by Michel Bussi
My trembling hands tried to control the King Cobra. In the gloom it was impossible to tell the make of the revolver that I was aiming at them. I tried my luck.
Barrel of the gun aimed straight at Piroz’s face.
Slowly, I walked around the Fiat to sit down on the driver’s side. The two cops, arms dangling, didn’t move an inch, as if crushed by the weight of their blunder.
One certainty stabbed at my heart.
The cops hadn’t given me a chance! They had shot to kill. Mona had been in the firing line, she was dead because she didn’t believe me.
I had been right all along.
The cops were trying to trap me. Whatever the consequences.
I glanced one last time at Mona lying on the tarmac, then put all the weight of my grief on the accelerator.
The sound of metal rang out in the silence. Gold dust sparkled on the hood of the Fiat.
My guts twisted. Foot to the floor.
The sheriff’s star balanced there for a moment, then toppled into the parking lot. In films, the heroine wears it on her heart, and the bullet bounces off it. She doesn’t die . . .
In films.
The Fiat leapt. I heard the front right tire driving over the gilded iron insignia that my mother had bought for five francs. It was another time. The time my mother had dreamed for me, when I would arrest the bad guys.
The Benedictine warehouses whizzed by I aimed between two hedges to get back to the main road. Dark and deserted.
On the way to hell. I wouldn’t see Mona again.
But the ghost of Morgane Avril . . . perhaps.
34
IN ANOTHER LIFE?
I drove for another few moments along the forest path, then stopped the Fiat 500. As I turned the ignition key I had the feeling that I was breaking up the universe all around me, cutting off with a single motion all forms of civilised life. The headlights, the luminous signs on the dashboard, but also the stars and the moon, invisible behind the arch of the trees. Pitch darkness.
I stayed like that for a long time, in total blackness.
Then I opened the door, leaned out and vomited on to the grass and over the tire of Mona’s car. Once I was done, I pressed my back and my neck against the driver’s seat. I stayed that way for several minutes, unmoving. Tears ran down my cheeks, and I didn’t make the slightest effort to wipe them away. They ran down to my lips, mingling with the bitter taste in my throat. For a moment I imagined that the visions produced by my raving brain might spill out like vomit, flood from my lachrymal glands like tears. Flow out in my blood too, were I to slit a vein.
The smell and the taste were becoming unbearable. My hand reached out to turn on the roof light.
Twelve letters appeared, as if etched on the dirty windshield.
M O R G A N E A V R I L
In my mind I saw Mona’s silhouette writing them with her finger, her weary smile, her last words as she left my star on the hood.
Good luck.
What did luck care about us, Mona?
A thin fog rose over the undergrowth, as if smoke were coming out of the ground. The thermometer of the Fiat showed that it was minus two.
Soon the twelve letters disappeared in a cocoon of fog.
An illusion.
I had to accept it. Magali Verron had never existed. Nor anything that might have been connected with her death.
No witness, scarf, rape, or murder by strangling.
An anagram. A ghost. A fantasy.
I jumped from one thought to the next as if they were stepping stones.
If none of it was true, why had Piroz been hunting me down for three days? And why did he have no hesitation about shooting me?
Another stone. This one was moving unsteadily beneath me.
If nothing was true about Magali Verron’s suicide, when had I first seen Piroz? Not on the beach at Yport beach that morning, with his deputy. Had I met him for the first time at Fécamp police station, the day when I first met Mona? So the police had called me in for a completely different reason. Another case. And I’d made up this whole story.
Another jump. Another stone. The far bank was barely visible in the distance.
Something didn’t add up! The French police don’t fire at suspects! Not without warning. Not point-blank. Not to kill. I had aimed the King Cobra at the sky. I had never threatened Piroz. But he had fired to keep me from getting away. He would rather have shot me down than let me run away. Why?
Because he was sure that I was the rapist who had murdered Morgane Avril and Myrtille Camus, a serial killer that the police had been after for ten years? Because, even if I had forgotten everything, they had accumulated enough evidence to be certain of my guilt?
My fingers touched the icy windshield. The twelve invisible letters taunted me, impossible to erase.
I had heard the shrinks talking about such things at the Saint Antoine Institute. Kids denying atrocities they had been subjected to. No, their parents weren’t rapists. No, they hadn’t been molested. Yes, they wanted to go back home. Those kids manufactured a different life for themselves, one that was easier to bear. In their heads at least.
The fog engulfed the Fiat, making it look as if it was floating silently through the clouds.
Was that what had happened in my case? Except I wasn’t a child who had been raped. I wasn’t a traumatised victim.
I was a monster.
I had killed those girls ten years before.
I, and I alone, was responsible for Mona’s death.
I went into the forest. The cold gripped me like a vice around my chest. I didn’t care. Icy puddles cracked beneath my feet. I walked unsteadily for several metres. I lost my balance on a thick patch of black ice. My hands gripped the trunk of the nearest tree, an elm whose bark tore my palms.
Then I yelled into the silence.
No!!!
Some leaves trembled ten metres in front of me. A rabbit, a bird, some animal that I had startled. Do woodland creatures have nightmares? Are they only afraid of the night?
Desperate to escape, I yelled again.
No!!!
I kept my cry going for an eternity, not even breathing, until my eardrums felt as if they would burst. One final barrier in my brain refused to yield.
No, I repeated at last.
Almost a murmur this time.
No.
I didn’t remember murdering Morgane Avril and Myrtille Camus. I didn’t remember for one simple reason.
I was innocent!
Three days ago I had watched as Magali Verron threw herself off a cliff. I stood over her body on the beach with Christian Le Medef and Denise Joubain. There was a key that explained everything, very close by, within reach. A detail that I had to decode, like the prisoner’s dilemma, or that poem Myrtille Camus had sent to her fiancé, signed M2O.
I wiped my palms against my jeans to get rid of the drops of blood that were forming on them. The mixture of bile and tears in my mouth made me feel nauseous. I couldn’t collapse, die there in the cold, wait for the police to come and pick up a guy who had been eaten up by remorse. A beast at the end of his tether, who would be finished off without being questioned any further. I remembered Mona’s last act of kindness at Martin Denain’s, in Vaucottes. Coffee and biscuits.
I walked to the trunk of the Fiat, running through the events of the last three days in my head once more.
The events of the last few days could not have happened by chance. They followed a preordained pattern, there was a logic . . .
The dew settling on the car was already turning into a fine layer of ice.
. . . but it wasn’t the kind of logic improvised in the heat of the moment, linking a series of steps the way a reader strings together the chapters of a detective thriller. I had to take a step back, take stock, on my own. Stop, sle
ep.
Or drink a litre of coffee.
I opened the trunk.
Like a statue of ice, I stood frozen beside the Fiat, unable to move.
Beside the thermos and the packet of biscuits was a brown envelope.
In my name.
Who but a ghost could have put it there?
Who but me?
I took the time to eat the biscuits, Lotus-brand Speculoos from Martin Denain’s larder, and drink two cups of hot coffee, strong, without sugar.
Then I opened the envelope.
35
SOMETHING DIDN’T ADD UP?
Avril–Camus case—spring 2007
The regional crime squad were officially taken off the Avril–Camus investigation on June 9th, 2007. Commander Léo Bastinet hadn’t come up with any new leads in almost a year and no one had looked at any of the three thousand pages of the case file. Judge Paul-Hugo Lagarde, with Léo Bastinet’s agreement, suggested passing the management of the Avril–Camus file to the Fécamp brigade until the statute of limitations ran out.
The Fécamp police had been the first to investigate the murder, they had remained involved in the investigation, and Captain Grima, who had been sidelined after the second murder, would probably see it as a small personal revenge when the case came back to him, after all the efforts of the regional crime squad had come to nothing.
Captain Grima accepted the case, and the files of the double investigation were transferred from Caen to Fécamp on Friday, June 15th, 2007. The next day he received a visit from Carmen Avril. She came back a few days later, and then almost every week during the summer. Then Grima worked out that Judge Lagarde hadn’t just given him a case that had reached a dead end, he had lumbered him with a pain in the neck who had been hassling the legal system and the police for years.
Never forget.
Time had done nothing to diminish the determination of the president of the Fil Rouge Association, who was now in sole charge since the double suicide of Charles and Louise Camus.
Three years later, Grima received his transfer to the police in Saint-Florent, a small port town in Corsica, wedged between Cap Corse and the Agriates desert. Perhaps he had grown weary of the assaults of the waves that crashed against the sea wall of Fécamp, or perhaps it was the assaults of Carmen Avril that drove him away. The police captain and the proprietor of the Dos-d’ne had never got on. Before leaving, Grima handed the keys of the case to the oldest officer in the station, an experienced detective who had been responsible for interviewing the witnesses who’d encountered the stranger with the red scarf. Sonia Thurau, the cloakroom girl, Mickey the bouncer, Vincent Carré, the chemistry student.
Captain Piroz.
A methodical worker, and one that Carmen Avril actually liked. Piroz had immediately agreed with her: they should be looking for a stranger who had been in Yport and Isigny on the dates when the murders occurred. He was not alarmed by the prospect of having to sift through lists of several thousand individuals to find the one name common to both lists. On the contrary, Piroz had a tenacity bordering on obsession. An old bachelor. No children. No talent or liking for football, detective novels, or dominos. He spent his evenings going through the case the way others might build models of the Benedictine Palace out of matchsticks.
All for nothing . . .
Piroz came no closer to the identity of the killer than Captain Grima, Commander Bastinet or criminal psychologist Ellen Nilsson.
After the death of Louise and Charles Camus, Carmen Avril held the reins of the Fil Rouge association, even though it now had no reason to exist but a duty of memory celebrated every year at a gloomy AGM.
Carmen Avril, mother of Morgane Avril, president
Frédéric Saint-Michel, fiancé of Myrtille Camus, vice president
Océane Avril, sister of Morgane Avril, secretary
Jeanine Dubois, grandmother of Myrtille Camus, deputy secretary
Alina Masson, best friend of Myrtille Camus, treasurer
The rare meetings of the association were an opportunity for Alina to get closer to Océane. They had both lost a twin sister, whether the tie was emotional or one of blood. Amputated from the other half of themselves. They got on, even though Océane had inherited from her mother, and probably from the rape of her sister, a stubborn hatred of men that she struggled to contain during their long nocturnal conversations. For the first time Alina opened up and dared to expose the doubts that had eaten away at her for years. Océane listened to her and didn’t talk to anybody, not even her mother, then advised Alina to resume contact with the police who had investigated Myrtille’s murder. With Ellen Nilsson rather than Bastinet. The criminal psychologist knew the file as well as the commander did, but would be more likely to understand. Perhaps.
Ellen Nilsson refused to talk to Alina Masson. The Avril–Camus file had been closed for four years, and she claimed to have other more pressing cases to deal with.
Ten phone calls didn’t change anything.
They would have to go through Piroz, who in turn put pressure on Judge Lagarde to make the criminal psychologist agree to see the police captain and Myrtille Camus’s best friend at her Paris office on Rue d’Aubigné. Piroz growled his way through a journey on the dirty, stinking Métro, nearly got knocked over at Place de la Concorde, cursed again as he crammed his belly into the wrought-iron lift that went up to Nilsson’s office on the fourth floor, south facing, view of the Seine.
Alina said nothing.
When Ellen in person opened the heavy oak door, wearing a Ralph Lauren dress that revealed her brand-new cleavage, she almost turned and left.
Likely to understand?
Piroz, visibly impressed by the customised curves, stood blocking her retreat.
They took a seat. Leather armchairs. Low glass table. Panoramic view of the Île Saint-Louis and the constant ballet of the bateaux-mouches. Alina felt suddenly dizzy. How could she progress towards the truth without damaging the memory of Myrtille?
Ellen crossed her perfect legs and wrinkled her smooth forehead into the best frown that she could muster.
“You wanted to see me, Mademoiselle Masson?”
Alina had no choice but to dive in.
“You remember,” she managed to say at length, “the first time we met at the regional crime squad in Caen, just after Myrtille’s murder. You asked a question. One that took me by surprise.”
“Which one was that?” said Ellen, who clearly hadn’t reviewed the notes on their meeting six years ago.
“You asked why Myrtille was wearing such a sexy outfit on the day she was raped. A short, sky blue dress with hibiscus flowers. Matching mauve underwear. Not the usual outfit for a camp activity leader.”
“That’s possible. We pursued so many theories . . .”
“What were you thinking at that moment?” Alina pressed.
Ellen delved into her memory, then replied wearily:
“Nothing specific. If I remember correctly, Bastinet thought we should be focusing on potential culprits, not the victims. Basically he was right, both Myrtille Camus and Morgane Avril were victims chosen at random.”
Piroz yawned.
“I’ve thought a lot about that question over the years,” Alina went on. “To tell the truth, I’ve never stopped thinking about it. You were right: Myrtille didn’t usually dress like that.”
“But Myrtille died on her day off! As I recall, that’s what you told me at the time.”
“Even on a day off, Myrtille wouldn’t have dressed like that.”
Ellen’s frown deepened.
“What do you mean, Mademoiselle Masson? Are you suggesting that she knew her rapist? That . . . that she had arranged to meet him, is that it?”
Alina hesitated. Hanging on the wall, in a glass frame, was a huge photograph of a naked woman on her knees, her face hidden by a cascade of
blonde hair.
Ellen?
It was plainly supposed to look that way.
“Yes,” Alina said at last. “Myrtille had arranged to meet someone. A man. Probably her murderer.”
“Wasn’t she engaged to that guy who played the guitar?”
Alina’s face turned pink. She had said nothing during all those years for one reason. To protect Myrtille. Not to tarnish the image that her family kept of her. Perfect. Faithful. Loving.
“Yes . . .”
“Chichin, something like that?”
“Chichin was his nickname. His name is Frédéric Saint-Michel.”
For the first time the criminal psychologist leaned over the file on the low table in front of her. She flicked through a few pages and then looked up.
“So Myrtille was the victim of a womaniser, something like that? A charmer who had turned her head? You know, Mademoiselle Masson, your conviction corresponds precisely to Captain Grima’s original theory. Morgane Avril wasn’t the victim of a stalker who came out of nowhere, but a seducer who lured her.”
Alina nodded and didn’t say a word. Of course, she knew . . .
“Which changes nothing,” Ellen Nilsson went on. “Charmer or predator, how does that get us any closer to identifying the murderer? Unless, of course, we know who Myrtille had arranged to meet. Do you have any idea, Mademoiselle Masson?”
“No.”
“Could it have been Olivier Roy, the guy with the Adidas cap who was prowling around her at the camp in Isigny? The one who disappeared a few months after the murder?”
For the first time, Piroz spoke. Ellen, surprised, turned towards the police captain.
“Impossible! Olivier Roy had a cast-iron alibi for the evening of Morgane Avril’s murder. And his DNA doesn’t correspond to that of the rapist.”
“Exactly,” the criminal psychologist concluded. “That was why poor Bastinet’s investigation ran aground. An appointment with whom, them?”