Claire was well aware that her affair with Simon had come at the worst possible time. The children were growing up and Gilles was suffering as he saw them pulling away. Emancipating themselves. To get through it, he’d started dreaming about going with Claire on the trips that the four of them had never been able to take. But now his wife seemed to be escaping him as well.
Obviously, that was not what Claire was feeling. More than anything in the world, she wanted to stay with him, to experience with him this second life without the children, and to grow old with him. He was the love of her life, she didn’t want another, she hadn’t lied.
Not about that.
She also knew that what she was putting her husband through reawakened other, deeply buried pains. Pains connected with his childhood. With his father, from whom he’d been estranged for a long time. And with his mother, too, of course.
Gérard Sebag had been a philanderer. His wife had put up with it for years before finally deciding to throw him out. But Claire sensed that there was something else, too. A kind of secret that Gilles had never told anyone. Not even her.
The children put their bags in the trunk of the car and got in. Séverine sat in the back, Léo in the front. Claire stood at a distance. Gilles went to kiss her good-bye.
“Have a good trip,” he said. “And be careful. You didn’t sleep well, I think.”
She caressed his cheek with her hand. She liked to feel his whiskers scratch her palm.
“I’m leaving so that we can get back together again.”
“I hope we will.”
“I want us to.”
“I do too. Really.”
They kissed again.
“Are you going to be all right alone for a few days?”
Gilles ran his hand through Claire’s hair.
“I’ll be fine. Provided there’s enough work at headquarters.”
“This is the first time I’ve heard you want more work.”
“I hope it’s the last . . .”
She didn’t know what to reply to what was probably more clumsiness than aggressiveness. She preferred to change the subject. But was she really changing the subject?
“Don’t do anything silly and above all don’t drink too much. Please . . .”
“Don’t worry about it, it’ll be all right.”
“We’ll call every night?”
He nodded.
“And we’ll send as many text messages as we want, day and night,” she went on. “The way kids do when they’re in love.”
She saw Gilles’s face darken. Now she’d committed a blunder, too. She guessed his thoughts; he was thinking about all the text messages she had exchanged with Simon. She would have liked to cry, “Never when we were together, Gilles, never behind your back!” But she couldn’t. If some day he asked her, she would tell him, she would even go so far as to swear it. But she would be lying. Some weekends far away from Simon had been very long, and she had not always resisted the desire for some tender words, written or read. Yes, she’d sent her lover messages—sometimes just smiley faces—behind the backs of her husband and her children, and she was ashamed of it. But if Gilles asked her about it, she would deny it. Without hesitation. She would do it for him, for them. And a little for herself as well.
“Forgive me, Gilles. I really want us to write to each other. As often as we feel like it.”
She took a step away, caught his eyes, and her lips spoke a mute “I love you.”
Sebag stood on the curb until the car had disappeared around the corner. Then he went back in the house. He was in his shirtsleeves, and he was cold. The wind off the sea was blowing big, black clouds through the sky. The air was humid. In the house, he went directly to the liquor cabinet and drank a slug of Scotch right from the bottle. Pure malt, pure defiance. Against whom? His wife, Gérard, life, fate. Against himself.
He was angry at his brain, too. That organ was becoming autonomous. It was unbearable. It was his brain that had awakened him in the middle of the night and manipulated his dark ideas.
What if Claire was still lying . . . Had she really cut off all contact with her lover?
He’d gotten up, dug around in his wife’s purse, and found her telephone. Goddamned phone! He hadn’t found anything, no message from Simon, no trace in the history.
But that hadn’t reassured him. A jealous man is relieved only when he finds a reason for his jealousy.
He had to get out of this dangerous downward spiral. He no longer wanted to be that man. He had to stop. Stop spying on Claire’s phone, stop asking her questions. Turn the page.
He was afraid it would be a long time before he could do that.
He took another swig before he put away the bottle. Let’s be reasonable. Not get to work drunk. Calm down, just calm down.
Silence prevailed in the large house. This silence was going to keep him company until his little family returned. Next Wednesday, for New Year’s Eve. It would be long and difficult, but maybe it was better this way. He needed to take stock of his situation, to feel what it was like without her, and to face up to solitude.
Fuck, it would be hard!
He got the bottle out again. Just one drop, just a drop. Then he took a shower and went to police headquarters.
CHAPTER 16
François Ménard had arrived early at headquarters and taken things in hand. He was satisfied, he’d done good work: the lineup was ready.
Stéphane Abad was standing with his back against the wall along with four other men of similar stature and hair color. Two of them were police officers at headquarters, while the two others were teammates on the Le Soler soccer team Ménard played with every Saturday.
Abad’s face looked tired, but he was clean-shaven. Ménard, who was the same height, had lent him a jacket and had taken care to have Abad’s laces put back in his shoes. Perfect! A memory from the beginning of his career led him to be a perfectionist when it came to organizing a lineup. While he was working at the Montreuil police headquarters, an inspector had negligently shown witnesses a suspect without laces in his shoes and wearing clothes wrinkled by a night spent in police custody. The suspect’s lawyer had found it easy to get the procedure invalidated.
Everything was set up, and Ménard was now waiting for his colleagues. He at least was being a good colleague.
Sebag and Molina, on the other hand, had deliberately not informed him of Abad’s arrest. It was only by calling headquarters late in the day that he had learned about it from that old fool Ripoll. He had immediately come to headquarters, gone to see the alleged murderer in his cell, and prepared for the lineup by calling colleagues and soccer teammates with vaguely similar physiques. That morning, he had brought in Jordi Estève, the Gecko’s owner.
His colleagues, always zealous, didn’t arrive until after 10 A.M. Molina, in his perennial mocking tone, congratulated him on his efficiency. Sebag said nothing: his mind seemed to be elsewhere, and his face looked almost as weary as Abad’s.
The policemen had old Jordi come into the adjoining room fitted with a one-way mirror. The hotel owner didn’t hesitate a second: he identified the man holding the number 3, namely Stéphane Abad himself. “And voilà, the job is done!” Ménard crowed. A lot of work for a confrontation lasting three seconds. The investigator’s work had its boring and slow moments, but rigor in executing it was one of its nobilities.
Some people tended to forget that.
After thanking his soccer teammates, Ménard brought in a table and four chairs and had Abad sit down. There was no question of allowing this second interview to take place on “hostile terrain,” in this case Sebag and Molina’s office. His colleagues understood the message. Jacques came up to Sebag and whispered in his ear: “Do you want to conduct the interview?”
“No, you began, I’ll let you continue. If I have questions, I’ll speak up.”
>
Ménard sat down. He would have questions, that much was certain. He’d read the record of the interrogation and had noted areas that remained obscure. Sebag began by asking Stéphane Abad for a detailed account of his actions on the morning of the murder. In a drawling voice, Abad repeated that he had left for work as if nothing was wrong, but with his rifle in the trunk of his car. However, he hadn’t stayed on the job for long. Too upset. On the pretext of a family problem, he’d left again an hour after he got there. He’d driven to the beach at Torreilles.
“We like that place, we often go there in the summer.”
He’d taken a walk on the beach, then returned to Perpignan.
“I’m not sure what time it was. In any case, soon enough to be in front of the hotel when they arrived.”
“And so you saw them together?”
Abad bowed his head and replied in a low, barely audible voice.
“Yes.”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward?”
“Yes, afterward, once your wife and her lover had gone into the hotel, what did you do?”
Ménard took out his notebook and his pen. He had in fact noticed something strange at this point in the presumed murderer’s timeline. Before answering, Abad ran his hand through his hair.
“Well . . . I waited.”
“You waited . . . for an hour and a half . . . for Éric Balland to come out?”
Abad raised his eyes toward Sebag but did not answer.
“Balland is the lover’s name,” Gilles explained.
“I know, you told me that yesterday,” Abad hissed.
“So answer my question.”
“I told you yesterday and I’m going to repeat it: Yes, I waited for that asshole to come out.”
“Hmm, hmm.”
Abad ran his hand through his hair again. His cheeks got a little pink. Ménard knew Sebag well, he’d learned a great deal from his way of conducting interrogations. He also knew the file well and he divined the tactics. After worrying the murderer over a minor discrepancy, Gilles was going to let him relax for a moment before playing his trump cards. But he felt slightly disappointed: he wasn’t the only one who had noticed these discrepancies.
“And once Éric Balland had come out, you still waited, is that right?”
“I was waiting to see if Christine would take the time to smoke a cigarette, as I told you yesterday.”
“If she had come out sooner, you wouldn’t have killed her?”
“I don’t know . . . Maybe I would have anyway . . . But not in the street, in any case.”
“Hmm, hmm.”
“You don’t seem to believe me, but I’m telling you the truth. Christine used to have the habit of smoking after sex. And she stopped smoking about ten years ago. I wanted to see if she had started again . . . with him. That’s all. Why don’t you want to believe me?”
“Oh, I believe you all right, Monsieur Abad.”
Sebag smiled.
“On this point, I believe you. On the other hand, I’m puzzled on other points.”
“You’re not going to ask me again about the confused wording of that SMS!”
Ménard perked up his ears. That point had escaped him. The record of the interrogation mentioned only Abad‘s statements concerning the SMS that had informed him of his wife’s infidelity, not the policemen’s questions on this subject.
“Let’s leave the SMS aside for a moment,” Sebag agreed. “If we need to, we’ll carry out the necessary investigations later on. We have other problems with your timetable: you say that you were in front of the Hôtel du Gecko when your wife and her lover went in, is that right?”
“Uhh . . . yes. Exactly.”
“Then can you explain why the surveillance camera next to the hotel recorded your arrival only at 1:33 P.M.?”
Abad’s eyes opened wide, then his mouth.
“Goddammit!”
Ménard had always been surprised to see that video-surveillance cameras, though they had initially been controversial in Perpignan as elsewhere, had been quickly been accepted and even forgotten by the residents. Few people were even capable to saying where any of the cameras were, even on streets they traveled every day.
“I probably stayed for a long time in a blind spot.”
Ménard jumped in:
“I viewed the images myself, Monsieur Abad. They very clearly show you walking down the Rue des Augustins at 1:33 with your rifle in its case, and taking a position about twenty meters from the hotel. Before that, you weren’t there.”
“Yes, I was,” Abad said stubbornly. “Five minutes before, no, but a quarter of an hour before, yes. And probably in a blind spot.”
He took a deep breath and explained:
“To avoid attracting attention, I didn’t take my rifle with me at first, I went back to get it. I couldn’t say exactly when, but I’m willing to believe you that it must have been at 1:33.”
A glimmer of pride or even arrogance flickered in Abad’s eyes. One didn’t have to be Gilles Sebag to see that he was making it up. But Ménard had no way to refute him; he had viewed the images starting from the hotel owner’s call to the arrival of the presumed murderer. It was impossible to contradict Abad right now, first he would have to watch the rest of the video recordings.
Abad took advantage of the silence that had followed his story:
“Is that all you’ve got? Do you always pester criminals so much with your pointless questions? What is this, anyway, a torture session, an initial punishment? Either you believe what I’m telling you and indict me for murder, or you don’t believe me and you let me go. But for God’s sake, let’s get this over with!”
Sebag calmly laid a sheet of blank paper on the table. On it, he drew two parallel lines representing the Rue des Augustins and a square to represent the site of the Gecko. Then he pushed the sheet and the pencil toward Abad.
“Can you put an X on the place where you waited before going to get your rifle?”
Abad rubbed his head and this time, instead of blushing, he paled.
“I’m tired, and I don’t feel well. I want to see a doctor.”
He looked at each of the three lieutenants before adding: “I also want a lawyer.”
A slate under his arm, Rafel, the owner of the Carlit, came to stand in front of the table at which Molina, Sebag, and Ménard had taken seats.
“Bon dia, tothom.”6
He showed them the slate on which he had written the three plats du jour. Molina suddenly felt happier.
“Caral! Galtes,7 and cooked with Banyuls8 to boot! I love that! You going to have the same, guys?”
Sebag and Ménard agreed.
“Shall I bring you a little Terrasous to drink with that?” Rafel suggested. Ménard quibbled:
“Another local wine, fourteen percent at least . . . I’ll have only a glass. The day is far from over.”
“Give us a liter all the same,” Molina insisted. “Precisely because the day is far from over!”
The policemen were obliged to grant Stéphane Abad’s request. It was the law. They had easily found a court-appointed lawyer who would come in right after lunch to talk with his new client. Finding a physician had been another question. They’d had to make call after call to dig up that rare pearl, a doctor who would agree to visit a murderer in a dark cell at police headquarters on the Saturday after Christmas—for the standard fee, which would not include travel costs and would not be paid for months, and then only after he had filled out fifteen forms and made countless phone calls to an administration whose dilatory laziness had now been erected into “good management” because it was one of the best ways of saving the government money. The rare pearl was a pal of Molina’s, and after he’d examined Abad and authorized them to continue holding him in police custody, he’d taken his friend aside to whi
sper this imperious entreaty in his ear: “If you’re really a pal, next time please forget me!”
Jacques took a sip of his wine. Then he put his elbows on the table and addressed his colleagues: “What’s wrong, guys? Why are you bugging Abad?”
Sebag glanced at Ménard before answering.
“For the most part, he’s telling the truth . . .”
“That’s right,” Ménard agreed. “But it’s the first time in my career that I’ve found myself in such a situation: a basically crystal-clear case with a suspect to whom everything points, a murderer who admits everything and yet who is lying to us on certain points. The least you can say is that it’s puzzling.”
“He didn’t tell us everything about the SMS and his timetable, OK, but apart from that?”
Rafel put three steaming plates on the table. Three impatient forks began digging into slices of brown meat. The galtes proved to be as tender as one could wish.
What he says rings false, too,” Sebag went on. “Not all the time, but from time to time. Take for example when he told us that he waited for an hour and a half in front of the hotel—that’s simply implausible!”
“He said he’d left for a moment to get his rifle . . .”
“And even if that’s true, Jacques, can you imagine a guy like him, impulsive and violent, standing around for more than an hour in front of the hotel until his wife had finished getting off before killing her?”
“Hard to imagine, in fact.” Jacques had been amused by Gilles’s way of putting it, which was uncharacteristically coarse. “And so what conclusion do you draw from that?”
“None, and that’s just what annoys me!”
“Yeah. Well . . . All that’s just pubic hair in a hippie’s mane, trifles, details . . .”
“And the devil is in the details.”
Molina frowned.
“Is that a proverb?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t twist it?”
Crimes of Winter Page 11
