The Beast of the Camargue (40 page)

The Baron was tense. He ran his fingers through his hair several times, blinking nervously as he did so.

“It's because I'm completely self-centered and reckon I should solve everything in record time! De Palma the protector of his fellow human beings … So when I fail, I blame myself and feel I should take on the universe. I've been thinking things through, Anne—life in general and myself in particular. And I realize that I'm arrogant and selfish. On this case, you've done as much as I have, you keep me up to date with what you do. I tell you hardly anything. I'm really sorry.”

“Sorry isn't bad!”

He sipped at his screwdriver, running the sweet, cool liquid down his throat.

“Texeira also made a recording of the voice. I forget to tell you about that and I didn't even send it to the lab. Sometimes I think I'm the king of jerks. Wrapped up in myself.”

She sat down next to him and massaged his neck.

“And I haven't told you about the Liberation either, and Steinert's connections with La Balme.”

“You'll have time enough tomorrow, in the car.”

“More and more often, I wonder what I'll do after leaving the force. Have you ever thought about that?”

“Don't take this badly, but I've got a good few years on you.”

She caressed his cheek and drew him toward her, sliding a hand beneath his shirt. She kissed his chest, and drew his leg between her own. He felt her firm body, tense with desire, her breasts crushed against his torso. She undid his belt and laid him back.

Much later, in the middle of the night, he woke up. Moracchini was asleep. The red light from the street was coming through the cracks in the shutters. His mind was empty.

It was the first time in a long while.

Leila Hamdi was waiting for the two of them beside the coffee machine. She had tried to conceal the signs of a sleepless night under a thick layer of make-up, and had varnished her nails a bright red that stood out against the white plastic of the cup in her hand.

During the night, she had consulted two colleagues in the U.S.A. and one in Germany about the strange bird calls. The Americans had come up with answers that sounded implausible: the species they credited with the sound was a type of moorhen found only in the swamps of the Mississippi delta. The German had owned up his ignorance at once, but suggested an obvious lead: websites run by birdwatchers.

For hours, she had surfed the net looking for sites with sound recordings, and at around two in the morning, with eyes red from staring, she hit the jackpot: ornithopedia.com had one of the most extensive archives of bird-call recordings imaginable. All she had to
do was to find the right one. It took her another couple of hours to download all the grunts that sounded more or less like the one on the tapped telephone call. In the early hours, she went to bed with a single name clear in her mind: the white spoonbill.

On arriving at the lab, she immediately compared the two profiles: they were identical. So when she saw Moracchini and de Palma arrive on the second floor, she threw herself at them.

“I've got good news for you,” she said as she kissed them both. “It's a white spoonbill. And apparently, they're extremely rare.”

De Palma said nothing until the lab door closed behind them.

“A white spoonbill, you say?”

“Stone-cold certain.”

He telephoned Texeira at once.

“Have you got white spoonbills in your sector?”

“Of course, but they're rare. They're a sort of mythical bird for lovers of the Camargue.”

“Mythical?”

“What I mean is that they're quite hard to observe. They're extremely picky migrators.”

“Are there any here at the moment?”

“Theoretically speaking, yes. But I haven't seen any since the end of spring.”

“Any chance you can clue yourself up?”

“Perhaps, but I don't see how.”

“Neither do I, but you have to try, Christophe. And as fast as you can … right now, I mean! I can't explain why, but you have to.”

“O.K., I'll get on it. I'll call up all my birdwatching friends.”

Moracchini and de Palma left Ecully at about 10 a.m. Moracchini took the wheel. For a long while, until they had left the traffic jams around Lyon, the Baron kept his eyes pinned on the rear of the cars in front of them. It looked as if he was sailing in murky waters.

She did not even try to lift him out of this strange torpor. On the other side of the Lyon tollbooth, it was her mobile that broke the silence.

“… the phone used to call Chandeler was reported stolen at the
commissariat of Tarascon on July 19th at 10:15. That's all I can tell you.”

“Thanks, Daniel …”

Chandeler gathered his strength. It had now been over a day since he had drunk or eaten anything. It felt as though his lips were coming off in shreds, and his tongue and throat were growing as rough as sandpaper.

He groped around in the darkness until his hands climbed a groove in the wall. At the top he found a right angle, a horizontal line, and another right angle. This must be a door. He was sure of it. He gauged its size and changed his mind. It was more like a trapdoor.

It was the only way out of the place where he now was.

Trying not to make a sound and holding his breath, he stuck his ear against the panel of the trapdoor and made out a noise on the other side of someone rummaging in what might be a drawer or a piece of furniture. Whatever it was, the movements sounded agitated and were accompanied by a deep voice that kept repeating, in a loop, as if chanting a mantra:

Lagadigadeu la tarasco, lagadigadeu dou casteu …
Lagadigadeu la tarasco, lagadigadeu dou casteu …

Suddenly, the voice moved away and he heard a door slam shut. His jailer had left. Feverishly, he felt around the panel and discovered, on the right-hand side, a hole. There was a lock but no handle. He put an eye to the hole. It was blocked, but a tiny ray of light came through it. This beam, as fine as a needle, brought him a joy such as he hadn't felt for ages. Small as it was, this hint of day gave him hope.

He sat down on the floor of his prison without taking his eyes off the source of light. After a moment the point was as large as the sun.

Ingrid Steinert was standing in the shade of the mauve wisteria that spilled down over the patio, between the rambling roses which were back in bloom. She was wearing a tight cotton dress, stretched by her thighs and breasts and fastened with a knot behind her back.

When de Palma came over to her, she took a final drag of her cigarette before flicking it into the garden. She held a limp hand out.

She had cut her hair quite short, like a schoolgirl's from the 1940s. That gave her a curl over each ear and a straight fringe, which made her look extraordinarily young. De Palma remembered that Isabelle had exactly the same haircut in the last known photograph of her.

“How are you, Michel?”

“I must admit that I'm happy to see you again … and a little embarrassed too.”

She gazed at him as if to examine his conscience. In the distance, a tractor could be heard coming and going across the fields. On the road from Eygalières, he had noticed a group of grape-pickers in a vineyard that must belong to La Balme. Because of the heat wave, the harvest was early that year.

He raised his eyes and peered at the hills of the Alpilles, looking for Bérard's sheep.

“What an awful way to go, don't you think so Michel?”

Weighed down by memories, he did not reply. He simply nodded and waved a hand in the air.

“So the grape-picking has started?”

“Not today. It rained last night, a heavy thunderstorm. The farmers have gone to inspect the vines to see if there hasn't been too much damage. We'll start in a few days' time when it's all dried out.”

The noise of the tractor stopped. Everything turned calm again. A cool breeze, still charged with the vicious mood of the storm, caused the heavy leaves of the plane trees to flutter.

“I'll have to go back to my autumn collections,” she said. “My life's in a terrible mess. I'll also have to deal with the olive trees. Nothing has been done for months.”

Laura, the housekeeper, came out of the living room.

“I'll have to do some shopping in Arles, Madame. Do you mind being left on your own?”

“No, not at all.”

The sky above the Alpilles was turning red, with blue flames piercing the clouds like blasts from a blowtorch.

“Are your husband's papers here?” De Palma asked.

She hesitated. Her eyes scanned his face.

“Quite a few of them. As a matter of fact, I was wondering when you'd ask if you could look at them.”

“I think the time has come.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“Everything.”

“I've been through them and tried to sort them out. I've set all his letters aside, and what you call his papers in a big box. It's upstairs. If you want, we can go and take a look.”

There were documents dating back over many years. De Palma tried to organize them chronologically. The oldest came from the Sixties and read like everyday thoughts in a diary kept by a foreign tourist in Provence. There were also some poems and a lot of notes about birds. De Palma read through them in detail. He had in mind the white spoonbill that the wiretap had revealed.

“Do you remember William ever talking about a bird called the white spoonbill?”

“Particular memories, no. He said it was very rare, and getting rarer. He was always very glad when he managed to photograph them. You know, he adored the birds of the Camargue.”

De Palma dipped back into the ornithological notes. They included precise accounts of nesting locations and maps to show observation points, but none concerned the places he had already located. Steinert
had inserted photographs with descriptions written on the back: velvet scoter, red-breasted merganser, great skua, yellowhammer … William Steinert had been a gifted photographer.

She came over to him, he could almost hear her breathing. A second bundle included a notebook on recycled paper. On the first double spread, Steinert had jotted down a date, 1990, which was no doubt the start of its use. Overleaf, there was a picture of a water rail lurking in the quiet of the marshland, its red beak brilliant against the green and gold of the rushes. On the facing page, Steinert had written:

Water rail. Rallus aquaticus
.

One nest with 5 eggs on March 23, 1990. Samphire field north of Le Vigueirat, thirty meters from observation point 18
.

One nest and two chicks on March 14, 1997. Samphire field of La Sigoulette, 43°30/4°28
.

The chicks will not be flying in August
.

On the fourth page, there were the same kind of notes about a common crane, taken the following year. De Palma flicked through the book rapidly, then stopped about halfway through.

White spoonbill. Platalea leucorodia
.

Two specimens. August 17, 1995. 07:30. Marshes of St. Seren
.

One specimen in flight on June 28, 1999. 18:20. Redon salt marsh
.

In Delachaux: observed quite frequently. Around 51 sightings between 1957 and 1979. Quite common in July and August. Very few in winter
.

There was something unreal about the photograph. It showed a white spoonbill gliding in the summer heat, borne up on the thermals, its snow-white wings spread wide in the sunlight.

“He also used to mention the black stork. He said that with the white spoonbill it was the most beautiful bird in the region. It's also very rare. Look at the next page.”

There was a stylish shot of the big bird, strangely majestic in the
middle of a meadow in the Camargue, where it seemed to have strayed. De Palma had never seen one before and found it magnificent.

Steinert had noted:

1 specimen. May 19, 1998
.

If Texeira is to be believed, this is the first photo taken since 1987! Anyway the only one known
.

He leafed through the rest of the book but found nothing else of interest. The only thing that stuck in his mind was Texeira's name. He telephoned the biologist.

“Any news of white spoonbills?”

“No. Nobody's seen any for months. At the start of the summer, there was someone who sent me some shots he had taken. I must admit I was rather jealous.”

“Do you know this person?”

“No, I'm afraid not. Why?”

De Palma let a moment's silence pass by, while he changed gear.

“Have you ever met this visitor?”

“Yes, in fact I have. We'd spoken together, a few days before I got the photos.”

“Do you remember him?”

“Quite clearly. I'm observant.”

“Go on.”

“He's tall, about 1 m 85. Hair chestnut or black. Aged around fifty. With the look of an old globetrotter, if you see what I mean—scruffy trousers, and a combat jacket … A bit of a hippy, or a dreamer. There are quite a few people like that in the world of birdwatchers. They're often highly intelligent with it.”

“Describe his clothes …”

He motioned to Ingrid to hand him a piece of paper and a pen.

“Jeans rather grubby, army jacket khaki, and sandals like the leftist militants used to wear in the Seventies.”

“Viet Cong sandals?”

“That's right.”

De Palma made a note.

“On the other hand his kit was terrific. You could say it was the classic photographer's kit, but at prices that only the keenest amateurs or professionals will pay. Also he had periscopic binoculars.”

“What are they?”

“They're like a periscope … you know, as in a submarine: see without being seen. Not many people have those!”

He jotted down this detail in block capitals and underlined it twice.

“And have you seen him since?”