“Contemporary art, my ass!” his wife interrupted. “The psychedelic delirium of a young Spanish painter puffed up with pride and cocaine . . . ”
Revel coughed and squirmed on his chair. His wife’s critical comments on art seemed to him inappropriate.
“And what was Lopez doing at this exhibit?” Molina went on.
Martine Revel was laughing openly but it was her husband who answered first.
“I think he works for the man who organized the exposition. A certain Barrère, who’s in public relations. All the important people in Perpignan were at that vernissage.”
“Lopez seemed completely out of place and uncomfortable,” Martine Revel explained again. “Like a eunuch in a sex-shop.”
The image was bold but clear. Martine Revel was natural. Spontaneous.
“Maybe that’s what attracted Ingrid to him,” she added.
“Because she was attracted to him?”
“She liked Lopez right away, and she didn’t try to hide it. Ingrid is no prude, you know.”
“Yes, we’ve gathered as much,” Jacques summed up, eager to return to a subject that interested him. “Your husband has told us what happened here, but we would like to have your version of the events as well.”
“‘Event’ is a very big word,” she said evasively.
She ran a finger splotched with blue paint over her upper lip, lingered over a little sensual sniff in the middle of it. Martine Revel didn’t really want to talk about the circumstances of Ingrid’s departure again. Her husband was watching her furtively. Uneasy, he occupied himself by pouring her coffee. The young woman took her time: she tossed a sugar cube in her cup and slowly stirred it.
Molina was getting impatient.
“Well?”
“Well, what?” she answered, abruptly putting her coffee spoon back on the table. “I don’t really see how what happened here can help you find Ingrid . . . ”
“Please allow us to decide what’s important in this case, madam.”
The atmosphere was becoming electric. Sebag knew from experience that when his colleague said “madam” in that tone, “bitch” was the word he would have liked to use.
“I know it’s not very pleasant to talk about such personal matters in front of three strangers,” he said, adopting a conciliatory tone. “We take no pleasure in asking you to return to that moment, but I remind you that we are investigating Ingrid’s disappearance.”
Martine Revel wavered for a few more seconds. She took another slow swallow of coffee, then started in. Not without having shot her husband a glance as dark as her coffee.
“The day after she arrived, Ingrid proved to be very different from the shy little student I thought I’d met. She went around all morning in scanty clothes: a little skirt and a T-shirt that was too short. And she had something sultry in her gestures, a come-hither look in her eyes. And then on Friday we made the error of asking her to pose for us, I don‘t know what we were thinking, it was as if we blundered straight into it . . . Anyway, we needed a model, she was there, she was pretty. There you have it.”
The clock loudly struck four. Gilles could not help thinking about his son for a moment. By then, Léo should have arrived at his vacation camp. He might already be on a motorcycle. Happy as the kid he still was.
“She was nude,” Martine Revel continued, “and she very quickly took poses that were . . . suggestive. Very far from what we were asking of her. What we were looking for was something like Renoir’s bathers. She took herself for a pin-up in a men’s magazine. She started asking us questions about our love life. She wanted to know if we were swingers—I was amazed that she knew the word in French—if we’d already done a threesome. Instead of relaxing during the rest period she came and walked around us.”
She would have much preferred to stop there, but the policemen were careful to say nothing, to give no sign. Another glance at her husband.
“I recognize that I acted rather brutally. I ordered her to get dressed, and while she was doing that, I went up to her room. I put all her things in her bag and threw it out the window.”
Her cheeks had grown slightly pink but her green eyes had gotten darker. This woman was a volcano. Capable of erupting but also of collapsing.
“Do you think something serious has happened to Ingrid?”
“At the moment, we have no reason to say that,” Sebag said. “What we do know is that it was not a simple disappearance.”
“You think she might have been . . . ?”
Sebag didn’t try to reassure her. A little dose of concern often proved necessary to make witnesses talk.
“I reacted too harshly, I don’t know what got into me,” Martine said regretfully. “Now I’m angry at myself for it. If Ingrid had stayed here, nothing would have happened to her.”
Her husband leaned toward her. He put his big paw on her frail hands splattered with paint.
“It was mainly because of me that you got angry, you know that.”
He added, for the benefit of the others:
“I couldn’t move while she was walking around us. I was . . . fascinated.”
With the nail of his index finger he was mechanically trying to remove a red splotch on the back of his wife’s hand.
“Don’t blame yourself, you did what had to be done,” he said. “And whatever might have happened afterward is not your fault.”
Martine Revel rested her forehead on her husband’s shoulder. The heavy tick-tock of the clock resounded in the room. It slowly dissipated the moment’s emotion.
Sebag took the coffee pot and poured the remaining coffee into the cups as equitably as possible. Molina roused their hosts.
“Would you have a little brandy or something to go with the last drop of this excellent coffee?”
Molina’s savoir-faire in matters of psychology was limited to old-fashioned recipes, but when properly applied, it could be effective.
Revel was the first to move and waited for his wife to raise her head from his shoulder before rising heavily to his feet. He took a bottle without a label from an old cabinet and poured a colorless liquid into the cups. Cornet politely declined, putting his hand in front of his cup. Martine pushed hers forward to make sure her husband didn’t forget it.
“This is a grape brandy my uncle makes,” he explained as he sat down again. “It’s all right in coffee, but alone it‘s pretty strong.”
“A drink for real men,” as they say,” Jacques remarked. He knew his classics.
They took little sips. Sebag could hardly repress a grimace, Jacques loved it, and Martine Revel choked, seeming to confirm Molina’s remarks about males. Putting down his cup, Gilles asked:
“Do you have any idea where Ingrid might have stayed between the time she left your home and her disappearance?”
“No, none at all,” Revel replied.
“Did you question this Lopez guy?” his wife asked.
The three men looked at each other and for a moment hesitated to answer.
“Is there a problem?”
“José Lopez disappeared at the same time as Ingrid,” Molina replied.
“You don’t think it might be simply two lovers running away together?” ventured Martine Revel.
“If we thought that, we wouldn’t be here,” Molina said evasively.
Sebag decided it was time to leave. He finished his fortified coffee. Yuk! To spoil such nectar with a rot-gut barely good enough to make a tractor cough! Molina might sometimes show a talent for psychology, but he would definitely never have taste.
When they got back to police headquarters the meeting was already over. However, they found on their computers a summary of the proceedings rapidly written up by Ménard.
Sebag skipped the passage concerning the work done by Jacques, who had already told him about it that morning. At least one ca
ll-girl he’d talked to had admitted having met Lopez at parties organized by Barrère. She even said that she had had “paid sexual relations” with the cab driver. The expression the young woman used had made Molina laugh.
For their part, the Raynaud-Moreno pair had gone to Toulouse to talk with Charles Got, who’d been beaten up by Lopez outside a night club a few years earlier. Got had left the Perpignan area in 2003 and moved with his wife and children to the suburbs of Toulouse. He seemed to have retained no hard feelings about their argument. “Lopez paid, the whole business is forgotten,” he’d told the inspectors. Moreover, he had an excellent alibi for the night of June 26: along with a dozen other people, he’d been helping prepare for the village fête.
Lambert had found Ingrid’s room in the student residence hall, a very small studio with a kitchen near the university. In it he had found nothing belonging to the young woman except a tourist folder about the museum in Céret and an open tube of mayonnaise in the refrigerator. At the museum in Céret, Llach had dug up a signature reading “Ingrid from Holland” in the guest book, dated June 18, thus corroborating the Revel couple’s assertions.
Ménard had come up with the day’s most important information. In Barrère‘s account books he’d found the record of a check made out to a fancy hotel in Canet-Plage, curiously annotated “paid for JL,” JL like José Lopez, as Ménard judiciously noted. He had immediately looked into the matter: the hotel’s register bore no trace of the taxi driver, but on the other hand it did mention Ingrid Raven, who arrived Friday night—the day she left the Revel’s home—and left Tuesday morning. Four nights in all: Lopez had paid in cash for the last two, but Perpign’And Co. had in fact paid for the first two. Castello had immediately decided to bring Barrère in for questioning the next morning. The interrogation was to be conducted by Ménard under Lefèvre’s supervision.
Just as Sebag was about to exit his e-mail, a new message appeared on his screen. It came from Castello’s office and ordered all inspectors to be at the headquarters at six o’clock the next morning for a raid organized with the customs men and directed against contraband cigarettes. All officers were to be armed with their service weapons.
“Damn it to Hell,” Molina swore. He’d discovered the message at the same time as Sebag. “Six o’clock in the morning! . . . And I had a date this evening! I’m too old for this shit . . . ”
“Yes, I think you are,” Sebag joked. “You’re too old to go out with twenty-year-old girls. Watch out, your heart will make you pay for that someday.”
“Go ahead, laugh. Everybody isn’t lucky enough to have a wife who gets younger every year.”
This jibe, which was intended to be friendly, plunged Gilles back into his dark thoughts. He tuned out of the conversation for a few seconds but sensed that Jacques noticed. He had to get it together. Put Jacques off the scent.
“Tell her that you’re not a womanizer and you never sleep with a girl the first night, as a matter of principle.”
“And you think that women like that sort of talk?”
“I’ve already used it several times, you know. In the past.”
“And it worked?”
“I didn’t sleep with them the first night, if that’s what you want to know.”
“What about the other nights?”
“What other nights?”
There was a short silence during which Molina looked at his colleague without seeming to understand. Then he burst into laughter. Satisfied that he had distracted his attention, Sebag clicked on a game site. After all, it was only six-thirty. Claire could wait a little this evening. One little game would do her no harm.
“Do you remember where you put your gun?” Molina asked.
Sebag answered without looking up from his computer screen.
“It’s supposed to always be in the second drawer of my desk. That’s where I put it the last time. In 1957, I think.”
He didn’t like firearms and took out his revolver only when the order to do so was precise and imperative.
“I hope you still know how to use it, just in case.”
“I hold out my arm, the elbow slightly bent, I close one eye, and pull the trigger. No problem. How about you, do you remember what you’re supposed to do if I use my weapon?”
“Shoot in the same direction as you and try to hit the target you’ve missed?”
“That’s the second thing you’re supposed to do. But you can do that only if you’ve properly carried out the first assignment, which is far more important.”
“And what is that?”
“Always back me up, you imbecile! . . . And damn! You made me lose with your bullshit. I was about to break my record.”
He was far from having gotten his best score, but Sebag was one of those who believe that a little deception from time to time doesn’t hurt anyone.
“Sorry,” Molina said, though he wasn’t. “See you tomorrow.”
He left and Sebag took a deep breath. He was happy to have a few minutes to think before going home. For the first time, he wasn’t in a hurry to leave the office. Tomorrow Séverine was leaving with her girlfriend’s parents. Claire and Gilles would be alone. It would be time to sort things out.
Gilles was perplexed and worried, but he couldn’t feel angry. Maybe it was because the presumption of guilt wasn’t strong enough. After all, Claire wasn’t obliged to tell him everything; she could have her little secrets and even lie to protect them. Just because she’d missed a gym class didn’t necessarily mean that she’d spent that time in a lover’s arms: she must have had another reason for lying to her husband.
Okay, but what?
He would have much preferred not to reason like a cop in this matter. But his name was Gilles Sebag and Gilles Sebag was a cop. At least for the time being.
Unconsciously, he argued both sides of the case. On the one hand, Claire’s repeated absences and her lie. On the other, her expressions of love and their passionate love-making despite twenty years of living together. And then her happiness. Her happiness to be living with him, he was convinced of that. Or else everything was just a lie.
His mind was spinning. He could feel a headache coming on.
He took out his telephone and dialed Léo’s number. At the second ring, his son answered. There was music in the background.
“Hi, it’s Papa. Did you get there okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, no problem.”
“Are you having good weather?”
“It’s sunny but it seems cooler than in Perpignan.”
“Did you already ride a quad this afternoon?”
“Just a little bit, to see what level people were at.”
“Do you like it there?”
“Yeah, it looks like it’ll be fun.”
Léo interrupted himself. He was speaking to someone in a low voice. Behind him, the music grew louder.
“Have you eaten?” Gilles asked.
“No, not yet. We’re going to eat soon, I think it’s dinner time.”
“Well, then I’ll let you go . . . What’s on the program for tomorrow?”
“We have a quad lesson in the morning and in the afternoon we’ll do motocross.”
“Great . . . ”
He almost told him not to go to bed too late, but stopped himself.
“Okay then, see you, son.”
“See you.”
“Don’t hesitate to call, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I promise, papa.”
He hung up, frustrated. He recalled the pleasure they’d taken in talking on the phone when Léo was a child spending his vacations with his grandparents. The boy never knew what to say when Gilles tried to make him talk about the little joys of childhood. The pebbles and bits of wood collected in the fields, the games he’d made up with Séverine, the cartoons on television. The words didn’t matter much. What m
attered for the father as well as for the son was prolonging the moment.
Sebag tried to concentrate on the case. He opened his notebook to write down the results of his reflection. Gérard Barrère’s conception of public relations activities was clearly too flexible for the tax authorities and the vice squad. But Sebag couldn‘t imagine him being involved in Ingrid Raven’s disappearance.
Besides, “disappearance” was not a legal offense.
If the hypothesis of a voluntary act was definitively set aside, a disappearance could be the consequence of two kinds of crimes: a kidnapping or a murder. Sebag wrote down and circled the two words. He connected them with a third expression that he wrote just under them: criminal court. Barrère’s lies were too fragile and too easily discernible to stand up to an extensive police investigation. And then when you’re getting ready to kidnap or murder a young woman, you don’t pay for her room in a hotel with a check that has your business’s name on it.
The telephone interrupted his reflections.
“Hello, Gilles?”
It was Claire.
“Are you coming home soon? Should we go ahead and eat or wait for you? Séverine and I would like to watch a film on television tonight.”
He looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock.
“Excuse me, I had work to do. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Just go ahead and begin without me. What’s the film?”
“Les Choses de la vie. It’s a film by Sautet made in the 1970s. I’d like Séverine to see it, but I’d be surprised if you liked it . . . ”
“Doesn’t matter. Go eat. I’ll be there soon.”
He got up with difficulty. Last night he’d slept badly, and he had to get up early the next morning. He felt tired just thinking about it.
CHAPTER 13
Sebag checked to be sure he’d taken off the safety. He knew from experience that when you decided to carry a gun, it had to be ready to fire.
The warehouse they were surrounding looked just like the other warehouses in the Saint-Charles Market. Except that behind these metal doors there were hundreds of cartons of cigarettes. If they got lucky, there might be thousands of them. Superintendent Castello had tried to postpone the raid but the prefect had insisted on it. He needed something to brag about. Fortunately, there was no longer any talk of a visit by the Minister of the Interior.
Summertime All the Cats Are Bored Page 11
