Camille

by Pierre Lemaitre

  “No, leave it,” Camille sighs. “I’ll do it. You focus on Hafner. Is there any news there?”

  “Nothing yet, he seems to have completely vanished. There’s no-one at his last known address and there’s been no sign of him at his usual haunts. His known associates say they haven’t seen him since the January . . .”

  “Since the robberies?”

  “Around that time, yes.”

  “So he may have left the country?”

  “That’s what they seem to think. A couple of them even suggested he might be dead, but there’s no basis for it. There is talk that he’s seriously ill, more than one witness mentioned this, but given his little performance at the Galerie Monier, I’d say he’s in fine fettle. We’re still looking, but I can’t say I’m optimistic . . .”

  “The forensics on Ravic’s murder, when do we get results?”

  “Tomorrow at the earliest.”

  Louis is silent for a moment, it is a very particular silence – from his own extensive repertoire, one that he observes before broaching the thorniest questions.

  “About Madame Forestier . . .” he ventures. “Will you inform the commissaire or should I?”

  “I’ll do it . . .”

  The response came unbidden. Too quickly. Camille sets his mug down by the sink. Ever intuitive, Louis waits for the rest of the response.

  “Listen, Louis . . . I’d rather look for her myself.”

  Camille can almost hear Louis nodding cautiously.

  “I think I’ll be able to find her . . . fairly quickly.”

  “Understood,” Louis concedes.

  Camille’s message is clear: say nothing to Commissaire Michard.

  “I’m heading in now, Louis. I’ve got a meeting, but I’ll be there as soon as I can be.”

  The razor-sharp rivulet of cold sweat Camille can feel tracing the length of his spine has nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

  *

  7.20 a.m.

  He quickly pulls on his clothes, but he cannot leave like this, he cannot help but check that everything is locked and bolted, irritated at the thought that somehow everything is down to him.

  He creeps up to the mezzanine on tiptoe.

  “I’m not asleep. . .”

  Reassured, he walks over and sits on the edge of the bed.

  “Was I snoring?” Anne asks without turning towards him.

  “With a broken nose, it’s unavoidable.”

  He is struck by her position. Even in hospital she turned away from him, lying on her side, staring at the window. She can’t bring herself to look at me, she thinks I can’t protect her.

  “You’re safe here, nothing can happen to you now.”

  Anne merely shrugs, and it is difficult to tell whether this means yes or no.

  It means no.

  “He’ll find me. He’ll come here.”

  She rolls onto her back and looks at him. She almost makes him doubt himself.

  “That’s impossible, Anne. No-one knows you’re here.”

  Anne shrugs again. This time, however, the meaning is clear: say what you like, he’s coming here, he’s coming to kill me. Her fear is becoming obsessive, becoming hysterical. Camille takes her hand.

  “After everything that’s happened to you, it’s only normal that you should be scared. But I promise you . . .”

  Her shrug this time could mean: how can I make you understand? Or it could mean: forget it.

  “I have to go,” Camille says, checking his watch. “You’ll find everything you need downstairs . . .”

  She nods. She is still exhausted. Even the half-light of the bedroom can do nothing to hide the ravages of livid bruises and contusions.

  He has shown her everything in the studio, the coffeemaker, the bathroom, a veritable pharmacy to deal with her injuries. He was loath for her to leave the hospital – who will look after her, remove her sutures? But there was nothing to be done; frantic and nervous, she could not bear to stay and was threatening to go back to her apartment. He could hardly tell her that someone would be waiting for her, that this was the trap. What could he do? Where could he take her other than here, in the middle of nowhere?

  So this is where Anne is.

  No woman has ever come here. Camille immediately dismisses this thought, since it was downstairs, by the doorway, that Irène was murdered. In the four years since, everything has changed, everything has been remade and yet everything is the same. He too has been “remade”, after a fashion. It never quite works, tattered shreds of a former life still cling; looking around he can see them everywhere.

  “I want you to do exactly what I’ve told you,” he tells her, “I want you to shut . . .”

  Anne lays her hand on his. Given the splints on her fingers there is nothing romantic about the gesture. It means: you’ve told me all this already, I’ve got it, now go.

  Camille leaves. He goes down the stairs from the mezzanine, steps out into the yard, locks the door and gets into his car.

  If his situation has become much more complicated, Anne’s is more secure. All he can do is grin and bear it, take the whole world on his shoulders. If he were of standard height, would he feel such a crushing sense of duty?

  *

  8.00 a.m.

  Forests are depressing, I’ve always hated them. This one is worse than most. Clamart, Meudon, welcome to the armpit of the universe. Gloomy as a wet weekend. A sign announces a built-up area. Difficult to know what to call the cluster of houses for the nouveaux riches, it’s not a part of the city, it’s not a suburb, it’s not a village. People say “the outskirts”, but the outskirts of what? Looking around at the carefully manicured gardens and terraces, I can’t decide which is more depressing, the desolate surroundings or the smugness of the inhabitants.

  Once past the cluster of houses, there is nothing but forest as far as the eye can see. The G.P.S. system takes an age to find the rue du Pavé-de-Meudon (and, on the left, the rue Morte-Bouteille. Who the fuck comes up with names like Morte-Bouteille?) Obviously, it’s impossible to park a car without attracting attention, which means driving deep into the arse-end of nowhere and walking back.

  I’m strung out, I haven’t been eating properly and I’m exhausted, trying to do too many things at once. And I fucking hate walking. Especially in the forest . . .

  The little damsel just needs to sit tight, I’ll be there very soon to bring her a little message. And I’ve got all the tools I need to make myself understood. And when I’m done with her, I plan to take off to where forests are banned, where there’s not a single tree within a hundred-kilometre radius. I need sandy beaches, killer cocktails and a few relaxing hands of poker so I can get over all this excitement. I’m getting old. I’d like to make the most of things while there’s still time. But if I’m to do that, I need to stay calm, to be cold-blooded as I tramp through this fucking forest, constantly on the alert. It’s hard to believe how many people there are traipsing through this desolate wasteland even at this ungodly hour – young people, old people, couples are out rambling, hiking, jogging. I even came across a couple riding horses.

  That said, the further I trek, the fewer people I encounter. The shack is set back at least three hundred metres from the road and the dirt track leading there stops abruptly, beyond it there is nothing but forest.

  Carrying a sniper rifle – even in its case – is not quite in keeping with the local country attire, so I’ve stuffed it into a sports bag. Especially as I don’t look like some guy out collecting mushrooms.

  I haven’t seen a soul for several minutes now, the G.P.S. has no reception, but this is the only dirt track around here.

  It will just be the two of us. We’ll get this little job done.

  *

  8.30 a.m.

  Every clanging door, every footstep along the hallway, every face peering through the bars, everything weighs on him. Because deep down, Camille is afraid. Long ago, when he first realised that one day he would have to come back
here, he dismissed the thought. But it came back to the surface, thrashing like a fish on a riverbank, telling him that sooner or later this meeting would take place. All he needed was some pretext to come here, to give in without shame to this overpowering need.

  Before him, behind him, all around, the heavy metal gates of the central prison open and close.

  As he moves along the hallways with little, birdlike steps, Camille stifles the urge to vomit, his head is spinning.

  The guard escorting him is deferential, almost protective, as though he understands the situation and feels that, given the exceptional circumstances, Camille deserves special consideration. Everywhere Camille looks there are signs.

  A hall, another hall and then the waiting room. The door is opened and Camille sits at the metal table bolted to the floor, his heart is hammering fit to burst, his throat is dry. He waits. He lays his hands flat, but seeing them tremble, he hides them under the table.

  The second door opens, the one at the far end of the room. At first he can see nothing but a pair of shoes on the footrest of the wheelchair, shiny black leather shoes, then the wheelchair begins to move, infinitely slowly as though wary or suspicious. Two legs appear, fat knees straining at the fabric of the trousers, then the wheelchair comes to a halt halfway across the threshold. Camille can see a pair of fleshy hands, so pale the veins are invisible, gripping the wheels. One metre further, and the man himself appears.

  He pauses for an instant. From the moment he enters, his eyes bore into Camille, they never leave him. The guard steps around the table and moves the other metal chair to make room for the wheelchair and then, at Camille’s signal, he leaves.

  The wheelchair rolls forward, then pivots with unexpected ease.

  Finally they are face to face.

  For the first time in four years, Camille Verhœven, commandant of the brigade criminelle, finds himself confronted by the man who butchered his wife.

  The man he knew then was tall and lean, with an old-fashioned, almost rakish elegance and a disconcerting sensuality, especially his full lips. The prisoner before him is slovenly and obese. The same physical traits are now half buried in a bloated body. Only his face is the same, like a delicate mask worn by a fat man. His hair is long and lank. His eyes are as sly, as shifty as ever.

  “It was written.” Buisson’s voice is tremulous, too loud, too shrill. “And it is now,” he says, as though bringing the interview to an end.

  In his glory days, he prided himself on such turns of phrase. In a sense, this was what led him to murder seven times, this taste for the grandiloquent, his ostentatious arrogance. He and Camille despised each other at sight. Later, as so often, history confirmed that their intuitions had been correct. But this is not the time to go over ancient history.

  “Yes,” Camille says simply. “It is now.”

  Camille’s voice does not tremble. He feels calmer now he is sitting opposite Buisson. He has a lot of experience of face-to-face encounters, he knows he will not rant and rage. The man he so often imagined dead, tortured, suffering in dreams, is not the same, and seeing him now, Camille realises that he feels only a calm, dispassionate animosity. For years, all his hatred, all his rage was heaped on Irène’s killer, but that is finished.

  Buisson is finished.

  But Camille’s life, his story, is not.

  His culpability in Irène’s death is something that will haunt him for ever. He will never be over her, this truth, this simple fact, illuminates everything. Everything else is evasion.

  Realising this, Camille looks up, and his eyes well with the tears that instantly bring him closer to Irène as she was, beautifully, eternally young, for him alone. He grows old; she, more radiant than ever, will never change. What Buisson did has no power over his memories, that intimate collection of images, recollections and sensations that comprise his love of Irène.

  Something he bears like a scar, imperceptible yet indelible.

  Buisson does not move. From the beginning of this encounter he has been afraid.

  Camille’s brief pang, quickly overcome, creates no awkwardness between the two men. Words will come, but it was necessary that silence be given its due. Camille shakes it off, he does not want Buisson to see this fleeting moment of pain, their mutual silence, as some sort of mute communion. There is nothing he wishes to share with this man. He blows his nose, stuffs the tissue in his pocket, props his elbows on the table, folds his hands under his chin and stares at Buisson.

  Buisson has been dreading this moment since yesterday. When he discovered – on the prison grapevine – that Verhœven had paid a visit to Mouloud Faraoui, he knew his time had come. He lay awake all night, tossing and turning, unable to believe it. His death is now a foregone conclusion. Faraoui’s gang has spies everywhere in La Centrale, there is not a cockroach that can hide from him. If Camille has found a way of paying for Faraoui’s services – by giving up the name of the man who grassed him up, for instance – then an hour from now or two days from now, Buisson will find a shiv embedded in his throat as he comes out of the dining hall or be garrotted from behind while a couple of weight-lifters hold his arms. He may be catapulted in his wheelchair from the third-floor balcony. Or be smothered by his mattress. It will depend on the order given, Verhœven may even insist on a slow, painful death; Buisson might spend a whole night choking on a gag in the fetid toilets, or bleed to death, drop by drop, in the cupboard of one of the workshops . . .

  Buisson is scared of dying.

  By now, he had convinced himself that Camille would not exact revenge. The fear that he put behind him years ago floods back, all the more violent and terrifying because it feels somehow less justified. The years he has spent in jail, the things he has endured, the respect he has earned, the power he has managed to acquire, instilled in him a sense of impunity that Verhœven has destroyed in a few short hours. Camille had only to visit Faraoui for everyone to realise that the reprieve has been temporary, that Buisson’s stay of execution will last only a few hours more. There has been a lot of talk in the corridors, Faraoui was quick to spread the news, part of his deal with Verhœven was to put the fear of God into Buisson. A few of the screws have heard and the inmates have begun to look at Buisson differently.

  Why now? That is the question.

  “I hear you’ve become a big shot . . .”

  Buisson wonders if this is the answer. But no. Camille is simply stating a fact. Buisson is an exceptionally intelligent man. When he tried to make his escape, Louis lodged the bullet in his spine that put him in this wheelchair, but before that he had been running rings around the police. By the time he arrived in prison, his reputation had preceded him, in fact he became something of a star for having successfully evaded the brigade criminelle for so long. With considerable skill, Buisson capitalised on the prisoners’ admiration, he managed to remain aloof from the gang wars, he performed small services for other inmates – in prison, an intellectual, a man who knows things, is a rarity. Over the years, he succeeded in forging a small network of contacts, first within the prison and later outside as he continued to do small favours for paroled prisoners, making introductions, arranging meetings, securing interviews. Last year, he successfully intervened in an internecine war between rival gangs in the western suburbs, calmed the situation, proposed terms and expertly negotiated the ceasefire. Within the prison, he does not involve himself in any trafficking, but he knows all the scams. On the outside, Buisson knows all there is to know about high-profile criminals and is remarkably well connected to those who meet his exacting standards; this makes him a powerful man.

  But for all that, now that Camille has made his decision, a day from now or perhaps an hour from now, he will be a dead man.

  “You look worried . . .” Camille says.

  “I’m waiting.”

  Buisson immediately regrets the phrase which sounds like a challenge and therefore a defeat. Camille raises a hand: no problem, he understands.

  “I’ll let you
explain . . .”

  “No,” Camille says, “there will be no explanation. I’m simply here to tell you how this is going to go down.”

  Buisson is deathly pale. Even Verhœven’s calmness seems like a threat. He becomes indignant.

  “I deserve an explanation!” Buisson roars.

  Though physically he is a very different man, inside he has not changed, his titanic ego has survived intact. Camille fumbles in his pocket and lays a photograph on the table.

  “Vincent Hafner. He’s . . .”

  “I know who he is . . .” The remark is curt, as though Buisson feels insulted. But it also betrays his immense relief. In a split second, Buisson realised that he still has a chance.

  Camille registers the instinctive exultation in his voice, but he makes no comment. It was to be expected. Buisson immediately goes on the defensive, attempting to confuse the issue.

  “I don’t know the man personally . . . He’s not a major player, but he has his place. He has a reputation for being somewhat . . . savage. A thug.”

  It would take electrodes attached to his head to record the astonishing speed of firing synapses.

  “He disappeared last January,” Camille says. “For months, no-one – not even his criminal colleagues – knew where he was. Complete radio silence. Then, suddenly, he reappears and it’s like he’s got a new lease of life, he’s back to his old ways, back on the job, bright as a button.”

  “And you find this somehow strange?”

  “I’m having a little difficulty squaring his sudden disappearance with his spectacular comeback. For a career criminal so close to retirement, it’s unusual.”

  “So, something is not quite right.”

  Camille’s face darkens, he looks worried, almost angry with himself.

  “That’s one way of putting it: something is not quite right. Something I don’t understand.”

  Seeing the ghost of a smile cross Buisson’s face, Camille knows he was right to trust to the man’s overweening pride. It was arrogance that led him to kill again and again, even as it led to his arrest. This is the reason that he will die in a prison cell. And still he has learned nothing, his narcissism is like a bottomless well, ever ready to engulf him. “Something I don’t understand.” Camille’s crucial phrase was designed to appeal to that same vanity, because Buisson is convinced that he understands. And cannot resist letting Camille know.