by Michel Bussi
At three in the morning, Commander Weissman allowed his colleagues a break and tried to wake up Commander Léo Bastinet, who had retired five years ago to somewhere near Ambert, in the Puy-de-Dôme, to inform him about the final twist in the Avril–Camus case. Commander Bastinet picked up after ten rings or so, and hung up before Weissman could get a word in. This was not the case with Ellen Nilsson, whom Weissman managed to contact a few minutes later.
At 6 A.M., the criminal psychologist gave her first televised interview, her hair tousled as if she had just jumped out of bed, her face unwrinkled and free of make-up, her enhanced breasts visible under a see-through silk blouse that she had “slipped on in a hurry.” She told the journalist, who was staring at her bare legs, that she had always been convinced that Myrtille Camus knew her murderer, but, alas, no one had listened to her.
By ten in the morning, the switchboard operators of Rouen regional crime squad had collected five new witness statements from former activity leaders who’d worked under the supervision of Frédéric Saint-Michel. They all said that when he was in charge of the summer camps, the handsome Chichin had been drawn to the young and pretty trainee youth leaders, and had drawn up an impressive list of groupies, aged between seventeen and twenty, willing to follow him even under the duvet. Several girls admitted succumbing to the guitarist’s advances, and described the metamorphosis of the seducer as soon as they had laid down their arms: the attentive romantic in the evening became a ruthless lover at dawn. In a hurry. Indifferent. On the other hand, the police hadn’t manged to find a single girl who had passed through Saint-Michel’s bed after the summer of 2003, when he was officially going out with Myrtille Camus. Had Saint-Michel found the love of his life? The one he couldn’t bear to lose?
Gilbert Avril steered firmly to starboard. The Paramé turned towards the harbour, straight towards the concrete jetty that dominated the narrow entrance to the canal. In spite of the early hour, rubberneckers were already gathering on the sea wall. Probably people who lived on the seafront, alerted by the procession of police vans.
They watched us curiously, pointing in our direction, laughing or whispering. Several flashes went off.
Océane, still wrapped in my arms, turned her back on them. The Paramé slipped gently over the calm water. I guessed that the storm would break as soon as we pulled in. Two police officers would take charge of each member of the Fil Rouge.
They would be taken to the nearest station and interrogated separately. Packs of journalists setting up camp in front of the police station.
I took advantage of the last few seconds of calm to list in my head all the doubts that the death of Saint-Michel hadn’t laid to rest.
Who had put Myrtille Camus’s private diary on the island of Saint-Marcouf? Was it Piroz, in the hope of exposing Frédéric Saint-Michel, as he had implied in the hold of the Paramé? But if he had laid his hand on a piece of evidence as crucial as that private diary, why hadn’t he directly accused Saint-Michel? If Piroz had guessed the real significance of the signature M2O, why agree to take part in this crazy set-up conceived by Carman Avril, until that macabre dénouement on the island of Saint-Marcouf?
Everything’s in place, the captain had said.
What had Piroz planned before Saint-Michel had stabbed him? What did this case have to do with the theory of the prisoner’s dilemma to which the captain had attached so much importance?
The Dutch kotter skimmed past the end of the jetty. A guy in a sailor’s hat was perched on the guardrail, armed with a camera fitted with a telephoto lens. He waved his arms at us. Jerk!
Instinctively, I turned to hide Océane’s face. The sight of the pack massing on the dock had me panicking.
Océane had killed a man. But Frédéric Saint-Michel was guilty, there was no doubt—
Except there was. The reason Saint-Michel had never come under suspicion until now.
His DNA.
The police had checked the DNA of everyone connected with Myrtille, including Frédéric Saint-Michel. It was not a match for the sperm found on the bodies of Morgane and Myrtille.
Had the handsome Chichin also fallen victim to a conspiracy? Or had he come up with the most ingenious sleight of hand?
None of us knew at the time, but the police would find the solution the following day, at 1 P.M.
A solution as simple as it was obvious . . .
44
HAD HE FOUND THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE?
By midnight, sixty-three sealed plastic bags had been delivered to the regional crime squad in Rouen. Glasses, bottles, knives, forks, toothbrushes, combs, clothes, shoes, glasses, gloves, handkerchiefs, pens, keys, guitar capos, MP3 headphones . . .
The officers from the Elbeuf brigade had obeyed the strict orders of Commander Weissman and painstakingly collected from Frédéric Saint-Michel’s apartment all the objects that might contain traces of his DNA.
After sifting through these items, in the early hours of the morning they came upon a glass bottle that contained residues of sperm. A few hours later, a computer spat out a genetic code.
For several minutes the police checked every letter, every number, like players of the lottery who don’t dare to believe that they are holding the winning ticket in their hands. They’d been waiting for the right combination for ten years . . .
Then they exploded with joy.
The sperm in the bottle was the same as that found on the bodies of Morgane Avril and Myrtille Camus!
In his report for Judge Lagarde, Weissman hypothesised that Frédéric Saint-Michel had got hold of a stranger’s sperm to avert suspicion. That certainty resolved the case while making it even more sordid. Chichin was no longer a lover who had panicked in the face of the about-turns of his two girlfriends, he had been unmasked as a sadistic killer who had minutely planned his two murders. While a police medical examiner, Dr. Courade, stated that it struck him as impossible for the sperm found in Morgane Avril’s vagina to have been introduced artificially, no one dwelled on that detail. Frédéric Saint-Michel, even with three bullets in his belly, entered the pantheon of Machiavellian murderers.
The Paramé entered the harbour of Grandcamp-Maisy. It passed by a dozen colourful trawlers floating idly in front of the quay. The cops thronging the quay looked as though they’d been dumped from the net of some fishing boat in readiness for the auction.
Denise threw a rope to the nearest policeman. The Paramé crushed the yellow buoys as it came to rest against the brick quay.
“They want to talk to you,” Carmen said into Océane’s ear. “They want to talk to all of us. But you first.”
A worried voice. Telephone clutched in her fist.
Océane’s moist eyes looked away from her mother’s and back to me. A band of rain moving in, warm this time. Of course she would have to explain herself to the police. She had killed a man. Three bullets to the body, less than thirty minutes before.
To take her revenge.
To save me . . .
Her hand slipped slowly around my arm.
“I’m sorry, Jamal,” she said. “Forgive us, it was—”
“They’re waiting for you,” Carmen cut in before she could finish.
Océane got to her feet. I thought I saw an expression of regret in her eyes.
“They’re calling us,” she murmured.
They’re calling us.
While Carmen and Océane disappeared into the back of the blue Renault Trafic parked opposite the Paramé, other officers climbed aboard the kotter. Some wore latex gloves and transparent plastic hoods. I was still sitting on the chained storage bench and no one seemed to be interested in me. Right in my field of vision, still leaning against the railing, Mona said a quick word to the policeman who was coming towards her.
Too far. Impossible to hear.
The officer nodded and walked away. A second later, Mona came and stood
in front of me.
“Hello, Jamal. Since I died near the station at Les Ifs, we haven’t had had much of a chance to talk.”
Her laughter sounded false. Hollow, in fact. I looked back at her, stony-faced.
She pursed her lips. The wind was tugging at her red hair, pulling it free of the hood.
“I’m sorry, Jamal. You had nothing to do with any of this. We were all set up. All of us.”
Cold water was still trickling under my wetsuit. I wanted to get it all over with. To give my statement to the police, sign it and get out of there.
“You won’t care,” Mona went on, “if I tell you I didn’t agree with them. But I didn’t have any choice.”
I turned my head. Carmen had got out of the Renault Trafic accompanied by a policewoman. Not Océane.
“But you see, in the end Carmen Avril was right. So was Piroz. To bring the truth back to the surface, we had to dig up the past.”
Dig up the past?
Bring the truth back to the surface?
Two corpses were rotting in the hold of the Paramé—and probably not the ones they’d planned from the start.
A policeman came towards us, his cap pulled down to his eyebrows. Before he was able to say a word, Denise intercepted him, pressing Arnold into his arms. Mona had clearly enlisted help in buying time to talk to me.
What was she hoping?
A stray tendril brushed her lips, and she pushed it away with a grimace. She no longer reminded me of a frightened mouse.
“Jamal, I worked out very quickly that you were innocent—”
Very quickly?
Explain, my pretty one . . .
After we slept together? Before? Afterwards? During?
I noticed a fourth policeman going down into the hold of the kotter.
“I had to carry on playing my role to its conclusion,” Mona pleaded. “In memory of Myrtille . . . of Louise, of Charles . . . It was, how can I put it, unreal. You remember, last night, in the Fiat, in Vaucottes, when you read about the little girl from Puchot and her childhood friend. Mimy and Lina. The desperately sad life of a girl weeping beside you as you read that letter from a stranger . . .”
Last night. At ten o’clock. I felt as if a whole year had passed in the meantime.
Vaucottes. The Fiat. A brown envelope.
“Moving?” she had asked me. “Thank you,” she had added.
I hadn’t understood.
“I remember. You made a fool of me.”
“No, Jamal—”
“Yes . . . Hats off. You’re an incredible actress.”
She twisted a red curl between her fingers, hopped on tiptoe like a shy schoolgirl and then took a deep breath.
“No, Jamal. I was sincere. Contrary to appearances, I was sincere. Absolutely sincere. You won’t believe me, Jamal, I’m under no illusions, but I have to say it to you. Now. Apart from the thing about the double murder, never . . .”
She finished her declaration under her breath.
“. . . never have I been so sincere in a relationship.”
Her clumsy smile pressed against my face.
Sincere?
Apart from the thing about the double murder?
Apart from the brown envelopes strewn in my path.
Apart from that nocturnal trip to Le Medef’s house. Apart from the visit to the bedroom of those traumatised children in the old railway station. Apart from the invented life of Magali Verron. Apart from the dreamed-up life of one Mona Salinas, pebble-collector, holder of a doctorate in silica, the favourite student of a thesis director who ran the biggest chemistry lab in France, who gave her the use of his villa. Why sell yourself short, eh, Mona? Since you have no choice, why not act the part of a funny, intelligent, and over-qualified girl . . . And take every opportunity to seduce the sucker sitting opposite over dinner at La Sirène.
“None of it was true,” I murmured. “None of it.”
“Neither true nor false, Jamal . . . We both made things up, we told each other stories.”
A muted cry rang out:
“Leave me alone!”
In the wheelhouse of the Paramé, Gilbert Avril was shouting at a policeman who was trying to pull him away from the tiller. Crazed gulls flew from one mast to the other.
My eye passed over Mona’s shoulders.
“No. I believed it.”
A silence.
I saw Océane getting out of the Renault Trafic, escorted by two gendarmes, then she disappeared into the back of a van. A few minutes later, the van departed.
I had butterflies in my stomach. I averted my eyes.
“I believed it, Mona,” I said again. “You notice that? I still call you ‘Mona.’ Pathetic, isn’t it! Mona Salinas doesn’t exist. Never has. You are . . . a stranger!”
“If that’s what you think . . .” she said after a long pause. “But Alina’s not so different from Mona. She’s the same girl, Jamal. The only difference is the order of the letters. We were all playing our part in the end.”
She stepped forward and kissed me on the cheek. She was trembling. She forced a smile.
“I can’t be angry with you. That would be too much, wouldn’t it? So no hard feelings . . .”
I didn’t react. I had nothing to say to her. Mona’s cheerful tone struck me as completely fake.
“You remember our first meeting, Jamal? Our dinner à deux at La Sirène. I had asked you if you would give me one of your visiting cards, the ones that you handed out to the prettiest girls in the street?”
“I said yes.”
“That’s true. But do you remember what I said?”
No idea.
My eyes drifted to the place where the van carrying Océane’s had disappeared behind the cream pavilion by the quay.
“I said: ‘I’m sure that you wouldn’t have given me your card. I reckon you go for romantic women, femmes fatales. Not direct girls like me.’” Mona ran a cold finger down my cheek. “‘If you ask me, that’s the problem with your technique: you collect women like Panini stickers, but you don’t get the ones you need.’”
A flash of light made me blink. A policeman was taking photographs of the railing of the Paramé, probably to find from which spot on the deck Saint-Michel had thrown Piroz overboard. None of them seemed to be in a hurry to question me.
Mona’s words slipped around my head.
You go for romantic women, femmes fatales.
You don’t get the ones you need.
I remembered now, she had said that on the first evening. I hadn’t paid the slightest attention.
“No hard feelings,” I confirmed in a loud voice. “You were right, Mona, I’m attracted by the stars.”
My hand moved through the empty space beneath my left knee.
“The ones I must conquer! The inaccessible peaks. To climb Mont Blanc, that sort of nonsense. I’m training hard for that.”
“I know. I’ve always known. Ciao, Jamal. The police are waiting for us. I think we can both bury Mona once and for all . . .”
Alina. I had to get that name into my head.
She twisted around to remove something from her jeans pocket.
“Talking about those inaccessible peaks, I found this yesterday. I’d put it on the hood of the Fiat near the old railway station. It fell off when you made your getaway. You may even have driven over it . . .”
Mona slipped my sheriff’s star into my hand. Black with mud. Battered.
“You entrusted it to me. You’ll have to find another keeper for it.”
I raised my eyes to the sky. Above the crescent moon that frayed into long white clouds, one last constellation twinkled.
“Thanks, Mona. But I don’t need it any more.”
Once again I studied the morning stars, hiding coquettishly behind a thin veil of mist,
then I took the sheriff’s insignia between my thumb and index finger.
I resolutely flung it as far as possible into the water.
The scrap of gilded metal flew for a moment in an elegant curve, until it bounced on the black water of the harbour.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Mona protested. “It was your talisman . . .”
The sheriff’s star sank gently.
“Your lucky charm,” she added.
She walked away. By the time she’d climbed down three rungs of the ladder of the Paramé to get to the quay, a cop in a leather jacket was taking his hands out of his pockets to help her.
On the deck, four police officers appeared, carrying the corpses of Piroz and Saint-Michel wrapped up in opaque plastic bags.
A policeman turned his head indifferently towards me. Perhaps he was hoping I would help them shift the corpses.
I closed my eyes, letting the waves rock me.
Five verbs danced in my head.
Five commandments.
1.Become—the first disabled athlete to run the Mont Blanc Ultra-Trail.
2.Make—love to a woman more beautiful than me.
3.Have—a child.
4.Be—mourned by a woman when I die.
5.Pay—my debt before I die.
I hadn’t been bluffing, not this time.
I no longer needed a star to guide me. I touched each of my five points with my finger. The first was only a question of training. The second was no longer an inaccessible Everest.
Océane . . .
Never had I so desired that the same woman would fulfil three of my vows. As to the fifth, I had brushed with death so often that it would wearily grant me a long respite . . .