by Michel Bussi
My fingers trembled as I opened the envelope.
Who could be writing to me here? No one knew I was staying in Yport, apart from Ibou, Ophélie, and a few other girls from the Saint Antoine Therapeutic Institute. And even then, they knew the name of the village where I was staying, but not the name of the hotel.
There was no sender’s name on the envelope. Just mine, with my address, handwritten, a round, feminine hand.
Jamal Salaoui
Hôtel de la Sirène
7 Boulevard Alexandre Dumont
76111 Yport
The letter had been posted from Fécamp.
Just a few miles away.
Scraps of ochre paper fell on the bed.
The envelope contained about twenty sheets of paper. The first one leapt out at me. It was a photocopy of an article from a newspaper, Le Courrier Cauchois—the Fécamp edition. The headline took up the whole front page:
19-YEAR-OLD FOUND DEAD AT THE FOOT OF THE YPORT CLIFFS
Beyond my window, the cliffs seemed to sway.
My fingers tightened on the paper. How had a local newspaper managed to get hold of this information already? The girl had jumped less than three hours ago, and the police would still be on the beach examining her corpse.
I tried to slow the manic beating of my heart, to force my eyes to focus on the sheet of paper. As I read, my breathing grew easier. I was holding in my hands an old edition of the Courrier Cauchois.
Very old. Almost ten years. It was dated Thursday, June 10th, 2004.
What the hell!
Why send me a photocopy of a newspaper from a decade ago?
With a trembling hand, I scrolled through the other pages. They all related to the same case. A nineteen-year-old girl found dead at the foot of the Yport cliffs. The envelope contained other cuttings from newspapers, local and national, as well as more confidential documents—extracts from interrogations, local police officers’ notes detailing their investigation, letters exchanged between the examining magistrate and the captain in charge of the case.
As I read, the identity of the sender ceased to matter.
Everything this stranger had sent me seemed to be a factual account of events. But the events they described seemed beyond belief.
Ten years on.
6
DID I ENCOUNTER THE RAPIST?
The Morgane Avril case—Sunday, June 6th, 2004
It was the first time Maxime Baron had seen a corpse. But when a group of youths ran up to him shouting, “Officer, officer, there’s a dead woman on the beach!”, he had no choice but to go with them.
There was no point telling them he was only a cadet at Fécamp police station, that he wasn’t actually on duty, that he was just covering for Captain Grima while he nipped out to buy some cigarettes . . .
He’d had no option but to accompany them.
The girl on Yport beach had had her skull smashed in.
She had fallen from the cliff, no doubt. Head first. Her brain was spilling out of her skull.
First Maxime threw up his breakfast on the pebbles, right in front of everyone. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and phoned his boss.
“Phil, we’ve got a body. On the beach. Just across from the Hôtel de la Sirène and the casino.”
Maxime looked up at the huge poster, two metres by three, stretched across the walls of the casino. A silver guitar, floating in front of the cliffs, and listed below were the names of fifteen local rock groups.
The Riff on the Cliff
7 P.M.–4 A.M.
Empty cans and bottles littered the sea wall. Yport was waking up with a hangover.
Captain Philippe Grima arrived less than a minute later—long enough for Maxime to throw up again, and for a crowd to gather. Maxime doubted that his boss had any more experience of corpses than he did. His superior was barely five years older than him, and just out of Montluçon Police Academy. More of a mate than a boss. Just yesterday, after a session in the local squash club, the pair of them had sat for two hours in a seafront bar, talking football, bikes, and girls. Then Grima had gone home to his wife and kid.
A five-year age gap, yet practically a lifetime separated them.
This was immediately evident: Captain Grima didn’t throw up. He behaved like a boss. Instead of treating Cadet Baron like a mate, giving him a wink or a slap on the back, he issued crisp and precise orders that Maxime executed diligently. Far from taking offence at his superior officer’s cool demeanour, the cadet looked to him as a role model. Could that be him in five years?
The first thing Captain Grima did was order the cadet to wipe the vomit from his chin and push back the rubberneckers. Then he took out his mobile phone and snapped about thirty photos of the scene. When this was done, he turned to the crowd of twenty or so teenagers who’d gathered and asked:
“Do any of you know this girl?”
Among them was a guy in a red waistcoat with gold buttons. He looked like a lift attendant. On his heart, above the yellow flames of the Sea View Casino logo, six letters were stitched in gold: Jérémy.
“I do. A girl like that isn’t easy to forget. She spent the whole night at the Sea View.”
It took less than an hour to identify the girl.
Morgane Avril.
Nineteen years old.
First-year medical student.
Lived with her mother, Carmen Avril, Gîte du Dos-d’ne, Route de Foucarmont, Neufchâtel-en-Bray.
Lieutenant Grima had no trouble reconstructing the events leading up to the tragedy. Morgane Avril had come to Yport to attend a rock festival organised by the casino: Riff on the Cliff. She was accompanied by her sister Océane and three friends: Nicolas Gravé, Clara Barthélémy and Mathieu Picard. Nicolas Gravé’s Clio and its four passengers had set off from Neufchâtel-en-Bray, a hundred kilometres from Yport, at about six o’clock the previous evening. Morgane’s mother had hesitated for some time before giving her daughters permission to go, even though they were adults.
Was she being over-protective? Was it apprehension? A premonition?
It was their first time at a nightclub. After months spent slogging away at university in Rouen, Morgane had successfully passed her first year of medical studies, coming thirty-eighth in her year. In the circumstances, it was impossible for Carmen to deny her daughter.
A preliminary examination by the medical examiner established beyond doubt the circumstances of the girl’s death. Morgane Avril had been raped, between five and six in the morning, then strangled; her body was then thrown from the top of the cliff overlooking Yport.
Her face was swollen, her limbs dislocated by the impact. Her dress was torn, her underwear had been ripped off. Morgane’s fuchsia thong was found the following day at the foot of the cliff, a dozen metres below the blockhouse, probably carried by the west winds. The thong bore traces of sperm and a few pubic hairs belonging to the rapist, identical to those found on Morgane’s body. There was no trace, however, of the girl’s handbag, despite a police search—of the Sea View cloakroom, the coastal path, and the beach—that occupied three officers for two days.
During the ten hours after the discovery of Morgane Avril’s corpse, Captain Grima questioned twenty-three witnesses—fifteen men and eight women—most of them locals who had spent the evening at the Sea View.
The Riff on the Cliff event had drawn almost a thousand visitors, most of whom had carried on enjoying themselves at the Sea View after the last group had finished playing. The witnesses, without exception, had been able to give an accurate description of Morgane Avril.
Beautiful.
Desirable.
Excited.
Captain Grima then spent hours rereading witness statements. Some of those questioned were clearly uncomfortable about speaking this way of a murder victim, particularly one who’d been ra
ped, quite possibly by one of the guys who’d been checking her out in the club, but all the witnesses—male and female—used the same terms:
Tease.
Hot.
Sexy.
They described her impromptu pole-dance around one of the Sea View’s oak pillars. She’d emerged from the ladies with her dress soaking wet and clinging to her breasts; she’d writhed, eel-like, on the dance floor, her hands playing with the fabric, sliding, opening, exposing her thighs, her shoulders. And all the while her gaze was locked on the men as if she were watching them through a sniper’s cross-hairs.
The bookish medical student letting go of her inhibitions.
No one could recall seeing Morgane after 5 A.M. No one had seen her leaving the Sea View. No one knew whether she had left alone or with someone else.
At 6 P.M. Captain Grima met with Morgane’s mother, Carmen Avril. He had kept her waiting deliberately. Officially, because was busy pursuing leads and interviewing witnesses. Unofficially, because two images were blurring in his mind: that of Morgane’s shattered corpse, and that of the woman on the dance floor, desired by hundreds of men . . . and the thought of discussing this with a mother who must have been about the same age as his own unnerved him.
Carmen Avril came in. A strongbox, was Captain Grima’s first impression. A strongbox that he would need to crack.
Grima took in her barrel-like figure, strapped into a suede jacket with iron buttons, her stout legs in laced boots. Carmen Avril’s entire body seemed to be under lock and key, down to the thick glasses hanging from a chain around her neck and her leather handbag with its heavy metal frame. He suspected that her jacket concealed another chain, this time with a key hanging from it.
The key to her heart.
Now lost forever, Grima thought.
The man who accompanied her looked as though he’d been labouring under a heavy burden for years. He had a thin face that ended in a pointed chin, and rubbery arms that seemed to flow along his body. Mister Tickle sprang to mind—the one with the endless arms—but Grima quickly suppressed the comparison as inappropriate in the circumstances.
An ill-matched couple, the captain thought to himself.
He indicated the two chairs in front of his desk.
“Monsieur and Madame Avril?”
“Madame,” the strongbox replied. “Gilbert is Morgane’s uncle. He’s come with me.”
“And Morgane’s father?”
“Morgane has no father.”
“He’s . . .” the captain hesitated, running through the options. Dead. Disappeared. Gone . . .
Carmen Avril was one step ahead of him. “Morgane never had a father . . .”
“You mean . . .” The captain had no idea what she meant, so he dragged out the pause until Carmen Avril cut in again.
“I brought her up on my own. I own a bed and breakfast, the Dos-d’ne in Neufchâtel-en-Bray. For the last twenty-five years I’ve run that alone too.” She turned to her brother, her handbag rattling like a convict tugging on his chain. “I asked Gilbert to come with me today. But usually . . .”
This time it was Grima who stepped in to finish the sentence:
“You endure life’s trials alone. I understand.”
And he did understand. Carmen Avril was an almost unsinkable rock, he had grasped as much from their brief exchange, and the investigation would confirm it over the days that followed. Carmen was an institution in Neufchâtel-en-Bray. She ran a 3-star bed and breakfast renowned for its table d’hôte; she served as vice president of the community development association, responsible for tourism and culture; she’d served a term on the local council fifteen years ago. A strong, active, determined woman. No man in her life. Her brother, Gilbert Avril, was a lorry driver for a company in Gournay-en-Bray who spent half his life on the Dieppe-Newhaven ferry, transporting dairy products to England in his refrigerated truck.
“I need to know about Morgane’s father,” the captain insisted. He stared at Carmen. The buttonholes of her jacket, reinforced with metal rods, reminded him of arrow-slits.
She assumed a weary expression. “Must I say it again, Captain? She has no father.”
“I have no doubt, Madame Avril, that she was brought up without a father. But from the genetic point of view, I have to know who—”
“I had IVF nineteen years ago.”
Grima took a moment to consider this. By law, in vitro fertilisation was reserved for married couples, or those who were able to show that they had lived together for at least two years.
“You have to be in a relationship for that, don’t you?”
“Not in Belgium!”
So Carmen Avril really had produced two children all by herself . . . In other circumstances, Grima would probably have told her just how selfish he thought that was. Each night for the last four months he’d got up every three hours to bottle-feed his daughter Lola, five kilos of sheer wonder curled against his bare chest, and each time he thanked God that his girlfriend Sarah hadn’t wanted to breast-feed.
Carmen Avril pulled on the chains of her glasses to wipe the lenses with a tissue. A little condensation, the captain thought; she’s virtually in tears. He reminded himself that Carmen Avril’s private life and the way she’d raised her daughter had nothing to do with Morgane’s rape and murder. Fretting about the mother’s psychology would only complicate matters.
“Madame Avril, I need to ask you some questions about Morgane. Intimate questions.”
In that moment he felt too young for this. Carmen was twenty years older than he was. True, he was a father, but his euphoric experience of fatherhood was limited to a few months.
“Go on.”
“Morgane was nineteen. It was her first trip to a nightclub. Witnesses have described her behaviour in the course of the evening as, how can I put it . . .” He pretended to search for the right term, as if this would somehow reduce the impact when he let the word drop.
“Provocative,” he said.
“Provocative?”
In Carmen’s clenched hands, the armoured handbag twisted like white-hot metal. Her body swelled, but the iron bars resisted. Her glasses were like a glass dam; behind them he could see the tears welling in her eyes, betraying the pain she was trying so hard to hide.
“What do you mean by provocative.”
Grima was relying on line-of-sight sailing at this point; he knew exactly where he wanted to get to, but there was no knowing how many strokes of the oar it would take to get there.
“Desirable, Madame Avril. Attractive. Likely to catch the eye of any men present. She was aware of the way men looked at her—you know that as well as I do, Madame Avril.”
The padlock exploded. The lorry driver reached out a soft hand to calm his sister. She was seething with indignation.
“What do you mean, Captain? That Morgane deserved what happened to her? She was raped, Captain. Raped, strangled, and thrown off a cliff. And you ask me if she was provocative!”
Grima thought of his own daughter, already adorable at the age of four months. How would he feel if someone told him she was provocative?
“We’re on the same side, Madame Avril,” he stammered. “We’re trying to find your daughter’s murderer. Every second counts. Morgane was the victim of the most heinous crime, no one is denying that. But if I am to catch her killer I must listen to what witnesses are telling me.”
“Witnesses who say my daughter was asking for it?”
Captain Grima, without knowing why, rose to his feet.
“Madame Avril, let me be clear about this, there are only two possible scenarios here. Either your daughter’s murderer is a pervert, a mentally ill individual who just happened to come across Morgane that night—a random encounter in the casino parking lot, or on the beach, or by the light of a street lamp. If that is the case, we have almost no chance of iden
tifying this person, because no one witnessed what happened. The second possibility is that Morgane’s murderer was in the casino nightclub, they were on the same dance floor, he may even have talked to her. They might have left the club together, Morgane might have gone with him of her own free will. Things took a bad turn after that, as we both know. This guy is a monster, and Morgane the most innocent victim you can imagine. But you must understand, Madame Avril, this second hypothesis significantly narrows down the list of possible suspects.”
Carmen Avril gave no reply. She loosened her grip on the leather-and-iron handbag and took out a tissue that she didn’t have the energy to bring to her eyes.
Grima thought again of the witness accounts: Morgane, back arched against the oak beam, her strategically revealing dress displaying her panties and one breast. The most beautiful girl in the Sea View . . . Grima couldn’t share those details with her mother. This wasn’t the time or the place for that.
“Madame Avril, everyone who knew Morgane has told us that she was a good, studious, sensible girl. Going to the festival was her reward for a year of intense study . . . In your view, did Morgane attach a particular importance to that trip? A kind of . . .” Grima struggled for the appropriate euphemism “. . . first experience that she’d been looking forward to for a long time?”
Carmen glared at him. “Was she determined to lose her virginity at all costs, is that what you’re trying to say? Get to the point, Captain. Was she planning on giving herself to the first guy who came along, is that it?”
Grima nodded. “She may have happened on the wrong person . . . If she was willing enough to go off with a stranger, it’ll be easy to discover his identity.”
Behind the steel bars of her jacket, Madame Avril looked as if she might explode. The captain hoped a compliment might improve matters, particularly one that was sincere.