The Beast of the Camargue (19 page)

“Oh well, it was probably just a coincidence, nothing more.”

Instead of heading toward Tarascon, he turned left on leaving La Capelière and tried to drive around to the other side of the reserve.

He found himself on the road to Le Sambuc and noticed that both sides of the marshes of La Capelière were only accessible by foot. And even then you would have to scale the barbed wire and avoid the marshes and perhaps quicksand too.

To find a way through that succession of stagnant waters, clumps of white poplars and brambles, ghost trees and impenetrable reed beds, you would have to know the place like the back of your hand.

To go and howl at the night in such a location meant making a real effort. And probably more than that. He was now sure that William Steinert had drowned in the marshes after being terrified out of his wits.

At the end of the morning, he parked his car between two plane trees, beside the old army recruitment center in Tarascon.

Five minutes later, he was in rue du Théâtre Municipal, just a few meters from Steinert's office. He let a municipal vehicle go by, then a driving-school car which seemed to be grazing on the sweltering paving stones as it crept along. He examined the scene around him closely, then leaped up the drainpipe which he had climbed two days before.

When he was back on the roof, the tiles burned his hands. He stood and walked on as far as the office's window-ledge.

He looked at the shutters: they had been carefully closed from inside. He bent down and looked down the street, trying to imagine the trajectory of the bullet that had hit him. It took him barely a minute to spot the tiny impact in the cement on the façade.

The bullet had ricocheted.

“Shit,” he said to himself. “Why couldn't it have got stuck in the fucking cement?”

He looked around the tiles, but found nothing.

He tried to imagine the bullet's trajectory after the ricochet, then he headed toward the far end of the roof. There it was, clearly visible between two tiles. De Palma picked it up and put it in a plastic bag.

“You've just made your first mistake, idiot,” he muttered between his teeth. “I wouldn't be in your shoes if this bullet tells me what it knows.”

On Tuesday morning in the ballistics department, de Palma gazed at the weapons on their pegs: quite a lot of .45s, CZs, a row of Herstals … He paused in front of a Walther P38, one of the favorite guns of the old-time gangsters, the ones who had fought in the war and stayed in business until the 1980s. He had even met a superstitious old boy from Le Panier who never went into a hold-up without his P38.

“It's a 9 mm. A good old number 9.”

“What about the weapon?” the Baron asked.

Pierre Diaz looked up over his rectangular glasses, which were perched on the tip of his turned-up nose, leaned on the test barrel and looked resigned.

“Instead of saying ‘Thanks Pierrot,' you do my head in with stupid questions. Come on now, Michel!”

The Baron raised both hands in a sign of apology.

“It was a SIG, my friend. A SIG 29. A precision weapon, often used by marksmen who take part in competitions. I've got quite a few colleagues who go to clubs who use one. A nice gun.”

“How do you know it's a SIG?”

“There are two very fine grooves, there, on the sides. All the SIG 29s do that. It's their signature!”

“Don't take me for an idiot, Pierrot. I know you're good, but don't push it too far. Without your machines, you're no better than me. A 9 mm is a 9 mm.”

“In your opinion, Baron, does your gun talk, yes or no?” De Palma felt a wave of heat climb up from the tops of his thighs to his stomach. Diaz looked at him, pleased with the effect.

“It talks like a jackass, as a matter of fact. The barrel says it all: two grooves, and no more. This SIG has been used once before, for a hold-up.” Diaz picked up the notebook that lay next to him. “I'm bored stiff at the moment … there's really fuck all to do,” he cursed, staring at his cross-ruled notepad. “So, I found out a few things on the side. And here we go: the Ben Mansour case. The hold-up of a lousy Arab grocer's on rue de Lyon. Jesus, using a SIG on a corner store! You've either got no religion or you're a fucking idiot, take my word for it!”

“You're certain of this?”

Diaz whipped off his glasses.

“I'm not even going to answer that …”

He beckoned to de Palma to come and look at the screen of the comparator: on the right was the image of the projectile that he had collected on the roof in Tarascon; on the left, the comparison. The grooves were a perfect match. Diaz tapped on the top of the left-hand screen, where the words “Incriminated Bullet” flashed up.

“The guy who used this gun is a real jerkoff.”

“Have you had the boys from criminal records round?”

“Yeah, but their computer is down, they've been waiting to have it changed since June, and now it's the end of July. So no records. No nothing, for that matter.”

“Shit.”

“So go back upstairs, you lazy sod …”

“Yeah.”

“The best thing you can do is go and see Le Gulvinec. He was the one who looked into the Ben Mansour heist. He was on a crusade to put the whole lot of them in the slammer, all those little buggers from the northern estates who were holding up late-night grocery stores.”

Diaz tapped the Baron's forearm.

“There's no more respect … they even shoot each other now.”

“What can you do? They're allowed to be as dumb as we are!”

Anne Moracchini had put both feet up on her desk and was staring into space while chewing the end of her ballpoint.

“Hello, my lovely.”

She stretched and offered the Baron her cheek.

“Well, what a surprise! The opera, a great night out, then zilch. Nice work, Michel!”

“I … I was up to my eyes in it. Plus, I did call you …”

She threw her pen onto the desk.

“Stop right there, Michel. People could get away with that before the invention of mobiles and electronic address books and all that. You're getting past it, my friend.”

“I came to ask a favor.”

“Fancy that!”

De Palma could hardly meet her eye. He felt like a shit. He had told her nothing, had not answered her calls and did not know how to talk to her.

“I'd like you to talk to Le Gulvinec.”

“Why go through me? You afraid of him?”

“It's not that. But officially, I can't.”

“Then try being unofficial.”

“Anne, this is important.”

“What's this all about, now? You turn up just like that, all of a jitter, like a schoolboy going to his first party, and then you ask me to do you a favor without even telling me why?”

De Palma pulled over a chair and sat down beside her.

“The other day, someone shot at me,” he blurted out.

She immediately pulled her feet off the table and leaned toward her colleague.

“WHAT?”

“You heard me.”

She ran a nervous hand through her hair and stood up.

“And now you tell me!”

At first, she looked at him tenderly, then her expression hardened. De Palma shook his head in surrender.

“I found the bullet and showed it to Diaz, he …”

“Just a second, Michel, just a second. You're telling me that you were shot, you found the bullet, you showed it to Diaz and …”

Moracchini was worried. She walked round the desk to sit down opposite the Baron.

“Michel, look at me. We've known each other for fifteen years. You're the only cop I admire in this fucking profession. You're the man who … Anyway, I think you've seriously lost the plot and you need a good head doctor plus a few months of R and R.”

She let a long moment of silence go by, then moved close enough to touch him.

“Show me.”

He uncovered his shoulder. A piece of lint with two strips of plaster made a white square on his brown skin. She placed a kiss delicately on the dressing.

“‘The little kiss that cures everything,' as my father used to say.”

He realized that he had not felt the least touch of affection for days.

“I spoke to Maistre yesterday. We talked about you a lot, but he didn't mention that. There's male solidarity for you. How touching.”

It was difficult for de Palma to hide his emotions. His temples had tightened and were pressing on his eyes. He wanted to hold Moracchini in his arms, even for a moment. But he stopped himself.

“Le Gulvinec isn't here at the moment,” she added in a somber voice. “He's on leave back in Brittany. Lucky him. It's baking here. A real scorcher.”

De Palma rubbed at his forehead.

“What did Diaz tell you?”

“He said that the bullet came from a SIG and that the gun had already been used in a hold-up. He also told me that Le Gulvinec had caught the case. Young thugs from the north suburbs robbing the local Arab grocers.”

“Why don't you call Maistre? It's his section, after all! If they're his local thugs, then he must know them. Also, he'd love you to call him. I bet he hasn't slept since you told him your story.”

Daniel Romero came into the office and came up to the Baron.

“M. de Palma, I have been so much wanting to meet you!”

“So you're the new recruit?” De Palma said, shaking Romero's hand. “How's old Casetti?”

“Fine. Listen, I'm really pleased to … I mean, to get to know you, Michel. I've heard so much about you.”

De Palma kept his eyes fixed on the floor. Romero caught Moracchini's eye.

“When I was in the B.A.C., Maistre was always telling us that there was only one good officer on the force … and it was you. The 36, the French Connection, the works.”

“That's nice for the rest of us!” Moracchini said.

De Palma stood up, holding the small of his back as though nursing lumbago.

“Tell me, Daniel, what if I said the name Ben Mansour?”

Romero sat down, propped his chin in his hand, and flicked his lips with his index finger.

“Ben Mansour … Shit, that does ring a bell … But in the B.A.C. you see so many of them! Ben Mansour …”

“A grocer, on rue de Lyon.”

“Ah right … a hold-up in a corner store. It was the gang from La Paternelle, with a few boys from Bassens. Arabs and gypsies who'd teamed up.”

Romero was waving his hand in the air.

“Seriously mean bastards, I can tell you. They'd put a bullet in you for the slightest reason. In Ben Mansour's place, they shot up the bottles of plonk. Poor old bastard.”

“Is he still alive?”

“No. He died shortly afterward, just like that. It was really sad.”

“And then?”

“Some bigshot in your office took over the case. We gave him everything we'd found out, but it didn't do any good.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, in the B.A.C. you know no one can spell their own names!”

“Leave it out, Daniel, don't start that crap.”

“The man in the
Criminelle
… I can't remember his name, something weird, with a Breton ring … anyway, he never got back to us.”

“Le Gulvinec. He's a good cop. When was all this?”

Romero looked up at the ceiling and wrung his hands, as though to rack his memory.

“1988. In the winter and spring. I'm sure about that. The year my daughter was born.”

De Palma studied Romero for a while. He was in very good shape. An athlete's physique and square features, which suggested a straight character, but with considerable abilities beneath his rather rugged look.

“We questioned one of those bastards once. It was some years later, in 1991 or thereabouts. A little routine I.D. check at the McDonalds drive-in on the roundabout, and who do we come across? Jérôme Lornec.”

“The gypsy?”

“Spot on. In an Audi A6 and everything. The bugger was straight. With his papers, and all. But he wasn't insured. And that was enough to drag him down to the station. The fucker was furious.”

Moracchini was tense, concentrating on what her new colleague was saying.

“The problem with people like Lornec is that they have an answer to everything.”

“What happened?”

“We knew he was involved, because we chased them once. They'd just done a grocery in the town center, the one next to the station, when you go down …”

“Rue de la Grande Armée,” said Moracchini.

“That's it. So we went down boulevard des Dames then the dual carriageway toward L'Estaque. We caught up with them near the petrol station. A real race! All of us were breaking two twenty, with them in front with their foot down, driving like crazy! And they could have kept going! But then they turned off toward Saint-Henri, and so we were sure to nab them.”

Romero was gesticulating wildly, his left hand imitating the getaway car, and his right the pursuers.

“First roundabout, by Saumaty, they go straight across. Second, they mount the pavement. For a couple of seconds, they stop … Jesus, I had the window open … I remember it as if it was yesterday, it was poor old Jacky who was behind the wheel … Believe it or not, I emptied my clip. Six .38s in the driver's door. Jesus fucking Christ!”

Romero stood up, gripped by a sudden excitement.

“My whole clip, it had never happened to me before.”

“I remember that business. Maistre told me about it. He misses you, you know.”

“Poor old Maistre, he had a lot of reporting to do about those six .38s. Me too, for that matter.”

“And what about Lornec?”

“Jesus, you don't let up! Lornec was the driver. I put one in his shoulder.”

Romero slapped his left side.

“We found out because we heard tell that they were looking for a nurse later that night. At the time, they weren't too careful with mobiles. But that's over now!”