The Beast of the Camargue (10 page)

“Michel, I've got some info about your fellow, William Steinert.”

“Go ahead, but don't ask me to take notes. I'm driving and it's starting to pour again. I can't wait to get back to Marseille.”

“I dropped in on the S.T.I.C.,
^†
and they have him on file. Nothing much, just some business about financing a political party …”

“Was he convicted?”

“Just formally questioned, by the boys in Tarascon.”

“Which party?”

“Jacques Chirac's R.P.R.”

“Really? I would have imagined him more as center left, the champagne socialist type, someone who cares about paupers like you and me.”

“Hang on a minute, that doesn't mean he was
in
the R.P.R. What's more he's German. Anyway, it was all based on phone tapping and town hall rumors. The sort of thing that smells decidedly fishy.”

Suddenly arriving at a roundabout that he had forgotten existed, de Palma had to brake abruptly. To his right, a brand-new sign indicated the Abbaye de Montmajour and Fontvieille. A truck from a cellulose factory on the banks of the Rhône was concealing the exit for Tarascon. He drove all the way round the roundabout, now breathing heavily into his telephone.

“Are you still there Michel?”

“Shit, I nearly took the road to Montmajour!”

“It's for holidaymakers … So, as I was saying, he was questioned for corruption.”

“O.K., I'm not deaf! So what had our dear William done?”

“Nothing at all, apparently, he was completely cleared!”

“Hmm. Listen, don't worry about all that, I'm going to see what I can find out today, and then I'll let it drop. Maybe he's the sort of man who vanishes like that, only to reappear a few days later.”

“You think so?”

“It's possible. He might be a billionaire who likes to treat himself to a little adventure from time to time. He could be sunbathing in the Caribbean while I'm getting drenched in Provence.”

“Whatever, Michel, you should still get some rest.”

“Yes,
chérie
, I know. What happened with Casetti by the way?”

“He's here, in Daniel's office. We're waiting for the D.N.A. tests to come back from Nantes. He'll be home tonight or tomorrow morning. That's all. See you later, Commandant.”

The clock-tower of Saint Martha's church was ringing the angelus when Ingrid Steinert got out of her B.M.W. in front of the Tarascon theater and adjusted the strap of her sandal.

From the far end of the street, de Palma was watching her. As she approached him, he observed the mane of disheveled hair that fell over her bare shoulders.

“Excuse me,” she said contritely. “I'm a little bit late.”

She had changed her clothes, and was now wearing a yellow cotton dress that fluttered over her body. She had also removed her big diamond and now just a fine gold chain hung around her neck while discreet earrings were hidden by her blond hair.

When she was just a meter away from him, he smelled the perfume that she was wearing on her neck. At that moment, the policeman's head was about as much in order as a jigsaw violently shaken in its box.

“Let's go,” she proclaimed, with a hint of anxiety in her voice.

William Steinert's office was on the second floor of an old nineteenth-century building. She produced a huge set of keys and, as she went over to the door, he could not help admiring the hem of her dress as it swung against her sumptuous legs.

The door was reinforced, as were both sides of the walls, enough to keep out the most determined of burglars.

“I think it's the round key, the yellow one.”

“Really? If you say so.”

“There's maybe an alarm. You should be careful.”

“We'll see.”

She eventually found the right key, which was indeed the one that de Palma had suggested.

“It's the first time I've been here … It's very upsetting. Please, go in first. I'm feeling rather apprehensive.”

She pronounced the final word with a slight accent, rolling the “r” and aspirating the “h.” De Palma noticed this tiny detail at once. He stopped on the threshold and groped for the light switch.

No alarm went off, even though William Steinert had furnished his office with the latest in security equipment. The detective at once deduced that either the industrialist had forgotten to switch it on—which seemed strange for someone who took such precautions—or else somebody had disconnected it and couldn't put it back into action. Why not Ingrid Steinert herself? But that didn't square with the emotion that showed in her gaze.

“Does your husband employ a cleaner, or anyone else who looks after his office for him?”

“I don't know.”

“You'll have to find out.”

Steinert's office was in fact a large flat, presumably dating back to the same period as the theater, and it was made up of three huge rooms that communicated directly one into the other, without a corridor. The ceilings were unusually high, with decorative moldings, like Bavarian cream cakes.

The owner could not have opened the windows for some time: a smell of scented tobacco and accumulated dust filled every nook of the first room, which served as a hall, and was furnished with a coffee-table and four old-fashioned upholstered chairs to take up the space.

Why this furniture? Was it a waiting-room? Did Steinert receive clients in this office?

She crossed the room without stopping. She was worried and seemed to be looking for something in particular.

The second room was very much more spacious. The two high windows and the shutters were closed, and also reinforced. The dying yellow gleam of evening filtered through the blinds. Ingrid turned on the light.

It was a library, with genuine rococo shelves in massive walnut, each shelf crammed to bursting with books, some displaying their spines, others piled up anyhow. The fine layer of dust that covered them showed that they had not been touched for some time, presumably since Steinert's disappearance.

“My husband used to read a lot,” she said with emotion. “My God, all these books …”

For the first time, de Palma sensed that she felt sad when she thought about her husband.

He glanced at the spines of the books. Steinert did not seem to have arranged his books by subject, or by author, and still less in alphabetical order. Many of them were in German.

On the shelves facing the windows, the books were arranged more neatly, a sign that they had been considered more important, or maybe read less often than the others. However, the layer of dust was thinner than elsewhere.

The Baron's lips formed the titles on the worn covers:
Le musée de sorciers
by Grillot de Givry;
Sciences occultes et magie pratique; Les admirables et merveilleux secrets du grand et du petit Albert; Le matin des magiciens
by Pauwels and Bergier;
Les arts divinatoires; Orthodoxie maçonnique
followed by
La maçonnerie occulte et de la tradition hermétique
by Jean-Marie Ragon;
La science des mages
by Papus …

De Palma gingerly took down the
Traité de l'apparition des esprits
, a tome written by Noël Taillepied and published in Paris by Guillaume Bichon in 1587. Although knowing nothing of the occult arts, he realized that this must be a very rare work, most probably owned only by initiates.

“Your husband seems very interested in the occult!”

“I didn't know that. But I can see that most of the books here in
German are on the same subject. Do you know much about it yourself?”

“Far from it,” he said, opening
Les états multiples de l'être
by René Guénon, the most renowned French mystic of the nineteenth century. “Some of these books seem extremely general, and not a high level, while others are far more specialized. This one, for example.”

De Palma was thinking hard. Every time he discovered something, it felt as though he were sinking deeper into molten tar, with nothing to stop this slow and progressive suffocation.

The third room was William Steinert's actual office. Expensive paintings on the walls: a Léger, a De Staël, a couple of Bascoulès …

What a strange combination, de Palma thought. There was nothing symbolic in all this. But he understood the point of the alarm. On a shelf, there were several statues of Greek gods, which he was incapable of identifying, and two bulky Egyptian ushabtis, funerary figures, standing on a metal mounting; all of this must have been worth a fortune.

On the table lay a disordered pile of manuscript notes, mostly concerning Provençal myths and legends. On one page, Steinert had jotted down in his very fine, neat hand details about the mythical monsters found in the region of Tarascon.

The Drac, an amphibious dragon, used to spirit away big-breasted washerwomen to feed its young … Less interesting than the Tarasque, the heroine of Tarascon became a star of regionalist marketing … A hideous beast that consumed everything in its path … Tamed by Saint Martha shortly after Christ's death. See monuments and abbey
.

“Your husband writes?”

“Yes, he loved writing. Part of the reason why he'd partly retired from business was to devote more time to his passion.”

“A book about the myths and legends of Provence …”

“I didn't know that.”

De Palma went round the office once again, examining the pictures. He lingered in front of a Bascoulès canvas, a scene of boats being
loaded in the port of Oran. For a moment, he had the impression that the tugs were busy pushing at the huge black hulls of the freighters of the Paquet company, while blowing columns of smoke into the burning sky.

He went back into the library and examined every surface. Mentally, he photographed the exact layout of the furniture and of various books that seemed important to him, then he returned to the office to do likewise. He noticed that there was no computer or telephone. But there was a telephone socket on the wall.

“Curious for a man of such importance. I don't see him casting a laptop around and only using his mobile … Still less, doing without the Internet.”

He took a long look at the office. The placing of the notes didn't look natural. The pen lay well to the left, while Steinert was definitely right-handed, you could tell from his handwriting. Things had been moved about and then wiped clean.

Beside the pen, there was a feather measuring a good thirty centimeters, which was thin and extraordinarily white. De Palma picked it up carefully, stared at it for a moment, then put it back down where it had been.

“I don't think that our visit has taught us anything of significance, apart from getting to know your husband's character better. And first of all, that he was hiding some things from you.”

Ingrid did not reply, and felt ill at ease. Was it because of the presence of this police officer in her husband's personal space, she wondered. Was it the discovery that he had hidden whole aspects of his life from her? She remembered that once, after the theater, her husband had invited her to visit his den, but she had refused, saying that she felt too tired. It had been one of the few occasions when they had made love late into the night. She felt swamped by emotion and decided to bring this visit to an end.

De Palma waited for her to go back into the hall before unbolting the shutters and the office window and blocking them with two wads of paper—in case he had to come back, without coming in through the front door …

“Did your husband have any enemies?”

“Of course. In his position, you always have enemies!”

He noticed a hammer on the desk, of the sort used by auctioneers, with a black handle and ivory head. It had a rare beauty and looked very old. He picked it up and made to hit out at something in mid-air.

“I mean people capable of taking his life … Had he received any threats? Was he worried the last time you saw him?”

“I'll think about those questions, M. de Palma.”

He knew from the tone of her voice that she was lying. But as yet he did not know to what extent or for what reason.

As they left, de Palma told her that it was standard procedure to carry out a neighbor inquiry. But it would not be done by him, and for two reasons: first because he wasn't allowed to, and second because he thought it wiser not to make things public. A neighborhood inquiry would happen, or it wouldn't. But he sensed that in the end it would serve no purpose.

On the R.N. 568, he drove straight toward the big refineries at Fos. Two clouds darker than night had risen in the distance, above the flares of the oil terminal.

Several questions beset him. Why had Madame Steinert gone out of her way to show him her family photographs and her husband's office? Why just those two things? Why not the rest of the farmhouse? And the family?

Why did she always talk about her husband in the past tense, as though she was sure he was dead? She could just as easily have said nothing to him at all. So what was going on? He would take care not to ask her these questions for some time.

Third point: he was almost certain that Steinert had a computer and that it had been removed from his office. Was this for no particular reason, or because someone wanted to get at his hard drive? Maybe Steinert had removed certain objects himself, because of some threat or fear?

When he got home, he phoned Moracchini.

“Good evening, my lovely. Where are you at with your holdup?”

“We've just got the D.N.A. results. They're negative. But Delpiano wants us to squeeze him anyway. I don't like that.”

“You'll always be a sentimental girl.”

“It's because of his kids that it gets to me. I don't give a damn about him …”

“So what about me, in all this?”

“What? You're not going jealous on me, are you?”

“I'm asking you to dinner this evening.”