Crimes of Winter

by Philippe Georget

  Sebag looked at his watch. It was almost 5 P.M. The first traffic jams must already be clogging the boulevards and the road along the river. It would take forever to cross the city.

  “Whatever you want . . .”

  The slowdowns began on the Arago Bridge. It was always difficult to cross the Têt. Sebag had time to enjoy the view of le Canigou.20 He came this way every morning, but had hardly paid attention to the landscape these last few days. The mountain had put on its white winter mantel and its snowy summits stood out magnificently against the sky reddened by the setting sun. Sebag closed his eyes. It was a beautiful place, this part of France where they had decided to settle seven years earlier. Obviously, had they remained in Chartres, there would never have been a Simon, but you can‘t rewrite history. And in any case there would have been a Pascal, a Philippe, or a Didier. It wasn’t the opportunity that elicited the desire, but the desire that found the opportunity. The chicken and the egg. An eternal debate.

  Abad’s neighbors had not all come home from work. There was no answer at the house on the right, and none at the one on the left, either. However, the old lady who lived just across the street received them on her doorstep.

  “It’s a real tragedy, this affair. I’m still all upset about it. Such nice people . . . Who could have imagined this? Christine was adorable, she invited me to tea now and then in the afternoon. I knew him less well, but he was helpful. Several times he came over to make some little repairs for me. The last time must have been about a month ago, he unplugged the kitchen sink. And when I think about little Maxime, what a misfortune! I knew him when he was just a little boy. At the funeral he looked so sad, completely lost. How can anybody recover from something like that? Pobret! Now he’s all alone in life.”

  She shook her head, putting two white, permanent-waved locks in movement on her wrinkled forehead.

  “Maxime came by two or three times for just a moment. I invited him in for tea, but he refused. I hope he’s being well taken care of and that he has friends in Toulouse . . .”

  “We hope so, too.”

  Ménard had let the old woman express her sadness; now he could move on to serious matters. First he questioned her regarding the personalities and habits of her neighbors, but obtained only the conventional, already known answers. On the other hand, when he mentioned the morning of the tragedy, he got a surprise:

  “I didn’t see Christine that day, but I did see Stéphane. Maybe even several times . . .”

  Sebag and Ménard frowned at the same time.

  “What do you mean, ‘maybe even several times?’”

  “I saw him—definitely—come home at ten minutes after noon.”

  The two policemen looked at each other. This contradicted Abad’s statements: the murderer had said that between the time he left work and the time he arrived at the hotel he had gone to the Toreilles beach.

  “Are you sure about the day and the time?”

  The old woman adjusted the pink shawl draped over her shoulders.

  “How could I forget a day like that one . . . As for the time, I haven’t yet lost my mind, Monsieur. Every morning I go to see my friend Louise, Louise André, who lives two blocks away. We watch a television program together, it’s a game show we both like. It’s better to watch together than separately, isn’t it?”

  Ménard nodded approvingly.

  “After our game show, Louise watches the regional news. But since I have already seen the news the evening before and they always repeat the same reports, I prefer a different program, so I go home to watch it. And it was as I arrived that I saw Stéphane parking his car in the driveway. Christine’s car was no longer there.”

  “You didn’t speak with him?”

  “No. Besides, I don’t think he saw me, I was still at the end of the street when he got there.”

  “Did he stay long?”

  “I don’t know. All I can say is that when my program was over, around a quarter to one, his car was still there.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  The old lady pursed her lips. She had used a lipstick in a shade similar to that of her shawl.

  “Yes, Inspector. I was surprised. Stéphane never came home at noon, he worked a lot and returned only late in the evening. He didn’t take many vacations, either. Poor Christine was often left alone. Especially since Maxime left for Toulouse . . .”

  She suddenly interrupted herself.

  “What was I saying? Ah, yes! Since Stéphane never came home at noon, I was amazed to see him on that day. And when that evening I learned about the tragedy from my neighbors, I saw the connection.”

  “What connection?”

  “Well, he came to get his rifle, obviously!”

  Sebag stared at the old lady. She thought she was Miss Marple! But what she said wasn’t necessarily stupid.

  “You knew he had a rifle?” Ménard asked.

  “Yes, of course. He belonged to a shooting club—it’s over by Boulou, I think—and he went there every Saturday morning. Christine was left alone again . . .”

  Ménard let her go on about the Abads’ life before returning to the strange expression she’d used a few minutes earlier.

  “A little while ago you said that you’d seen Stéphane ‘maybe even several times.’ What did you mean by that?”

  “Wouldn’t you like some tea? It’s cold outside.”

  François sensed a trap. If they wanted to get short, precise answers, they’d be better off remaining on the doorstep. Sitting in a warm room, they would have a hard time avoiding useless digressions. He declined the offer. And after all, it was a little late to drink tea. Madame Vidal finally answered:

  “I had the impression that he’d been sitting there for a long time. And even that he’d been waiting for Christine to leave.”

  “Why is that?”

  “When I went out around 11 A.M. to go to Louise’s house, I thought I saw his car parked nearby. That struck me as odd because the car started and backed up while I was approaching it. I couldn’t tell whether it was really Stéphane inside it. At the time, I thought I’d made a mistake and paid no more attention, but later on I said to myself that it must have been him.”

  She stroked her silvery locks with a wrinkled hand.

  “But about that—I prefer to tell you, Inspector—I’m not entirely sure.”

  “But you think it was he and that he was waiting for Christine to leave?”

  “Yes. As I told you: so he could pick up his rifle. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea?”

  “We wouldn’t want to impose.”

  “You wouldn’t be imposing, you know.”

  The old lady was already opening her door and standing aside to allow them to enter. Sebag sensed that his colleague was going to give in, out of politeness or Christian charity.

  “We would have loved to have some tea with you, but we don’t have much time, Madame Vidal. Thank you very much for your valuable information. We’ll probably come back to see you regarding other questions.”

  They hurried back to their vehicle. Before getting in, Ménard put his hand on the roof of the car and asked Sebag:

  “Interesting, no?”

  “If her testimony is credible . . .”

  “She seemed to me in possession of all her faculties.”

  “You think so? Inviting two cops to drink tea at the cocktail hour, does that strike you as mentally sound?”

  He got into the car. Ménard did the same and put the key in the ignition.

  “You sound exactly like Jacques Molina. Do you miss him that much?”

  Surprised by what seemed to be an attack of jealousy, Gilles did not reply. Ménard started the car.

  “I think we’ve just succeeded in determining an important part of Abad’s timeline on the morning of the murder. He did not learn of his wif
e’s cheating by SMS, as he claimed, and he didn’t have his rifle when he left work. Instead, he went to Cantalou just as he did every morning. There, he received the corbeau’s letter and the photos, and freaked out. He went back to Pollestres and waited until his wife left. Then he took his rifle and went to wait in front of the Gecko. Regarding the exact time of his arrival in front of the hotel and his convoluted explanations of it, I admit that . . . I’m stumped.”

  “The city’s security cameras filmed him at 1:33. We have no reason to think that he showed up earlier. On the back of one of the photos, the corbeau wrote: “you know how to reach me.” We can suppose that Abad called him, and that was how he learned what time the lovers usually left the hotel. Thus he didn’t need to hang around there for hours.”

  “But why did he lie to us about that?”

  Sebag took time to think. He had a vague sense that there was something important there. He didn’t answer until they were about to arrive at headquarters.

  “Abad did everything he could to conceal the corbeau’s existence from us. Showing us that he knew too much about the lovers’ schedule would have been too likely to tip us off.”

  “He didn’t hide the photos very cleverly.”

  “Because he didn’t hide them. He was angry, he had them with him when he got his rifle, and he simply forgot about them.”

  Ménard shook his head.

  “Hmm, hmm . . . Those are just suppositions.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have anything else on hand.”

  “But why did he want to hide the corbeau’s existence from us? Especially if his enemy was the guard . . .”

  Sebag gave him a sly smile.

  “For the moment, the guard’s guilt is only a supposition.”

  19Coll Bakery.

  20A peak in the Pyrenees (altitude 9,137 feet) visible from Perpignan.

  CHAPTER 25

  Gilles Sebag poured himself a shot of whiskey in a plastic cup. Sitting at his desk, he had momentarily set aside the hypothesis worked out in the car and tried to resolve the problem of probability in order to figure out whether the lead Ménard was following really held water. The terms of the problem were the following: given that the department of Pyrénées-Orientales has—according to a very recent census—452,530 inhabitants, that Cantalou-Cémoi employs three hundred people, and that one third of all women admit having cheated on their husbands, what are the chances that the conjugal problems of two of the Catalan chocolate-maker’s employees come to a dramatic end in a period of less than ten days? No matter how much he turned the problem over and over in his head, he could not come to any conclusion. First of all because he’d never been very good at math, and secondly because Sandrine Valls threw the data off by claiming that she had not cheated on her husband!

  The only quantitative result he could arrive at was “not much!”

  Sebag didn’t like chance. Experience had taught him that in police work, aleatory facts could sometimes disrupt the best arguments. But if they were included in one’s reflection from the outset, it became impossible to forge serious and credible hypotheses. He had therefore decided that until he had proof to the contrary, chance played no role in the proximity of the two tragedies.

  So what did?

  A single answer had germinated that was capable of contradicting Ménard’s theory: that the tragedy Abad had caused deepened Valls’s despair and made it easier for him to act. A slender, uncertain supposition that would suffice for this evening.

  He finished his glass and decided it was time to go home.

  As it did every evening, his anxiety mounted very fast. He regretted not having drunk a full glass. As he approached his house, the malaise in his gut grew. His pain never disappeared, it just became less acute when his professional concerns took over. Or when he was restoring to sanity a madman holed up in his house. But it remained there despite everything, crouching inside him, like a headache that never goes way.

  He recited out loud a line from Baudelaire he’d learned in middle school: “Sois sage, ô ma Douleur, et tiens-toi plus tranquille.”21

  He’d always seen his home as a haven of peace in a world gone mad. But the patiently constructed dikes had burst and his little moorage had to struggle against the assault of furious waves . . .

  However, he spent a pleasant evening. Claire, Séverine and Léo had gone back to school and had lots of things to talk about. Gilles remained in the background, contemplating his little world.

  He’d lived happily with Claire for twenty years. At first it was just the two of them, and then they were four. She had given him magnificent children and he had discovered a passion for his role as a father. He had played it well, he thought. He’d taken a pleasure in it that was as intense as it was unexpected. Léo and Séverine seemed to be flourishing and at ease with themselves. He’d never had major conflicts with them. What more could he ask for?

  Deep down, he’d always known that there would be a price to pay for this happiness. Life had just presented its bill. He was going to pay it and then happiness would return.

  But a typhoon cannot be calmed with simple words and fine resolutions: you can’t stop a good shit by reciting Coué’s method of autosuggestion while sitting on the toilet. Nature always brings us to heel.

  As they were getting undressed for bed, Claire suddenly pressed her warm body against his. Then she pushed him onto the bed and kissed his skin all over before concentrating her attention on one precise part of his anatomy that she caressed, licked, sucked. Overcome by this passionate desire, Gilles experienced a rapid and intense pleasure. He climaxed with happiness.

  The moment should have remained fabulous, but this rush of pleasure had devastating secondary effects. Gilles was assailed by brutal, atrocious, rending images. It was still Claire’s body, her mouth, her tongue, but it was no longer his body. Direct, raw questions arose in addition to the images. How many times had she done the same thing with him, with the Other, the asshole, the sleazebag?

  He abruptly got out of bed.

  Claire put on her silk peignoir and joined Gilles in the living room. At first she didn’t see his form slumped on the couch. She sat down beside him. It was a bright night, the moon was almost full. Gilles’s profile stood out like a silhouette against the picture window. She couldn’t see his features, but she could sense that his jaw was tight. She tried to take his hand, but he refused.

  “Would you prefer to be alone?”

  “I’m not alone.”

  He raised his arm on the other side and indicated a whiskey bottle. He took a swig from it.

  Claire bit her lip until it bled. She got up and, dragging her feet, returned to the bedroom alone. In the doorway, she turned around.

  “I made a mistake but I’m not responsible for everything.”

  “I know.”

  She would have liked to leave the door half-open. As a sign, a proffered hand. You’re suffering, you’re not sleeping, neither am I, I’m waiting for you. But she didn’t want to hear again that night the clink of the bottle on the glass coffee table.

  She closed the door, buried herself in the sheets, and let herself be overwhelmed by sorrow.

  21“Be calm, my Pain, and lie more quietly.”

  CHAPTER 26

  When Sebag arrived at the office the next morning, Molina was sitting straight up on his chair, his eyes riveted to his computer screen, his hand clicking the mouse nervously.

  “Are you winning?” Gilles asked.

  “Almost . . .”

  “The operation ‘reassured merchants’ is making progress, it seems . . .”

  “Rapidly!”

  Sebag knew from experience that he mustn’t disturb Jacques when he was fully engaged in something like Bubble Shooter, Jewels, or Last Chaos. He sat down in his chair and turned on his computer.

  His hand caressed t
he handle of his desk drawer. He’d thought he would be the first to arrive and that he’d be able to get himself going with a quick swallow of whiskey. A little one, just one. He looked at Jacques, so absorbed in his game. That might do it. He bent down, got a paper cup out of the wastebasket, and opened his drawer. Holding his hands under the desk, he poured himself a drop that he quickly tossed down. Damn, it was good. He felt the warmth flowing through his veins.

  Molina had a final spasm before being defeated. Then he furiously pushed the mouse away.

  “I’ve learned what Ménard did. Not cool! When you make progress on a case, you talk about it with your colleagues before going to the big boss . . .”

  Sebag shrugged.

  “We haven’t always been straight with him. You didn’t call him when Abad turned himself in.”

  “It was Christmas Day, he wasn’t working!”

  “Neither was I, but you still let me know.”

  “OK, agreed! He screws you royally and you ask his forgiveness. Go right ahead.” Uh-oh . . . Jacques had to be dealt with carefully. Prudence . . .

  “And when I refer to progress, I’m being nice. Do you believe his theory of vengeance? It’s a little shaky, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve occasionally suggested riskier hypotheses.”

  “That’s true. But it was you! I have confidence in you!”

  “Thanks . . . But I wonder if it’s confidence, faith, or blindness.”

  “A little of all that, for sure.”

  For the first time, Jacques smiled.

  “By the way, I thought of something . . .”

  “Tell me.”

  “You know that I’m a very basic guy, and so I started out from the premise that if revenge is involved, it was aimed primarily at the lover . . .”

  “If we start from that premise, there is no longer any connection between Abad and Valls.”

  “That connection is Ménard’s idea, not mine, or yours. And I reconsidered the interrogation of Balland. Do you remember that you were skeptical when he said he’d never cheated on his wife before Christine?”