“O.K., fine,” Vasseur concedes. “I lent the money to my sister. Is that illegal?”
Camille relaxes, as though he’s just chalked a cross on the wall. He smiles, but it is not a nice smile.
“You know perfectly well that it’s not illegal, so why did you lie?”
“It’s none of your business.”
Precisely the words not to say.
“In the situation you’re in, what precisely is none of the police’s business?”
*
Le Guen calls. Camille steps out of the office. The divisionnaire wants to know where they’re at. Difficult to say. Camille opts for being reassuring.
“Not bad. We’re getting there.”
Le Guen doesn’t respond.
“What about your end?”
“The custody extension: it’s going to be tough, but we’ll sort it.”
“Then we’d better get our act together.”
*
“Your sister was n—”
“Half-sister,” Vasseur corrects him.
“Your half-sister, then. Does it make a difference?”
“Of course. It’s not remotely the same – you could at least be accurate.”
Camille glances from Louis to Armand as though to say: “See, he can handle himself.”
“In that case, let’s just call her Alex. You see, we’re not at all convinced that Alex was planning to kill herself.”
“Well, that’s what she did.”
“Indeed. But you knew her better than anyone; maybe you can explain it to us. If she wanted to die, why was she planning to leave the country?”
Vasseur raises an eyebrow; he doesn’t understand the question.
Camille simply nods at Louis.
“Your sister … Excuse me, Alex bought a plane ticket in her own name the night she died, a flight to Zurich leaving the following morning, October 5 at 8.40 a.m. In fact, while she was at the airport, she bought a travel bag which we found in her hotel room neatly packed and ready to go.”
“That’s news to me … Maybe she changed her mind. As I told you, she was unstable.”
“She checked in to a hotel near the airport; she even ordered a taxi although her car was in the hotel car park. She obviously didn’t want to have the hassle of trying to find somewhere to park and maybe missing her flight. She wanted to make a quick getaway. She also dumped a lot of her personal effects – she was planning to leave nothing behind, not even the bottles of acid. We had forensics test it, by the way: it’s the same stuff she used in the murders, sulphuric acid at 80 per cent concentration. She was running away, leaving France. She was absconding.”
“What do you want me to say? I can’t answer for her. No-one can answer for her now.”
Vasseur glances from Armand to Louis, looking for confirmation, but his heart isn’t in it.
“Granted, you can’t answer for Alex,” Camille says, “but you are able to answer for your own actions.”
“By all means, if I can …”
“Of course you can. On the night of Alex’s death, October 4, where were you, let’s say between 8.00 p.m. and midnight?”
Vasseur hesitates. Camille rushes in.
“We’ll help you out … Armand?”
Curiously, perhaps to emphasise the drama of the moment, Armand gets to his feet, like a schoolboy asked to stand up and recite. Diligently, he reads his notes aloud.
“You received a call at 8.34 p.m. on your mobile telephone; you were at home at the time. As your wife says: ‘Thomas got a voicemail from work, some sort of emergency’. A call from work at that hour was very unusual. ‘He was very annoyed,’ she told us. In her statement your wife said you left home at around 10.00 p.m., and you didn’t get back until after midnight. She can’t be more precise – she was asleep so didn’t notice the time, but it could not have been before midnight since that was when she went to bed.”
Vasseur has a lot of information to digest. His wife has been questioned. He wondered about that earlier. What else?
“However,” Armand goes on, “we know that this was not true.”
“Why do you say that, Armand?” Camille says.
“Because the call that Monsieur Vasseur received at 8.34 p.m. was from Alex. The call was logged because she made it from the telephone in her hotel room. We will of course check with Monsieur Vasseur’s phone provider, but his boss has confirmed that there was no such emergency. In fact he said, ‘In our business, we don’t get call-outs in the middle of the night. We’re not the ambulance services’.”
“A very astute point …” Camille says, turning back to Vasseur. But he doesn’t have time to press his advantage.
“Alex left me a message,” Vasseur blurts out. “She wanted to see me, told me to meet her at half past eleven at Aulnay-sous-Bois.”
“Aulnay … that would be very near Villepinte where she died. O.K., it’s eight-thirty, your darling sister calls. What did you do?”
“I went.”
“Were they a regular occurrence, these meetings?”
“Not really.”
“What did she want?”
“She asked me to meet her, gave me an address – it was only supposed to be for an hour.”
Vasseur continues to weigh his words, but in the heat of the discussion Camille can tell he wants to get it all out; the sentences rattle off like machine gun fire. Vasseur is desperately trying to keep his composure, to stick to his strategy.
“So what did you think she wanted?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Really? You didn’t know?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“To recapitulate: last year, she extorted 20,000 euros from you. In our opinion she did so by threatening to wreak havoc in your little domestic arrangements, to tell your wife and kids that you raped her when she was ten, that you prostituted her …”
“You’ve got no proof!” Vasseur is on his feet, screaming.
Camille smiles. Vasseur losing his cool is a bonus.
“Sit down,” Camille says calmly. “I said in our opinion – it’s a theory. I know how much you love theories.”
He lets the seconds tick by.
“Actually, on the subject of proof, Alex had conclusive proof that her childhood had not been a happy one. She had only to go and see your wife. Women can tell each other these things, even show them … If Alex had shown your wife the injuries to her private parts, I am willing to wager that it would have created a bit of a stir in the Vasseur household. So, to go back to what I was saying … in our opinion, since she planned to leave the country the following day, she had almost nothing in her bank account and only 12,000 euros in cash … she called you to ask for more money.”
“She didn’t say anything about money in her message. Anyway, where would I get money in the middle of the night?”
“We think that Alex was letting you know that you’d have to come up with the money soon, by the time she got herself settled abroad. And that you were going to have to get yourself sorted, because she was going to need more money … It’s expensive, being on the run. But I’m sure we’ll get back to that. For the moment we’ve got you leaving your house in the middle of the night … What did you do?”
“I went to the address she gave me.”
“What address?”
“137 boulevard Jouvenel.”
“And what exactly is at 137 boulevard Jouvenel?”
“That’s the weird thing. Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“I don’t know, nothing.”
Louis doesn’t even need Camille to glance over at him; he’s already typing the address into an online mapping site. A few seconds later, he beckons Camille over.
“Well, well, you’re right, there’s nothing. Offices at 135, a dry cleaners at 139, and in between, number 137, a shop for sale. Boarded up. Do you think she was planning to buy a shop?”
Louis moves the mouse to explore the map onscreen; it’s obviou
s from his expression he’s come up with nothing.
“Obviously not,” Vasseur says, “but I don’t know what she did want since she didn’t show up.”
“Didn’t you try to call her?”
“The number was disconnected.”
“That’s true, we checked. Alex cancelled her mobile contract three days earlier. In preparation for her departure, probably. So how long did you stand in front of this shop for sale?”
“Until midnight.”
“You’re a patient man, that’s good. Love is patient, everyone knows that. Did anyone see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“For you, maybe: you’re the ones who have something to prove, not me.”
“It’s not unfortunate for you or for me, it’s just unfortunate; it leaves a grey area, creates doubt, makes your story sound like a fabrication. But never mind. I’m assuming that that’s all there is, that when your sister failed to show up, you simply went home.”
Vasseur doesn’t answer. An M.R.I. scanner would reveal his neurons scrabbling to come up with a solution.
“Well?” Camille says. “Did you go home?”
Despite marshalling all its resources, Vasseur’s brain cannot come up with a satisfactory solution.
“No. I went to the hotel.”
He’s taken the plunge.
“Well, well,” Camille says, astonished. “So you knew which hotel she was staying in?”
“No. Alex had called me, so I just dialled the last incoming number.”
“Very ingenious! And … ?”
“There was no answer. I got an answering machine.”
“Ah, what a pity. So you drove off home.”
This time the two hemispheres of the brain all but collide. Vasseur closes his eyes. Something tells him this is not the right strategy, but he doesn’t know what else to do.
“No,” he says finally, “As I said, I went to the hotel. It was closed. There was no receptionist on duty.”
“Louis?” Camille turns to his colleague.
“The reception desk is open until half past ten. After that, there’s a keycode you need to enter to get in. It’s given to hotel guests when they arrive.”
“So.” Camille turns back to Vasseur. “Then you drove back home.”
“Yes.”
Camille turns towards his fellow officers.
“Well, what an adventure! Armand … you look dubious …”
Armand does not stand up this time.
“Witness statement from one Monsieur Leboulanger and one Madame Farida.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Armand glances at his notes again.
“No, sorry, you’re right. Farida is her first name. Madame Farida Sartaoui.”
“You’ll have to excuse my colleague – he’s always had problems with foreign names. So these people were … ?”
“… staying at the hotel,” Armand goes on. “They got back at fifteen minutes past twelve.”
“O.K., O.K.!” Vasseur roars. “O.K. fine!”
60
Le Guen picks up on the first ring.
“We’re about to call it a night.”
“What have you got?”
“Where are you?” Camille says.
Le Guen hesitates, which means he’s with a woman, which means he’s in love – Le Guen doesn’t do casual flings, it’s not his thing – and that means …
“Jean, I told you last time, I will not act as your witness at another wedding. It’s out of the question!”
“Yeah, I know, don’t sweat it. I’m not planning to fall in love here.”
“Can I quote you on that?”
“You certainly can.”
“Now you really are starting to worry me!”
“How are things with you?”
Camille checks his watch.
“Lent money to the sister, got a call from the sister, went into the hotel where the sister was staying.”
“Good. Will it hold up?”
“It’ll be enough; we have to be patient. I just hope the magistrate—”
“Don’t worry. As far as this goes, he’s on our side.”
“Good. Well, in that case the best thing to do now is get some sleep.”
*
And it’s night.
Three o’clock in the morning. He couldn’t stop himself and, for once, he managed to deal with it by himself. Five blows, no more, no less. The neighbours are very fond of Camille, but even so, banging nails into the wall at that hour … The first hammer blow surprises, the second wakes, the third astonishes, the fourth shocks, the fifth has neighbours thumping on the walls … There is no sixth: silence returns. Camille can hang Maud Verhœven’s self-portrait on the living room wall; the nail holds firm. As does Camille.
He had intended to catch up with Louis as they were leaving the brigade offices, but Louis had already left, disappeared. He’ll see him tomorrow. What will he say? Camille trusts to his intuition, to the situation; he plans to keep the painting, to thank Louis – a lovely gesture – and to reimburse him. Or maybe not. This thing about the 280,000 euros is still going round in his head.
Ever since he’s lived alone, he’s slept with the curtains open; he likes to be woken by the dawn. Doudouche has crept up beside him. He can’t get to sleep. He spends the night on the sofa, staring up at the painting.
Obviously the interrogation of Vasseur has been an ordeal, but that’s not the only thing.
What was kindled in him some nights ago in the studio in Montfort, what assailed him in the hotel room when he came face to face with the corpse of Alex Prévost is now before him.
This case has allowed him to exorcise the death of Irène, to make his peace with his mother.
The image of Alex, the plain-faced little girl, makes him want to weep.
The childlike handwriting in her diary, the pathetic collection of objects she kept; this whole story breaks his heart.
He feels as though, deep down, he is just like everyone else.
Even for him, Alex is just a means to an end.
He has used her.
*
In the course of the next seventeen hours, Vasseur is taken from his cell on three occasions and led back to the offices of the brigade. Twice, Armand is there to meet him; the last time it is Louis. They go over details, and Armand gets him to confirm the exact dates of his stays in Toulouse.
“It was twenty years ago – what fucking difference does it make?” Vasseur explodes.
Armand gives him a look that says Hey, don’t have a go at me, I’m just following orders.
Vasseur is prepared to sign anything, prepared to acknowledge anything.
“You’ve got nothing on me, absolutely nothing.”
“In that case,” says Louis, who is now leading the interview, “you’ve got nothing to be afraid of, Monsieur Vasseur.”
Time drags on, the hours pass, Vasseur is convinced this is a good sign. He was taken from his cell again and asked to sign something confirming the dates on which he met with Stefan Maciak as a sales rep.
“I don’t give a fuck,” he says and signs.
He glances at the clock on the wall. No-one can accuse him of anything.
He’s unshaven and has scarcely washed.
He is led out again. This time it is Camille’s turn. The moment he walks into the room, he looks up at the wall clock. 8.00 p.m. It has been a long day. Vasseur is triumphant, prepares to claim his victory.
“How are things, captain?” he says, all smiles. “Sadly we’ll be parting company soon. No hard feelings, O.K.?”
“Soon? Why do you say ‘soon’?”
Vasseur is no fool – he has a warped sensibility; he’s sharp; he has a sixth sense. He immediately knows what is coming. The proof being that he says nothing, simply goes pale, crosses his legs nervously. He waits. For a long moment Camille stares at him wordlessly. It’s like a staring match where the first to look awa
y loses. The telephone rings. Armand comes over, lifts the receiver, says, “Hello,” listens, says, “Thank you,” and hangs up again.
Camille, who has still not taken his eyes off Vasseur, says simply: “The magistrate has just granted our request to extend police detention by twenty-four hours, Monsieur Vasseur.”
“I demand to see this magistrate!”
“I’m terribly sorry, Monsieur Vasseur, terribly sorry. Monsieur Vidard sends his regrets, but his workload means he cannot be with us. We’ll just have to rub along together for a little while longer. No hard feelings, O.K.?”
Vasseur looks round wildly, determined to make an impression. He stifles a laugh; they’re the ones he feels sorry for.
“And what are you going to do after that?” he says. “I don’t know what you said to the magistrate to get this extension, what lies you told him, but whether it’s now or twenty-four hours from now, you’re going to have to let me go. You’re …”
He gropes for a word.
“… pathetic.”
*
He is taken back to the cell. They hardly question him anymore. They could try to wear him down, but Camille thinks it’s better this way. Skeleton service. It’ll be more effective. But doing nothing, or almost nothing, is very difficult. They all do their best to focus. They imagine the release, imagine Vasseur slipping on his jacket, knotting his tie, they picture the smile he’ll give, the words he’ll find, the farewell he’s already rehearsing.
Armand manages to track down two new rookies, one on the second floor, one on the fourth. He stocks up on cigarettes and pens. It takes quite some time. But it keeps him busy.
Sometime in mid-morning, there is a strange series of to-ings and fro-ings in which Camille tries to take Louis to one side to talk about the painting, but nothing seems to go as planned. Louis keeps being called away; Camille can feel the atmosphere between them become awkward. As he types up his reports, half an eye on the clock, he realises that what Louis has done has royally screwed up their working relationship. Camille could say thank you, but so? He can pay Louis back, and then what? There is something paternalistic about Louis’s gesture. The longer this drags on, the more Camille feels that this whole thing about the painting is Louis trying to teach him a lesson.
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