The First Fingerprint

by Xavier-Marie Bonnot

  “That’s all. If I’m wrong we’ll have to go through everyone Autran, Luccioni, Féraud, Weill and Chevallier knew, which will do our heads in. We just don’t have enough staff, my lovely. My intuition might spare us all that work. So let’s be friends. Don’t try to screw me up, just trust me,” he said bluntly to put an end to his teammate’s awkward questions.

  At 2:00 that afternoon, de Palma rang Bérengère Luccioni’s doorbell.

  “Sorry to disturb you. Aren’t you working today?”

  Bérengère welcomed him with a sunny smile tinged with a wicked gleam. She took his hand gently. As her long, soft fingers touched his, he felt as if a wave of heat had lifted him off the floor. He walked into the salon, then turned toward her. She was barefoot, dressed in a simple dress of crimson shirting.

  “I know I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I think you’re extremely beautiful.”

  She blushed and tidied away an electricity bill which was lying on the table, to hide her embarrassment.

  “I wanted to see you because I need to ask a few questions.”

  “Are these the last ones?”

  “I hope so …”

  He went out on to the balcony. A storm had just blown by, leaving behind a shattered sky. Beyond the islands, blue patches pierced the gray, while a white light sank into the tin surface of the sea.

  “I wanted to talk to you about your brother’s private life … Apart from Christine, who did he hang around with?”

  “People I didn’t know. He had friends, but I couldn’t name any.”

  “What kind of people were they?”

  “What do you expect? Crooks, like him!”

  “And did you see Christine often?”

  “No, not often. She didn’t live in our neighborhood any more. But I think they still saw each other regularly.”

  “Even just before he died?”

  “Yes, I think so. If he’d fallen out with her, I think he would have told me. When it came to that, Franck and I told each other everything.”

  Franck’s violent death was still a gaping wound. Bérengère’s eyes were full of tears. She offered the Baron a drink, which he refused.

  “And do you know anything about the Autran family?”

  “Not much. Except that her mother was completely mad. And I mean completely.”

  “That’s what I heard. Apparently she abused her son.”

  “Not half! Anyway, they’re all dead now …”

  All of a sudden, de Palma had an odd feeling, deep down, an idea which was starting to shift around in the jungle of his brain.

  “Did you know her brother?”

  “A bit … But Franck knew him well. They were the same age, and they often used to play together. Christine’s brother—his name was Thomas—was totally crazy. I mean really, an utter loony. When I was little, he used to scare me. We didn’t see him very often. After their mother’s death, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital, the Edouard Toulouse … I remember because Franck went to see him several times.”

  “You wouldn’t have a photo of him, would you?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Never mind.”

  De Palma sensed that the pieces of a complex edifice were now coming together, one after the other, like in a child’s game. But he could not master the rules while the overall structure remained imperfect. Many scraps of truth were still missing.

  “Did her brother have blue eyes?”

  “Yes, really blue. Like his sister.”

  The man on the motorbike. Luccioni’s bakery. De Palma felt his guts tighten.

  “Do you remember the date of Thomas’ death?”

  “No, I don’t … My brother told me about it … It was so long ago.”

  “Was it before or after their mother died?”

  “After, I think … At the time, Franck was …”

  Bérengère could no longer hold back her tears.

  “… was in prison. So … it must have been after their mother’s death …”

  De Palma looked away to hide his emotion. Bérengère was right next to him. She put her hand on his shoulder. He quivered.

  “Why did you become a policeman?”

  Her question took him unawares. He would have liked to reply that, as a boy, he had wanted to be a great conductor, a lead violinist or a seafaring captain. He heard himself describing how he pictured the ideal man.

  “I thought it was the perfect job for a man. I wanted to be useful to society. I wanted to have a purpose.”

  “And do you still think that?”

  “I dunno.”

  “I think you do.”

  Her words were reassuring. Something in the way her lips trembled showed that she understood his inner truth. They spent the rest of the afternoon deep in conversation. She told him about her childhood, her hardships and occasional moments of joy, despite everything … She laid out her painful past, her dislocated life, heavy as a limp body.

  They went their separate ways at about 5:00 p.m.

  De Palma drove aimlessly for a while, plagued by contradictory thoughts. Then he picked up his mobile and called the office.

  “Anne, has Maxime got in touch with Hoskins? Good. Leave that aside for the moment and head straight to the Edouard Toulouse to see if they treated a certain Thomas Autran in the ’80s … Sometime after 1982. Do it quick, then call me.”

  Moracchini placed her tricolor card on the reception counter in the psychiatric department of the Edouard Toulouse hospital and clacked her signet ring on the Formica. It was one way of showing her claws, and it made the receptionist contact the head of the department. She was so unpleasant that Dr. Bentolila turned up within five minutes.

  “Good evening, Madame. How can I help you?”

  “Anne Moracchini, murder squad. I want to know if you treated a certain Thomas Autran in the early ’80s.”

  The psychiatrist rolled his eyes and whistled, then stared long and hard at his watch. It was nearly 6:30. He frowned behind his tiny spectacles.

  “I’d like to help you, but this would mean going through the registers. I didn’t work here at the time. Can I ask why you need to know?”

  “It’s part of a murder investigation … several murders in fact,” Anne stressed. “Your former patient might be able to give us some vital information.”

  Given Bentolila’s reluctance, Anne laid it on with a trowel. She spoke of investigating magistrates, legal procedures and even threatened to spend the night going through the archives herself.

  “O.K., O.K. … I’ll see what can be done. Come with me.”

  He led her down a corridor which ran alongside the drug addicts’ unit. It was cluttered with chrome-plated trolleys and three muscular nurses—one male, two female—were loading them with nocturnal medication; multi-colored horse pills to knock out head-cases.

  Dr. Bentolila shoved open a heavy door and they entered a room lined with files from floor to ceiling.

  “Here we are. It was 1980, was it?”

  “No, a bit later. Let’s start with 1982. A-U-T-R-A-N, Autran.”

  The doctor grabbed a ladder and clambered up to the middle of the left-hand wall.

  “You must be surprised that a departmental manager also works in records?”

  “Well, yes, a bit.”

  “We’re short of staff. It’s a pity, but that’s the way it is. Quite apart from our problems with care nurses … it’s an utter catastrophe.”

  A few moments later, Bentolila came down with a huge folder.

  “This is for 1982.”

  Moracchini reached for the file, but the doctor drew back.

  “Some of this information is confidential. I’ll have to check first.”

  He sat down at a white wooden table in the middle of the room and flicked through the folder, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. A few minutes later, he came across a plastic slip file and stopped.

  “I think I’ve found what you want. Thomas Autran, arrival September 21, 1982 �
� Departure January 6, 1985. Dr. Caillol’s department. He no longer works here.”

  Moracchini had been expecting anything and everything from the records at Edouard Toulouse hospital except that name. Caillol.

  “And was it Caillol himself who treated him?”

  “Yes. He signed his release form in 1985.”

  “Can you tell me why Thomas Autran was interned here?”

  Dr. Bentolila shook his head in disapproval. Moracchini realized that pressing the point would be a waste of time. This was something she could sort out later. She asked if the file mentioned an address for Thomas Autran after his release.

  “Let’s see. He went on to a Catholic institution here in Marseille for some kind of convalescence, the Saint-François institute in Château Gombert. It’s just round the corner.”

  The doctor explained how to go there. It was five minutes away. She thanked him before driving straight to the institute. On the way, she tried calling de Palma on his mobile, but all she got was his answerphone.

  *

  The Saint-François institute was hidden behind high stone walls. Only an absurdly small door and a gleaming brass plaque indicated that this was indeed the right place. Moracchini parked her car a few meters away from the entrance and rang the doorbell.

  A shrill female voice emerged from the intercom.

  “Anne Moracchini. I’m a police officer.”

  The door opened to reveal a gravel driveway which ran between lawns dotted with exotically scented trees, before finishing several hundred meters away at an austere nineteenth-century manor.

  Father Bouvier was waiting for her at the end of the avenue, between two ancient olive trees.

  “Good afternoon, Madame,” he said in a baritone voice with an unidentifiable, slightly harsh accent. “So you’re from the police?”

  “Yes, Father. My name is Anne Moracchini, from the murder squad.” She showed him her card.

  Father Bouvier was about sixty and completely bald, with little sparkling eyes behind national health glasses.

  “And how can I help you?”

  “We’re looking for a man who was here between 1985 and a date which is at present unknown to us. Does the name Thomas Autran mean anything to you?”

  “Thomas Autran? Yes indeed. He was here until 1988.”

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about him.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll be pleased to help. But I must ask you to remain discreet.”

  “Don’t worry, Father. I just want to know how he behaved when he was here.”

  With a wave of his hand, the friar invited her to stroll with him through the olive trees, yews and cypresses in the institute’s garden. Some way off, residents were playing football in the ochre light. Two men were leaning against the wall of the manor, staring into space and chain-smoking.

  “Thomas behaved extremely well. He was a tormented soul when he arrived.”

  “Did he tell you about his past?”

  “No, never. All I know is that there had been some sort of a family tragedy, but he never really spoke about it. He almost lost his sanity after his mother’s death, but that’s all I know. And he loved his father more than anything. They were very close.”

  “You never noticed anything abnormal in his behavior?”

  “‘Abnormal’ is a fairly meaningless term here. We take in people who are convalescing after hospital treatment, and often it’s extremely severe. Thomas was a case in point. He came to us from the Edouard Toulouse, if I remember correctly, where he’d spent three years on particularly strong medication. In the beginning he was very edgy, sometimes even violent. Then, with time, he recovered his sanity. At first he refused to communicate, rather like someone with autism. But gradually he recovered his speech.”

  “So you think he was cured when he left here?”

  “Yes, I think so. But with that kind of illness, you can never be sure.”

  “What was he suffering from?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “He was schizophrenic, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  Father Bouvier stopped next to a bed of rose bushes in bud. He put out a hand and gently stroked the tips.

  “Why are you asking about Thomas?”

  “His sister has been murdered.”

  “Oh, so that’s why!” he said, glancing at her furtively. “I read about it in the papers. Poor Christine, I prayed for her several times.”

  “Did you know his sister?”

  “Christine? Of course I did. She used to visit him two or three times a week. She was his twin. They seemed inseparable.”

  Father Bouvier set off again.

  “They used to spend hours in the gardens here. In the beginning, Thomas got into a terrible mood every time she went home. It was as though he had shut himself in. But this got better over time. He even managed to accept the separation. I should also tell you that, little by little, he came to know Jesus. He found his vocation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, after he left, he came back to tell me that he wanted to leave France to help those people who were suffering the most.”

  “You mean, in poor countries?”

  “That’s right … though not only in poor countries, rather in places where people suffer the most. He’d contacted various Catholic institutions like ours, and I think the Church accepted his request, because a year later I got a postcard from Australia. It said that he was in a program to help Aborigines.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, nothing. I must admit that’s a little surprising, when I think about it. It is rather odd that he hasn’t been in touch again after all this time. Especially now that his sister is dead. He should have come to see me.”

  “Yes, that is odd. Do you remember where he went exactly?”

  “No, not exactly. I’ll have to look for the postcard.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Father. Just try to remember. Any inkling?”

  “No, really, I have no idea. But I’ll call you if I remember anything, or if I find the postcard.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  The sun had just disappeared behind a hedge of cypresses, and a cold shadow fell across the Saint-François institute. The football match had finished.

  “You seem to remember Thomas extremely well. Is it the same for all your residents?”

  “No, I’m afraid not! If only it were so. But I’m like everyone else. I only remember people who are out of the ordinary.”

  “And Thomas was out of the ordinary?”

  “He was an extraordinary person. With exceptional intelligence. I singled him out at once when he arrived here.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s hard to explain … For example, he devoured every book in our library. Whenever I ran into him, he’d ask me questions about all sorts of subjects, such as the scriptures, or history. I didn’t always have the answer, in fact, because his questions were so precise.”

  “Did he talk to you about prehistory?”

  “A great deal. It must be in the family. He asked me about Teilhard de Chardin, Leroi-Gourhan … and also a lot about Lévy-Strauss. His sister brought him lots of books.”

  “When you read about his sister’s death in the press, did you try to contact him?”

  “Yes, I did. I contacted the institute he’d been with, and they told me they would do what they could. But I haven’t heard from them since.”

  “Try to find out everything you can, Father, and call me as soon as possible.”

  Moracchini gave him her card and left.

  It was nearly 7:00 p.m. For the past two days, Sylvie Maurel had been phoning the Baron, asking to meet up. He had not responded because he did not want to give her any false hopes. But the previous evening, he had agreed to see her. His mobile rang just as he was parking on rue Caisserie, about a hundred meters from the marine archaeology laboratory.

  “Michel? It’s Anne. I’ve just been to the Edouard Toulou
se.”

  “And?”

  “They definitely treated a Thomas Autran between 1982 and—hold on to your hat—1985!”

  “So?”

  “1985! Wake up Michel, 1985!”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “They wouldn’t tell me exactly what was wrong with him. But they reckoned he’d been cured, because they let him go. Then there’s a second piece of news.”

  “I’m all ears!”

  “It was Dr. Caillol who treated him.”

  “WHAT?”

  “You heard me: Caillol.”

  “Have you got anything else?”

  “Yes. I went to a Catholic institute for convalescents. He stayed there after leaving the Edouard Toulouse. Until 1988.”

  “1988!”

  “That’s right … Anyway, I’ll explain it all tomorrow. But tell me, was it the Luccioni girl who gave you this lead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I must admit, you’ve got incredible intuition.”

  “It was just luck, Anne.”

  “It’s odd we didn’t think of it earlier!”

  “That’s probably my fault … What can I say? There are only three of us on the case … Anyway, it would have come out sooner or later. Now we have to find him. They didn’t tell you anything else at the Edouard Toulouse or at the institute?”

  “Yes, they did. But the rest is less important. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “Nice work, Anne. I’m lucky to have you with me.”

  “Keep your compliments to yourself, Michel.”

  He hung up.

  When he got to the tower at Fort Saint-Jean, he could hear Sylvie calling to him from the quayside. He turned and saw her on the deck of the L’Archéonaute, a thirty-footer used for marine exploration.

  “Do you want a guided tour?”

  She smiled at him broadly and he stammered something incomprehensible.

  “Come on board.”

  When he was on deck, Sylvie held out her hand and looked at him shyly. A man came out of the boat’s bridge.

  “May I introduce Lieutenant Laffitte?”

  The man looked at him and gave a nod before disappearing back into the bridge.

  “This is the boat we used when we investigated Le Guen’s Cave in 1992. I remember how choppy the sea was; it was awful staying on board all day. We’d set up a video link which meant we could follow the work in the cave as it happened.”