“The accounts were all in order.”
For the new proprietor, closing his eyes solemnly, this is a blank cheque for life.
“Then, one night in November …” Chief Langlois takes up the story. By now he and Camille have left the bar, having refused a drink, and they’re walking towards the war memorial, a pedestal on which stands a WWI solider leaning into the wind, about to skewer some invisible Kraut with his bayonet. “November 28, to be exact. Maciak is closing up as usual at about ten o’clock – he’s pulled down the metal shutters and he’s started cooking himself something in the kitchen at the back of the café. He’s probably planning to eat in front of the T.V., which has been on since 7.00 a.m. But he didn’t get to eat that night, he never had time – we think he went to open the back door. When he comes back, he’s not alone. No-one knows what transpired exactly; the only thing we know for sure is that some time later, he’s hit on the back of the head with a hammer. He’s stunned, he’s badly injured, but he’s not dead – the postmortem was very clear. At this point he’s tied up using bar towels, which means this wasn’t premeditated. He’s laid out on the floor of the café, someone obviously tries to get him to tell them where his savings are, he refuses. They must have gone out through the back kitchen to the garage to get the sulphuric acid he used to refill the battery in his van. They come back and pour half a litre of it down his throat, which quickly puts an end to the conversation. They pocket the day’s takings – thirty-seven euros – go upstairs and turn the place upside down, rip open the mattresses, empty out the drawers and find his savings – 2,000 euros – hidden in the toilet. Then they just disappear, without being seen by a single soul, taking the container of acid, presumably because it had fingerprints.”
Camille is unthinkingly reading the list of names of those who fell in the Great War. Finds three men called Malignier: the name the chief mentioned earlier – Gaston, Eugène and Raymond. He’s trying to find a connection to the “four cheeks”.
“Any mention of a woman?”
“We know there was a woman, but we don’t know if she is connected to the case.”
Camille feels a little shudder down his spine.
“O.K., how do you think it happened? Maciak is closing up, it’s ten o’clock …”
“Nine forty-five,” corrects Chief Langlois.
“That doesn’t change much.”
Chief Langlois pulls a face: to his mind, it changes everything.
“Surely you understand, commandant,” he says. “A bar owner is more likely to stay open a little later than his licence permits. For him to close up fifteen minutes early is very unusual.”
A “tryst” – this is Chief Langlois’s word, his theory. The regulars had mentioned a woman coming into the bar that evening, but they’d been there since mid-afternoon and had blood alcohol levels to prove it, so unsurprisingly some reported that she was young, others said old, some claimed she was short, others said fat, a few thought there was someone with her, mentioned a foreign accent, but even those who claimed to have heard it couldn’t say where it was from. All in all, none of them knew anything beyond the fact that she chatted for a while to Maciak, who seemed all excited, that this was at nine o’clock and forty-five minutes later he closed up early, telling the regulars he was tired. We know the rest. No record of any woman – young, old, short or fat – staying at any of the hotels in the area. A call for witnesses was put out, but nothing came of it.
“We should have widened the search area,” the chief says, dispensing with the usual litany about lack of resources.
For the moment, all that can be said with certainty is that there was a woman in the area. Beyond that …
Chief Langlois permanently looks as though he’s standing to attention. He is stiff, wooden.
“Something bothering you, chef?” Camille says, still looking down the names of those who fell in the Great War.
“Well …”
Camille turns towards Langlois and, without waiting for a response, he carries on. “The thing I find surprising is the idea of trying to get someone to talk by pouring acid down his throat. If they were trying to shut him up, it would make more sense, but to get him to talk …”
For Langlois, this is a relief. His rigid posture relaxes a little as though for a moment he’s forgotten he’s on parade – he even clicks his tongue – a mannerism hardly in accordance with police regulations. Camille is tempted to call him to order, but he suspects that in his career path, Chief Langlois never ticked the box marked “humour”.
“I thought that too,” he says at length. “It’s curious … At first glance, the crime looks like the work of a prowler. The fact that Maciak opened the back door hardly proves that he knew the person; at best all it proves is that the person was persuasive enough to get him to open up – it would hardly be difficult. So, it could be a prowler. The café is deserted, no-one saw him enter, he picks up the hammer – Maciak had a small toolbox under the bar – he stuns Maciak, ties him up; that is compatible with the report.”
“But since you don’t believe the acid was used to try and make him tell where he’d hidden his savings, you presumably favour a different theory …”
They leave the war memorial and walk back to the car. The wind has come up a little and with it the late-season cold. Camille pushes down his hat and buttons his coat.
“Let’s just say I’ve found a more logical one. I don’t know why acid was poured into his mouth and down his throat, but to my mind it has nothing whatever to do with the burglary. As a rule when thieves are inclined to murder, they favour the direct route: first they kill, then they search, then they leave. Vicious thugs torture their victims using orthodox means, which though they may be excruciating, are standard techniques. But this …”
“So, what do you think the acid was for … ?”
Langlois looks dubious for a moment, then comes to a decision.
“I believe it was a sort of ritual. What I mean is …”
Camille knows exactly what he means.
“What kind of ritual?”
“Sexual …” Langlois ventures.
Smart guy, the chief.
Sitting next to each other, the two men stare through the windscreen at the rain streaming down the war memorial. Camille explains the sequence of events they’ve established: Bernard Gattegno, March 13, 2005; Maciak later that year on November 28; Pascal Trarieux, July 14, 2006.
Chief Langlois nods.
“What links them is that the victims are all men.”
This is what Camille thinks too. The ritual is sexual. This girl, if it is her, despises men. She seduces men she meets, perhaps she even chooses her victims and, at the first opportunity, she bumps them off. As for the sulphuric acid, they’ll understand that once they’ve arrested her.
“That’s one crime every six months,” Chief Langlois says. “But geographically it’s one hell of a hunting ground.”
Camille agrees. The chief doesn’t simply put forward very plausible hypotheses, he also asks the right questions. But as far as Camille knows there’s nothing to connect the victims: Gattegno, a garage owner in Étampes; Maciak, a bar owner in Reims; Trarieux, unemployed in Paris. Apart from the fact that they were killed in very much the same way and apparently by the same hand.
“We don’t know who this girl is,” Camille says, as Langlois starts the car to drive back to the train station. “All we know is that, if you’re a man, you’re better off not crossing her path.”
32
When she arrived, Alex checked in to the first hotel she found. It’s opposite the station. She didn’t get a wink of sleep. When it wasn’t the racket of the trains, the rats were still haunting her dreams, something that would happen no matter what hotel she was in. In the last dream, the fat black rat was at least three feet tall, and it poked its snout, its whiskers into Alex’s face, its black beady eyes piercing her; she could see the slavering jaws, the razor-sharp teeth.
The following mor
ning, she found exactly the place she was looking for in the Yellow Pages. The Hôtel du Pré Hardy. Luckily, they had a number of rooms available and the prices were reasonable. It proved to be a nice hotel, very clean, if a little far from the centre. Alex likes the city; the light is agreeable, and she has been going for walks, as though this is a holiday.
When she first checked in to the Hôtel du Pré Hardy, she almost turned on her heel and left again. Because of the owner, Mme Zanetti – “but everyone calls me Jacqueline”. It rankled a little with Alex, this pretending to be friends straight off.
“And what’s your name, dear?”
She had to say something, so, “Laura”.
“Laura?” repeated the owner, surprised. “That’s my niece’s name.”
Alex couldn’t see what was so strange about this. Everyone has a first name – hotel owners, nieces, nurses, everyone – but Mme Zanetti finds it particularly startling. This is why Alex took an instant dislike to the woman – the horribly manipulative way she pretends to be connected to everyone. She’s a “people person” and now that she’s getting older, she consolidates her communication skills with an aura of protectiveness. Alex is infuriated by this need in her to be best friends with half the planet and mother to the other half.
Physically, she was once a beautiful woman, but her attempt to cling to her beauty ruined everything. Plastic surgery doesn’t always age well. With Mme Zanetti it’s difficult to put a finger on exactly what is wrong; it looks as though everything has shifted and that her face, while still trying to look like a face, is out of all proportion. It’s a tightly stretched mask with snake eyes sunk into deep hollows, a network of fine lines around lips that have been ridiculously inflated; the forehead is so taut the eyebrows are permanently arched, the jowls pulled back so far they dangle like sideburns. Her staggering mane of hair is dyed jet black. When she first appeared behind the reception desk, Alex had to fight back the urge to recoil; the woman looks like a witch. Having a monstrosity like this to welcome you every night makes for quick decisions. Mentally, Alex decided to get Toulouse out of the way quickly and head back to Paris. But on her first night, Mme Zanetti invited her into the back room for a drink.
“Come on, dear, won’t you have a little chat with me?”
The whisky is excellent and her private sitting room is pleasant, all done out in a Fifties style, with a big black Bakelite telephone, an old Teppaz gramophone with a Platters L.P. When all’s said and done, Mme Zanetti is pretty O.K. – she tells funny stories about previous guests. And after a while you get used to the face. You forget about it. Just as she has probably forgotten about it. It’s the nature of a handicap; there comes a time when only other people notice.
After the whisky, Mme Zanetti opened a bottle of Bordeaux. “I don’t know what I’ve got in the fridge, but if you’d like to stay for dinner …” Alex accepted, because it was easier. The evening is a long and pleasant one; Alex is subjected to a barrage of questions and she lies reasonably well. The good thing about casual conversations is that you’re not expected to tell the truth – what you say is of no importance. When Alex got up from the sofa to make for bed, it was past one o’clock in the morning. They kiss each other spontaneously on both cheeks, tell each other it’s been a marvellous evening, something that is both true and false. In any case, the time passed without Alex noticing. She’s getting to bed much later than she had planned, utterly exhausted – she has an appointment with her nightmares.
The following morning, she visits the bookshops, has a little nap and sleeps so deeply it is almost painful.
The hotel “comprising twenty-four guest rooms, was entirely renovated four years ago,” according to Jacqueline Zanetti, “call me Jacqueline, no, honestly, I insist.” Alex’s room is on the second floor. She doesn’t encounter many other guests but hears them rattling around: clearly the renovation did not extend to soundproofing. That evening, as Alex attempts to slip out discreetly, Jacqueline suddenly appears behind the reception desk. It’s impossible to turn down the offer of a drink. Jacqueline is on even better form. She tries hard to be scintillating: laughing and joking and pulling faces; she’s laid on snacks and at about 10.00 p.m., she reveals her plans. “Why don’t we go dancing?” The proposal is offered with a delighted impulsiveness designed to win Alex over, but Alex does not much like dancing … Besides, she finds such places mystifying. “Not at all,” tuts Jacqueline, pretending to take offence, “people just go to dance, honestly.” Persuasive. As though she really believes what she’s saying.
At her mother’s insistence, Alex trained to be a nurse, but deep down she is also a nurse at heart. She likes to do good. The reason she finally accepts is that Jacqueline has put so much effort into presenting her proposal. She laid on supper, talks about some place where they have dancing twice a week – “You’ll see, it’s priceless!” – Jacqueline has always been crazy about dance halls. “Well,” she confesses, simperingly, “I suppose you also get to meet people there.”
Alex sips her claret. She barely even noticed that they sat down to eat, but now it’s half past ten, time to go.
33
As far as they know, Pascal Trarieux’s path never crossed that of Stefan Maciak, who as far as they know never met Gattegno. Camille summarises the police records.
“Gattegno, born in Saint-Fiacre, went to technical college in Pithiviers where he also did his apprenticeship. Six years later he opens up his own workshop in Étampes and later (he’s twenty-eight by this time) he takes over his former mentor’s garage, also in Étampes.”
The offices of the brigade criminelle.
The magistrate came by for what he insists on calling “a debriefing”. He says the word with a pronounced English accent somewhere between affectation and ridiculousness. Today, he’s wearing a sky-blue tie; this is as outrageous as his dress sense gets. He is sitting, expressionless, hands splayed on the desk in front of him, like starfish. He is determined to make an impression.
“From the day he was born to the day he died, this guy didn’t go beyond a thirty-kilometre radius,” Camille continues. “Three kids and suddenly, at the age of forty-nine, a mid-life crisis. It drives him crazy, and eventually, it does for him. No known connection to Trarieux.”
The magistrate says nothing. Le Guen says nothing. They’re keeping their powder dry; with Camille Verhœven, you never know which way things will go.
“Stefan Maciak, born 1949 to a Polish family, a family of modest means, a hardworking family, a model of French social integration.”
Everybody already knows all this. Reviewing the details of a case for just one person is tiresome, and it’s obvious from Camille’s voice that he’s losing patience. At times like this, Le Guen closes his eyes as though trying to communicate serenity using thought waves. Louis also does this to try to calm his boss. Camille is not a hothead, but from time to time, he can be a little impetuous.
“This Maciak was so socially integrated he became an alcoholic. He drinks like a Pole, which makes him a good Frenchman. The kind that wants to preserve the French national heritage. So he goes to work in a bistro. He washes dishes, waits tables, he’s promoted to head waiter – we’re witnessing a miracle of upward mobility through the downward application of alcohol. In a meritocratic country like ours, hard work always pays off. Maciak is managing his first café by the age of thirty-two, a place in Épinay-sur-Orge. He’s there for eight years and then comes the peak of his social climb, the bistro in Reims where he died in circumstances we’re already familiar with. Never married. Which might possibly explain him falling head over heels when a passing traveller takes an interest in him. It costs him 2,037.87 euros (traders like to be precise), and his life. His career may have been a long hard slog, but his passion was a blinding flash.”
Silence. Impossible to tell whether this signals annoyance (the magistrate), consternation (Le Guen), forbearance (Louis), or joy (Armand), but no-one says a word.
At length the magistrate says:
“According to you, there is nothing to connect the victims. Our murderer is killing people at random. You think the murders are not premeditated.”
“Whether or not she plans them, I can’t say. I’m simply making plain that the victims did not know each other, so there’s no point pursuing that line of inquiry.”
“So why does the murderer change her identity, if not so she can kill?”
“It’s not so she can kill, it’s because she has killed.”
The magistrate only has to float an idea for Camille to start back-pedalling. He explains.
“She doesn’t really change her identity; she simply changes her name. It’s not the same thing. Someone asks her name and she says ‘Nathalie’, or she says ‘Léa’ – it’s not as if they’re going to ask to see her I.D. card. She changes her name because she has killed a number of men, three as far as we’re aware, though we have no idea of the true figure. She’s covering her tracks as best she can.”
“She’s doing a pretty good job,” snaps the magistrate.
“I concede that …” Camille says.
He says this distractedly because he is looking at something else. All eyes turn towards the window. The weather has changed. Late September. It’s 9.00 a.m., but the sky has gone dark. The thunderstorm lashing the windows has suddenly whipped itself up into a raging fury; for two hours now it’s been wreaking havoc. It doesn’t look like anything will stop it. Camille surveys the damage worriedly. Though the clouds don’t quite have the brooding savagery of Géricault’s “The Flood”, there is danger in the air. We need to be careful as we lead our little lives, Camille thinks; the end of the world will not be some momentous calamity – it could start out just like this.
“What’s the motive?” the magistrate says. “Money doesn’t seem likely.”
Alex Page 17