by Michel Bussi
Why would she play such a sadistic game?
I sat down in the driver’s seat. I turned the ignition and put my hands against the vent to warm them up.
Who could have known that I was parked here?
No one.
Who could have slipped the envelope on to the seat?
Anyone. The car door didn’t shut . . .
I waited for several long minutes, turning the heater up as far as it would go and aiming the vent at my face, until the hot air burned my skin. Then I opened the envelope.
Myrtille Camus case—Friday, October 8th, 2004
Commander Léo Bastinet was reading the fax from Brigadier Larochelle for the third time, taking in every detail.
The stranger in the Adidas cap, number one suspect in the murder of Myrtille Camus, was called Olivier Roy.
He was twenty-one, he lived in Morsalines with his parents, who ran the newsagents in Valogne. He was taking a course in cultural mediation at Caen.
Brigadier Larochelle had no right to claim credit for identifying the boy in the composite. His parents, Monique and Gildas Roy, had presented themselves at the station in Valognes on October 7th, 2004 to report the disappearance of their son. There was no doubt Olivier was the one the police were after. He had camped in Isigny-sur-Mer, sailed near the îles Saint-Marcouf, and sunbathed on the beach at Grandcamp-Maisy on the dates when Myrtille Camus was there.
His parents explained that the murder of Myrtille Camus had affected Olivier, although they didn’t really know why. As soon as the girl’s death was reported in the press he had locked himself in his room for hours, only emerging for long solitary walks. On October 6th, 2004, in the late afternoon, he had set off due north, along Boulevard des Dunes, towards Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue. He never came back.
For exactly thirty-seven hours Commander Bastinet thought they had their culprit. Olivier Roy’s silence could have been interpreted as a desire to evade the police, his depression as remorse, his flight as a confession.
The next day, at around six in the evening, his suspicions collapsed like a house of cards.
Olivier Roy’s DNA was not a match for the rapist’s!
An hour later, a second piece of information dropped like a bomb: Olivier Roy couldn’t have murdered Morgane Avril, nor could he have been the stranger with the red scarf described by Riff on the Cliff festival-goers. On the weekend of June 5th, 2004, he had been at the street arts festival in Biarritz, nine hundred kilometres away, with three friends from his course.
The appearance and disappearance of Olivier Roy blew Bastinet’s file apart. They pursued their line of inquiry for another few weeks. They took down the blurred facial composite pictures and replaced them with the photograph of Olivier Roy.
But what was the point? Why bother trying to find someone who, at best, was merely a witness?
Judge Paul-Hugo Lagarde began to publicly question Bastinet’s methods, while privately trying to get himself taken off this case before it scuppered his career. The local papers moved on, seizing upon the story of a worker from Mondeville who had asphyxiated himself with carbon dioxide, claiming the lives of his wife and four children who were in the car with him.
Criminal psychologist Ellen Nilsson took the Paris-Caen train less and less often, then not at all. The local police, who had been betting on which part of her body she would rejuvenate next through the miracle of Botox, had to find something else to bet on.
Everyone who had worked day and night on the investigation during the weeks following the murder of Myrtille Camus, had been driven by one fear: the discovery of a new victim. That fear had kept them at it, running a race against time, fuelled by adrenaline. Now they found themselves hoping that another rape would revive the case. They hoped in vain. The red-scarf killer had retired . . .
Carmen Avril met Léo Bastinet at the regional crime squad in Caen on October 12th, 2004, a few days after the Olivier Roy trail was abandoned. She set down a heavy file on the commander’s desk and proceeded to summarise what he would find inside.
The only way to discover the identity of Morgane and Myrtille’s killer would be to look for someone who had been in Yport on June 5th, 2004 and Isigny-sur-Mer on August 26th, 2004. The likelihood of that person being innocent was almost nil, particularly since they had not voluntarily presented themselves to the police.
Bastinet nodded, and wearily opened the file. Inside he found lists, series of addresses, phone numbers, screenshots. Looking for a man, the commander thought, a man on his own, on the Normandy coast, first on one Saturday in spring and then one Thursday in late summer, meant having to check the names of every tourists who had booked into a campsite, a hotel room, a holiday cottage . . . And then there were the ones who had stayed with friends and family. The daytrippers who had used their bank card to pay a motorway toll, a restaurant bill, a souvenir in a shop. The ones who had left a business card or a cheque. Their face in a photograph.
The commander closed the file, then raised hollow eyes to Carmen.
“Madame Avril, I’m going to be frank. The budget for the Avril–Camus case has been reduced by ninety percent. From fifty investigators we have dropped to five. In a few weeks, unless new evidence comes to light, not a single officer will be devoted exclusively to this case.”
Carmen Avril didn’t bat an eyelid. Bastinet continued:
“Officially, since last week, this case isn’t supposed to take up more than ten percent of my time.”
He pushed the file towards her, without offering an assessment of the value of the work she had undertaken.
“We’re not giving up, Madame Avril, but the investigation is on standby. We have the rapist’s DNA, we know that he has claimed two victims. We have to wait . . .”
Bastinet waiting for Carmen to dive in with a stinging retort:
Wait for what? Wait for him to rape another girl?
He was disappointed.
Carmen gave herself a shake, tucked the file under her arm and marched out the door, yelling so that everyone on the floor could hear:
“We’ll get by without you!”
In June 2004, after the murder of Morgane, Carmen had set up a collective. Everyone who had known Morgane had joined, almost five hundred people, but a hard core of about ten close friends had proved sufficiently active and, more importantly, sufficiently generous to help pay the fees of the lawyers in charge of the case.
The night after Myrtille Camus’s body was discovered, Carmen had invited Charles and Louise to join the collective. The next day they founded the Fil Rouge Association. The first article of the statutes consisted of two words:
Never forget.
Charles Camus became the association’s president; his tact and diplomacy seemed more useful when it came to negotiating with the police and the legal system than the passion of Carmen Avril, who settled for the role of vice president. Carmen had always struggled in her dealings with men. Particularly men in authority. Océane, Morgane’s sister, took care of admin. Alina Masson, Myrtille’s best friend, was appointed treasurer. Assembling their dossier on the stranger who had been in both locations brought the two families together during the weeks after the second murder, but as soon as it was clear that no one would help them, the group splintered.
“We’ll get by without you,” Morgane’s mother had snapped at Commander Bastinet.
Carmen Avril was thinking crusade, vengeance, punishment.
Charles Camus was thinking truth, justice, and even forgiveness.
The slender consensus within the Fil Rouge Association evaporated in 2005. Carmen had given her consent to a journalist from France 2 who wanted to devote an episode of Bring in the Accused to the red-scarf double murder. Charles had tried veto it, but Morgane’s mother had argued that the TV broadcast would reach a huge number of potential witnesses, and the fee for their participation would help pay lawye
rs and investigators. The rest of the Avril clan lined up behind her. Louise Camus said nothing. Alina Masson and Frédéric Saint-Michel were initially reluctant to go against Charles, but in the end followed Carmen.
The programme was scheduled for March 24th, 2005, at 10:30 P.M.
Like the other members of the Fil Rouge, Carmen first saw the ninety minute programme at a preview screening held within the studios in La Plaine-Saint-Denis. The documentary traced the sequence of events and the twists and turns of the investigation, alternating murky reconstructions, indecent photographs of the victims, and sorrowful testimony from neighbours. Without shedding the slightest bit of light on the case.
In the front row of the screening room, faces were expressionless.
Pure voyeurism! The double rape of Morgane and Myrtille had only been put on screen to compete with CSI or NCIS on the other channels. Carmen Avril wanted the broadcast to be cancelled, but France 2 held their ground. The show brought in an audience share of 18.6 percent, which was slightly below average. The channel didn’t pay a cent to the Fil Rouge association, much less, posthumously, to its two leading actresses.
A few days later, Charles and Louise Camus announced their intention to distance themselves from the group. Charles, with customary diplomacy, cited a health problem as his reason for stepping down.
The last time they spoke to Carmen Avril was the day before the tragedy.
December 27th, 2007.
26
WAIT FOR WHAT? WAIT FOR HIM TO RAPE ANOTHER GIRL?
I put the sheets back in the envelope and slipped it into the glove compartment of the Fiat 500.
So the two cases, of Morgane Avril and Myrtille Camus, had become one.
And within a year the case had been closed.
As I started the Fiat, I couldn’t help smiling. This latest information would be useful to me.
Carmen Avril would welcome me with open arms. I had come to tell her that, ten years on, her daughter’s murderer had emerged from his lair.
A few minutes later, I parked the car a hundred metres past the Gîtes de France sign. A woman was walking along the embankment, bent under the weight of three satchels. She was pulling a string of three children towards a cluster of new houses.
“I’m looking for Carmen Avril.”
The weary woman puffed.
“Down that driveway. You can’t miss it. Hang on, there she is, out on her terrace.”
She pointed to a blue silhouette among the branches of the pollarded trees, then set off like a locomotive, towing her children behind her.
I set off down the driveway. The Dos-d’ne was an old longhouse. The dressed stones of the building were in perfect harmony with the grey of winter, but it looked as though they would be covered in spring by wisteria or the blossom-covered branches of the big apple tree that stood in the middle of the courtyard.
On the terrace a stout woman armed with a hammer was busy straightening the screw bar of what I took to be an old apple press. A collector’s item, which seemed to be in its rightful place in this garden which resembled a museum of Normandy’s arts and crafts.
Carmen hammered away with force, energy, and precision.
From behind, she looked like a man.
Suddenly the hammer paused in mid-air and Carmen spun round, as if she had sensed my presence.
“Who are you looking for?”
“Madame Avril?”
“Yes?”
My heart began pounding as I delivered, as naturally as possible, the speech that I had practised in my head ten times over since Yport.
“I’m Captain Lopez. Fécamp police station. I’d like to talk to you.”
She looked me up and down. A question seemed to be burning on her lips—“They’re recruiting cripples in the police these days?”—but she managed to restrain herself.
“What do you want from me?”
“I’ll get right to the point, Madame Avril. It’s about the murder of your daughter, Morgane. Something . . . something new has come up.”
The hammer crashed to the tiles of the terrace before Carmen could stop it. Her red face, as faded as an apple forgotten at the bottom of a basket, seemed to crack. Relief flooded through me.
Piroz hadn’t contacted her!
Which was odd, given the number of similarities between Magali Verron and Morgane Avril, but I’d been gambling on Carmen Avril not having heard from the police.
“Something new?”
“Nothing concrete, Madame Avril, I don’t want to raise any false hopes. But a series of disturbing events have taken place in Yport over the last few days. Can I come in?”
The interior of the building was level with the landscaped garden. With its exposed beams, a fireplace in which you could have roasted a calf, and rustic touches like the old cartwheel that had been converted into a table, it was the perfect rustic setting for tourists passing through the area.
Carmen invited me to take a seat on a sofa that smelled of leather. For a moment I wondered how a woman had managed to keep this place running single-handed. Then I launched into my account of everything that had happened.
The suicide of Magali Verron, the rape that preceded it, the Burberry cashmere scarf found around her neck.
I omitted to mention one detail: that Magali had bumped into a jogger at the top of the cliff.
Carmen Avril listened to me open-mouthed for almost a quarter of an hour.
“The bastard’s back,” she muttered between her teeth.
I took from my rucksack the “Magali Verron” file that I had stolen from Piroz’s office. The red, white and blue headers and official stamps lent credibility to the information that I was about to give Carmen.
“You’ll have to listen to me without interrupting, Madame Avril. Only then will I ask you for an explanation. If you have one . . .”
She nodded excitedly. Her daughter’s killer had resurfaced, she was willing to listen to anything. I took a deep breath and listed all the things I had learned about Magali Verron.
Born on May 10th, 1993, in Neufchâtel, Canada. Attended school in the Paris region, at the Claude Monet primary school, Albert Schweitzer middle school and Georges Brassens high school, before going on to become a medical student. Raqs sharqi dancer. Fan of seventies rock.
Carmen’s excitement turned into bafflement.
What could be the meaning of this? The same birthday as her daughter, born in a town of the same name, attending schools of the same name, sharing the same tastes.
Sheer insanity.
Carmen Avril rose to her feet without a word; only a slight imbalance in her gait betrayed the effect my words had had on her. She went into the adjacent room and returned with a “welcome” tray, the sort she might offer her guests. Local biscuits, glasses, a jug of water, orange juice, and cold milk. The tray vibrated in her trembling hands. She set it down on the low table before addressing me in a hesitant voice.
“Captain Lopez, what can I say? Everything you have told me seems incredible. Absolutely incredible. Who is this girl? This . . . Magali Verron?”
I poured myself a glass of milk before delivering my next bombshell.
“I haven’t yet told you everything, Madame Avril. Magali Verron looked like your daughter. A most unsettling resemblance—”
I was debating whether to bring up the in vitro fertilisation of her daughter, and the possibility that Morgane and Magali might have been half-sisters, via their father. Carmen, as if reading my thoughts, cut in:
“A resemblance, Captain Lopez? That’s ridiculous. Morgane didn’t have a younger sister! And neither did she have a cousin ten years younger than her. Just me and her sister Océane.”
I shook my head as if trying to come up with another possible explanation. In truth, I was playing for time. If I was going to catch this fish, I would need to reel her in slow
ly. I flicked through the “Magali Verron” file again, to the page with details of her DNA.
“Madame Avril, we know that you are the keeper of the Fil Rouge Association’s archives. I’ve come here today because there’s something I need to check with you.”
Carmen was bound to take the bait. If all I had read about her was true, she would be ready to pursue any trail that might lead her to her daughter’s murderer. However far-fetched it might sound.
I carelessly picked up a biscuit, and then pushed the page towards her.
“I’d like to compare Magali Verron’s DNA with Morgane’s.”
The line went taut. Carmen’s voice hardened. For ten years, she had learned to be suspicious of the police.
“You didn’t keep my daughter’s file in your own archives?”
I flailed for a second.
“Yes. Yes, of course. But to access that file would involve a lengthy bureaucratic procedure, obtaining the permission of the examining magistrate and various other parties. I thought it would be quicker to come straight to you.”
I couldn’t tell from her expression whether she believed me. I was hoping she would seize upon my explanation as further proof of the incompetence of the police.
“Do you work with Captain Piroz?” she asked.
I went on steadily chewing the biscuit. Honey and almond. Slightly sticky. On the way to Neufchâtel I had run through all the possible question in my head, but stupidly I hadn’t predicted that one.
I swallowed, buying a few more seconds to decide on my answer.
“Yes, of course. He sent me here.”
Her cheeks flushed crimson. For the first time Carmen Avril seemed to be relax.
“O.K., come with me to the office. Piroz is the only honest policeman in Normandy.”