Crimes of Winter

by Philippe Georget

  This hypothesis seemed to him less plausible but it could not be excluded, in fact. But that was not the most important thing: he was going to have to pour cold water on the young man’s hopes.

  “I understand your anger at the person who sent these, but what crime can he be accused of committing?”

  Maxime stared at him.

  “He’s the one who started this whole mess, isn’t he?”

  Ménard spread the photos on the table.

  “What do these photos tell us? Basically, just one thing: that somebody harbored enough malice or even hatred to spend his time spying and then taking these compromising photos.”

  He paused long enough to find the right words. Clear but not too harsh. He decided to use first names rather than say “your mother” and “your father.”

  “But who deceived Stéphane? Not him. Who shot Christine? Not him, either. And nothing allows us to conclude that this mysterious individual wanted his revelations to lead to this kind of tragedy. For the examining magistrate and for the prosecutor, the case is closed, we have to move on. And I don’t think that the existence of these photos is enough to lead us to request further investigation. By the way, you haven’t told me exactly where you found them.”

  “In the cabinet where Papa keeps his rifle.”

  “Curious . . . Did he usually store papers in that cabinet?”

  “Only his shooting equipment.”

  Maxime was replying distractedly. He had not yet digested Ménard’s remarks.

  “Do you mean that you aren’t going to do anything to arrest this . . . this bastard?”

  “Do you have any idea who he is? Suspicions, a lead we could pursue? Do you think you know someone who held a grudge against one of your parents?”

  “Me? Of course not! But Papa’s co-workers or his friends might know something. Mama’s friends, too.”

  “And Éric Balland’s friends and colleagues as well. That would be a lot of work and energy spent for an uncertain result. And even if we identified the person who sent the photos, what then? We could charge him with ‘invasion of privacy’ or ‘assault and involuntary violence,’ but nothing more. And if his lawyer were half-competent, he’d get off with a suspended sentence or a simple fine.”

  “What if that man really acted with the intention that things turn out badly?”

  “We’d have to be able to prove it.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  Ménard talked about budget reductions, fewer officers, policies based on numbers, police efficiency, etc. Seeing that he was getting nowhere, he collected the photos. Then he stood up.

  “I’ll keep these, of course. They’ll be part of the investigation file. Maybe the judge will ask us to investigate after all. You can also get a lawyer and file a complaint against an unknown person on the basis of these photos. That might help move things forward.”

  “But you don’t think that’s very likely?”

  If François Ménard had been the young man’s father, he would have advised him to drop it and start the mourning process immediately, rather than desperately seeking a scapegoat for his pain. But he was only a policeman.

  “I promise you that I’ll do all I can.”

  He saw Maxime’s shoulders trembling. He should have put a comforting hand on those shoulders, a father’s hand . . . He didn’t dare. Physical contact had always been difficult for him. He just held out his card.

  “Don’t hesitate to call me to let me know if you have something new.”

  Julie Sadet and Gilles Sebag were in an unmarked car, patrolling the streets of Bas-Vernet, a problem area north of downtown. A dozen burglaries had taken place in this sector since the beginning of the vacation, all of them during the middle of the day, and all in the homes of elderly people.

  The radio crackled:

  “Calling all cars: a man has blockaded himself at number 35, Rue Viollet-le-Duc, Las Cobas sector. Threatening to set his house on fire. Need an OPJ12 on-site.”

  “You didn’t have plans for noon today?” Julie asked.

  “Other than lunch, no.”

  Sebag opened the glove compartment and took out a revolving light and placed it on the roof of the car.

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  After two months in the department, Julie was beginning to know her way around.

  “Las Cobas is on the other side of the Têt, near Cabestany, I think. I take the fourth bridge to avoid going through downtown, right?”

  “Perfect. Step on it, I’ll guide you afterward.”

  Their service vehicle was not yet equipped with a GPS, so Sebag did a search on his mobile.

  “I found Rue Viollet-le-Duc, it’s near the Lycée Picasso.”

  At the bridge over the Têt, Julie took the bus lane, passing cars on the right. The radio crackled again:

  “The man is not alone. He’s holding a woman hostage. The firefighters are on the scene.”

  The avenue went around the Saint-Jacques gardens, the last bastion of market gardening still resisting urbanization, and then climbed toward the Las Cobas neighborhood. Julie enjoyed audaciously passing a few cars on curves. Sebag’s hands gripped the armrests.

  “Turn right after the roundabout, then turn right again on the third street afterward,” he panted.

  The tires squealed as Julie made the turn. A hundred meters on, she stopped the car in front of the security cordon the municipal police had set up. She leapt from the car and greeted the officers. Farther up the street, the firemen were unrolling a fire hose. A thick, dark cloud was rising into the sky. Julie turned to Sebag but he was already gone.

  Ménard was driving to headquarters when he heard the first radio calls. He was reluctant to respond, and was relieved to learn that Gilles and Julie were on their way to the scene. He was not a man of action, knew it, and made no effort to suggest the contrary. Sebag was better in that regard, unless shots had to be fired. Gilles had the reputation of being a terrible shot. But maybe that was only one of Molina’s jokes.

  As he drove, Ménard was running through all the oddities in the Abad case, which was basically so simple. The presence of a malicious anonymous letter-writer came on top of the mysteries of the SMS and the murderer’s lies about the time of his acts. Because Abad had in fact lied. Ménard had viewed the surveillance tapes again and no longer had any doubt about that. He’d found an image of Abad shortly before he showed up in front of the hotel, but only three minutes before, as he parked his car in a handicapped place on the Rue du Pont d’en Vesit. On the other hand, before that point, there had been no trace of the murderer in the city.

  Strange, really strange.

  No matter how much he mulled them over, he couldn’t make these oddities hang together. He caught himself wondering if once he’d been informed of the existence of the photos, Gilles would be able to find a connection among all these things. He had to acknowledge that his colleague sometimes had amazing flashes of insight. François saw himself as a little more . . . how to put it . . . laborious. Yes, that was the right word. Laborious. A good cop, hardworking, rigorous, but . . . laborious.

  Sebag approached the house cautiously.

  On Rue Viollet-le-Duc, the little houses were built adjoining one another. They were “two-faces,” as people say in Northern Catalonia. The façade of no. 35 was no more than ten meters wide. The front door was right in the middle, framed on the left by a small picture window, on the right by a garage door. Above them a balcony occupied two thirds of the length of the façade, leaving room for a small window over the garage, probably for the bathroom. In the yard, a pile of clothing, furniture, and various other things was blazing.

  “For it to burn like that, the guy must have poured gasoline on it before lighting it,” said a deep voice behind him.

  Sebag sniffed. Beneath the acrid, powerful odor of the fir
e there were in fact syrupy smells. He turned around and recognized Captain Carré, who commanded firefighting operations in Perpignan. He was a tall, slender fellow with a determined face. Sebag had already had occasion to admire his efficiency and simplicity.

  “I’ve had the two adjoining houses evacuated,” Carré explained, “but I’m wondering if I shouldn’t expand the security perimeter.”

  Two tiled areas divided the space in front of the house. Only a little hedge and a concrete wall about twenty centimeters high separated the courtyard where the fire was burning from the driveway. A white Seat was parked there.

  “Are you afraid the car might catch fire?”

  “My men have already sprayed it with water, but I don’t care if it burns. It’s only in movies that cars explode. No, what worries me is that the neighbors saw the owner unload several jerry cans from his trunk this morning. He must have them inside the house.”

  “Shit!”

  “The prefect’s chief of staff is supposed to arrive any time now. She’s the one who will make the decision.”

  “Who’s inside?”

  “A man and a woman. The people renting the place, apparently. Bastien Gali and Véronique Marti. Those are the names on the mailbox. I don’t know anything more about them.”

  Sebag took off his helmet and used his sleeve to wipe his forehead, which was drenched with sweat. Then he realized that it was astonishingly warm. He raised his face to the blue sky and let his skin be caressed for a moment by a malicious sun. He was sweating under his jacket and felt sorry for the fireman, who had to put up with his dark uniform in fireproof material. He laid a hand on Carré’s shoulder and went off to find Julie. She was questioning the neighbors, who were kept about twenty meters from the house.

  “Do I know Bastien? Somewhat, for sure!” exclaimed a stout man with a mustache. “We meet from time to time in the nearby bistro. He’s unemployed, and that leaves him a little time.”

  “At the nearby bistro . . .” Julie repeated. “So he drinks, then?”

  The neighbor’s face darkened.

  “A little glass from time to time never hurt anyone . . .”

  Sebag considered the pudgy, reddish face of his interlocutor, but abstained from making any comments. He was in no position to tell others what to do. Not right now. Replying to another of Julie’s questions, the neighbor gestured vaguely toward the house behind him.

  “I live in number 12, the wine-colored one.”

  Gilles had to fight down a nascent smile. “Tone on tone,” he almost said. The man introduced himself. Norbert Camard. Former mason. Fell off scaffolding four years earlier. On disability ever since.

  “So that leaves you the time to . . . chitchat with Bastien from time to time,” Julie remarked. “What kind of guy is he?”

  “With me, he’s always been very cordial . . .”

  She picked up on this excessively evasive answer: “And with other people?”

  Camard smoothed his mustache greedily. He was about to badmouth his pal and that didn’t seem to displease him at all.

  “I’ve heard that some parents complained. He coaches boys in a soccer club and apparently he yells at them a little too much. And in a match he doesn’t always set a good example with regard to the referees.”

  “Is he violent?”

  “I don’t think he has ever struck anyone.”

  “But he’s irascible?”

  “Yes, you could say that.”

  “Do you think he could do something stupid today?”

  The neighbor ran his hand over his mustache again.

  “If he bought jerry cans, it wasn’t for a barbecue.”

  Sebag didn’t much appreciate that little joke.

  “Did you see him take them in?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Camard turned to a blond young woman next to him.

  “But you did, Muriel . . . You saw him, right?”

  The young woman confirmed what the neighbor had said: Bastien Gali had returned home shortly before noon and unloaded a dozen heavy jerry cans.

  “He looked crazy, I’ve never seen him like that. I think he’d been drinking. He told me that I should keep away, that he was going to set fire to the whole neighborhood and everyone would see that he wasn’t the chump people thought he was, and she’d see, too.”

  “She?” Sebag asked with a grimace.

  “He didn’t say so, but it’s clear he was talking about Véro. She came back around noon, as usual. She works at an insurance agency. She’s inside with him.”

  “You didn’t try to keep her from going in?”

  “Of course I did! I’d been keeping an eye out for her, and I told her that he was like a crazy man, but she went in anyway.”

  “Do they have children?” Julie asked.

  “No.”

  “And then what happened?” Gilles went on.

  “Then there was a lot of loud shouting.”

  “Who was shouting?”

  “Both of them. I couldn’t understand anything they said, they were both screaming at the same time. And afterward, Bastien threw Véronique’s clothes off the balcony into the yard, and then he started throwing other stuff. I saw jewels, a dressing table, things of hers. Then he emptied a jerry can on them, still from the balcony. At that point I went home to call the police. And while I was on the phone, I heard a kind of explosion. Through the window I could see the fire in front of their place.”

  “Does he have weapons in the house?”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  “I don’t think he does,” Camard broke in. “In any case, he never mentioned them to me.”

  “How were Bastien and Véronique getting along lately?”

  The question Julie had just asked was the right one, but Sebag dreaded it. A man who threatens to burn his house down, screaming that he’s going to prove to everyone and especially to his wife that he’s not a chump . . . You didn’t need much imagination to guess the reasons for that anger. But good God! Why did every couple in the department have to tear each other apart just now? Couldn’t they leave him alone?

  “They were a pretty close couple,” Muriel answered. “But it’s true that for the last few weeks, things seemed a little tense between them.”

  “Were they just tired of each other, or was it . . . something else?” Julie probed. “Was he jealous?”

  “Who isn’t?” Muriel said evasively.

  “Did he have reasons for being jealous?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Sebag took Norbert Camard aside. To let Muriel speak more freely with Julie, and because the big guy with a mustache had a mocking smile on his lips.

  “So, in your opinion, she was fooling around and that’s the cause of this mess?”

  “Might well be . . .”

  Sebag waited. Norbert was dying to tell him more.

  “However . . . jealousy really isn’t their thing. He looked around. There was a lewd sparkle in his eyes. “Their thing is swinging . . .”

  “ . . .”

  “When he’s two sheets to the wind, Bastien gets talkative. One day he told me that from time to time they contacted other couples over the Internet and then met for a party at their house or at the other people’s house.”

  Well, well, Sebag said to himself. Maybe this case is going to turn out to be a little more unusual than the others. But Julie immediately came to dash his illusions.

  “Véronique had a lover,” she whispered discreetly in his ear. “Bastien figured it out a couple of weeks ago and ever since things have been pretty bad between them.”

  “OK,” Gilles sighed before turning back to the neighbor to ask him for Bastien’s phone numbers.

  Camard took his mobile out of his hip pocket, carefully pressed his big index finger on the screen, an
d gave Gilles the numbers for Bastien’s landline and his mobile. Sebag felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “We’ve got a visitor,” his colleague told him.

  Sebag saw Superintendent Castello crossing the security perimeter accompanied by a young brunette with a severe face. Sabine Henri, the prefect’s young chief of staff, shook his hand vigorously.

  “Where are we with this?” she asked.

  Sebag described the situation in a few sentences.

  “So he’s potentially dangerous,” she summed up.

  Her questions rang out, cold and direct. The preceding autumn Sebag had dealt with this young woman who had just graduated from the ENA.13 He had found her competent and had quickly understood that her distance and austerity were just a pose to establish her authority in a man’s world, because she was a woman and only twenty-seven years old.

  “A few witnesses heard something like explosions: he may be armed.”

  “What kind of weapon?”

  “No idea. Nobody has seen anything. Just heard . . .”

  “Have you established contact with the madman?”

  That was the first time that word had been used. It resounded like a verdict. Quick but right.

  “I was just going to do that when you got here.”

  Sabine Henri turned to the superintendent:

  “Is Lieutenant Sebag directing the operations?”

  “He’s one of the first officers who arrived on the scene and I have complete confidence in him.”

  “I do too,” she replied, not looking at Gilles but keeping her eyes on the thick smoke that was still rising from the house’s courtyard.

  The fire had now gone out. The firefighters‘ action had been rapid and energetic: the car on the driveway had not burned. Sebag took his mobile out of his jacket. Sabine Henri stopped him. She addressed the fire chief, who had joined them during the discussion.

  “If there were a fire, would there be a major risk that it would spread?”

  “If he’s poured gasoline on the shared walls, we won’t be able to prevent the fire from affecting the adjoining houses. We’re ready to act, but with that quantity of inflammable liquid, the fire will burn very fast and give off a large amount of heat. There will be a thick, black cloud of toxic smoke.”