“Me too.”
Sebag unscrewed the cap of the whiskey bottle. He put the bottle to his lips and took a long drink. He wanted to impress Gali, but what the latter noticed most was the sigh of satisfaction that escaped him despite himself when the liquid spread through his veins.
“So, copper, looks like you were thirsty . . . You wouldn’t be on the way to becoming an alcoholic, would you? Go ahead, tell me your problems.”
The jerry cans were piled up at the other end of the living room, next to the door that must lead to the kitchen: five standing upright, probably full, and five more lying on their sides, empty. Sebag set the bottle down. Gali had a lighter in his left hand and was caressing the thumbwheel. That was less reassuring.
“After you, Bastien, if you don’t mind. In a way, you’re the one who began, aren’t you?”
From underneath a high forehead two dark eyes were looking at him. Gali had a long, straight face; his hair was going gray at the temples. A little three- or four-day beard surrounded a large mouth with a drooping lower lip.
“You’re joking! You lured me with your personal problems, now you’ve got to cough them up.”
Sebag took another swig of the whiskey. In the fireplace, the flames had gone out; the fuel had been just paper. The first words were hard to get out, but the rest came easily. He told the truth, just the truth. He didn’t invent anything, he didn’t hide anything. The alcohol and the adrenaline gave people a sixth sense. Gali could have spotted the slightest lie and the trust that had been established would have been broken . . .
“What do you think you’re going to do?” Bastien asked when Gilles had finished.
“Try to forgive her, try to rebuild. Before that happened, I thought that it would be easy to put up with this sort of thing: we’ve been living together for twenty years and what Claire might have experienced with this guy has nothing to do with what we’ve shared over all those years. But that was theory. In practice, things aren’t so simple. There’s the head, and there’s the gut. Our organs don’t all agree. Despite everything, I think we can overcome this.”
He made sure he had Bastien’s eye before he added:
“In any case, I don’t think that burning my place down is a solution.“
Gali nodded pensively.
“You got children?” he asked.
“A sixteen-year-old son, and a daughter who has just turned fourteen.”
“That changes everything, doesn’t it?”
“That changes things, absolutely. But not everything.”
Gali looked at his lighter and struck a brief light. Even though he was in his undershirt, Sebag felt sweat running down his back.
“We’ve never been able to have kids. Though we had every possible test. In theory, there’s no problem. Doctors are stupid jerks!”
“No doubt.”
Gali picked up the vodka bottle and put it to his lips to take another swig. Sebag did the same but only pretended to drink.
“So what about you, what’s your story? Your story . . .”
“You already know everything. Unfortunately, it’s completely ordinary!”
Véronique, who had raised her head while Sebag was telling them his story, bowed it again. Gasoline was seeping from her clothes, just a T-shirt and panties.
“It’s never ordinary when it happens to you . . .” Sebag said. “And whatever people say or think, it’s always difficult to take.”
“Yeah, but why is it so hard, after all? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself for three months and I haven’t found the answer.”
Sebag recalled what he’d heard about Bastien and Véronique’s sexual habits.
“However, I’ve been told that you weren’t the jealous type . . .”
One of Gali’s thick eyebrows shot up.
“You done a bit of swinging, haven’t you?”
Bastien’s mouth stretched into an ironic smile. His lower lip seemed all the heavier.
“You’re a good cop, Gillou. You already know everything, it seems.”
“Only a few bits and pieces.”
Gali took another drink from the bottle before putting it down alongside him. The level was sinking at an alarming rate.
“I know it might seem strange, but swinging has nothing to do with infidelity. On the contrary . . .”
“How’s that?”
“I’m not sure I can explain, but I’m tempted to say that it’s the opposite of infidelity. It might seem stupid, I know, but I think that it brings us closer. We talk about it together beforehand, and we talk about it together afterward. Yes, it unites us unto death. We both take pleasure with someone else, but we also take it together through these intermediate persons. Do you see what I mean?”
Sebag nodded. Out of neither politeness nor tactics. He could understand: love without sexual exclusivity was perhaps true love. Yes, he understood. He always understood.
“Swinging brings you closer and infidelity drives you apart, is that it?”
Gali gave him a grateful look:
“Exactly! But this time, she did it behind my back, you see, without me, secretly. She no longer had the intimacy with me but with this other guy. That’s . . . that’s . . . that’s just betrayal, goddammit!”
“Who is this guy?”
“One of her co-workers. He’s married too, the bastard. When I found out three months ago, she told me that I was the one she loved, that she’d never considered leaving me, that they’d been discreet and that no one at the place where she works knew about it.”
Sebag could hardly resist the desire to take a real drink. Here, too, he not only understood but knew. Why did his professional life and his private life have to telescope to this point?
“At first, I was surprised that I was so jealous. A little like you, I told myself that given the way we live, I didn’t have the right. But it was too strong for me, I just couldn’t do it.”
Gali took a big slug of vodka. A real snootful.
“Listen, I’ll tell you how unbearable it is: every time we watch a film together and a woman falls into some guy’s arms, she’s the one I see with somebody other than me, and fuck, I assure you it’s painful. However, that isn’t the way it usually works . . . Usually you yourself are the one you imagine in the arms of another chick, generally a really great one. But I can’t do it anymore, no way! It’s torture and crisis every time. The result is that now I watch only game shows on TV.”
“I understand why you’re mad. Game shows on TV, they’re God-awful!”
Gali laughed jerkily. The way a drunkard does.
“And why are you angry today, Bastien?” Sebag asked. “This business is three months old . . .”
“Yeah. Three months that I’ve been trying to accept it and can’t. And then she started up again.”
Véronique sat up and tucked her legs underneath her. The gasoline stuck her black bangs to her shining forehead.
“I didn’t start up again,” she said softly. “I told you, nothing happened.”
She had a singsong voice. He thought he detected a Toulouse accent. Bastien didn’t look at his wife; it was to Sebag that he replied:
“It seems they only ate together, but I’d forbidden her that, too. I didn’t want them to speak or see each other ever again. Ever. I’d already accepted their running into each other at work every day, but I couldn’t do any more . . .”
He turned to her:
“What got into you, you slut?”
His hand was playing with the thumbwheel on the lighter.
“I shouldn’t have, I know,” Véronique whined. “But it has been so difficult between us for the past three months, I needed to talk to somebody.”
“Not to him, goddammit! To anybody but him . . .”
Gali had shouted. His index finger pushed on the lighter’s f
lint and lit another flame. Véronique bowed her head again. Sebag held his breath.
Was it really a coincidence?
Ménard pulled the envelope he’d taken with him out of his jacket pocket. He spread the photos of Christine Abad and her lover on his desk. And if ever . . . “Good God!”
In the Valls file he found the name and address of the widow of the man who committed suicide. He dialed the number of the landline. No answer. Then the number of the mobile. Voice mail. He asked for a rapid callback.
Then he telephoned the Cantalou company. At first he got a not very cooperative personnel director, but by moving from one person to another he finally obtained the information he was looking for. The information that opened the door to all kinds of conjectures.
Sebag had to remind them of his presence. In any way he could.
He tapped his chest but he was in his undershirt, he’d left his pack of cigarettes in his jacket.
“You wouldn’t have a cig?”
That was the best he could think of, but maybe it wasn’t so bad. Gali mechanically rose. From the drawer of a secretary he took out a pack of cigarillos.
“I haven’t got anything else, will that do?”
He handed Sebag the pack of Niñas.
“Perfect. The smoke won’t bother you?”
“No, because I smoke them!”
Sebag pretended to dig around in his pants pockets.
“Got a match?”
Gali was about to hand him his lighter when he changed his mind.
“Are you nuts or what? You want to burn everything up?”
Sebag put the pack of cigarillos on the coffee table and looked Bastien straight in the eye:
“No, I just wanted to steal your lighter to keep you from doing something stupid.”
Gali stared at him, speechless, then broke into his staccato laugh.
“Fuck, what a moron! And I almost fell for it, too . . .”
He sat down again, relaxed, on his end of the couch. Sebag took advantage of this moment of calm.
“What if we just stopped all this bullshit? We could get out of here and continue the discussion somewhere else.”
“In police custody, for example? Now you’re the one who’s being stupid. You’re going to throw me in jail.”
“Not necessarily. If no one files a complaint, this can turn out differently for you. The judicial system doesn’t pardon violence, but it can understand despair.”
Sebag had prepared the way. He mustn’t push harder. Not right away.
“And how did you find out that she’d had lunch with him?”
Gali’s face hardened. The memory must be painful. Sebag was moving onto dangerous ground.
“I intercepted an SMS. The stupid bitch! She knew I was regularly checking her phone after I found out.”
He raised his left buttock and took a mobile phone out of his hip pocket. He put it on the coffee table and then pushed it over to Sebag.
“Alain Guibert, that’s his name. Easy to find, he’s in her favorites.”
Sebag didn’t pick up the phone. He didn’t want to read the messages, it was more than he could stand.
“We just had lunch together,” Véronique repeated. “I swear it.”
“I told you not to see him, and you went ahead and did it anyway.”
Bastien’s tone had softened. There was now more sadness than anger in his voice. Sebag had to take advantage of that.
“She needed help, she was unhappy, she didn’t go to the right person . . .”
“That’s the least you can say!”
“Is that a reason to blow up everything now? You’ve been struggling for three months to forgive her, and you want to give up? Your battle’s over, is that it? You’ve lost?”
Gali bowed his head. He suddenly felt tired.
“I can’t live with her any longer. I’ll never trust her again.” He began to sob. His voice trembled. “But I can’t live without her.”
“And that’s why you want to set a fire?”
“I don’t know what I want, I can’t think anymore! I want all this to stop. One way or another.”
Véronique’s eyes met Sebag’s, and they understood each other without saying a word. It was time. In a smooth movement, she unfolded her legs. Her T-shirt soaked in gasoline stuck to her skin, emphasizing the curve of her full, firm breasts. She put her arm around her husband’s shoulders.
“I can’t live without you, either. And I don’t want to.”
She caressed his hair. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“If you think we no longer have a future together, then go ahead, burn everything to the ground. I want to die with you.”
She wasn’t bluffing, she was sincere. She was ready to go, too. Bastien still had his lighter in his hands and his finger was caressing the thumbwheel. It was double or nothing . . . Sebag braced himself. Say something, he had to say something.
“You could get help, you know. There is such a thing as couples therapy.
Véronique coiled up next to her husband, who didn’t budge.
“There’s no miracle solution,” Sebag went on. “But when you love as much as you two do, you have to try everything.”
Véronique put her mouth near her husband’s ear and whispered to him:
“I love you, I’ll do whatever you want.”
At least that’s what Sebag thought he heard. He continued:
“Each trial we encounter takes on a particular resonance for all of us,” he explained. “Depending on our past, our childhood, our upbringing, our character . . . And everything that we’ve buried, year after year, deep inside ourselves.”
Images flooded into his mind. A face, a figure, a house that wasn’t that of his childhood, another woman in familiar arms. He added, in a lower voice:
“Or else personal therapy, why not? We spend our lives chasing phantoms but sometimes we have to confront them straight on.”
He smiled inwardly. He no longer recognized himself. And that did him good. And he wasn’t ashamed of it. That was not only the effect of the alcohol and the gasoline fumes. It was not only because he was trying to prevent a tragedy.
Then he understood that everyone would walk out of this house alive.
“What are we going to do, Bastien?”
“What do you mean, what are we going to do?”
Sebag pointed to the lighter.
“Are you going to burn us all up or are we going to leave the house upright?”
Gali played with the thumbwheel again. A flame sprang up that he let burn.
“I knew there was a trap. Do you think I won’t dare set fire to the place with you inside it?”
“Yes.”
“Now we’ve changed styles: it’s no longer Bruce Willis, now it’s Mel Gibson, Lethal Weapon. You’re ready to risk your skin to achieve your goal.”
“Not at all. As I told you a while ago, I trust you. You’re not a madman but a good guy. And whatever she might have done, your Véronique is a good woman, too. You’ve still got a ways to go together. As I do with Claire . . .”
Gali pretended to hesitate again and then finally threw the lighter to Sebag.
“Here, Gillou, we’re going to smoke that cigarillo outside.”
“Love to.”
“I’m not sure I can stand up. I think I’ve drunk too much.”
He put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“You’ve got to stop drinking,“ Sebag said. “That’s never a solution.”
“You’re right about that, Gillou. Have you thought about doing it yourself?”
“I pay attention: on days off, for instance, I no longer drink in the morning.”
“That’s a good start,” Gali snorted. “And what’s your secret?”
“I set the alarm for noon
!”
“Attention! They’re coming out.”
François Ménard had turned the radio back on and was following Sebag’s exploits. Listening to the messages and orders, he could guess what was going on in front of no. 35 Rue Viollet-le-Duc. Gilles had left the house with Gali and his wife right behind him. Together, they’d smoked a cigarillo. An ambulance had taken the wife away and then Gilles put the guy in his car. Soon they’d be back at police headquarters.
Gilles Sebag, the hero of the day. Once again.
Ménard shrugged. He had no reason to resent Gilles. He could have, though . . . But he hadn’t responded to the radio call. Action wasn’t his thing. He wouldn’t have had the guts to do what Gilles did.
He collected the notes he’d taken. He’d made progress, he had something. Something even Gilles hadn’t seen.
Valls and Abad knew each other well, they even saw each other outside work. Two friends, one a victim and the other a perpetrator of conjugal tragedies that arose from their wives’ infidelities. These tragedies occurred at a few days’ interval, and at least one of the men had learned everything through an anonymous accusation.
Was that really a coincidence? No, certainly not, that was no longer possible!
11 Poor kid.
12Officier de police judiciaire, an investigating officer.
13École nationale d’administration, an elite French graduate school that trains many of France’s senior officials.
14Groupes d’intervention de la Police Nationale, elite units of the national police that specialize in cases involving hostage-taking, terrorism, etc. In April 2015, they became local units of RAID (Recherche assistance, intervention, dissuasion).
CHAPTER 21
As he drove home, Gilles felt an immense satisfaction. Everyone had congratulated him. His boss, his colleagues, the chief of staff. Molina, who was on vacation, had also called him: he’d made fun of him, which was his very special way of weaving a laurel crown.
Beyond this symphony of praise, he was especially happy to have been useful. His work consisted of punishing crimes; preventing them was rarer but so much more gratifying . . . Today, he had kept a whole neighborhood from burning, saved two lives, and even better, saved a couple. At least he hoped he had . . . Bastien Gali had been put in police custody under medical surveillance in a Perpignan hospital. He was to be examined the next morning by a psychiatrist. He would probably be indicted for making death threats, but with a streamlined procedure. However, Sebag clung to the hope that the case would simply be closed. Especially since Véronique, who had also been hospitalized, did not want to file a complaint. Those two loved each other madly and still had a future as a couple.
Crimes of Winter Page 17
