Her brain, running in the background, sends out another message: what if he comes? She has to get out of here, quickly.
Alex checks: all her clothes are here. All her stuff, her bag, her papers, her money, even the wig she was wearing that night, is in the pile with Trarieux’s things. He took nothing. All he wanted was her life – well, her death. Alex gropes around, picks up her clothes, her hands shaking and weak. She keeps glancing around anxiously. The first thing she needs to do is find something she can use to defend herself in case he should come back. She rummages feebly through the tools strewn around and finds a crowbar. It was obviously used to open crates. When had he been planning to use it? When she was dead? So he could bury her? Alex puts it down next to her. She doesn’t even realise how ridiculous the situation is: were Trarieux to arrive, she wouldn’t have the strength to pick it up.
As she gets dressed, she suddenly becomes aware of her own smell: it’s sickening – she reeks of piss, of shit, of vomit and dog’s breath. She opens a bottle of water, then another, rubs herself hard, but her hands are slow. She washes as best she can, dries herself off, her limbs gradually returning to normal. She warms herself, rubbing herself down with a blanket she finds and some filthy rags. Obviously, there’s no mirror so she can’t see what she looks like. She probably has a mirror in her handbag; as she thinks this her brains sounds the alarm. Last warning: get the fuck out of here now; clear off. Right now.
The clothes immediately make her feel warmer. Her feet are swollen; her shoes pinch. It takes two attempts before she can stand, and then only barely. She picks up her bag, decides to leave the crowbar and stumbles out thinking that there are some things she will never be able to do again – fully extend her legs, turn her head, stand up straight. She shuffles forward, half-stooped, like an old woman.
Trarieux left footprints; she has only to follow them from one room to the next. She looks around, trying to find the exit he’s been using. That first day, when she tried to escape, when he caught her at the bricked-up doorway, this is what she didn’t notice: there, in the corner, the metal trapdoor in the floor. The handle is a loop of wire. Alex tries to lift it. She panics. She heaves with all her strength, but it doesn’t budge an inch. She feels tears well up again and a muffled groan comes from deep in her belly; she tries again, but it’s impossible. She already knows there will be no other way out; this was why he didn’t rush to try and catch her the other day. He knew that even if she found the trapdoor, she would never be able to lift it.
And now she feels angry, a brutal, murderous anger, a terrible rage. Alex screams and starts to run. She runs awkwardly, as though crippled. She retraces her steps. In the distance, the rats that dared to come back see her charging towards them and scatter. Alex picks up the crowbar and three of the broken planks, and she manages to carry them because she does not stop to ask herself whether she has the strength – her mind is on other things. She needs to get out of here and nothing, absolutely nothing is going to stop her. She’ll get out of here even if it kills her. She slides one end of the crowbar into the gap between the trapdoor and the floor and puts her whole weight on the other end. When it grudgingly lifts a few inches, she slides one of the planks under it with her foot and starts again, inserts a second plank, runs to get more wood, comes back and eventually manages to wedge the crowbar vertically under the trapdoor. The gap can’t be more than fifteen inches, scarcely enough to squeeze her body through, and she knows there is a risk that the whole rickety construction will collapse, bringing the heavy manhole cover crashing down and crushing her.
Alex pauses, cocks her head, listens. This time her brain sends no message, no advice. The slightest slip, the slightest hesitation and her body might nudge the crowbar and the trapdoor will collapse. In a split second she has tossed her bag through the gap, hears the muffled sound as it lands – the hole doesn’t seem too deep. As she thinks this, Alex lies flat on her stomach and, inch by inch, she slides backwards under the trapdoor. It’s cold, but she’s sweating by the time the tip of her shoe finds a foothold, a step. She slides the rest of her body through the gap, hanging on to the edge with her fingertips then, as she turns her head, what she most dreaded happens: she accidentally nudges the crowbar: with a metallic shriek it slips and the trapdoor slams shut with a deafening clang. She just has time to jerk her fingers away, a reflex action, a matter of nanoseconds. Alex stands, frozen, on the step in pitch darkness. She is unscathed. When her eyes adjust to the light, she picks up her bag, which is a couple of steps below. She holds her breath – she is getting out of here, she’s going to make it, she can’t believe it … A few more steps and she comes to a steel door held shut by a breeze block which takes an age to shift since she has no strength left. Then she finds herself in a corridor that smells of piss, a second stairwell which she negotiates, feeling her way with both hands like a blind woman, guided by a dim glow. This is the stairwell where she hit her head and passed out when he first brought her here. At the top of the steps there are three rungs, which Alex climbs, then a short tunnel, a sort of utility shaft that runs to a small metal plate set into the wall. Only a flicker of light comes through from outside and Alex has to feel around the edge of the plate to work out how it opens. It is simply wedged into place. Alex pulls it towards her and finds it’s not very heavy. She carefully removes it and sets it down next to her.
She is outside.
Immediately, she feels the cold night air – it tastes sweet, the cool damp of evening – and smells canal water somewhere. Life returning, a faint glimmer of life. The panel was hidden in an alcove in the wall at ground level. Alex crawls out then turns back to see whether she can put it back into place, but gives up; there’s no need to take precautions now. As long as she leaves now, fast. As fast as her stiff, aching limbs will allow. She creeps out of the alcove.
Some thirty metres away is a deserted wharf. Further off, a scattering of small houses with almost every window lit up. There are muffled sounds from the boulevard that can’t be far away.
Alex starts to walk.
She comes to the boulevard. Exhausted as she is, she won’t be able to walk very far. Suddenly she has a dizzy spell and has to cling to a streetlight to stop herself from falling.
It feels too late to be able to find any form of transport. But there, in the distance, a taxi rank. It’s deserted, the few neurons still working whisper, and besides it’s much too risky. She is bound to be noticed.
But her neurons have no better solution to offer.
27
When you’ve got a lot of irons in the fire, as he has this morning, and it’s difficult to prioritise, Camille claims “the most urgent thing is to do nothing”. It’s a variation on his approach to dealing with cases with as much perspective as possible. When he used to teach at the police academy, he referred to this as the “aerial technique”. From a man who is four foot eleven in his socks, it’s a term that might have raised a laugh, but no-one ever dared.
It’s six in the morning. Camille is up and showered, he’s had breakfast, his briefcase is by the door and he is standing, cradling Doudouche. He scratches the cat’s tummy; they both stare out of the window.
His gaze falls on the envelope from the auctioneers which he finally opened last night. This auction is the last act in dealing with his father’s estate. Camille had been shocked, upset, had grieved a little, but his father’s death had not been devastating. It had caused limited damage. Where his father was concerned, everything had always been predictable; his death had been no exception. If Camille has been unable to open the envelope until yesterday it is because it marks the end of a whole era in his life. He will be fifty soon. Around him, everyone is dead: first his mother, then his wife, now his father; he will never have children. He never imagined he would be the last living soul in his own life. This is what bothers him; his father’s death brings to a close a story, but the story is not yet over. Camille is still here – he may be dead beat, but he’s still standing. The p
roblem is his life now belongs entirely to him; he is sole owner and sole beneficiary. When you become the main character in your own life, it’s no longer interesting. What troubles Camille is not simply survivor’s guilt, but that he feels overwhelmed by such a cliché.
His father’s apartment has been sold. All that remains is a dozen or so paintings by Maud Verhœven which her husband had hung on to.
Not to mention the studio. Camille can’t bring himself to set foot there – it is the meeting point of all his griefs, for his mother, for Irène … No, he simply cannot, he would not even be able to climb the four steps, push open the door and step inside … Never.
As for the paintings, he has summoned up all his strength. He contacted a friend of his mother’s – they were at the Beaux-Arts together; the man agreed to make an inventory of the works. The auction will take place on October 7; it’s all arranged. Opening the envelope, Camille sees the titles of the paintings on offer, the date and time; the entire evening is devoted to Maud’s work with speeches and reminiscences.
At first, he made a big deal of the fact that he didn’t plan to keep any of the paintings, devised a whole string of theories. The most impressive was the theory that selling off all her works was a tribute to her. “If I wanted to see one of her paintings myself, I would have to go to a gallery,” he explained with a mixture of satisfaction and solemnity. Of course, that’s bullshit. The truth is he worshipped his mother above everything, and since he has been alone he has been shaken by the ambivalence of this love mingled with admiration, rancour, bitterness and resentment. This love tinged with anger is as old as he is, but if he is to be at peace with himself he has to cut it loose. Painting was his mother’s great cause – she sacrificed her life to it and with it Camille’s life. Not entirely, but the part she sacrificed became her son’s destiny. As though she had a child without ever imagining he would be a person. Camille will not be relieving himself of a burden, simply ridding himself of baggage.
Eight canvases, mostly from the last decade of Maud Verhœven’s life, are to be sold. Mostly abstract works. Looking at some of them, Camille has the same impression he has looking at Rothko’s work: the colours seem to vibrate, to throb – it’s something you have to feel to know truly what it is to see living painting. Two paintings have already been pre-empted; they’ll go to museums – works from her last days, howls of agony painted in the terminal stage of Maud’s cancer and the apogee of her work. The one Camille might have kept is a self-portrait she painted when she was about thirty. It depicts a childlike face, anxious, almost solemn. The subject is looking past the viewer, there is something vacant about the expression, a sophisticated mixture of adult femininity and childlike innocence, the sort of expression one might find in a face once young and tender and now ravaged by alcohol. Irène loved this painting. She took a photograph of it once, a six- by four-inch snapshot that still sits on his desk next to a blown glass pot for his pencils which Irène also gave him, the only truly personal item Camille keeps at work. Armand has always had a fondness for the picture; being figurative, it’s one of the few paintings by Maud Verhœven he understands. Camille always meant to give him the photograph one day, but he never has. But even this painting is included in the sale. When his mother’s works are finally scattered, perhaps he’ll have some peace, perhaps he’ll finally be able to sell the last link in the chain that will no longer connect to anything: the studio in Montfort.
*
Sleep came and with it other images, more urgent and more topical, images of the young girl who was imprisoned and managed to escape. All images of death, but these are images of future deaths. Because he doesn’t know how he knows, but from the moment he saw the disembowelled cage, the dead rats, the traces of flight, he has been convinced that all this obscures something else, that there is death still to come.
Downstairs, the street is still humming. For someone like Camille, who sleeps little, it doesn’t matter, but Irène would never have been able to live here. For Doudouche, on the other hand, it’s entertainment; she can sit staring out of the window for hours at the barges, the opening and closing of the lock. When the weather is fine, she’s even allowed to sit out on the windowsill.
Camille won’t leave until he has got things clear in his mind. And right now there are too many questions.
The warehouse in Pantin. How did Trarieux find it? Is it important? Though derelict for years, the place has never been squatted; the homeless haven’t taken it over. The fact that it was unfit for human habitation would have put them off, but the main reason was that the only possible way in was through a long narrow tunnel just below ground level, making it nearly impossible to bring in everything you would need. Maybe this was why Trarieux built such a small cage – he was limited by the length of the planks he could bring in. And it must have been difficult to bring the girl in. He had to be pretty determined. He was prepared to leave the girl for as long as it took to get her to confess to where she had buried his son.
Nathalie Granger. They know it’s not her real name, but since they’ve got nothing better, that’s what they still call her. Camille prefers “the girl” but even he slips up from time to time. Between a false name and no name, how can you choose?
The magistrate has agreed to initiate a manhunt. Though, pending evidence to the contrary, the girl who bumped off Pascal Trarieux with a pickaxe before almost taking his head off with sulphuric acid is being sought simply as a witness. Her housemate in Champigny formally identified her from the E-FIT, but the Public Prosecutor’s Department needs hard evidence.
Samples of blood and hair together with other organic matter have been collected from the warehouse in Pantin, which will quickly confirm a match to the traces of the girl found in the back of Trarieux’s van. That, at least, will be something. But it’s not much, Camille thinks.
The only way to pursue this lead is to reopen the two recent cold cases involving sulphuric acid and see whether they are connected to the same killer. Despite the divisionnaire’s doubts, Camille is absolutely persuaded that the same person – the same woman – is responsible for all three murders. The case files are due to arrive this morning; they should be there by the time he gets to the station.
Camille thinks for a moment about Nathalie Granger and Pascal Trarieux. A crime of passion? If it were, he would have expected things to be the other way round: Pascal Trarieux murdering Nathalie in a jealous rage, or because he could not stand the idea of being dumped, a sudden impulse, a moment of madness, but the reverse … ? An accident? Difficult to believe when you consider how it played out. Camille finds it hard to focus on these theories – another thought is running through his head while Doudouche claws at the sleeve of his jacket. It’s the way the girl managed to escape from the warehouse. How exactly did she do it?
Forensic tests will confirm how she managed to snap the rope holding up the cage, but once she was outside, what then?
Camille tries to picture the scene. And in his movie version, there’s a sequence missing.
They know the girl retrieved her clothes and they have her shoeprints leading to the shaft. These must be the shoes she was wearing when Trarieux abducted her – it’s hardly likely her kidnapper would have brought her a new pair. The thing is he beat this girl, she struggled, he tossed her into the back of his van, tied her up. What sort of state would her clothes be in? Rumpled, dirty, torn? They certainly wouldn’t be clean, of that Camille is sure. Once outside, a girl like that would be conspicuous, wouldn’t she?
Camille finds it hard to imagine Trarieux being particularly careful with the girl’s things, but leave that to one side. Forget the clothes and focus on the girl.
We know she was filthy. She’d spent a whole week, stark naked, locked up in a crate two metres off the ground. In the pictures she looks half dead. They found dry pet food, kibble for pet mice and rats – this is clearly what Trarieux fed her. For the whole week, she’s been forced to relieve herself while huddled in the cage.
>
“She’s shattered,” Camille says aloud, “and absolutely filthy.”
Doudouche looks up as though she realises better than her master that he has started talking to himself again.
There were puddles of water on the floor, damp rags, and her prints were found on several water bottles, so before she left she obviously had a perfunctory wash.
“Even so … when you’ve been shitting yourself for a week, what kind of a wash can you do with three litres of cold water and a couple of grubby rags?”
This brings him back to the crucial question – how did she get home without being noticed?
*
“Who’s to say no-one noticed her?” Armand says.
7.45 a.m. The offices of the brigade criminelle. Even when you’re not altogether with it, seeing Louis and Armand standing next to each other is a trip. Louis in his grey Kiton suit, Stefano Ricci tie, Weston brogues; Armand dressed from a clearance sale at a charity shop. Good grief, Camille thinks, staring at him: he looks as though he buys his clothes a size too small to save that much more.
He takes another sip of coffee. Armand’s right: who’s to say she wasn’t noticed?
“Let’s look into it,” Camille says.
The girl attracted no attention to herself; she got out of the warehouse and disappeared into thin air. It’s hard to credit.
“Maybe she got a lift?” Louis suggests, though even he does not believe this. A girl of twenty-five or thirty hitchhiking at two o’clock in the morning? Unless a car pulls up straight away, she’s hardly going to stand there with her thumb out. And she can’t exactly stand on the kerb flagging down cars like a hooker.
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