The Beast of the Camargue (2 page)

He walked straight on, like a bush hunter, across the huge flat expanse covered with scrawny grass and partitioned in squares by barbed wire: an hour's walk, perhaps more. Behind him, in the distance, rose the dark crests of the Alpilles hills and the peak of Les Opiès, bleached by the sun's last gleams.

Far off, in the direction of the rank of cypresses, the sheep of Méril farm were just visible. Not pausing for a moment, he leaped over a fence and found himself in the middle of some heifers, presumably belonging to the Castaldi herd. He walked straight on, keeping
close enough to the pitch-black calves so as not to be spotted by chance passers-by, but far enough away so as not to spook them. A couple of times, his gaze met their empty eyes.

But he knew them too well to be afraid.

The day was fading by the time he reached Départementale 35, which marked the eastern border of Vigueirat national park, just a few kilometers away from Thibert's farm. He decided to spend the night on that strip of the Camargue. The end of the day was luminous, as thousands of stars came out over Provence. Before nightfall, he was back at the beach and had crept through the ruddy clumps of samphire, without being noticed. Then he waited, as he usually did, flat on his stomach among the pink sea daffodils, white sand camomile and yellow sandy everlastings.

Then he sang, and the beast came. He told it of the Festival marvels and then took his leave.

When darkness fell on sea and land, he unrolled his sleeping bag in a warm hollow of a dune, sheltered from the wind. He slept for a few hours. In the depth of his sleep, he toyed with his craziest dream: to liberate the beast on the Festival of Saint Martha.

On the night of July 29.

He would talk about it with the master. But, in any case, he didn't give a damn for his advice. The monster listened only to him.

The Rhône flowed on, heavy with late spring rain. Beneath the walls of King René's Castle, some children had climbed onto a little promontory over the green waters of the river by clinging to the ivy that snaked its way along the rocks.

The man had completely recovered his spirits. He stood up, slung his jacket over his shoulder and walked toward the cries of the crowd.

It was Monday, June 30. The third day.

The last bull race had just finished, and with it, the grand festival of la Tarasque.

The bell of the Opéra Municipal of Marseille echoed brightly from the gallery stairway to the marble of the main function room. It stopped abruptly when Michel de Palma burst into the Reyer Hall. Félix Merlino, the ancient cloakroom attendant, patted down the few locks of curly hair which still fringed his gleaming scalp.

“Ah, Michel! You're the last!”

Merlino grimaced, making his massive chin rise and his pale lips droop.

“Hello, Féli, has it started?”

“Oh yes, it's started! For the last time this year. Come on, Baron, get a move on …”

The Baron. Commandant Michel de Palma's nickname. The idea had come from Jean-Louis Maistre, his blood-brother on the
Brigade Criminelle
, who had started calling him that one evening, as a joke after a few too many drinks. He thought it suited the “de” of his surname, his slender build and melancholy aristocratic manner.

The Baron pushed open the padded doors that led to the first balcony, paused for a moment, then glanced around at the audience, as he had always done ever since his father had initiated him into serious theater when he was still a little boy.

The auditorium was bathed in velvet, and crammed from the first row of stalls up to the gods. The air was laden with sour breath, musky perfumes and the dust of face powder. From the orchestra rose a riot of trills, scales and snatches of melody twisting around each other like superheated atoms. De Palma spotted Capitaine Anne Moracchini of the
Criminelle
and nodded to her discreetly. He was at least an hour late. In the ten years that they had been working
together in the
Police Judiciaire
, this was the first time that he had invited her to the opera; at the very last moment, too, because this was the final performance of
La Bohème
that season.

Darkness had fallen when he sat down beside her.

The first few minutes passed by. Moracchini seemed totally wrapped up in the music, which trembled in the air around them. Then the old man in the gods who for years had been coughing at the start of each performance suddenly stopped. An electric sigh ran through the opera house and silence descended.

Rodolfo walked toward the front of the stage:

“Che gelida manina
Se la lasci riscaldar
Cercar che giova? Al buio non si trova.”

Instead of looking at Mimi, Rodolfo never took his eyes off the conductor and stood on tiptoe each time he hit the middle register and compressed his diaphragm.

“Chi son? Sono un poeta.
Che fascio, scrivo …”

In the end, Rodolfo didn't do too badly for an end-of-season show, but de Palma felt disappointed. Under the cover of the applause, he crept out of the auditorium. In the Reyer Hall, Félix Merlino was pacing up and down, lowering his heels in slow motion so as not to make the parquet creak.

De Palma turned on his mobile. Two messages had been left that day, Saturday, July 5. The first had arrived at 7:58 p.m., just before he had entered the opera house, and the second at 8:37 p.m., presumably while Rodolfo had been sounding off in his garret in Montmartre.

“Good evening, Commandant de Palma. Maître Chandeler speaking. I'm a lawyer. The person who gave me your number would prefer to remain anonymous, but I'm taking the liberty of calling you. We don't know each other, but I should very much like to meet you so as to discuss a case … as soon as possible would be best, if
that's alright with you. Say Monday the 7th? See you very soon, I hope.”

It was a male voice that made its nasal consonants sing slightly, both deep and smooth at the same time. The second message was also from Chandeler, leaving a different mobile number and begging him not to give it to anyone else.

Félix Merlino came up to the Baron and pointed at the phone.

“Turn that thing off at once. If ever I hear the damn thing ring, I'll …”

“Don't fret, Féli. In any case, there's no need to worry considering the warblers on stage this evening.”

“You should have heard the first cast. Then you'd have really heard something …”

“Oh really? Because this lot sound like the mistral rattling the shutters in my ex-mother-in-law's house.”

“That's right! It's a disaster tonight.”

“But they're still applauding …”

“People clap anything these days. Not like before … You remember?”

De Palma raised his eyes to the ceiling and waved his right hand over his shoulder in a sign of shared nostalgia with Merlino.

“When things were as bad as tonight, they even had to call in the police sometimes to calm the audience down!”

Félix Merlino shook his head and, with his foot, swept away a scrap of lace which must have been torn off a gown.

“We haven't seen you for ages, Michel. The other day I was talking to the pianist Jean-Yves, you know, the singing coach, and he asked after you …”

“You know I had a bad accident?”

“I read about it in the paper. But you look better now.”

De Palma did not reply, but looked at the square tiles of the parquet. Applause could be heard coming from the auditorium, muffled by the padded doors. Merlino walked reverently over to the varnished doors of the dress circle and opened them in the manner of a sacristan with a cathedral doorway.

Anne Moracchini tapped de Palma on the shoulder.

“Well, for a night at the opera it was quite a success!”

“I'm sorry, Anne. I did try to get seats for …”

She looked at his mobile and pulled a wry face.

The police capitaine was wearing a black pencil skirt that revealed her knees, and a silk purple top onto which her dark hair tumbled down. Her legs were clad in sheer stockings that clung to the curve that rose from her fine ankles to her knees. When his cheek brushed against hers, he recognized the peppery notes of Gicky, and felt a thrill.

“You left before the end! Didn't you like it? I thought it was really good,” she said, laying a hand on his forearm.

He did not want to disappoint her on their first night at the opera together by telling her what he thought of the cast.

“Yes, yes, it was fine,” he replied, with a wink at Merlino.

He had never seen her look so beautiful, so elegant. Usually she wore trainers or flat shoes, jeans, and a bomber jacket over a T-shirt or pullover, depending on the season. And of course the Manurhin revolver that she wore in the small of her back, to keep it inconspicuous.

“Come on, let's have a drink,” said de Palma at last, rousing himself from this trance of admiration. He ordered two glasses of champagne and they went back to the main hall.

“It's marvelous here! All this art deco stuff. What's that on the ceiling?”

“A painting by Augustin Carrera,
Orpheus Charming the World …
”

“I sometimes wonder what the hell you're doing in the force,” she said, with a sideways glance.

“So do I. But I have my reasons.”

“I hope you do.”

Moracchini gazed at the huge Carrera fresco, before examining the details of the metalwork and gilt masks along the cast-iron balconies. The Baron's mobile rang.

“Change that ring tone, Michel. It grates!”

“M. de Palma?”

He knew the voice at once.

“Speaking. One moment please.”

The Baron sat down on a purple divan, set a little apart from the crowd.

“This is Yves Chandeler. I'm a lawyer.”

De Palma paused for a moment, taking control.

“Yes?”

“Um … did you get my message?”

“I did.”

“I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

He did not like the way this plummy voice prolonged each open vowel it came across. It suggested a childhood spent in Marseille's best private schools, in a society that de Palma knew nothing about, but tended to despise.

Again, he imposed a moment's silence.

“Not at all.”

“I'll get straight to the point. When can I see you?”

He felt like saying that people seldom asked him questions that were more like barely concealed orders, that he had no idea why this man was calling him and that he did not want to see anyone except Anne Moracchini. Instead he replied perfunctorily:

“Monday, 4 p.m. in your office? Does that suit you?”

“Today's Saturday so … yes, that will be perfect. I'm at 58 cours Pierre-Puget. I suppose you know where that is.”

“Indeed, not a very original address for a lawyer.”

“No, you're right. Next door to the high court!”

“See you on Monday, then.”

He hung up without a goodbye. Moracchini walked over to him, holding her glass of champagne.

“I suppose that horrible ringing means that the interval's over? And are you planning to let me go back to seat number 35 all on my own?”

“No, Anne, certainly not!”

He slid a hand around her waist.

It was 2 a.m. when de Palma drew up in front of the little house Moracchini owned in Château-Gombert, at 28 chemin de la Fare, the last remainder of her marriage.

“How about a nightcap?”

The air was alive inside the car. She looked at him hard. He lowered the window for a breath of air.

“No, I'm going home … I need to sleep. I don't feel so good. In fact, I've …”

“You've got another of your migraines. Come here and I'll give you a massage.”

She laid her long fingers on his temples and rubbed gently.

“What does your doctor say?”

“He says he doesn't know, like all the doctors!”

Moracchini continued her massage, tracing small circles above his eyebrows, then she withdrew her hands like a caress, took hold of his temples and squeezed them gently.

“Do you remember, Anne?”

“Yes, I do, but I don't want to talk about it …”

“Nowadays, I think about it less, but a month ago I kept on playing the film in my head like a loop from hell. Non-stop.”

She pressed the top of his skull softly and raked through his hair with her nails.

“I can still see myself going into the Le Guen cave and reaching the bottom. I've never told anyone, but if you only knew how frightened I was. Guts in a knot, balls on the ground.”
*

“That's pretty …”

“So to speak.”

He breathed deeply and shut his eyes.

“I can still see those marvelous paintings, how impressive they were. I can't describe how I felt, seeing the hands of prehistoric men. And then I saw her. And he was behind me. I turned …” De Palma's breathing speeded up. He closed his eyes and turned his head in a circle. “I can see myself spinning round on my left leg, and firing at him … Then he hit me smack on the forehead. It was like being struck by lightning.”

“It's made you into a top cop, with a medal and accolades and
all. Plus a good deal of jealousy. Well done. And I might add it's not done away with your charm.”

“His strength was superhuman. I often think about that. My aim was straight, I can see myself lining it up … I'll never get it out of my mind that he managed to dodge a bullet. He had the reflexes of a great prehistoric hunter, I'm sure of it. He was stronger and quicker than a normal man. Compared with him, we're all degenerates.”

“You're talking as if you admired him!”

“He dodged a .38 bullet! Lightning versus lightning. At incredible speeds. You can't help respecting something like that. Do you see?”

“What I see is that he's going to go down for life, and that it's thanks to you.”

“You could also say that I missed him!”