Crimes of Winter

by Philippe Georget

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” Jacques predicted, putting on the hand brake. Let me handle it this time, I’m tired of you taking all the credit. I want to be a hero, too.”

  “Gladly; he’s too big for me. But I promise to bring you oranges at the hospital.”

  “Thanks for your confidence.”

  Molina got out of the car and put on his “Police” armband. The giant contemptuously sized him up before turning to Sebag, who was approaching.

  “I know you,” he said. “I never forget a face.”

  Jacques kept his eyes on the man, but on his right he saw Gilles nod. So they did know each other. Introductions were made, and they could move on to other matters.

  The giant handed Gilles a flyer.

  “Here, look at this. One message among so many others. This one is for a certain Miquel. Miquel Rossetto. A lawyer by trade.”

  Sebag grabbed the flyer but paid it no attention. He folded it and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “How come you’re still outside?”

  “She didn’t file a complaint and the judge was nice to me. He charged me with assault but he let me go on condition that I don‘t try to see her again.”

  “And on condition that you behave yourself, right?”

  The man scratched his chin and chuckled.

  “Uhh . . . I don’t remember that part.”

  “You’ve been drinking again, too.”

  “I don’t remember that, either.”

  His red eyes full of defiance constituted a sufficient response.

  “You’re going to have to come with us,” Sebag said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re being aggressive and you’re scaring people.”

  “I’m not hurting them . . .”

  Molina had observed the exchange without saying anything, and he forced himself to step in. Otherwise Gilles was going to steal the scene again.

  “People don’t give a shit about your problems with love or sex. They’re just quietly walking along, doing their errands, and you’re bothering them. Moreover, you’re making kids cry. That’s called ‘disturbing the peace.’ If you don’t come with us voluntarily, you’re going to find yourself behind bars this time.”

  “I’m going to come, guys, don’t get upset.”

  The man’s mouth twisted and his eyes scornfully challenged Molina.

  “In just a minute . . . I haven’t finished yet, I’ve still got flyers to distribute.”

  And he left them standing there while he took off in the direction of the Place de Catalogne.

  “He’s defying us!” Jacques grumbled. “Hey there, Hulk, we’re talking to you . . .”

  The man ignored him and continued to walk away.

  “Hang on, Gilles, we’re going to have some fun!”

  He made a megaphone with his hands and shouted:

  “Hey, cuckold, you’re the one I’m talking to!”

  The colossus reacted as if he’d been lashed with a whip. He turned on his heel and walked toward Jacques.

  “What’d you say?”

  “You heard me. If you didn’t want me to call you that, you shouldn’t have been handing out flyers all over Perpignan. By the way, is your Marie a good fuck?”

  The man put his bag down in a doorway and then stood right in front of Jacques. He flexed his muscles underneath his tank top.

  “Goddammit, you’re going to pay for all the others. I’m going to rip your guts out.” Molina shifted his weight from one foot to the other to be sure he was ready. Without taking his eyes off his adversary, he murmured to Gilles:

  “I’m counting on you . . .”

  He said a silent prayer. They’d been working together long enough for Gilles to know what to do. The question was whether he was focused enough. He saw the guy’s eyes turn slightly away. Gilles had just taken out his handcuffs.

  “Here . . . You’d be better off putting them on yourself.”

  Molina saw the cuffs leave Gilles’s hands and fly toward the giant’s face. Instinctively, the giant tried to catch them. That was the moment! Molina jumped, grabbed the raised arm—an enormous arm, thick as a tree trunk—pulled it back with all his strength and twisted it. He heard a cry. The pain forced the man to drop a knee to the ground. Sebag picked up the handcuffs that had fallen on the asphalt and attached the man’s hands behind his back. It was over.

  “I see that you haven’t lost your reflexes,” Gilles congratulated his partner.

  “Rugby is more useful than marathons in this kind of situation.”

  “That’s for sure . . . But don’t tell me that you used arm-locks in scrums?”

  “No. That was prohibited in my time. But we could still call our adversaries cuckolds!”

  Sebag didn’t reply and Jacques wondered if he hadn’t gone too far in acting “as if.” He’d never been good with subtleties. He forced the giant to get up and pushed him toward the car while his teammate opened the door. The guy grimaced with pain as he bent down to get in. His shoulder was probably dislocated. As he passed by, Jacques gave him a knock on the head. He didn’t flinch. Now he was as docile as a lamb.

  Molina leaned on the roof of the car.

  “That is the kind of talent that got me into the police,” he explained.

  “I suspected that it wasn’t your scores in general culture . . .”

  Gilles might be upset by his personal problems, but he was always quick with repartee.

  “You’d better behave yourself if you don’t want me to give you the same treatment,” Molina shot back.

  “I may not be a rugby player, or a wrestler, but you’d find it hard to do the same thing to me.”

  “You want to bet?”

  “First you’d have to catch me. If you’re capable of running forty-two kilometers at twelve kilometers an hour . . .”

  “OK, you’re right, I’ve lost in advance,” Jacques conceded.

  He sat down behind the wheel of the car and they took their package back to headquarters. The streets of Perpignan had already recovered their peace and quiet.

  CHAPTER 35

  He smoked too much.

  That was obvious, but what could be done about it?

  He also drank too much and thought too much. Far too much. A constant flow of thoughts. His ideas resembled an impetuous mountain torrent that could be diverted, tempered, and deflected by obstacles, but never stopped.

  He was who he was, after all! With his defects and his qualities. He had to live with them! On the whole, other people seemed to manage, but for him it was far more difficult.

  He would have so much liked to be different . . . Better. More. And especially greater.

  `His cigarette was almost finished. He took out another and lit it with the butt of the first one. Going out for a smoke was the only way he’d found to escape the interrogation of Jean-Paul Casty. The wine-soaked brute that he’d once run into in the offices of the night watch, the one who kept screaming that his wife was a “slut.”

  He tried to stop the flow of his thoughts. To find another subject. For example, this evening’s dinner. What should he take? Flowers, a bottle of wine, dessert? No, not dessert . . . Without having made that suggestion in advance, it was impolite. Usually he let Claire handle good manners. But this evening, for the first time in at least twenty years—maybe the first time in his life—he was going out unaccompanied by his wife.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Have you got a fag for me?”

  Gilles handed his pack to Molina.

  “Everything OK?”

  “Hunky-dory. But we’re going to take Casty to the emergency room. His shoulder hurts, and he’s no softy. I think it’s really dislocated.”

  “We?”

  “Don’t worry! I asked Lambert to go with me.
He’s finishing up the statement and then we’ll leave.”

  Gilles gazed at his teammate. Unusual behavior. Why had he asked for Thierry’s help when they would usually have handled Casty together? Had Jacques guessed his hesitations?

  “ Jean-Paul’s a nice guy, after all.”

  “You think?” Gilles said, surprised.

  “His wife gave him a hard time . . . I don’t think you want to examine all the flyers we’ve collected, but if you want a summary, I counted almost three hundred e-mails, handwritten letters, and even printed copies of SMSes. She kept everything. And over the past ten years I found about fifteen different correspondents Marie-Isabelle Casty had a romantic or sexual relationship with. There’s a broad range of ages, occupations, social circles and nationalities. In the list, I even found a former municipal councilor, a restaurant owner I know, and a guy I went to middle school with. Frédéric Rofé. He dreamed of working in film. He used to bore us half to death talking about it! Now he’s working in the Social Security office. Well . . . when I say he’s working, you know what I mean!”

  Molina took a drag on his cigarette. On the avenue, the streetlights were coming on one after the other.

  “Marie’s affairs seem to have been romantic as much as they were sexual. She talks about love and tenderness most of the time. That said, I have to admit that sometimes it’s pretty raw, all the same! Despite his bull’s shoulders and neck, Jean-Paul has a stag’s horns on his forehead.”

  “And she kept it all, that’s crazy . . .”

  “Broads . . . what do you expect, even when they’ve got hot pants, they remain romantic.”

  Sebag thought about Claire. He knew enough to know that she had undoubtedly deleted messages as she went along, in order to avoid taking any risks. But what feelings did she have at the time when she erased her lover’s sweet words? Probably sadness and regret.

  Molina was still talking and Gilles made an effort to put the fragments back together. Molina wasn’t giving him a summary . . . He was explaining that now and then Jean-Paul had discovered some of his wife’s cheating, and that each time, after getting furiously angry and slapping her around, he had accepted the situation. Until he got his hands on all the correspondence and learned the extent of his misfortune.

  “It doesn’t look like it at first, but hey! Basically, he’s just a big teddy bear . . . A giant’s physique but a soft heart. He wept like a baby as he told me about his wife. If you want my opinion, loving to that point is no longer love.”

  He threw his cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it out.

  “So, that’s not all, but there’s likely to be a line at the emergency room. I hope Thierry has finished because now we’ve got to get going.”

  Sebag went to a nearby wineseller. He’d made up his mind. Giving a bottle of local wine to people who had recently settled in Northern Catalonia wasn’t such a bad idea. On the advice of a professional, he chose a Tautavel from the Domaine Fontanel, a well-known wine at an affordable price.

  Back at headquarters, he made a tour of the people held in police custody. Dominique Barrache occupied the third cell. Curled up under a moth-eaten blanket, he was sleeping like a log on the metal cot attached to the wall. Every time he took a breath, his lips opened to let a bubble of air pass. For a long time, Sebag watched him through the cell’s glass wall. One conclusion was forced upon him: they had to find another suspect as soon as possible.

  When he returned to the lobby, Officer Ripoll approached him.

  “Ah . . . Lieutenant. A lady wants to speak to you.”

  Sebag looked at his watch.

  “Is it urgent?”

  “Yes, please,” a voice behind him said.

  He turned around. A woman was coming toward him. Tall, blonde, plump, with brilliant blue eyes that elegantly illuminated her square, almost too masculine face.

  “You are?”

  “Marie-Isabelle Casty.”

  Sebag couldn’t help but look her over. Under her brightly colored overcoat, she was wearing a low-necked blue dress over tanned skin, despite the season. One sleeve of her coat was empty; Marie-Isabelle’s arm was in a sling across her breast.

  “I’m sorry, Madame, you’ve been misinformed. It’s my colleague, Lieutenant Molina, who’s handling your husband’s case.”

  Officer Ripoll’s loud voice resounded in the lobby:

  “Jacques has gone to the hospital with the individual in question. You’re the only one left, Lieutenant Sebag.”

  Gilles sighed.

  “OK. Follow me.”

  He led her into one of the three offices adjacent to the lobby, offices intended for filing simple complaints and holding impromptu meetings.

  The inspector showed her into a small room that smelled like sweat and fear. He pointed to a chair. She sat down, he remained standing.

  “I’m listening.”

  He was receiving her against his will and made no effort to conceal it. She felt judged and immediately condemned. She had repeated over and over in her head the main lines of what she wanted to say but could no longer find the words to begin. She ran her tongue over the corner of her lip that was still marked by a scar and took a deep breath. It pulled on her broken rib and made her wince.

  “How is Jean-Paul?”

  “He’s in the emergency room. A dislocated shoulder, apparently.”

  “And . . . psychologically, how is he?”

  “It was my colleague who talked with him.”

  “But I was told that you took part in his arrest?”

  “True. But we didn’t have time to talk. It was pretty violent.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” she smiled, holding her wounded arm. “Jean-Paul is hot-blooded.”

  The policemen did not reply. He looked at her, his face closed. She mustn’t let the silence last. It would be too hard afterward.

  “Do you think he’ll go to prison?”

  “That seems to me inevitable. He should have gone to prison the first time.”

  “I spoke to the judge to spare him that.”

  “And is that the point of your visit here this evening as well?”

  “Among other things . . .”

  “Then you’re wasting your time: we can no longer let him go, he’s too dangerous.”

  “I hurt him so much . . .”

  The sentence had come out all by itself. Too quickly. It fell flat.

  “He hurt you, too . . .”

  She almost thanked the policeman for that formulation but she understood that it was more an escape than an expression of empathy.

  “What I did is unpardonable, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “That’s not for me to say, I’m just a policeman.”

  “But you’re a man, too.”

  “Inside police headquarters, I’m a cop before anything else.”

  The inspector didn’t want to be maneuvered onto that terrain. She decided to push him.

  “And I’m a slut?”

  “Please, Madame Casty.”

  “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  “As a cop, I don’t think anything on that subject because you are not accused of any offense or crime. What you did does not fall within the jurisdiction of the courts.”

  “But it does fall within the jurisdiction of morality, is that it? When a man seduces a women, even if he’s married, people say he’s a Don Juan. These days, when a woman acts in the same way, whether she’s married or not, she’s a slut.”

  The inspector crossed his arms to conceal his embarrassment. She had scored a point, she saw that in his eyes, which had grown gentler. But he persisted in his evasion.

  “I have not really understood the point of your visit. You came to plead your husband’s cause or . . . yours.�
�

  He’d said that in a neutral, almost sweet tone, without true malice but with a ruthless pertinence. The words she’d prepared stuck in her throat. Even though she had so many things to say.

  She would have liked to explain that she needed these adventures to be happy, that she needed these men to look at her and needed their caresses to feel beautiful. Yes, she had come to plead his case, she hadn’t realized that but that was in fact what it was about. She had consulted psychotherapists, she had tried to understand herself. They hadn’t judged her, that was normal, it was their profession, their way of earning a living, but they hadn’t helped her, either. Hadn’t cured her. She would have liked a man to understand her for once, so that she might someday be able to pardon herself. This cop was so frigid in his politeness . . . She would have liked to scream at him that she couldn’t do without the first times—the first desire, the first rendezvous, the first kiss, the first orgasm— that she loved men, their warmth, their intimacy, their tenderness, that she liked more than anything those moments after sex when they told her their life stories, their passions, where they finally revealed all their weaknesses as well as their strengths. She would have liked to shout from the rooftops that all that was not a matter of sex, but of thrills, of life and freedom . . .

  And where was Jean-Paul in all that? Jean-Paul was her mooring point, her beacon, her rock. Without him, she would drift aimlessly, driven by her wishes, her desires. Without him, she’d be alone. She loved him. Despite herself, despite everything, despite them.

  Who could understand her someday? She would never be anything but a slut!

  Silence had fallen in the room. This cop wouldn’t understand her. Any more than the others. Even her lovers hadn’t understood her.

  She thrust her hand in her handbag, seized the envelope, and then changed her mind. What good would it do to hand over the photos it contained? In the end it really didn’t matter.

  A mobile phone beeped. It wasn’t hers. The policeman uncrossed his arms.

  “I’m sorry, it’s late and I still have work to do,” he announced. “Thank you for coming to speak with us, Madame Casty. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to contact my colleague, Lieutenant Molina. As I told you, it was mainly he who talked with your husband.”