The First Fingerprint

by Xavier-Marie Bonnot

  “Hang on, Michel,” said Moracchini. “Try to be coherent.”

  “I’m being perfectly coherent. She wanted to find the entrance so she could contact the spirit world. She thought she was a shaman too.”

  “What about her brother?”

  “He’s taken her place. Maybe he’s even found the entrance.”

  “That’s quite possible, isn’t it?” Vidal said, with a hint of irony. “But to commune with the spirits, she could have gone to Lascaux, or any old cave.”

  “The Slain Man …” the Baron murmured.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a picture which occurs in only three caves … I can’t remember the other two, but the only one the specialists are certain shows the victim of a ritual killing is in Le Guen’s Cave.”

  Vidal and Moracchini stared doubtfully at the Baron and said nothing.

  “I can’t see any connection to the Church.” Moracchini asked. “Let’s go back over it. Maxime, what about the first murder?”

  “Hélène Weill. She lived alone. He followed her and managed to frame Caillol. I can’t see any connection to the Church.”

  “What about in his modus operandi?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “O.K.! On to the second murder.”

  “Julia Chevallier. Let’s skip her age and so on. The modus operandi doesn’t teach us anything new. And here, too, he framed Caillol.”

  “Hang on,” said de Palma. “He got into her house, just like that. He knew her. He killed her and then left. We followed his tracks and they ended up in the cemetery.”

  “That’s something which has always puzzled me,” Moracchini suddenly said. “I can’t imagine how he knew there was a door at the bottom of the garden.”

  “That’s my point,” said de Palma. “He got into her house via the garden, then left the same way.”

  “Before Barbieri took us off the case, I checked out everything,” said Vidal. “No-one I questioned in Saint-Julien knew about that pathway. No-one. Not even the old guys. You’d have to live next to the canal to know about it. So I think he must live, or have lived, in Saint-Julien”

  “Yes, that’s always bugged me,” said Moracchini.

  “And the path ends up in the cemetery,” said Vidal.

  “And at the far end of the cemetery, there’s the church. And Father Paul was the last person to see her alive. But we can’t accuse the poor man, not at his age.”

  De Palma leaned his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes. He was beginning to have doubts about himself. The worst of it was he was beginning to question his intuition. When he opened his eyes, Vidal was staring at him with a strange expression.

  “If only we had the model of her car,” said de Palma, “we could put out a call to every unit in this fucking city.”

  “Let’s try anyway,” said Moracchini. “I’ll deal with it.”

  She was on her way out of the office when Maxime started hammering madly on the edge of the desk. Then all at once he spat out the tension which he had been building up over the past few months:

  “LUC CHAUVY!” he yelled.

  “What’s the matter, Maxime?”

  Vidal frantically searched for his notepad in his jacket pockets.

  “Luc Chauvy, for fuck’s sake. He was the man there with Father Paul when I went to the presbytery. Shit.”

  There was a long silence as Vidal flicked through the pages of his notepad.

  “Now that I think about it, he fitted the description pretty well: tall, blond … but he wasn’t wearing glasses.”

  He slapped his notepad with the back of his hand.

  “Luc Chauvy … IT’S HIM!”

  The Baron stared straight at Vidal. For a few seconds, they confronted each other.

  “I couldn’t have known, Michel, I …”

  “It’s nothing, kid. It happens to the best of us.”

  If the man he had seen at Saint-Julien was their killer, then they would have to go together. Arresting him was not going to be easy, and the young officer might have to use his weapon. A baptism of fire. However ambitious he was, he still needed the old guard.

  “Let’s go, Maxime. Anne, stake out the cemetery. If he tries to jump you …”

  “Don’t worry, teammate. I was the best shot in the academy.”

  When the two officers parked their unmarked Megane in front of the church, the only people on the square were two old timers talking in whispers, like sextons.

  Moracchini arrived two minutes later in a Golf and parked twenty meters away from the cemetery entrance. She felt nervous; if things went wrong, the killer might well come her way. Then she would shoot, as she had already done once. She opened her jacket, placed her hand on her revolver and tried to calm down.

  She went into the cemetery, without taking her eyes off the church, and spotted a door in the presbytery which led directly out to the graves. She proceeded slowly and took up position beside a burial vault at the end of the graveyard, where a low wall ran alongside the canal. She pretended to be in silent prayer.

  De Palma walked toward the church and leaned on the heavy, cast-iron door handle. It was locked. He went round the right-hand side of the building, followed by the censorious eyes of the two old boys, and rang the presbytery bell with his other hand on his Bodyguard. As he waited for an answer, he read the cellophane-wrapped sign which had been pinned up beneath the bell:

  THE PARISH PRIEST IS AVAILABLE ON

  THURSDAYS AND FRIDAYS FROM 10:00 TO 16:00.

  IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY, PLEASE CALL 04 91 93 00 56.

  Lower down were the times of masses written in a neat, regular hand.

  “Locked?” Vidal asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “What do you think? We’re going inside.”

  “Just like that!”

  “Too right!”

  “Hang on, Michel. That’s not legal …”

  “Get out of my face. This isn’t the moment.”

  Vidal drew back as the Baron took a piece of twisted thick metal wire from his pocket. He shoved his improvised tool into the lock, which gave way after a few clumsy twists.

  The officers entered the vast, gravel courtyard with its two large pine trees.

  “Michel, I’m going to head for that half-open window over there, the second one along … can you see it? Cover me.”

  “No, Maxime, I’ll go. He hasn’t been armed before now. So you cover me.”

  Vidal quietly drew his gun and held it against his thigh. De Palma headed straight toward the window, and managed to clamber inside without having to break it.

  The room smelled of stale cooking. He looked for the switch, which was to the left of the sink, half hanging off the door frame. Vidal joined him.

  They were in fact in the presbytery’s dining room. In its center stood a table covered with an oilcloth which was so worn that its bright-red cherry pattern could only be seen on the edges that hung over the sides. On the wall were several yellowed photos showing catechism classes. De Palma glanced at the faces and captions: J4 Skiing Group, Orcières Merlette, 1988; Confirmation class, Cotignac 1990 … In each of the photos stood the parish priest, a slight man with a piercing stare, despite his ruddy, peasant-like features. He was clearly not the person they were after. In the penultimate photo, labeled J2 Class in Paris, 2000 Jubilee, there was another man standing beside the priest. De Palma took it down from the wall and laid it on the table.

  “There’s no-one upstairs. Have you found anything?” Vidal asked.

  “I don’t know. Come and see. Your eyes are better than mine.”

  Vidal bent over the picture and almost yelled:

  “I think it’s him, Michel!”

  “So he looks like Christine Autran, and like the man you saw?”

  “Absolutely. It’s him.”

  “Let’s give the place a thorough search. Go and see if there’s a cellar.”

  “I’ve already been all r
ound. There’s the cellar door, under the stairs.”

  De Palma drew his Bodyguard and headed toward the door. It was ajar.

  “Stay here for the moment,” he told Vidal. “You never know.”

  He slowly went down the staircase to the basement and paused at the bottom. A vision of the Dustman came into his mind like a cannonball. Icy sweat poured down his back. He found a switch and turned on the light.

  A corridor about eight meters long led to four little rooms, two on each side. The first was empty. He pushed open the door of the second but all he could see were ancient prayer books lined up on rusty metal shelves. The third contained stacks of boxes. Their contents were marked with a red felt-tip pen: “candles,” “old missals,” and so on.

  He went into the last room. It was far smaller than the others and had not been tidied. The remains of an old crib balanced on top of some rickety chairs. On the left-hand wall were two large notices for the parish fair. One read ‘Aunt Sally,’ the other said ‘Raffle.’ There was a wobbly pile of cardboard boxes in the middle of the room.

  De Palma noticed that the room had a clay floor. He crouched down and made out a print of a bare foot. When he examined the ground and the boxes, he noticed that someone had been rummaging around in the center of the pile: the clay had been scuffed up, cobwebs had been pushed aside, and a fine black dust covered all of the boxes except the two in the middle. He moved over to them, careful not to disturb the footprint, and opened one. It was empty. He opened the second. It contained a half-liter bottle of strange-colored liquid with a thick layer of deposit on the bottom. He put the bottle in his pocket and went back upstairs.

  Vidal had searched the ground floor thoroughly and had found nothing, apart from a number of fingerprints.

  “Found anything, Michel?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  De Palma removed the bottle from his pocket and raised it to eye level.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t think it’s altar wine. I’d guess it’s a mixture of water and powdered earth … making a … what’s it called?”

  “A pigment.”

  “Yes, that’s it. An ochre pigment.”

  “What shall we do now?”

  “Behave like serious police officers. We take this to forensics for the fingerprints. We’ll get the result this afternoon.”

  “I wanted to tell you …”

  “It’s O.K., Maxime, don’t bother. Just call Anne and tell her to move off without drawing any attention to herself.”

  “I wanted to tell you that I’ve thought things over, and I’ve been unfair on you.”

  “It doesn’t matter, kid. Simply leave the force at once, or else give up on the idea of staying normal. Call Anne.”

  The little old men were still sitting there when they left the presbytery.

  “Just look at those two,” the Baron said as they pulled away. “They see two suspicious-looking characters break into a presbytery and they don’t even call the police. And then they start complaining … Fuck them.”

  The first results from forensics arrived at the end of the afternoon. All of the fingerprints taken from the presbytery matched those found in Chevallier’s house and Autran’s car.

  Commissioner Paulin came into the office without knocking.

  “Where are you at, de Palma?”

  “We’ve located him. I mean, we’ve put a name to a face.”

  “Moracchini has already told me. Do you think …?”

  “I don’t think,” de Palma butted in. “The only thing we’re sure about is that the fog we’ve been walking through is less dense. We can now see shadows. The outlines are less hazy, but they’re still only shadows. With a third of a fingerprint, we’ve got nothing. He can always say that he paid a visit to a member of the congregation. There’s the bottle, but that’s not enough. We’ll have to run D.N.A. tests and compare them with the samples we got from Caillol’s place—the gendarmes omitted to do that as well. The fact that he’s Christine’s brother doesn’t make him guilty. We need more: a confession, or else the kind of solid evidence that they like in Aix.”

  “I’ll put as many men at your disposal as you want.”

  “Thanks, but we still have to find out where he’s hiding.”

  “How are you going to proceed?”

  “First, we’ll have to watch the presbytery and Saint-Julien church. You never know. Second, we’ll have to stop him from leaving the city. In other words, distribute his description and an identikit photo to all units, the airport, railway stations and so on. For once, the anti-terrorism law might serve another purpose than pissing off Blacks and Arabs.”

  “And then?” asked Paulin, frowning.

  “Then, I reckon we’ve been lucky once and won’t be lucky a second time. We’ll have to think things through. Rack our brains. Figure out the sort of place where he could be hiding, and where he could have taken Sylvie Maurel. Anne, take care of the description, please. But don’t spend too much time on it. We need your brains. That’s all for now.”

  “I have to congratulate you, de Palma, and your teammates too. I was beginning to lose hope.”

  “The fact that we know what he looks like doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to catch him like a goby. Far from it.”

  “Allow me to trust you! I’m sure you’ve got a good idea.”

  “I’m afraid not. Nothing at all. Not the slightest hint of a lead.”

  “I’ll let you get on with it,” said Paulin on his way out. “See you later.”

  Just as he was closing the door, he added:

  “By the way, de Palma, an old acquaintance of yours died in an occupational accident this morning.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Francis Le Blond. Two charges of buckshot and six bullets from an 11.43. Yet another settling of old scores. But done in real Sicilian mafia style. Not a clumsy local job.”

  “At least this time you can’t say it’s the gambling syndicates.”

  “Who knows?” said Paulin, closing the door.

  De Palma stretched in his chair. He sensed that Vidal was thinking back over their meeting with Lolo and analyzing it. He did not dare look at him, and tried to take refuge in Moracchini’s eyes, but she was staring at her trainers.

  “I think he’s using Sylvie Maurel as bait,” she said, “as something which will lead us to him. He must have realized that it’s all up. He’s just too intelligent not to know that. I think he wants to get this business over with.”

  “Logically speaking,” de Palma said, “he’ll probably go to Le Guen’s Cave. It’s his sanctuary.”

  “But how would he take her there?” Moracchini asked.

  “I’ve got no idea. He kidnapped her outside the lab and forced her to use her car. But to get to Sugiton creek is another matter altogether! You have to go by foot, and he couldn’t take that risk.”

  “You’re right, Michel,” she replied. “But you never know what people like that are capable of. He might have found a solution which you could never imagine.”

  “There aren’t that many ways to get to Sugiton creek,” Vidal said. “Either you go on foot or by boat. Unless you fly there. Anyway, it would be practically impossible to take someone along against their will.”

  “Unless you’re not alone,” observed de Palma suddenly.

  “What do you mean?” asked Moracchini.

  “I mean that I’ve always suspected that he’s not working on his own. For a time, I even thought Sylvie was with him.”

  “And who do you imagine this second loony might be?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Let me tell you something,” Moracchini said. “To work with someone like that, you’d have to share his madness … just think about it! There aren’t that many people around who eat their victims. It’s the first time it’s ever happened in Marseille.”

  “Still, I don’t think he’s alone.”

  “O.K., but I reckon you’re on to a false l
ead.”

  “Whatever,” said the Baron, shoving his computer keyboard away. “Logically he would have gone to Sugiton. That would be the most obvious thing for him to do.”

  “But he can’t have gone there … At least not if he were taking Sylvie Maurel.”

  “What do you mean by that?” de Palma snapped, more aggressive than ever.

  “I mean that he would either have gone there without her, or …”

  “WITH SOMEONE ELSE!” yelled the Baron.

  “Calm down, Michel,” shouted Anne. “Calm down for Christ’s sake! It’s a point we can’t neglect. Maxime’s right.”

  The Baron got up. For the first time, he really imagined that Sylvie might be dead and sliced up, like Hélène and Julia. He had been haunted by the idea since 11:00 that morning, but had refused to admit it. He felt bile rise in his throat.

  “Maxime, look at your diary and tell me when the next full moon is.”

  “I’ve already checked. It’s tomorrow!”

  “Right, in that case, if this loony raises his head, it will be then.”

  “What do you suggest?” Vidal asked.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll go to Sugiton. Just a small group, four or five at most. Too bad if we’ve got it wrong.”

  “What should we do in the meantime?”

  “What do you expect me to say? We’ll try to force the hand of chance again. If a patrol happens to spot him …”

  De Palma slumped in his chair. He felt all in. Moracchini had never seen him in such a state, looking so beaten.

  “Professor Palestro told me he was the only person who knew where the second entrance was—even Christine Autran didn’t know,” he added. “So, in theory, she can’t have told her brother. In that case, he might think that Sylvie is one of the few people who knows, and try to force her to speak.”

  “Does Sylvie know where it is?”

  “She told me she didn’t. But I’m not so sure.”

  “So, supposing that he wants to find the entrance, why take her and not Palestro?”