Summertime All the Cats Are Bored

by Philippe Georget

  In the fourth-floor meeting room, the air-conditioner was humming. A miracle. Sebag chose a seat far from the machine. Castello handed him a file: the deposition of Anneke Verbrucke, the student attacked in Perpignan.

  “We’re expecting any minute another report from the gendarmerie’s research team concerning the Argelès case,” the superintendent explained.

  Ménard was already reading the file. He’d underlined with a yellow highlighter the passages that seemed to him important. Then Llach came in. He was given a file as well.

  As soon as he’d read the first lines, Sebag understood that Anneke Verbrucke was the young woman he’d seen weeping the other night in the headquarters‘ corridors. A complaint had been filed for assault, and not for an attempted kidnapping. The young woman had been attacked by a hooded individual near the university, at 3:00 A.M. According to the police report, she’d been threatened with a knife held against her throat. The man had ordered her to get into a car, but she had succeeded in getting away. When the anti-crime squad arrived on the scene, it had found no trace of the attacker, and no witness. The individual in question was said to be about five foot eleven and slender. Those were the only identifying elements the victim had been able to provide. In other words: nothing.

  The police report had been written like all reports in all the police headquarters in France. On a first reading, it appeared to be sober and precise. Informative. But Sebag had found nothing in it that seemed to him indispensable. That was life! In reports, reality seemed to be put through a grinder, poured into a mold, and spat out again in a formatted way. Every time he read one, Sebag thought of what Alfred Sauvy had said about statistics: “They’re like bikinis: you think they’re showing everything but in fact they’re hiding the most important thing.”

  Lambert and Molina came in and greeted them in low voices. Castello had gone out and Sebag still hadn’t seen the other two policemen that Martine had mentioned. Lambert and Molina each took a packet of papers and started to read.

  A few minutes later, Castello came back. With a new file in his hands and, on his heels, Lefèvre, in an impeccable charcoal gray suit. They were followed by an inspector from the regional criminal police in Montpellier, whom Sebag had met on several occasions. His name was Petit, Bernard Petit, and he wore a jacket in the neutral color characteristic of the local police.

  The three men gave them time to peruse the gendarmes’ report on the murder in Argelès. They were talking in low voices. Jeanne, Castello’s secretary, brought them coffee. She put three cups on the table. She was wearing a short skirt. Her tanned legs danced between the tables. Her calves were perfectly rounded, her thighs firm and muscular. The temperature rose one or two degrees. Jeanne filled the three cups slowly, without seeming to notice the effect she was having on the men around her.

  After she’d left, the movement of her legs still floated around the room, prolonging the recess for a few moments. Her vanilla-like perfume slowly disappeared, giving way to a delicious aroma of dry, strong coffee.

  The body of Josetta Braun, twenty-three, had been found in a thicket of reeds near the Mas Larrieu nature preserve on June 17, around five in the morning. It had been found by an early morning walker, a retiree on holiday who was staying in a nearby campground. The young woman’s skull had been fractured by blows with a stone. Three blows, according to the coroner: one on the mouth, two on the left temple. A stone stained with blood and bits of brain had been found more than a dozen meters away. The investigators had found a clear thumbprint on the stone. The report added that no information about the weapon used or about the thumbprint had been communicated to the press. The murder had occurred a few hours before the discovery of the body: probably between eleven and midnight. The young woman had been killed right there. Her blouse had been removed and she was wearing no panties beneath her skirt, but she had not been raped. She had not had any sexual relations during the hours that preceded her death.

  Josetta Braun had arrived at the Oleanders campground in Argelès on June 5. She was traveling alone but, according to the deposition given by the owners of the campground, she did not spend many nights alone in her tent.

  The gendarmes had questioned the young people who had hung out with Josetta since her arrival in France. None of them had a thumbprint matching the one found on the stone. In the absence of any other lead, the gendarmes had given priority to the hypothesis that the perpetrator was a vagrant. They had brought several vagabonds in for questioning, but the comparison of prints had not yielded anything there, either. They had all been released. In desperation, a call for witnesses had been put out via the press. Without result. The investigation was ongoing, the gendarmes said at the end of their summary. A gentle euphemism meaning that it was at a standstill. The family had picked up the body: Josetta was buried in Holland on June 27.

  Sebag knew that, barring some unexpected development, the investigation would not continue. The gendarmes had a lot to do in Argelès during the summer. From less than ten thousand inhabitants in the off season, the population rose to a hundred thousand in the summer. The tourists were scattered over about sixty campgrounds, which had won the commune the title, not necessarily greatly desired, of the “European capital of open-air tourism.” After certain excesses caused in the early 1980s by young people on vacation at the seaside, a mobile company of gendarmes was sent to Argelès every summer. Despite this reinforcement, the local police force did not have time to devote to tasks other than maintaining order.

  He finished reading the file and remained puzzled. It was hard to imagine a connection between these three cases. A murder, a kidnapping, and an assault. Even if the latter were redescribed as an attempted kidnapping, it was difficult to see any link, for lack of similarities in M.O. In Ingrid Raven’s case, the kidnapping had taken place in complete security in an isolated place, and it seemed to have been prepared at least a few days in advance. In Anneke Verbrucke’s case, if there was an attempt to kidnap her, it had been made in the middle of the city and in an improvised way. Except for the nationality of the three victims, he didn’t see how the three cases could be connected.

  The murmur of conversation drew him out of his thoughts. His colleagues had also completed their study of the files and were exchanging points of view. With a wave of his hand, the superintendent put an end to the separate discussions.

  “Gentlemen, you have just seen the reports on the three cases that that we now have to deal with. I’d like to have your impressions.”

  The question was formulated in an open-ended way. Castello didn’t express an opinion.

  “When you say that we have to deal with these three cases, does that mean that the police department is officially taking over the murder in Argelès? Has the gendarmerie given it up?”

  It was Llach who had asked the question. He was always very punctilious about each branch’s prerogatives.

  “Not entirely,” Castello replied. “We don’t have the resources to do everything.”

  He pushed his chair back slightly to lend more prominence to his two neighbors.

  “Even if we have received reinforcements from Paris and Montpellier, we can’t operate on all fronts. Our priority remains the kidnapping of Ingrid Raven. We will work on the two other cases so long as we have not eliminated the possibility of a connection.”

  “So is a connection officially considered a possibility?”

  Sebag had spoken up without thinking. He hadn’t wanted to be the first to raise this question.

  “For the moment, yes,” Castello confirmed. “We can’t afford to ignore it. That is, moreover, the point of this morning‘s meeting.”

  Sebag sighed.

  “Do you have a problem with that?” Lefèvre said.

  “No, absolutely not. If we have time to waste . . . ”

  Sebag bit his lip. He didn’t want to seem aggressive. The truce with Lefèvre was turning out t
o be precarious.

  “You don’t believe there is any connection?” Castello asked.

  Sebag glanced out the window. The wind had driven away the clouds, and the sky had become uniformly blue again. He remembered the time when he was trying to teach Léo a few rudiments of guitar-playing. He recalled how hard it had been to find the words to tell him how to tune the instrument. The note was right or it wasn’t. The ear hears it or it doesn’t. What can words do? It was the same today. He sensed a good half-tone of difference between Ingrid’s kidnapping and the assault in Perpignan. As for the murder in Argelès, it wasn’t on the same harmonic scale at all. But how could he express this feeling?

  Everyone had turned to gaze at him. Lefèvre’s eyes had regained their ironic sparkle. Sebag couldn’t limit himself to expressing his views. He had a few seconds to construct a solid argument. He took a deep breath.

  “These cases have one obvious point in common: all three of the victims are young women of Dutch nationality. Period. And that’s it. Nothing in the way these attacks took place seems comparable, and the young women did not suffer the same kind of violence.”

  It was a bad beginning. He didn’t like this categorical tone. Usually he was able to express himself in a more qualified way.

  “What basis do you have for saying that it wasn’t the same kind of violence?” Lefèvre asked.

  Lefèvre’s arrogance irritated him, but he didn’t want to start a war. He glanced at his colleagues: no one seemed about to speak up. On the contrary, they were waiting for him to respond.

  “One of the three is dead, a second was kidnapped, and the third is safe and sound,” he ended up saying.

  “Anneke is alive and Josetta is dead, we agree about that,” Lefèvre conceded. “But Ingrid? Who can say at this point whether she is lying in a ditch with her face crushed by a rock?”

  “The murder of Josetta Braun was a savage attack that seems to have been committed in a fit of madness. It in no way shows the organizational ability that Ingrid Raven’s kidnapper showed.”

  “Maybe we’ve gone the wrong way on this case,” Lefèvre replied. “Maybe it’s not a kidnapping premeditated and organized by José Lopez’s customer, the infamous BW who is supposed to have paid three thousand euros for Ingrid’s services. We can’t eliminate the hypothesis that a murderer—a serial criminal—has passed through here.”

  “In the Argelès case, Josetta’s body was left where she was killed,” Sebag said. “Did the killer act differently in Ingrid’s case, then? And what happens to Lopez in this scenario?”

  Lefèvre turned to Superintendent Castello.

  “Has the area around the hermitage of Força Real been properly examined?”

  “Twice. Once very quickly after Lopez’s taxi was discovered there, and a second time more carefully, after we’d made the connection between Lopez’s disappearance and that of Ingrid Raven. I can ask the gendarmes to examine it again more extensively.”

  “That would be good.”

  Addressing Sebag once again, he went on.

  “It’s puerile to think that a serial killer always acts in the same way. That is true only for serious psychopaths.”

  Puerile . . . the adjective sounded like an insult.

  “And then, after all, three young Dutch women who have been the victims of violence in less than two weeks in your department, that has got to get your attention, doesn’t it?”

  Sebag let a few seconds go by, but his colleagues still weren’t ready to get involved.

  “Frankly, no! I don’t know the precise number of Dutch women currently vacationing in the region. But in my opinion there must be several thousand. If we consulted the logs of the police headquarters and all the gendarmeries in Roussillon over the past two weeks, we’d find other crimes and misdemeanors committed against Dutch women tourists: assaults, rapes, attempts to do something, steal their credit cards or even purses, who knows?”

  Sebag’s delivery had accelerated; his tone had become more aggressive. Maybe because Lefèvre had continued to smile. Ménard spoke up, trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

  “In what Gilles says there are things we should take seriously. We have to examine more closely all the complaints filed last month. Maybe we’ll find others concerning Dutch women. If there are lots of them and they are of no interest, that would tend to support Gilles’s view. If we find one or two more serious ones, that might confirm the postulate of the existence of a series of attacks. And maybe that will give us additional information about this possible serial attacker. An identikit portrait, why not?”

  Castello agreed.

  “I’m assigning you that job, François.”

  From the back of the room, Llach asked:

  “Where exactly are we with the terrorist hypothesis? Has it been abandoned?”

  “It was never really taken seriously,” Castello replied. “Neither in Paris nor in Holland.”

  “And the ransom demand? What are we supposed to think about that, then? We do have proof that whoever sent us the letter is holding the young woman.”

  “We are in fact obliged to take that demand into account. I have to say that we’re not sure what to make of it.”

  “Does that mean that it’s out of the question to pay the ransom asked?”

  Castello sighed.

  “A hundred and fifty million, Joan, do you realize how much money that is?”

  The discussion went on for another quarter of an hour. It quickly returned to the question of the relation among the three cases. People took sides. Molina declared his skepticism in solidarity with Sebag. Raynaud and Moreno supported the thesis defended by Lefèvre and finally by Ménard. Castello took no position, and neither did Llach or Lambert. Beyond the arguments they made, Sebag sensed that his colleagues were chiefly afraid of missing out on something big. Something fabulous. All cops have dreamed of having to confront a serial killer someday or another. Of finally playing in the big leagues.

  A newspaper article had sufficed to radically change the direction of the investigation. Who had dared to speak of puerility a little while ago?

  The superintendent concluded by assigning tasks. They were to pursue further the leads that had come up in the framework of the investigation into the kidnapping of Ingrid Raven: Llach and Lambert would continue to look for the store where the paper and the envelope used for the ransom letter had been bought; Raynaud and Moreno would still be working on finding all the BWs in the department. Molina received permission to go to Argelès to gather additional information regarding the murder of Josetta Braun. Finally, he asked Sebag to reinvestigate the assault in Perpignan.

  “I found some gaps in the anti-crime squad’s work. We have to go over everything again seriously and methodically. I’m counting on you for that.”

  It was a backhanded compliment, his way of letting Sebag know that he wasn’t repudiating him. The inspector appreciated that.

  “What’s going on with Kevin Costner?”

  “With whom?”

  Jacques was amused by his astonishment.

  “Kevin Costner.”

  Sebag stared at him. They were back in their office, face to face. Molina was sipping a black coffee and looking at him slyly. Sebag didn’t understand why he’d suddenly started talking about movies.

  Jacques decided he’d had enough fun at his colleague’s expense.

  “You don’t think Lefèvre looks kind of like Kevin Costner?”

  Jacques was very good at seeing resemblances, in both faces and voices.

  “Do you think so? If you want my opinion, I think he looks like a hypocrite.”

  Now that he thought about it, however, it seemed to him that Jacques wasn’t entirely wrong. A strong-willed and gentle face full of pent-up energy, blue eyes under straight eyebrows, a tall, slender figure. The two men seemed to be characteriz
ed by an unusual determination, a quality Sebag found attractive in Costner but that verged on smugness in Lefèvre.

  “What is it about him that you don’t like?” Molina asked.

  “I didn’t like his last film.”

  “I’m talking about Lefèvre.”

  “So am I. The scenario is weak, his interpretation a caricature. Apart from that, I don’t have much against him. He’s a little too full of himself, of course, but along the lines of ‘Policeman from Paris on assignment among the hicks’ I’ve seen worse.”

  Jacques agreed; they had a few memories in common.

  “At the same time,” Sebag went on, “as soon as he starts talking, and no matter what he says, I don’t feel like agreeing with him.”

  “Do you really think the cases we’re talking about have nothing to do with each other?”

  “Yes, we’re going down the wrong path, in my opinion. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. It’s true that it all seems pretty convoluted, but at the same time . . . ”

  “At the same time, jeez, a ‘serial killer’ in Perpignan, that would be pretty cool, right?”

  “No, it isn’t that. You know, so far as I’m concerned, routine work suits me perfectly. I think above all that we mustn’t miss out on a big deal. Can you imagine? If there really was a common attacker and we refused to follow that lead after it was mentioned by the press, we’d look really stupid.”

  “I see that, yeah. More than ever, then, we have to apply the famous adage . . . ”

  “I fear the worst . . . ”

  “‘Prudence is the mother of security,’” in this case the Urban Security Squad.”

  “Yeah, I suppose . . . I didn’t know that proverb.”

  “Okay, next time I’ll stoop to your level.”

  Molina looked as if he were going to throw his telephone at Sebag, but he just picked it up to call the gendarmes in Argelès. In the end, Sebag wasn’t very proud of his proverb.

  It was definitely not his day.