Summertime All the Cats Are Bored

by Philippe Georget

  She hurt but couldn’t remember any violence. She plunged into listening to her body. The pain was coming chiefly from the bruises caused by her bonds. Then she focused on her limbs stiffened by a position that was growing more and more uncomfortable. Still proceeding mentally, she examined her head. Her pain felt like a headache, not like something caused by a blow. She had not been struck. Her mind slipped down to her vagina. No pain in that damp place, not the slightest burning. She had not been raped.

  The word suddenly forced itself on her. There was no possible doubt. A kidnapping! It was a kidnapping.

  But why?

  She moved her head, rubbing her face on the mattress to try to move the damned cloth that was hiding the light from her. Then she held still. Memories of cop shows came back to her. If the kidnappers had blindfolded her, it was so that she couldn’t recognize them later on. After they had released her.

  So they were expecting to release her.

  When?

  For the moment, that didn’t matter. She had glimpsed a hope. A light. So it was a kind of game. A cruel game. She wanted to see it that way. She was prepared to play earnestly. She’d learn the rules, and respect them scrupulously.

  Everything was going to be all right.

  In a few days at most, she would return home. She would go back to her little apartment in Amsterdam and give her parents a big hug.

  Just as she was formulating these reassuring thoughts in a low voice, she heard a key turn in a lock.

  Who could have kidnapped her? She had an idea but rejected it with horror.

  The door creaked. Ingrid’s tears soaked into the rough cloth that masked her eyes.

  CHAPTER 4

  Could you please do me a favor, Gilles?”

  Perceiving his colleague’s hesitation, Jacques Molina conspicuously looked at his watch. He was late for work.

  “Provided you do me one in return, of course,” Gilles replied.

  Jacques Molina had been working with Gilles Sebag for four years. They shared the same office and often conducted investigations together. They got along well but were not friends. Too many differences. They put up with each other; they respected each other. They both thought that was good enough.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “A young woman came in to report her husband missing. It’s a case that seems . . . interesting, but I absolutely have to leave. I’m in a hurry. I’ve got an important meeting at noon. If you could keep this warm for me, I’d be eternally grateful.”

  “What do you mean, ‘keep it warm’?”

  Molina gave him a complicitous wink.

  “I just had time to take down the main points of her deposition. I’d like you to get the details and give me your impressions. I’ll take over the case afterward.”

  Sebag heaved a long sigh.

  “No problem. I’ll take care of it.”

  Molina was delighted.

  “I knew I could count on you! We’ll both put our signatures on the report, as if we’d spent the whole morning working on it. As usual.”

  “As usual,” Sebag replied wearily.

  He wasn’t very proud of himself. Not very proud of them.

  “Go ahead, hurry up. You’re going to be late.”

  “Thanks. See you later.”

  Molina was already on his way. He was going out the door when Sebag shouted after him:

  “Brunette or blonde?”

  Molina waved his hand and answered without turning around.

  “The meeting is with a blonde, the deposition with a brunette.”

  “So . . . your name is Sylvie Lopez, née Navarro. You’re twenty-four and live on Vilar Street in Perpignan. You work as a housekeeper for an industrial cleaning firm. You’ve been married for . . . three years, and you have a little girl born last January.”

  Sebag looked up from the notes his colleague had taken and looked at the young woman. She was in fact a brunette, with a Louise Brooks–style bob. She had a pretty, sad face, lit by two large, dark, and glistening eyes. Tired eyes. Sebag understood what Molina meant by an “interesting case.”

  “Your husband is named José. He’s a cab driver. And he hasn’t come home for two days. Is that right?”

  She nodded timidly.

  “Tell me everything,” Sebag went on. “The last time you saw him . . . What you said to each other . . . When you started to get worried, and so on.”

  The young woman smoothed out her skirt with her right hand and started in.

  “The last time I saw him was Tuesday noon. I was leaving for work and he had to leave too. We both work afternoons and evenings. Actually, I’m the one who works like that, he has adapted to my schedule. That’s easier in his trade, you know, as an independent cab driver, he’s freer . . . ”

  She pulled a thread on the hem of her skirt and continued.

  “I came home around ten-thirty, after I went by my parents’ place to pick up our little girl. I put her to bed and made dinner while I watched television. Normally José gets home around eleven-thirty. He waits for the last train at the Perpignan rail station.”

  She looked up slightly and glanced at the inspector from below. Sebag said nothing. Didn’t move. You had to let them talk.

  “At midnight, he still hadn’t come home. I told myself that was good news: it meant that the last customer had asked for a long trip. At that hour, it’s nighttime rates, and long trips bring in a lot of money, you see. José hasn’t been driving a cab for very long, and it’s a little difficult. He has to make payments on the car, pay for his license, gas, it’s really hard. But then my parents help us . . . ”

  Sebag allowed himself to nod his head to encourage her. The minimum. She had opened a parenthesis regarding their financial and familial situation. It was up to her to decide whether she should close it right away.

  “Finally, at midnight I decided to eat dinner. I mustn’t go to bed too late. Our daughter wakes up every morning at six, and often she even cries several times during the night, so, as far as sleep is concerned, you understand . . . ”

  He understood, yes, and he told her so with a flick of his eyelids.

  She didn’t go on immediately. She returned to the hem of her skirt, seeming to check its condition. Pauses, like digressions, could be significant.

  “Jenny . . . Jenny is our little girl, her name is Jennifer but we call her Jenny, she didn’t cry at all that night and she woke later than usual. Just before seven o’clock. That hasn’t happened more than once or twice since she was born.”

  She seemed proud of her daughter. So proud that she dared to stop examining her skirt and raise her eyes toward Sebag. He smiled at her. He too remembered the first week with Léo, how a child’s sleep and meals could determine everything in a household.

  “I . . . I took care of Jenny,” the young woman went on. “I gave her a bottle. And since José still hadn’t come home, I decided to call him on his cell phone. But I got his voice mail.”

  “What time was it when you called?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure. Maybe eight or nine in the morning.”

  Sebag sat up and put his elbows on his desk, his hands folded in front of his mouth. He asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world:

  “Did you leave a message?”

  “Yes . . . No,” she finally stammered. “That is, not right away. I had housework to do, ironing. I was busy. I played with Jenny.”

  “You weren’t concerned?”

  “Not very . . . Not yet, really.”

  Sebag tried to imagine what would happen at his house if he didn’t come home one evening. Claire wouldn’t have waited until the next morning to call him. She would have called before going to bed and she would have left messages on his cell phone. She would have quickly gotten worried, and she would probably have slept badly. Being a policema
n was a dangerous occupation, but not as dangerous as being a cab driver. The road kills more people than hoodlums do.

  The situation in his marriage wasn’t comparable. Sebag would never have stayed out all night without letting his wife know.

  “When exactly did you start to get worried?”

  The question seemed to destroy the trust that had been established between them.

  Sylvie Lopez looked down again at her hem.

  “Well, uh . . . In the morning. I’d called his cell phone, I’d left a message, and since he still hadn’t called back, then I got worried.”

  “And what did you think then?”

  Sebag didn’t want to rush the young woman. He was an advocate of painless births.

  “I don’t recall, precisely,” Sylvie Lopez went on after a few hesitations. “I was annoyed: it was getting late and I had to leave for work.”

  “You weren’t worried all that much, in fact.”

  She suddenly stopped fussing with her hem and starting smoothing her skirt again.

  “Not all that much, no.”

  Sebag looked at her. He waited a few seconds until she decided to raise her eyes to him. He spoke in his warmest voice, in his most understanding tone. Even during a painless birth, there comes a time when the baby has to be pushed out.

  “This wasn’t the first time he’d stayed out all night that way?”

  The young woman’s chin began to tremble. She looked at him with her dark eyes shining with shame.

  “It wasn’t the first time, was it?” he repeated.

  “No,” she admitted in a whisper.

  Tears welled up and rolled slowly down her hollow cheeks. She sniffled. Sebag opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a package of Kleenex. The last one. He’d have to buy some more, he said to himself. The administration provided free cartridges for revolvers but hadn’t thought of Kleenex. They were, however, more useful on an everyday basis.

  Sylvie Lopez blew her nose for a long time. Sebag waited until she had finished.

  “Does your husband have a mistress?”

  She jumped. The word offended her. As if he’d shown a spotlight on a situation she had pretended she didn’t know about. So long as we don’t name things or people, we don’t bring them to life. And we prevent them from taking too much power over us.

  “No . . . I don’t think you could say that.”

  She looked for words, and would have liked to clarify her thought, but first she needed to get things straight in her own head. She had to begin by looking the truth in the face.

  “I think he’s had . . . flings that didn’t go anywhere. I don’t think he has an, uh, ongoing relationship . . . I would have noticed.”

  She dried her eyes with the Kleenex. Her mascara had run and left marks on her cheeks. She wasn’t able to wipe it all away. Sebag would have liked to get up and help her.

  “Have you spoken with your husband about his . . . flings?” he asked.

  She shook her head. Sebag didn’t try to hide his astonishment.

  “You seem to have accepted this situation pretty easily . . . ”

  She shrugged.

  “What good would it have done to talk about it?”

  She blew her nose again and, confronted by Sebag’s silence, felt obliged to explain.

  “I believe men sometimes have needs that women don’t have. And then I think being a father scared him a little. Maybe he needed to reassure himself, I don’t know. Do you have children?”

  Sebag did not answer.

  “And then so long as he came home and was nice to me, to us, I didn’t have any reason to complain, did I?”

  Sebag found her touching in her old-fashioned naïveté. She’d said that as if it were a commonplace. Her husband was really the worst of jerks. You don’t leave a woman like her. He scribbled a few key words in his notebook. A little blue notebook with large squares. These notes would later be valuable for re-transcribing the interview as accurately as possible.

  “What made you think your husband hadn’t simply stayed out two nights in a row?”

  “Since I hadn’t heard from him, I called some of his colleagues, I know two or three who’ve come to the house. I said that our daughter was sick and I had to get in touch with him right away, but he’d lost his cell phone. But nobody had seen him all day Wednesday.

  Sebag weighed his words so as not to hurt her.

  “He could also have stayed out all day, so to speak.”

  She shook her head vigorously. A lock of hair stuck to her wet mascara.

  “That seems impossible to you?” he asked.

  “He would have called, asked about Jenny . . . ”

  “He might have been afraid.”

  Her big, somber eyes grew round. They looked like two black marbles.

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Afraid of you.”

  “Why, since I don’t ask anything of him?”

  “You wouldn’t have made a scene? And you would have let him leave again without saying anything?”

  Her two black marbles caught Sebag’s eyes. She wanted to convince him.

  “What good would it have done to make a scene? We would have risked losing him forever. And then if he wanted to leave us for good, he could have come back to tell us, couldn’t he?”

  “Even the best of men are cowardly sometimes,” Sebag said ironically. “Maybe he didn’t dare tell you?”

  She thought about the inspector’s arguments for a moment, and then rejected them with a vigorous shake of her head.

  “No, I really don’t think so. You have to believe me, Inspector. Something has happened to him. I know it, I can feel it. Something serious.”

  After lunch, Sebag reread the missing person report Sylvie Lopez had filed. They had filled it out together, sketching a quick description of José: In his thirties, 5’9, heavy-set, dark eyes, thick brown hair and eyebrows, a mole on his neck. They had mentioned the clothes he was wearing on the day he disappeared—light brown slacks and a sky-blue shirt. Then Sebag had had her sign the report before he sent her home with a few reassuring words that hadn’t reassured her at all.

  He remained perplexed.

  The young woman’s concern had ended up contaminating him. He couldn’t extinguish in his memory the wet and imploring flash of jade in her soft eyes. He wondered what was leading him to pursue this case. Was it the intuition that this disappearance was in fact concealing something serious, or was it the sympathy he felt for this young woman?

  He was dialing the number of the husband’s cell phone when the land-line on his desk rang. It was Superintendent Castello. His boss.

  “Ah, Sebag, finally . . . Could you come see me?”

  He added, but Sebag had already understood from his tone:

  “Immediately.”

  The superintendent’s office was on the fourth floor, right over his. Sebag quickly climbed the stairs. The door was open but he waited prudently on the threshold.

  “Come in,” Castello said, “and close the door behind you, please.”

  Sebag obeyed. Fearing a dressing-down for being absent that morning, he tried to forestall his boss.

  “So, how’s the training going? Are you in good shape?”

  The inspector and the superintendent had met several times at foot-race competitions. At first, Sebag, who was younger and in better condition, ran far ahead. But Castello, despite being in his fifties, continued to make progress. He hoped to run a marathon someday. Paris or New York, in a year or two. Sebag offered him advice and encouragement. He’d run three marathons.

  Castello didn’t allow his subordinate’s question to distract him.

  “Listen, Gilles, I couldn’t find you this morning.”

  “Did you need me?” Sebag answered evasively.

  “Yes, I
had a telephone conversation with Captain Marceau, the head of customs, about this matter of contraband cigarettes, you know . . . ”

  “Are they getting anywhere?”

  “Slowly, but Marceau is thinking all the same about raiding a warehouse near the Saint-Charles Market and also a few bars in Perpignan. They will probably need us.”

  After a couple of fruitful confiscations the preceding spring, the customs men had noticed that a small gang of local criminals was setting up a regular network for the clandestine sale of cigarettes, taking advantage of the enormous disparities in price on the two sides of the Pyrenees.

  “Isn’t it a little early for a raid?” Sebag asked with concern.

  “Probably. But the prefecture is putting pressure on us. The government wants quick results.”

  The subject was politically sensitive. Since the increases in cigarette prices in France in the early years of the decade, tobacconist shops were closing one after another in Roussillon, whereas cigarette sales had doubled in the border village of Le Perthus. Those mainly to blame were not the smugglers, however, but rather private individuals who bought their cigarettes in Spain. They saved twenty euros per carton, and that quickly paid for the trip. Since they couldn’t stop the smokers, the prefecture had decided to set an example by putting an end to the smuggling.

  “If customs acts too quickly, it may end up being a waste of time,” Sebag observed.

  “I know, and I said that to Marceau. But when politics get involved . . . ”

  “We have to look active, right?”

  “You might put it that way,” Castello smiled.

  Sebag shook his head resentfully. If the politicians really wanted to do something about the problem, all they would have to do is harmonize the two countries’ fiscal policies. The smuggling would cease immediately. Then customs could concentrate on more dangerous schemes and the police could concentrate on real crime. The kind that can’t be dealt with by a simple ministerial decree. The thefts, violence, and car-burnings. The kind that really affect people’s lives.

  “Marceau told me that our minister was planning to take advantage of the opportunity to bring a public relations campaign here,” Castello added.