Sebag pointed to a garish painting, the only decoration that hung on the walls. Composed of splashes of color with a preference for blood red and goose-shit green, it reminded Sebag of the first autopsy he’d witnessed when he was a young cop.
“And that’s a real what?”
Barrère had seen what he was looking at. He smiled.
“The work of a young Catalan artist. A complete madman. Very nice. When I say very nice, I’m referring to the artist, obviously. His work is a little more . . . complex and tormented.”
“You like it?”
“Let’s say I put up with it.”
Sebag didn’t hide his astonishment.
“In fact, I’m doing him a favor by displaying it. Lots of people pass through here, you know, CEOs, politicians. People who count. That’s useful for a young artist.”
Sebag was not fooled. Barrère’s allusion to his connections was no accident. It was a kind of notice, a warning.
“Events are a big thing in business these days,” Barrère went on. “It’s a form of management that’s currently very trendy. An event can range from a simple Christmas tree to an outing to go canyoning, by way of a weekend in Morocco, tuna fishing on the Mediterranean, or a private box at a rugby match.”
“Are there many of you doing this in Perpignan?”
“No, I’m the only one. And especially, the best!”
He laughed at his own joke. Sebag, frowning, didn’t even try to look amused. He looked behind him again. The young secretary had put her legs back under her desk. She was on the telephone. Judging by the excited gestures she was making, he guessed the call was in no way professional. He winked complicitly to the Perpignan king of the event.
“There are good sides to your business, it seems.”
Barrère pretended to be offended.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Inspector, she’s the daughter of a friend, a student whom I took on as an intern for the summer. As I was telling you a moment ago, our business concerns relationships, and we have to know how to be useful.”
“All right, then,” Sebag said in conclusion, “if you haven’t anything else to add.”
“I’m sorry, Inspector. I wish I could have been more helpful.”
Barrère had stood up, ready to usher his guest out. But Sebag remained seated, flipping through the little blue notebook in which he wrote down the important points in his interviews.
“All the same, it’s odd . . . ”
He circled a few words written in his notebook.
“What’s odd?” Barrère asked impatiently.
“Maybe I made a mistake. I probably wrote down one of your answers wrong.”
Barrère’s smile grew broader. A little too broad to be sincere.
Sebag turned several pages, pretending to re-read certain sentences. A petty revenge. It was amusing the way sometimes the person standing up could find himself in a position of inferiority.
“Regarding Lopez . . . ”
Barrère shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Irritated. Or not very at ease.
“Yes . . . ?”
Sebag decided to try a bluff. It didn’t cost anything to try. Especially when you’d arrived at a standstill in an investigation.
“Another witness told us that Lopez had someone with him the last time you played billiards.”
“Really?”
Barrère changed his position again, crossed his arms over his belly and then immediately uncrossed them.
“Who told you that?”
Sebag leafed through his notebook again. Stopped at a blank page, holding his pen in the air.
“You don’t want to change any of your statements?”
“My . . . statements? I thought we were just talking. My statements . . . All of a sudden that sounds very official!”
He puffed a little inaudibly and sat down again.
“Oh, and then after all . . . ”
He shrank back into the cushion of his armchair.
“I didn’t think that all this could be that important for you and I was afraid of getting Lopez in trouble. He’s married. But . . . since you already know about it.”
He hesitated a little longer, then began to talk.
“In fact, we played only one game that evening. There was a young woman with Lopez. They left together around nine-thirty.”
Sebag inwardly congratulated himself.
“How would you describe this young woman?”
“Tall, blonde. Quite pretty. If you like that type.”
“What type?”
“The Germanic type. Or Scandinavian. She spoke French well but with a northern European accent.”
“Did this woman have a name?”
“He introduced us to her as Vanessa.”
Something in his tone suggested that he was skeptical.
“That wasn’t her real name?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t all tall blondes called Vanessa?”
“Is that what you think?”
“In a certain milieu, yes!”
“What milieu?”
He looked down at his patent leather shoes, and seemed to regret having spoken too fast.
“You know what I mean . . . The milieu of loose women and sex for money.”
Sebag carefully noted down this last information.
“Anything else? Something unusual, a detail?”
“Uh . . . yes. The young woman . . . had a bird on her right shoulder. That is . . . she had a tattoo of a bird.”
“And that was which evening, again?”
He seemed surprised by the question.
“Well, Tuesday night, of course. I thought you knew that already.”
Leaving Barrère’s office, Sebag felt rather proud of himself. He gave the young “intern” a friendly smile and almost ran into a big, crew-cut guy who seemed to be waiting. The client looked him up and down with curiosity.
In the end, he hadn’t needed to bluff. Without trickery, Molina had obtained the same information from another of Lopez’s buddies. It was in fact Tuesday night that the cab driver had played billiards, in the company of a blonde.
“That coincides with what I was told, and that’s good,” Sebag commented, “but it’s still not very much. And above all it seems to confirm that we’re dealing with a simple case of adultery.”
“Yes and no. That still doesn’t explain this two-day absence. By the way, are you drinking something?”
Molina had arrived at the bar before him, and was drinking a pastis. Sebag asked for a lemonade with barley water. Rafel, the bar’s owner, had foreseen his order and brought it immediately.
“Vols tambe un caf?” (“Would you like coffee, too?”)
“No thanks, not now. Mainly, I’m thirsty.”
Fabrice Gasch, Lopez’s other friend, ran a surveillance firm. He provided watchmen for small and large stores in the city and doormen for a few nightclubs. He recruited mainly in the department’s boxing clubs, and had himself boxed with the professionals a few times, on the quiet. Gasch and Lopez had known each other since they were children; they’d grown up together in the Saint-Jacques neighborhood. Pals, they had also been accomplices: it was Gasch who’d helped Lopez beat up a rival outside a discotheque ten years earlier.
Perpign’And Co sometimes hired guards. Barrère had taught Gasch how to play billiards. One night Gasch had invited Lopez to join them and that’s how the three men had gotten into the habit of meeting regularly.
“He spontaneously acknowledged that Lopez was accompanied by a young woman Tuesday night?”
“Yes, almost. First he told me that he’d seen Lopez Tuesday, and when I asked if the cab driver was alone, he admitted that he wasn’t. After two or three seconds of hesitation, maybe.”
“Did he know the young
woman?”
“No, it was the first time he’d seen her.”
“What did he tell you about her?”
“Not much. That she was blond, tall, rather pretty, with a tattoo on her shoulder. A description that tallies with the one Barrère gave you.”
Sebag was pensive.
“I wonder why Barrère tried to hide the fact that Lopez was with someone. He claimed that it was to avoid getting Lopez in trouble . . . But Gasch didn’t hesitate even though he was closer to the couple. He’s the one who should have tried to hide his buddy’s romantic affairs.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Why not?”
“If he knew about the relationship between Lopez and his wife, he knew there was hardly any risk in talking to you about the blonde.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he conceded.
However, he wasn’t really convinced. He had a feeling there was another possible explanation.
“He also tried to lie about the date of their last meeting. He said it was Friday and not Tuesday evening. But that’s very important information . . . That said, he didn’t stick to his lie, either. He gave in as soon as I bluffed.”
“So?”
“So I don’t know. It’s a little as if . . . As if he’d been afraid, at first, of saying too much, and then later of attracting our attention by telling too big a lie.”
“A little fuzzy, huh?”
“For sure. But maybe it would be worth poking around a little along that line.”
“How?”
“That’s the problem. We can’t pick a fight with Barrère. For the moment, we’re concerned only with the disappearance of an adult person: no misdemeanor has been committed, much less a crime.”
“We have to draw one conclusion, however,” Molina said, looking at his watch.
“What?”
“It’s time to eat. You staying here?”
“No, I’ve got an errand to run. I’d like to buy a cell phone for Léo. He’s going to a summer camp next week, and if I want to hear from him from time to time, I think I’m going to have to get him a phone.”
“A cell phone? He’s going to be one happy kid.”
“Are you kidding? His reaction will be something like: “Finally!” All his friends have one, and some of them have had one since they were in primary school, so you can imagine . . . ”
“And you’ve held out up to now . . . Bravo. What heroism.”
“Go ahead, make fun of me. What about your sons, do they have cell phones?”
Molina had two boys. The younger was Léo’s age, the elder would soon be eighteen.
“They’ve had them for years. After the divorce, I had to: they allow me to talk to my boys without going through their mother.”
He lifted his arms toward the heavens and then let them fall back heavily. Fatalist.
“Note that it’s cheaper to buy one now,” he went on. “It’ll cost you less.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well . . . when you get divorced!”
For Jacques, three things in life were inevitable: death, hemorrhoids, and, if you were married, divorce. He’d mocked Gilles ever since the latter had told him one day that in eighteen years of married life, he’d never cheated on Claire.
“You’re a poor imbecile if you’ve never tried to see what else is out there, and a dull cretin if you think that being as beautiful as she is, your wife has always limited herself to your pretty little face. And when I talk about your face, I mean . . . ”
Sebag was walking through the streets of Perpignan, looking down on the Basse. The little river ran quietly in its channel through the downtown area, below street level. Its grass-covered banks looked like nice places to hang out, but they were not accessible to the public. Planted on the lawn, pink, white, and red oleanders grew their brightly colored leaves as far as the sidewalk.
Sebag was satisfied: he’d found a cell phone that could actually be used to make calls. He’d had to wage a long battle with the salesperson, but had finally managed to get a model without too many gadgets. He’d yielded on the camera, though. He imagined that Léo would enjoy sending pictures even more than having a conversation, and the idea of receving photos from his son from time to time during his vacation had convinced him.
The police headquarters in Perpignan was a grim building, a three-story block that looked like one of the low-cost housing towers in the working-class neighborhoods of the northern part of the city. Two sickly palm trees framed the main entrance. In the reception hall, Martine, the young policewoman on duty there, gave him a warm smile. Sebag slid his badge over an electronic reader. The door opened with a click and allowed him to push it open. He briskly climbed the two flights of stairs that led to his office.
Jacques was already back. With both feet on his desk, he was reading L’Equipe. A cup was sitting next to him. Sebag had wolfed down a sandwich and hadn’t taken time to drink a cup of coffee. He felt a terrible craving but didn’t feel like going back downstairs to drink the lousy stuff dispensed in the cafeteria.
“I asked a couple of pals at the gendarmerie to put out a search bulletin for Lopez’s car,” Molina told him. “I also went by the Vice Squad: they do in fact have a Vanessa in their files, a blonde but small and rather plump. I’ve got her address, and I’ll try to stop and see her this evening.”
He winked at Sebag before going back to his newspaper.
Sebag looked at his watch. It was three o’clock. They hadn’t found anything. Soon, Castello would be blowing his top when he learned that they’d wasted precious time on a case that wasn’t worth it. At least he might give up that stupid idea of a promotion.
Gilles was already thinking about the weekend. The last one all of them would spend together for some time. Tuesday, Léo was going to take the train to the Cévennes, where he would spend a month at a special motocross camp. Séverine was leaving the next day with the parents of a friend of hers for a vacation on the Costa Brava. The following week, it would be Claire’s turn. Rather than spend her time alongside the pool with her dear and loving husband, she had decided to book a Mediterranean cruise for herself. He couldn’t blame her. But he didn’t at all like the idea of being alone part of the month of July.
So, what about this Lopez?
He tried to concentrate on the investigation. The difficulties they’d run into made him think that it wasn’t just a banal romantic escapade; there was something else. However, no matter how much he reflected on it, the information they’d gathered up to that point in no way justified that impression. So what was it? Instinct? Nonsense. And why not simply the unconscious hope that a “great” case would soon help him forget the absence of his family members?
He went down to the cafeteria to drink a Perrier. The headquarters‘ break area was in fact only an old storage room whose walls had been torn down. It had been fitted with five chairs attached to the walls and two vending machines: one distributed hot drinks, the other cold ones. Sebag put a couple of coins in the cold drink machine and received his can of water. Despite the smoking ban, an odor of cold tobacco lingered in this closed space. He opened the window. The warm air that flowed in carried the acid effluvium from exhaust pipes. The headquarters was next to a highway interchange. National Route 9 came in from Narbonne over the Arago bridge before heading out toward Barcelona, and crossed the National Route 116, which wound around toward Andorra. Barcelona, Andorra . . . In Roussillon, the highway signs encouraged you to dream and to travel.
When he got back upstairs, Molina was hanging up his phone. He was beaming.
“You know the Força Real hermitage?”
“A little. I went running there once. But I much prefer the Sant-Marti chapel above Castelnou.”
“Oh, yeah,” Molina said, looking as if he was thinking about something else.
“Over thirt
een hundred feet difference in elevation, if I remember correctly.”
“For Força Real?”
“Yes. When I went there, the hermitage was closed but the view is superb.”
“It’s quiet up there, in any case,” Molina commented, all smiles.
“That’s true.”
His colleague’s jubilation surprised Sebag.
“Very quiet, in fact.” Molina went on. “When you abandon a car there, you can be sure that the gendarmes won’t find it right away.”
“Which means . . . ?” Sebag urged, thinking he’d understood.
“Which means I’ve got a pal at the police brigade in Millas who has just called me. Lopez’s taxi has been found in the parking lot at the hermitage.”
“Shit! It can’t be true. And Lopez?”
“No trace of him.”
“Well, well . . . ”
The case was getting interesting. A taxi and no driver: so there was a mystery, after all. Sebag thought quickly. An hour to get together a team of technicians and get over there. Two hours there to check all the usual things and inspect the area around the hermitage. Before seven, they’d be in the boss’s office for a quick summary and maybe a few congratulations. Then enough time to throw together a report and give instructions to the teams on duty over the weekend, and off he’d go! He’d be home by eight at the latest. Wasn’t life great?
CHAPTER 7
Will you play with me, Grandpa?”
The boy set his blue eyes on his immobile grandfather.
“Hey, hey, Grandpa . . . ”
He put his delicate fingers in the big, dry hand of the man who was still sitting motionless in front of his glass of pastis.
“Will you play pétanque?”
Louis kept at it with the stubborn patience a four-year-old can show.
“Will you play, Grandpa?”
Despite his clear, high-pitched voice, he couldn’t get his grandfather’s attention.
Finally the boy dropped a ball on the table and overturned the glass of pastis. Robert emerged from his lethargy and seeing the damage done, swore. He met his daughter’s saddened eyes and got hold of himself. His grandson’s repeated questions finally made it into his consciousness. He managed a slight smile and got up with difficulty. In any case, the alcohol couldn’t do anything for him.
Summertime All the Cats Are Bored Page 5
