by Michel Bussi
What could I say? She was, by some way, the most beautiful girl I’d ever slept with.
Instead of waiting for a reply, Mona went on:
“Goals three and four. A child. A grieving widow. O.K., Jamal, but there’s an important detail missing here. Are you supposed to achieve all these goals with the same woman? The woman in number two?”
I carried on staring at the screen.
“So?” Mona went on. “Love, mother and widow. One, two or three women?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Liar!”
“No—the woman mourning as she scatters my ashes could be my daughter when I’m very old.”
“Good point! Let’s finish with goal number five: pay my debt before dying? Is that like a debt to society? What did you do? Kill someone?”
I sat on the bed and rested my hand on her hip.
“It refers to the debt we all have: to pay for our own life by saving another, to be useful.”
“You haven’t done too well on that score! You couldn’t even stop little Magali from jumping off the cliff!”
My hand slid along her curves. It seemed nothing was taboo where Mona was concerned. I had never talked to anybody about the five directions on my compass, not even Ibou or Ophélie. I tried to explain it to her:
“It could also refer to stopping a murderer. Preventing him from striking again.”
“The Burberry scarf rapist?”
“For example.”
Mona put one hand over my eyes and gently took my hand with the other, guiding it across her body.
“Forget him . . .”
The green LEDs of the alarm clock showed 4:03. We had made love again, then I had stayed there, wrapped between Mona’s legs, and told her all about the mystery of the red scarf around Magali Verron’s neck. I finished with a question.
“Do you think I should tell the police what I’ve just told you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, there’s nothing odd about you finding that Burberry scarf caught on the fence. The guy who raped Magali Verron must have panicked when he heard you coming, and left it where it was. But then . . .”
Mona frowned, deep in thought. Then she sat up.
“I know! The rapist must have been wearing a mask. Or a balaclava. Or maybe Magali didn’t have time to study his face. When she saw you a few minutes later, holding the scarf, she thought her attacker had come back. She thought you were him!”
I ran through the scene in my head. I remembered the words that Magali had said before she jumped.
Don’t come any closer.
If you take so much as a step, I’ll jump . . .
Keep running. Go! Get out of here, now!
How could I have been so stupid? I had frightened her like a hunter cornering a rabbit. Paralysed with terror, she’d have done anything to avoid falling into the hands of the man who’d raped her. Even take her own life.
Mona’s hypothesis chilled me.
If I hadn’t approached with that scarf in my hand, Magali wouldn’t have jumped.
Oblivious to my distress, Mona carried on pursuing her train of thought.
“Jamal, that might even explain why she wrapped that scarf around her neck as she fell . . .”
She paused for a second.
“To accuse you!”
To accuse me?
My naked skin suddenly seemed repulsive—how could Mona bear to touch it? I moved away. This time she noticed that I was upset and laid a hand my shoulder.
On the bedside table, the sheriff’s star reflected the light of the ship’s lamp. She began to caress me.
“Don’t worry about it, Jamal. You’re not responsible. You couldn’t have known.”
I leapt to my feet. Mona’s fingers were left clutching at thin air.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Jamal! You’re innocent. You have nothing to fear from the police. Your sperm won’t be a match for the sperm of Magali Verron’s rapist, any more than it’s a match for the man who raped those two girls ten years ago.”
I stared through the window at the black cliffs. Mona said again behind my back:
“You have nothing to fear from the police, Jamal.”
But she was wrong.
She was terribly wrong.
I would soon discover just how wrong she was.
13
INTO THE HANDS OF HER EXECUTIONER?
At 10:22 the envelope was placed on the bench beside me. I was gazing out at the ten or so caïques—the local fishing boats—slumbering on the pebbles. Left high and dry by the outgoing tide. In the channel that had been dug in the foreshore to make it easier for boats to reach the sea, two windsurfers were setting up their wishbones. The younger of the two, his long blond mane bleached by the seawater, had painted a Viking helmet on his board; the other, a greying woman in her forties, had opted for a stylised version of the two leopards of Normandy in gold on a red background.
These were the real adventurers! Some sports you could only truly engage in by taking on the elements—the icy wind, the grey sea, the chalk cliffs. Those guys surfing beneath the palm trees of Honolulu or Sydney in their Bermuda shorts were lightweights in comparison.
I exchanged a conspiratorial smile with them. I wasn’t ready to open the envelope yet. I wanted to savour the morning calm a while longer.
I had woken at about 7:30. The first thing I did was to reach for my sheriff’s star and pin it to the blouse that Mona had thrown on the side of the bed. Right over her heart.
“Keep it, Mona,” I had murmured sleepily. “You can have it.”
Her warm body was pressed against mine.
“Whoa! Big responsibility!”
“Huge!”
Then I had gone back to sleep. An hour later, Mona slipped away, leaving me a note.
Have to go to work. I’ll be somewhere on the beach.
By the time I went down to the lobby of the Sirène in my running gear it was almost nine o’clock.
“I see the New Year resolutions have gone out the window,” André joked, consulting his watch. “Lying in bed all morning isn’t going to get you a place on the Ultra-Trail . . .”
“Attenuating circumstances, don’t you think? She’s a pretty girl . . .”
“What girl?” André said to me with a wink.
Given the average age of his customers, he couldn’t have got many chances to play matchmaker.
I’d been planning on a fast and intense run, about fifteen kilometres due west, towards Étretat, before turning along the path of Ramendeuses to the Valleuse de Grainval. I glanced at the weather forecast before setting off:
Risk of avalanche
Prolonged heavy snowfall
Gales expected late morning
-15 °C
05350 Saint-Véran
Hautes-Alpes
André’s daily joke made me shiver in spite of myself. Outside, the beautiful light gave an illusion of warmth. I set off in a light breeze. By the time I reached the cliff path, the stiff grass crunched beneath my feet.
About halfway through my run I passed above Vaucottes, I was panting a little and wondered which of these strange goblin houses lost in a forest of ogres belonged to Mona’s thesis supervisor. When I headed back towards Yport by the Sentier du Calvaire, I found myself face to face with the postman’s van.
He looked at me as if I were a kid asking for the postcard from his girlfriend.
“An envelope? In the name of Jamal Salaoui? Yes, there was one today, but I’ve already dropped it off at the Sirène. You’ll have to ask Dédé.”
I suspected as much, but I had another question for him.
“Is it possible to trace the sender of a parcel? By the franking, for example, if it’s a company stamp rather than a postmark?”
The postman had
the look of a teacher who was delighted to be given some overtime.
“Yes, in theory. But as regards your envelope, son, I happened to notice they’d used a franking machine. Any small business or government office in the region will have one just like it. If you’re hoping to learn the identity of the secret admirer who’s stalking you, you’ll have to find another way.”
André was waiting for me by the front door of the Sirène, the envelope in his hands.
“Your subscription, Jamal! So what is it, Storytime, the TV Guide, or Playboy?”
“Gadgets Monthly.”
I didn’t want to open the envelope in my room. The sun was struggling to break through the clouds, so I headed for the bench on the sea wall. Even before I tore it open, I knew what the envelope contained.
The next instalment.
Everything I needed to follow the events of ten years ago.
By 10:29 the two surfboarders were gliding towards England. I reminded myself that I had less than four hours until my meeting with Piroz. It was time to open the envelope.
I took out the contents, gripping the pages with my fingers, stiff with cold, so the wind wouldn’t scatter them.
Myrtille Camus case—Thursday, August 26th, 2004
Victor Thouberville was up on his tractor, surveying his field. At first he thought some inconsiderate tourists had left their rubbish behind. Then he saw the torn dress. Followed by the girl’s corpse.
Less than ten minutes later, two policemen from Isigny-sur-Mer arrived on the scene. They immediately made the connection with the Morgane Avril murder, three months earlier. Warning the two witnesses to the discovery, Victor Thouberville and his fifteen-year-old son, to be as discreet as possible, they got on to their superiors. A twenty-four-hour media embargo was imposed, long enough to confirm the link between the two crimes. After that, they couldn’t hold back the news that would spread panic the length of the Normandy coastline.
Every headline featured the same two words: Serial killer.
Myrtille Camus was twenty years old. She worked as an activity leader at a camp for teenagers that had pitched its tents in Isigny-sur-Mer two weeks previously. The last witnesses to have seen her alive had passed her at about three o’clock on the Grandcamp trail. She was walking alone. It was her day off.
Every paragraph of the autopsy report confirmed investigators’ worst fears.
Myrtille Camus had been raped, then strangled with a red cashmere scarf, probably a Burberry.
Preliminary DNA tests showed that Myrtille Camus’s rapist was the same man who’d attacked Morgane Avril. Further testing confirmed the result beyond any possible doubt.
But the scarf and DNA results weren’t the only indications that Morgane’s killer had struck again.
Before being raped and strangled, Myrtille Camus had taken a dip in the sea. Naked—she didn’t have a bathing costume with her and no trace of seawater was found on her underwear. No one had spotted her on any of the beaches along the route she’d taken. She had been wearing an elegant dress with big mauve hibiscus flowers on a sky-blue background. It was torn from top to bottom.
Like Morgane Avril, Myrtille Camus was still wearing her bra—mauve, to match the pattern on her dress—but her panties were missing. They were found the following day, in the channel of the Baie des Veys, stained with the rapist’s sperm. The final similarity between the two cases was that Myrtille’s bag had disappeared. Investigators would spend months searching for it, without success.
The same heinous crime. The same rapist. The same murder weapon. The same level of violence.
The same modus operandi, including details that the police had never disclosed.
He’s going to strike again.
After twenty-four hours, investigators were certain of one thing:
He won’t stop there. The killer will strike again.
An official statement was issued, thanking Captain Philippe Grima of Fécamp police station for his work over the last three months (there was no mention of his categorical assurance that Morgane Avril’s murderer would never strike again), and announcing that responsibility for the investigation would henceforth be entrusted to a two-man team selected by the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice.
Five years away from retirement, Commander Léo Bastinet of the Caen police department was renowned for his tact, organisational skills, and British sense of humour. Bastinet was that rare creature, a leader admired both by his men and his superiors. He was teamed up with Paul-Hugo Lagarde, a young magistrate from Calvados, who’d quickly made a name for himself. Brilliant, ambitious, and at ease with the media . . . but if he overstepped the mark, Bastinet would be the man to bring him back in line. The young judge was going to have to wait until the statute of limitations had run its course before publishing his bestselling account of the case.
The Minister of the Interior, alarmed by the spectre of a serial killer, had insisted on adding a third specialist to the team: criminal psychologist Ellen Nilsson. Thirty-six years old, with a long list of qualifications, was given the task of monitoring the investigation and adding her insights as and when she saw fit.
The investigators’ mission could be summed up in three commandments:
Work fast. Play things down. Catch this monster.
Given that the two victims had no ties, nothing whatsoever in common, they were dealing with a murderer who struck at random. Their task could not have been more difficullt.
More than five thousand people attended the funeral of Myrtille Camus in the church of Saint-Jean d’Elbeuf. Almost one in ten of the inhabitants of the town.
Myrtille Camus had become an icon. She deserved to be.
Everyone hated the murderer.
Everyone, perhaps, except her loved ones.
Charles and Louise Camus were well-known in the town. Well known and well liked. Charles had been the curator of Elbeuf Museum for almost twenty years, and was regarded as an expert in everything from the archaeology of the Seine to nineteenth-century industrial machinery. Louise taught dance workshops and campaigned for the preservation of the town’s famous circus-theatre.
A pair of humanists. Progressive. Moderate.
Louise and Charles had only one child, late in life. But for all that she was their greatest treasure, they resisted the urge to smother her in cotton wool.
Myrtille attended her mother’s dance classes and the circus-theatre workshops. She also attended the local school in Le Puchot, perhaps an unusual choice given that its reputation was built on catering for children from deprived areas and those with special needs. At her birthday party in the Camus family home on the banks of the Seine, children from the richest families mingled with the daughters of the unemployed and the sons of African immigrants.
This was a deliberate choice by Louise and Charles. Not so much a political choice as a life choice. Myrtille was an only child, privileged and well loved. They wanted her to be beautiful not on the outside (which she was in any case, without their having to do anything about it) but on the inside. It was selfish and pretentious, when you think about it. They wanted her to embody their values—generosity, sharing, forgiveness—so that she could pass them on to the next generation of Camuses.
Even before Myrtille was born, Louise and Charles had been generous donors to the disadvantaged children of Elbeuf. In 1964, when the demise of the textile industry plunged half the local workforce into unemployment, they founded the Association of the Cloth of Gold. Every summer the Cloth of Gold ran camps for deprived youngsters who wouldn’t otherwise have a holiday. Myrtille began attending the camps before she was old enough to walk; she was the mascot of the camp leaders who laid down the law in the dorms each summer (and on the sidewalks of the neighbourhood for the rest of the year).
In 1999 Louise and Charles handed over leadership of the organisation to Frédéric Saint-Mi
chel, director of the community arts club and youth centre. He began training Myrtille as an activity leader as soon as she turned seventeen. Frédéric, who preferred to be called Chichin, like the lead guitarist of his favourite band, cultivated the appearance of a cool dude. He had long hair, a five o’clock shadow, and spoke in a low, serious voice. Thanks to his rigorous education and ten years as a scout, he projected a sense of morality that Charles and Louise found reassuring. Courtesy of a solo round-the-world trip in his late teens, he also possessed an air of madness that girls found charming, including some who were much younger than he was.
Including Myrtille.
In spite of the age difference, it seemed inevitable that Myrtille and Frédéric would fall in love. She was eighteen at the time and he was thirty-seven, but Louise and Charles raised no objection.
Frédéric was a lovely person.
Their wedding was scheduled for October 4th, 2004. Myrtille’s corpse still wore her engagement ring.
There would have been lots of people at Myrtille’s wedding.
But perhaps not as many as attended her funeral.
The trio of investigators—the judge, the policeman and the psychological profiler—set to work immediately.
At first, Judge Lagarde’s only task was to approve decisions made by the detective, while the criminal psychologist busied herself yawning over endless lists of DNA results. Since the murder of Morgane Avril, thousands of locals, summer visitors, campers from the Baie des Veys had contributed their DNA to the database.
With no result, except to eliminate them as suspects.
The facial composite commissioned by Captain Grima—the one of the young man with the red Burberry scarf seen at Yport, the young man whose parents were believed to own a second home on the Normandy coast—had been distributed and displayed far and wide.
For want of any other alternative, he remained the number one suspect.