And, incidentally, what was her real name?
Beside him on a chair is her handbag. He takes a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and snaps them on. He picks up the bag, opens it – it’s amazing all the stuff women keep in their handbags – he finds her I.D. card, opens it.
Thirty years old. The dead never resemble the living they once were. He looks at the official photograph, then back at the dead girl on the bed. Neither of these faces is anything like the countless sketches he did in the past few weeks based on the E-FIT. And so the girl’s face remains elusive. Which is her real face? The stamped image of her on the I.D. card? She could be about twenty in the picture; the hairstyle is dated, and she is not smiling, simply staring ahead vacantly. Or is it the E-FIT of the serial killer, cold, hard, fraught with menace, printed out a thousand times? Or is it the lifeless face of the dead girl lying on the bed whose body, as though disconnected from her, is haunted by unspeakable pain?
Camille finds her eerily like a painting by Fernand Pelez, “The Victim”: the staggering effect of death when it strikes.
Fascinated by her face, Camille forgets that he still does not know her name. He peers at the I.D. card again.
Alex Prévost.
Camille repeats the name to himself.
Alex.
Laura is gone and with her Nathalie, Léa, Emma.
She is Alex.
Or rather she was … She was.
III
51
Vidard the magistrate is delighted. The suicide is the logical outcome of his astuteness, his skill and his single-mindedness. As with all vain men, what he owes to chance and circumstance he attributes to his talent. Unlike Camille he is jubilant. Discreetly so. The more reserved he is, the more triumphant he obviously feels. Camille can see it in the set of his mouth, the shoulders, in the purposeful way he slips on his protective gear. It’s bizarre, seeing Vidard in a surgeon’s mask and blue overboots.
He could simply have viewed the scene from the corridor, given that the forensics team are already at work, but no – a thirty-year-old multiple murderer, especially a dead one, like a hunting scene, is something that demands to be seen up close. He’s satisfied. He steps into the room like a Roman emperor. Leaning over the bed, his lips twitch as though to say Good, good, and as he leaves his expression reads Case closed. For Camille’s benefit, he points to the crime scene investigators.
“I want the result as soon as, understood?”
Which means he wants to hold a press conference. Quickly. Camille agrees. Quickly.
“Of course,” Camille says, “we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
The judge is about to leave. Camille hears the cartridge enter the barrel.
“We need this to be over and done with,” says the magistrate. “For everyone’s sake.”
“You mean for me?”
“If you want me to be frank, then yes.”
He peels off his protective suit as he says this. The cap and the overboots are ill-suited to the dignity of his words.
“You have demonstrated a singular lack of clear-sightedness in this case, Commandant Verhœven,” he says at length. “You were constantly overtaken by events. Even the identity of this girl we owe not to you but to her. You were saved by the bell, but you were lucky; had it not been for this … fortunate ‘incident’,” he nods towards the room, “I’m not at all sure you’d still be on the case. I strongly feel you simply don’t have …”
“… the stature?” Camille supplies. “Say it, sir, it’s on the tip of your tongue.”
Exasperated, the magistrate takes several steps down the corridor.
“That’s you all over,” Camille says. “You don’t have the bottle to say what you think, or the honesty to think what you say.”
“Very well then, I’ll tell you exactly what I think …”
“I’m shaking in my boots.”
“I think that you’re no longer fit to handle serious cases.”
He takes a moment to make it clear that he’s thinking, that being an intelligent man, aware of his importance, he never says anything lightly.
“Your return to work has been less than stellar. You might perhaps wish to take a step back.”
52
In the first instance, everything was shipped off to the forensics lab. and when they were done, the stuff was left in Camille’s office. It might not seem like it, but it takes up a lot of space. Armand had them bring in a couple of tables and cover them with a sheet, push back the desk, the hat stand, the chairs, the sofa, and then lay everything out carefully. It feels strange, looking at all these childish things and realising they belonged to a woman of thirty. As though she never grew up. Why would anyone want to keep a cheap pink hair slide with a paste diamond, or a cinema ticket?
All of these things were picked up at the hotel four days earlier.
After leaving the dead woman’s hotel room, Camille went back down to the foyer where Armand was taking a statement from the receptionist, a young man with his hair gelled into a side flick as though he’d just been slapped. For ostensibly practical reasons, Armand has set himself up in the dining room where hotel guests are having breakfast.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he said, and without waiting for a response helped himself to a pot of coffee, four croissants, a glass of orange juice, a bowl of cereal, a boiled egg, two slices of ham and a couple of portions of cheese. As he eats, he questions the receptionist, and he’s clearly listening carefully since, even with his mouth full, he’s capable of correcting the man.
“Earlier you told me it was eight thirty yesterday evening.”
“Yes,” the receptionist says, astonished by this scrawny man’s appetite, “but five minutes either way, it’s hard to say …”
Armand nods that he understands. When he’s finished the interview, he says, “I don’t suppose you’d have a cardboard box or something?” He doesn’t wait for an answer; instead he lays out three paper napkins, tips out a whole basket of bread and croissants onto them and ties them up in a bow; it looks like a gift. To the worried receptionist, he says, “For later … what with all the work we’ve got on, we won’t get to break for lunch.”
It is 7.30 a.m.
Camille goes into the conference room which Louis has requisitioned to take witness statements. He’s questioning the chambermaid who found Alex’s body, a woman of about fifty, with a pale, careworn face. Usually she does the evening shift, cleaning up after dinner, then goes home, but sometimes, when they’re short-staffed, she has to come back at 6.00 a.m. to do the bedrooms. She is a heavy-set woman and suffers from lumbago.
Her instructions are to leave the bedrooms until late morning, and even then she knocks loudly and waits, because the things she has walked in on … She could tell some stories, but the presence of the officer who’s just come into the room and is watching them intimidates her. He doesn’t say anything, he just stands there, hands in the pockets of the coat he hasn’t taken off since he arrived; the man is obviously either sick or sensitive to the cold. But this morning, she made a mistake. Room 317 was on her list – the guest had already checked out which meant she could clean the room.
“It wasn’t properly written,” she explains. “I thought it said 314.”
She is quite vehement; she doesn’t want to be blamed for all this. It’s not her fault.
“If the room number had been properly written, none of this would have happened.”
To calm her, reassure her, Louis places a neatly manicured hand on her arm and closes his eyes; sometimes he looks just like a cardinal. For the first time since she went into room 314 by mistake, the chambermaid realises that above and beyond the confusion with the numbers which she keeps harping on about, there is a thirty-year-old woman who committed suicide.
“I realised at once that she was dead.”
She falls silent, struggles to find the right words; she’s seen a lot of dead bodies in her time. But still, it’s unexpected every time. It kn
ocks the wind out of you.
“It gave me such a shock.”
She claps her hand over her mouth at the thought. Louis silently sympathises. Camille says nothing; he watches, waits.
“A beautiful young girl like that. She seemed so alive …”
“You thought she seemed alive?”
It is Camille who asks this.
“Well no, not there in the room … That’s not what I meant …”
And when the two men don’t respond, she carries on; she wants to do the right thing, wants to help. Because of the mix-up with the room numbers she’s convinced they’re going to try to blame her for something. She has to stand up for herself.
“When I saw her the night before she seemed so alive – that’s what I meant to say. It was the way she walked; she seemed so gutsy. I don’t know how to explain it.” She becomes irritated.
Louis says calmly, “Where did you see her walking the night before?”
“On the road there outside the hotel. She was taking out bin bags and …”
She doesn’t get a chance to finish the sentence; the two men have already disappeared. She watches them run for the exit.
On the way Camille nabs Armand and three officers and they all rush outside. To right and left, on either side of the street about fifty metres away a refuse truck is emptying containers hurriedly loaded by the operators; the policemen all shout but, at that distance, they can’t hear. Camille and Armand run up the road, waving their arms; Louis runs the other way, all three of them brandishing their warrant cards; the other officers blow their whistles as hard as they can; the effect is to completely paralyse the dustmen: they all stop in mid-action. The policemen keep running, panting and out of breath. It’s not often a refuse collector gets to see the police trying to arrest a bin.
The dazed chambermaid is led outside, like a celebrity surrounded by fans and paparazzi. She points to the spot where she was standing when she saw the girl the night before.
“I was on my moped, over there, and she was here – well, more or less here; I can’t say exactly.”
Some twenty containers are wheeled as far as the hotel car park. The manager immediately panics.
“But you can’t—”
“What exactly can’t we do?” Camille interrupts him.
The manager gives up; this is not going to be a good day: rubbish containers emptied all over the car park, as if a suicide wasn’t enough.
Armand is the one who finds the three bin liners.
He’s got flair. Experience.
53
On Sunday morning, Camille opens the window for Doudouche because she loves to watch the market. After he finishes breakfast – it is not yet 8.00 a.m. and he slept very badly – he goes into one of the long periods of indecision that he has always suffered from, where all the possible solutions balance each other out, where to do or not to do something seems equally valid. The difficult thing about these periods of uncertainty is that deep down he knows which solution he will choose. Pretending to deliberate is simply a means of masking a dubious decision with a semblance of rationality.
Today is the day his mother’s paintings are being auctioned. He told himself he wouldn’t go. Now he knows he won’t.
Camille projects himself into the future; it’s almost as though the auction is over. His thoughts turn to the proceeds and this idea of not keeping the money, of giving it away. Until now, he has refused to guess how much there will be. Though he does not want to do the calculations, his brain has already worked out the figures; he can’t help it. He will never be as rich as Louis, but even so. According to his calculations, it should raise about 150,000 euros. Maybe more, maybe 200,000 euros. He’s angry at himself for doing the maths, but who wouldn’t? When Irène died, the insurance paid off the apartment they had bought together. He immediately sold it on. With the proceeds, he bought this apartment, took out a small mortgage which the money from the auction would comfortably repay. This kind of thought is the first flaw in his good intentions. He’d tell himself, I could just pay off the mortgage and give away the rest. Then, it would be, pay off the mortgage, upgrade the car and give away the rest. It’s a vicious circle. Until there is no “rest”. He’d end up donating two hundred euros to cancer research.
Come on, Camille thinks, shaking himself. Just concentrate on what’s essential.
Towards 10.00 a.m., he abandons Doudouche, walks through the market, and – the day is bright and mild – resolves to walk to the brigade offices. It’ll take as long as it takes. Camille walks as fast as his stubby legs will allow. Unsurprisingly, his determination and his resolution fade and he catches the métro.
*
Though it’s Sunday, Louis has said he’ll join him at the office around one o’clock.
Ever since he got there, Camille has been in silent communion with the objects laid out on the big table. It looks like a little girl’s stall at a garage sale.
The night after Alex was found dead, after her brother came to the morgue to identify the body, her mother, Mme Prévost, was asked if she recognised anything among the effects.
Mme Prévost is a small, spirited woman whose angular face is of a piece with her grey hair and her threadbare clothes. Everything about her transmits the same message: We come from a modest background. She didn’t want to take off her coat or put down her handbag; she was eager to be out of there.
“It’s a lot for her to take in all at once,” Armand said. He was the first to speak to her. “Your daughter committed suicide last night after murdering at least six people – it’s a little disconcerting, to say the least.”
Camille talked to her at length in the corridor to prepare her for the ordeal; she will be confronted by so many personal things that belonged to her daughter as a toddler, as a girl, as a teenager, the things of no great value that become utterly heartbreaking the day your daughter dies. Mme Prévost steels herself, she doesn’t cry, she says she understands, but as soon as she is faced with the table full of memories, she breaks down. Someone brings her a chair. As an onlooker, such moments are painful; you shift your weight from one foot to the other, forced to be patient, to do nothing. Mme Prévost is still clutching her handbag, as though she is visiting; she sits in the chair, points to the objects: there are many that she has never seen or doesn’t remember. She often seems puzzled or uncertain, as though faced with an image of her daughter she doesn’t recognise. To her, these are like spare parts. To reduce her dead daughter to this catalogue of junk seems monstrous. Her grief turns to indignation; she turns this way and that.
“What possessed her to keep all this rubbish? Are you even sure it’s hers?”
Camille spreads his hands. Her reaction is familiar – it’s a way of defending oneself against the brutality of the situation, a reaction common to people in shock, this aggressiveness.
“Then again, this here, this is definitely hers.”
She points to the carved black wooden head. She seems about to tell a story, but changes her mind. Then points to the pages torn from various novels.
“She used to read a lot. All the time.”
*
By the time Louis arrives, it’s almost two o’clock. He starts out with the tattered pages. Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, Anna Karenina. There are passages underlined in purple ink. Middlemarch, Doctor Zhivago. Louis has read them all. Aurélien, Buddenbrooks. One of the witnesses mentioned her having the complete works of Duras, but here there are only a couple of pages from War: A Memoir. Louis can find no connection between the titles; there’s an element of romanticism, which is hardly surprising – young girls and mass murderers are tender-hearted creatures.
They go to lunch. As they’re eating, Camille gets a call from the friend of his mother who organised this morning’s auction. There’s not much to say. Camille thanks him again – he doesn’t know what else to do, so he discreetly offers money. Louis can tell the friend is saying that they’ll talk about it later, that what he did, he did f
or Maud. Camille falls silent, they agree to meet up soon, knowing that they never will. Camille hangs up. The auction raised much more than expected: 280,000 euros. The small self-portrait alone, a minor work, sold for 18,000 euros.
Louis is not surprised. He’s familiar with prices and valuations; he has experience in such things.
Two hundred and eighty thousand. Camille can’t believe it. He tries to calculate how many years’ salary this comes to. A good many. The idea that he’s well off now makes him uncomfortable; it’s a weight on his shoulders. He stretches himself a little.
“Was it a stupid thing to do, selling everything?”
“Not necessarily,” Louis says cautiously.
Still, Camille wonders.
54
Freshly shaved, square-jawed, determined, eyes bright, lips thick, voluptuous, expressive. He stands ramrod straight; he would have a military air were it not for the mane of curly brown hair tied back in a ponytail. The belt with its silver buckle emphasises a bulging waistline intended to be proportional to his social standing, the product of business lunches, of his marriage, of stress, or perhaps all three. He looks as though he’s forty plus. He is thirty-seven. He’s six feet tall and broad-shouldered. Louis isn’t fat, but he’s tall – next to this man he looks like a teenage boy.
Camille met him once before, at the morgue when he came to identify the body. He leaned over the aluminium autopsy table, his expression formal, pained. He said nothing, merely nodded to indicate yes, that’s her, and the sheet was pulled up again.
That day at the morgue, they didn’t speak to each other. It’s tricky, offering your condolences when the deceased is a serial killer who has destroyed the lives of half a dozen families. It’s hard to find the words; fortunately, this is not something that police officers are expected to do.
In the corridor on their way back in, Camille is silent. Louis says:
Alex Page 24