He picked up the set of pétanque balls and put his hand on Louis’s shoulder.
“I’ll start,” the boy demanded. “I get to throw out the conchon.”
“The cochonnet, Robert automatically corrected.
“Yes, the conchonnet, and I get to throw it out first, okay?”
Robert led Louis toward the area in the campground reserved for pétanque. He distractedly greeted the four vacationers who were already playing a game. He recognized at least two of them. Jean and his son. How did he know them? Oh yes, Patrick. It must have been twenty years ago now. Twenty years . . . the age of the young Dutch woman.
“Are you all right, Robert?” Jean asked, looking at him over his glasses.
“I’m all right,” Robert answered without the slightest conviction.
At first, people had felt sorry for him, pitied him. More, in fact, than the young woman, whom few of them had known: most of the vacationers now staying in the Oleanders campground had arrived after the tragedy happened.
“Making a discovery like that, just imagine, what a shock. It’s hard to get over it, that’s normal! It’ll get better in a while, you’ll see. You’ll forget . . . ”
It was two weeks now, and he hadn’t forgotten a thing. Josetta’s crushed-in face continued to haunt him. Day and night. People had gotten tired of hearing him talk about it and had ended up turning away. Then Robert had retreated into silence.
The local newspapers had also quickly gotten tired of the subject. The murder of the young Dutch woman had been in the headlines the first day. The following day, it was accorded a less prominent place, but it was still on the front page. Then it had slipped into the inside pages and finally disappeared. Since there were no new developments and the investigation wasn’t getting anywhere, it fell victim to oblivion and indifference. Argelès was preparing to receive hordes of tourists. As it did every summer, the population of the area was going be multiplied by a factor of ten or twelve in less than a week. There was no longer a minute to lose. Soon the tourists would be there. Everything had to be ready. Everything had to be beautiful.
Only Robert’s torments perpetuated the memory of the young woman.
“I threw out the conchon, Grandpa. I’ve also thrown a ball. Your turn to play.”
Robert looked at the playing area. He had some trouble remembering what he was doing there. The cochonnet had been stopped by the planks that enclosed the area. But where was the ball Louis had thrown?”
“Go ahead, Grandpa,” the boy said impatiently.
Finally Robert located Louis’s ball. Only a yard from his feet. He threw his ball. Or rather he tossed it. Luckily or unluckily, it struck the cochonnet. Louis was simultaneously dazzled and furious.
“You’re cheating, Grandpa. You’re bigger than I am, you should stand farther away.”
He went to draw a line a good yard behind them. Robert, docile, moved back. Louis took advantage of this to advance a bit. He positioned himself right next to his first ball, which he shamelessly picked up. It’s amusing, he’s always been like that, Robert thought. A nitpicker and a poor sport, exactly like his father . . . He was not being fair to his grandson, he knew, and didn’t care.
In fact, it did him good.
Louis threw another ball that bounced off the plank and hit his grandfather’s. He shouted with joy and pride.
“I beat you, Grandpa, one point for me.”
Robert accepted the rules improvised by his grandson. He picked up the cochonnet and handed it to him.
The police had questioned him. Briefly. They’d seen how upset he’d been by the discovery of the body and hadn’t gone on. After all, he didn’t know much. He’d just accidentally found the body.
The path to the beach had remained closed for twenty-four hours. The team from the crime lab had gone over the sector with a fine-toothed comb but found nothing. At least that’s the impression he’d gotten from reading the newspaper. Every morning for a week, he’d gone to the closest cafe to look at L’Indépendant. He sat down on the seaside terrace and ordered an espresso, which he sugared heavily. As he used to do. It was good. And to hell with his diabetes! Death would come when it came. Whatever people did, whatever they said, death always had the last word.
Always.
According to the journalists, the investigation was not advancing. The police seemed not to have any sure leads, and since there was no evidence of sexual violence, they were saying that the crime might have been committed by a vagrant. Which meant they had no idea.
After the autopsy, Josetta’s body had been returned to Holland, where it had been cremated the following day. A moving ceremony, to use the reporter’s expression. The article was accompanied by a photo of the victim’s parents and sister. Weeping.
The game of pétanque continued without hitches. Robert was careful to throw his balls randomly. Louis played his turn over until he’d placed his ball near the cochonnet. Not knowing how to count, he innocently jumped from five to ten points. Robert congratulated him.
“Ten to zero, you’ve won, bravo.”
Louis was modest in victory.
“I can’t wait for papa to come, he’s better than you are, but maybe I’ll beat him anyway. Shall we play another game, Grandpa?”
Robert ran his wrinkled hand through his grandson’s short brown hair.
“Later, Louis, later. You’re too good for me. You’ve worn me out.”
“If you want,” the boy persisted, “I can let you have a handicap.”
“Thanks. We’ll see next time.”
“Then you have to put everything away,” Louis ordered as he went off toward the campground’s play area.
Robert picked up the balls and the cochonnet. He put them in their plastic case and went back to the trailer. Florence was waiting for him under the awning, sprawled on a seat, her legs spread and her belly full-blown.
“Thanks to him. He loves playing with you.”
Robert collapsed on a chair. He took up his crossword magazine and leafed through it looking for a new puzzle. Most of them had been begun, but none had been finished. He closed the magazine, then reached for the bottle of pastis. He hesitated. He didn’t really want any.
“You’re drinking a lot these days, aren’t you?” Florence said.
He replied with more weariness than anger.
“Your mother is no longer here to bug me about it. Don’t feel obliged to replace her.”
He poured himself a comfortable dose of pastis and filled the rest of the glass with the lukewarm water from a carafe on the table. Florence bit her lip to keep from crying. She’d never seen her father in such a state. She watched him drink half his glass in a single draft.
He’d changed. Paler. Thinner. Older. Alarmed by the sadness of his tone on the telephone, she’d decided to come down earlier than planned. Without waiting for her husband’s vacation time. She was on maternity leave, pregnant with a little Anaïs, and had nothing to do with her days except to rest and take care of Louis. Provided the two could get along. She’d taken the night train from Paris with her son. Got off at Elne in the wee hours of the morning. Robert had come to pick them up in the car. She was startled to see his hollow cheeks, the bags under his eyes, and his wan complexion. Louis had refused to kiss his grandfather.
Robert looked up from his glass of pastis.
“When is Arnaud getting here?”
He didn’t really care, but the tears in his daughter’s eyes had struck a chord in his soul that was still sensitive. Poor Florence had nothing to do with what was happening to him.
“Not before July 10,” she replied, sniffling. “He’s got a lot of work.”
Florence’s husband was an architect in a large firm outside Paris. He always had trouble getting away for vacations.
“I’m not sure it was wise for you to come, my dear Flo.”
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br /> “Why do you say that, Papa?”
Robert examined the bottom of his glass.
“I’m not an ideal companion for a woman in your condition.”
Florence struggled up from her seat and came to sit alongside her father. She put her arms around his neck.
“Does it bother you that I’m here?”
He managed to smile at her. The presence of his daughter forced him to make superhuman efforts.
“No, my dear. On the contrary.”
He pushed the empty glass away.
“I’m mad at myself for not being able to show you a better face. I’m trying but I just can’t do it.”
The last words were muffled by a repressed sigh.
“Don’t worry about me, I’ve grown up. I know that for you I’ll always be your beloved little girl, the youngest in the family. But I’m not a child any more. And haven’t been for some time now . . . ”
She massaged her father’s neck. For a long time, they hadn’t had any physical contact. She realized that they were entering new territory. The roles were being reversed: now it was she who was going to care for him.
“I think you should see a doctor.”
She felt his body stiffen.
“I’m not sick,” he protested.
“It’s a kind of sickness,” she said gently. “And like all sicknesses, it can be treated.”
He stood up.
“You want me to see a psychotherapist? At my age?”
“There’s no age limit for that. No shame either. But if you prefer, first go see a general practitioner. He’ll at least be able to give you some pills to help you sleep.”
“Sleep? That’s all I do . . . ”
Her father’s bad faith made her smile in spite of herself.
“You aren’t sleeping, you’re drowsing. You nod off a dozen times a day but you don’t sleep at night. You try as hard as you can to be quiet, but trailers are small . . . I hear you.”
Robert went to bed early every night. Exhausted. Sometimes he fell asleep quickly, but he never slept soundly. He woke several times during the night and finally got up to lie under the awning. There, in the relative softness of the morning, he waited, listening for the campground’s first sounds. Footsteps on the gravel, a toilet flushing, a toad whistling in the distance. When he heard the first movements in the trailer, he got up and went to the closest bakery. Twenty minutes round trip. Fortunately, the road ran far from the beach.
“Do I keep you from sleeping?”
She seized the opportunity he offered her.
“A little, yes. And in my condition, I need to sleep.”
She caressed her round belly.
“All right, dear Flo, I’ll go see a doctor. Do you remember Dr. Pascal? We used to go to him when you had earaches. I think he‘s supposed to retire at the end of this year. It would be a chance to say good-bye to him.”
CHAPTER 8
Sebag knew only one remedy for Monday morning blues: work all weekend! Unfortunately, he hadn’t worked the day before. Worse yet, he’d had an excellent time with his family. So he looked like Death warmed over when he came into police headquarters that Monday morning.
Before going up to his office, he stopped in to say hello to the men on duty in the service de quart, the equivalent of the emergency room at a hospital. He glanced distractedly at the log and then approached François Ravier, who headed the service.
“I’m working on the case of the cab driver who disappeared, the one whose car the police found at Força Real. Do you know if there’s anything new on that?”
“Apparently not. But ask Ménard. He‘s the one that was assigned to it yesterday.”
François Ménard was the officer responsible for the weekend teams. A native of Picardy. A good cop. Serious, even austere, according to some. Sparing with words, not with his work. A grind, a real one, whose example made others feel they should work harder.
In their office, Jacques Molina was on the phone. Pretty annoyed. He was talking with his ex-wife. Sebag greeted him and sat down. He was in no hurry to go to work.
The preceding day, Gilles and Claire had taken the children to the summit of Le Canigou for the first time. By way of the Mariailles refuge. Four hours up, three hours down. A marvelous hike. The trail wound through the forest undergrowth, then slalomed between broom and wild pansies. Afterward, it continued over loose stones and ended with a climb through a vertiginous chimney. Nothing insurmountable. If you didn’t have vertigo.
Up there, the view was splendid. On the rocky peak, there were about twenty people picnicking around the ashes of a gigantic fire. Several years earlier, the Catalan tradition of the Bonfires of Saint John had been revived. A few days before the ceremony, the pluckiest carried logs, vinestocks, and bundles of vine shoots up to the summit. They piled them in a pyramid to make the mountain even higher. On the night of June 23, the peak was set afire and, weather permitting, the flama del Canigo could be seen all over Roussillon.
On the way back, they’d had a snowball fight with the last névés.
Molina hung up. He stirred his coffee angrily. The bitter odor dissipated the warm fragrance of the broom that the thought of Le Canigou had put into Sebag’s nostrils. Jacques’s face relaxed. He eyes became complicitous.
“I don’t know what you did this weekend, but obviously you haven’t come down again yet.”
Sebag knew that he was going to disappoint his colleague. He hadn’t any salacious anecdote to tell him.
“We went to Le Canigou.”
“Ah . . . ”
Jacques had played rugby for twenty years and during that time exhausted all taste for physical effort. His passion for sports was now expressed only on the bleachers of the Aimé-Girai stadium, the temple of Perpignan rugby.
“Have you ever climbed to the top?” Gilles asked.
“My father took me there when I was a kid. I’ve never gone back.”
Le Canigou is to northern Catalans what Mt. Fuji is to the Japanese. A sacred mountain and a symbol of identity. A local legend says that God laid his hand on the Earth and between his fingers three mountains rose up: Sinai, Olympus, and Le Canigou. However, many Catalans seldom went up there, or had in fact never even climbed it once.
“I never get tired of it,” Sebag went on with the fervor of a new convert. “The climb is worth making, and not just for the views from the summit. When you go by way of the Mariailles refuge, the whole hike is superb.”
In the last part of the ascent, Léo had challenged him. They’d raced, leaving the trail and its endless switchbacks and climbing straight up the slope. The little devil! He’d pulled out all the stops but Sebag had showed him once more—probably for the last time—that he was still the boss. That night, Léo had devoured two plates of pasta and gone to bed. By eighty-thirty, he was snoring like a baby. Gilles had had a little more trouble going to sleep, and had awakened this morning with cramps and a very stiff back.
“By the way,” Molina remembered, “our meeting with Castello isn’t until ten o’clock this morning.”
“If I’d known . . . ”
Usually, the Monday meeting began at nine on the dot. Current investigations were reviewed and the boss set the priorities for the coming week. It was the only day on which Sebag couldn’t come in late.
“So we’re free until ten. Do you know why?”
“No idea.”
“Do you know if there’s something new in the Lopez case?”
“I talked with Ménard a little while ago. The police combed the area around the hermitage but didn’t find anything. A search bulletin has been put out.”
Sebag booted up his computer and connected to the Internet. He took out the business card Barrère had given him and copied the address of the website of Perpign’And Co. There were several rubrics. The types of organization
: travel, parties, weekends; the themes: sports, culture, entertainment. He found the site attractive. A little flashy, perhaps, or even enticing. Lots of pictures of pretty girls, often not wearing much. A subliminal message?
“Incidentally, did you meet the famous Vanessa?” he asked Molina.
“No. I only saw her roommate. Vanessa is in Barcelona for the week. But I was able to see photos. She’s clearly not the one who was with Lopez.”
“We kind of suspected that.”
Sebag started printing several pages of the Perpign’And Co. website and then moved on to other sites. He looked at the local newspaper long enough to be sure he hadn’t missed any news over the weekend, and then surfed sites specializing in training advice for runners.
“Shall we go?” Molina asked.
Sebag looked at his watch. The hour had passed very quickly.
Lambert and Llach were already waiting in the meeting room. Ménard was there too. And a young guy sitting to the right of Castello. Sunglasses on his forehead, fashionable linen jacket, relaxed. He was tall, emanated a lot of energy and a little too much self-assurance. Raynaud and Moreno came in. In house, they were called the “brotherly friends” or “the duet.” Because they were inseparable and their names sounded like something on a music-hall program. Behind their backs, the two of them were called instead “the laugh brigade” because of their total lack of humor and the way in which they went through life as if they were attending a perpetual funeral.
Sebag passed in front of the air conditioner, which was running full tilt. He turned it down and went to sit on the other side of the room.
The boss cleared his throat. It was serious. Everyone sensed it and silence fell immediately. Castello signaled to Lambert, who was closest to the exit. The young inspector understood and closed the door.
“Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Cyril Lefèvre. He’s a superintendent at the office of International Technical Cooperation. He’s just gotten off the plane from Paris. I delayed our weekly meeting by one hour so that he could be with us.”
Summertime All the Cats Are Bored Page 6
