he is saying, you can’t help imagining him naked. He’s a straight arrow with the good looks of a playboy and a thick mane of hair parted at the side – he looks like an insurance salesman who dreams of going into politics. He’s a future ageing Lothario.
When she saw men like this, Irène used to laugh and say to Camille: “My God, he’s handsome! Why can’t I have a husband as handsome as that?”
Moreover, he seems rather stupid. Probably runs in the family, Camille thinks. Vidard is a man in a hurry; he wants to storm the place. There must be a three-star general somewhere in his family tree, too, because he wants to launch an offensive on Trarieux as soon as possible.
“We can’t do that, it’s ridiculous.”
Camille could have chosen his words more judiciously, could have respected the proprieties, but this arsehole magistrate is planning to risk the life of a woman who’s been held hostage for five days. Le Guen steps in:
“As you’ll see, monsieur le juge, Commandant Verhœven can be a little … abrupt at times. He’s simply trying to say that perhaps it would be more prudent to wait for Trarieux to make his appearance.”
Commandant Verhœven’s abruptness doesn’t faze the magistrate one little bit. In fact, he’s determined to prove he’s fearless, a man of decision. Better still, a strategist.
“I suggest we surround the building, free the hostage and wait for the kidnapper inside.”
Then faced with the stunned silence that greets this brilliant suggestion: “We’ll have him trapped.”
The team is flabbergasted. A silence Vidard evidently reads as admiration.
“And how exactly do you know the hostage is inside?” Camille is the first to react.
“Are you even sure he’s definitely the man?” Vidard counters.
“We’re sure that his van was at the scene at the time the woman was kidnapped.”
“Which means it must be him.”
Le Guen tries to think of a way to defuse the situation, but the magistrate gets there first.
“I understand your position, gentlemen, but you see, things have changed …”
“I’m all ears,” Camille says.
“Forgive me for putting it so bluntly, but as a society we are no longer focused on criminals; we focus on the victims.”
He looks from one to the other before concluding grandiloquently: “Tracking down criminals is entirely laudable, indeed it is our duty. But our greatest concern must be for the victims. They are the reason we are here.”
Camille opens his mouth, but he has no time to say anything before the magistrate opens the car door and gets out. Mobile in hand, he turns back, leans through the car window and glares at Le Guen.
“I’m calling in R.A.I.D. right now.”
Camille to Le Guen: “This guy’s a complete muppet.”
The magistrate is still standing next to the car but pretends not to hear. Genetics.
Le Guen rolls his eyes and he too takes out his mobile. They’ll need backup to cover the perimeter in case Trarieux reappears just as they storm the building.
In less than an hour, everything is in place.
*
It’s 1.30 a.m.
Sets of keys for the building have been urgently despatched so all doors can be opened. Camille doesn’t know Commissaire Norbert from the R.A.I.D. squad. With a surname like that, no-one ever asked his first name: shaved head, sure-footed as a cat. Camille feels he’s seen the type a hundred times.
Having studied the maps and the satellite photos, the R.A.I.D. officers are despatched to four key points: one unit to the roof, one to the main entrance and two units covering the windows. The brigade criminelle is tasked with manning the perimeter. Camille has put units in unmarked cars at each of the three entrances. A fourth unit has been discreetly posted to cover the storm drain, the only other possible exit should the suspect try to make a run for it.
Camille has a bad feeling about the whole operation.
Commissaire Norbert is being careful. Caught in this stand-off between a divisionnaire, a colleague and an investigating magistrate, he sensibly limits his remarks to his area of expertise. When asked by the magistrate, “Can you storm the building and free the woman being held in there?” Norbert studied the maps, checked out the building and in under eight minutes came back with the response: yes, they could storm the building. The advisability and appropriateness of such an action are a different matter – one on which he has no authority to pronounce. But from his silence, his opinion is deafeningly clear. Camille likes the guy.
Of course it’s frustrating to have to wait for Trarieux to come back when you know that inside is a woman who has been held in conditions you hardly dare imagine, but, he feels, it is the best course of action.
Norbert takes a step back; the magistrate takes a step forward.
“What does it cost us to wait?” Camille says.
“Time,” Vidard says.
“And what does it cost us to play it safe?”
“A life, maybe.”
Even Le Guen is reluctant to intervene. Camille suddenly finds himself in a minority of one. The R.A.I.D. team will storm the building.
Camille takes the officer who scaled the perimeter wall aside.
“Tell me again what it’s like in there.”
The officer doesn’t quite know what to say.
“I mean,” Camille is getting a little irritated, “what did you see in there?”
“I dunno, not much: site machinery, a skip, a site shed, some demolition equipment. Well, one excavator anyway …”
And the mention of an excavator makes Camille think.
Norbert and his units are all in place and give the signal. Le Guen is following behind. Camille decides to stay within the grounds of the building.
He notes the precise time Norbert launches the operation: 01.57. From here and there in the deserted buildings lights flash on; there is the sound of running.
Camille thinks. Site machinery. Some demolition equipment.
“There’s been a lot of coming and going here,” he says to Louis.
Louis gives a quizzical look, waiting for Camille to explain.
“Site workers, engineers, I don’t know what all, people delivering site machinery before the building work starts, maybe even meetings about the development project. Accordingly …”
“… he’s not going to be holding her here.”
Camille doesn’t have time to respond because just at that moment, Trarieux’s white van appears around the corner.
From this point, things move very quickly. Camille jumps into the car Louis is driving, radios the four units manning the perimeter wall, and then they give chase. Camille juggles with the car radio, providing running commentary of the exact location of the suspect’s van heading for the suburbs. It’s not very fast and it’s belching smoke – it’s an old, clapped-out model so even if he floors the accelerator, Trarieux’s got no hope of getting more than 70 k.p.h. out of this rust bucket. And it’s not like the guy’s a Formula One driver. He hesitates and wastes precious seconds making ridiculous manoeuvres, allowing Camille to close the net. Louis has no problem staying right up his arse, lights flashing, siren wailing. Before long the police cars will have got the van boxed
in; it’s only a matter of seconds now. Camille continues to give their position, Louis drives up behind the van, headlights on full to freak the guy out, make him panic, two more cars appear, one from the left, one from the right; the fourth car has taken a parallel route, crossed the Périphérique and is coming back the other way. The die is cast.
Le Guen phones Camille, who’s hanging on tight to his safety belt.
“You got him?”
“Nearly,” Camille shouts. “Anything your end?”
“You can’t afford to fucking lose this guy, because the girl isn’t here.”
“I know.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I said we’ve drawn a blank, d’you copy?” Le Guen roars. “There’s no-one here.”
As Camille is about to find out, this is to be a night of key images. The first, the opening scene in a way, is the flyover across the Périphérique where Trarieux’s van skids sideways and screeches to a halt. Two police cars behind him, a third in front blocking his escape route. The officers pile out, take cover behind the car doors and train their weapons on the van. Camille gets out too – he’s pulled his gun and is about to shout the standard warnings when he sees the man jump down from the van and lumber across to the railing where, unbelievably, he sits facing them as though goading them to come closer.
Everyone immediately knows what’s coming next. One look at him is all it takes as he sits on the railing, his back to the traffic below, his legs dangling, staring at the line of police moving slowly towards him, weapons trained on him. This first image is the one that will stick: a man staring at the advancing officers.
He flings his arms wide, as though about to make some momentous statement.
Then he raises his legs high.
And topples over the edge.
Before they even reach the railing they hear the body smash on the autoroute below, the sound of the truck hitting him, the shriek of brakes, the car horns, the screech of metal of cars unable to stop in time.
Camille looks down. Below is a tangle of cars, a blaze of headlights and hazard warning lights. He turns, runs across the flyover and leans over the opposite railing. Trarieux has gone under the wheels of an articulated lorry. Camille can see half the body, the shattered skull, blood spreading across the asphalt.
For Camille, the second image comes about twenty minutes later. The Périphérique is completely cordoned off, the whole area is an eerie scene of flashing lights and sirens, horns, paramedics, firefighters, police, drivers and gawkers. They’re on the flyover, in the car. Louis is taking notes as Armand reels off the information they’ve got on Trarieux. Next to him, Camille has snapped on latex gloves; he’s holding the mobile phone found on the suspect’s body which somehow escaped the wheels of the articulated lorry.
Photographs, six of them, of a sort of wooden crate, the slats regularly spaced, suspended above the ground. Inside, imprisoned, a woman, young, maybe thirty, her hair lank, greasy, dirty, completely naked, huddled in a space clearly much too small for her. In each picture, she is looking at the photographer. Her eyes are frantic, ringed by dark circles. But her features are delicate, her dark eyes are striking; she is in a terrible state, but this cannot hide the fact that in ordinary circumstances she must be quite pretty. But right now, all the images tell the same story: pretty or not, this caged woman is dying.
“A fillette,” Louis says.
“A what? What are you talking about?”
“The cage. It’s a fillette.”
And seeing that Camille is still puzzled: “A cage that makes it impossible to stand or sit.”
Louis stops. He doesn’t like to flaunt his cleverness; he knows what Camille’s like … But this time Camille gives an exasperated nod – come on, get on with it.
“It’s an instrument of torture created under Louis XI for the bishop of Verdun. He was kept in it for ten years. It’s a passive but very effective torture. The joints fuse, the muscles atrophy … and it drives the victim insane.”
They can see the girl’s hands frantically gripping the slats. It’s enough to turn your stomach. The last photograph shows only part of her face and three large rats scuttling across the top of the cage.
“Fucking hell …”
Camille tosses the phone to Louis as though afraid of burning his fingers.
“Check the date and time of the images.”
Camille’s not much use when it comes to technology. It takes Louis precisely four seconds.
“The last photograph was taken three hours ago.”
“What about calls? The calls!”
“Last call was ten days ago …”
Not a single call since he abducted the girl.
Silence.
No-one knows who this girl is or where he’s been keeping her.The one person who did know has just been hit by an articulated lorry.
Camille picks two images from Trarieux’s mobile, including the one with the huge rats. He types a text to the magistrate, copying the message to Le Guen:
Now that the “criminal” is dead, how do you suggest we focus on the victim?
13
When Alex opened her eyes, the rat was staring at her centimetres from her face, so close it seemed three or four times its actual size.
She screamed, and it scurried back to the basket then darted up the rope where it hung for a long time, whiskers twitching, uncertain as to its next course of action, gauging the level of the threat. And the potential benefits of the situation. She screamed and swore, but the rat ignored her efforts, clinging to the rope, head down, staring at her. The pinkish nose, the glittering eyes, the glossy coat, the long white whiskers and that tail that seems to go on for ever. Alex is numb with terror, unable to catch her breath. She shouted herself hoarse, but, being very weak now, eventually she had to stop and the two stared at each other for a long time.
Motionless, the rat dangles about forty centimetres above her then, cautiously, climbs down into the basket and starts eating the kibble, shooting frequent looks at Alex. From time to time, suddenly panicked, it scampers away to take cover only to quickly return. It seems to realise she is no threat. It is hungry. It’s an adult rat, about thirty centimetres long. Alex crouches down in her cage, as far away as possible. She stares at the rat with a fury all the more absurd since it is intended to keep the animal at bay. It’s eaten the dog food now, but it doesn’t scamper back up the rope. Instead it moves towards her. This time Alex doesn’t scream, she squeezes her eyes shut and cries. When she opens them again, the rat is gone.
*
Pascal Trarieux’s father. How did he find her? If her brain weren’t so slow she might be able to think of an answer, but her thoughts now are frozen images, like photographs: nothing is moving. Besides, what does it matter how he found her? She has to negotiate; it’s her only option. She has to come up with a story, something credible, anything that will persuade him to let her out of this crate – after that, she’ll think of something. Alex gathers all the information she can, but her thought process goes no further. A second rat has just appeared.
A bigger rat.
The king rat, maybe. Its coat is much darker.
This one did not crawl down the rope to the basket, no, it darted down the rope supporting the cage and appeared just above Alex’s head. And unlike the previous rat, it didn’t scurry away when she screamed and swore at it, simply moving in short, fitful bursts, until it could rest its forepaws on the top of the crate. Alex can smell the acrid stench of it; it is a fat, sleek rat with long white whiskers and deep black eyes. Its tail is so long that it dangles between the slats and touches Alex’s shoulder.
She screams. The rat turns unhurriedly to look at her, then paces up and down the slat three or four times, stopping from time to time to stare at her as though taking measurements. Alex follows it with her eyes, her whole body tensed, her breathing ragged, her heart beating fit to burst.
That’s what I smell like, she thinks; I smell
of shit and piss and vomit. It smells carrion.
The rat rears up on his hind paws, sniffing.
Alex’s eyes move up along the rope.
Two other rats have just begun their descent towards the cage.
14
The building site at the old outpatient clinic looks as if it’s been overrun by a film crew. The R.A.I.D. team have left, forensics have laid dozens of metres of cable, and the courtyard is flooded by the glare of spotlights. It’s the middle of the night, but there’s not an inch of shadow anywhere. Sterile walkways have been created, marked off with red and white police tape, making it possible to walk around without contaminating the scene. The forensics crew are collecting evidence.
What they need to find out is whether Trarieux brought the girl here at any point after the abduction.
Armand likes to have people milling around. As far as he’s concerned, a crowd is first and foremost a ready supply of cigarettes. He glides easily past those he’s already scrounged off too often before they get a chance to warn newcomers; he’s already stocked up enough to last him four days.
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