Summertime All the Cats Are Bored

by Philippe Georget

  A bus was coming up to the stop. Sebag signaled that he didn’t want to get in. The driver looked surprised and drove on.

  Sebag didn’t wait long. He had hardly finished his cigarette when a yellow car came down the avenue. A yellow Peugeot 306 sport coupe. It was moving slowly. Its driver was looking for a parking place. The car passed in front of him. He had time to catch a glimpse of the owner: high forehead, turned-up nose, round chin. He saw the car hesitate, then turn right at the intersection. He left the bus shelter and went back into the side streets. The 306 came out of Lluis Espare Street and turned right. It went along the ramparts of the palace of the Kings of Majorca for about twenty yards and then stopped in front of a little area for playing boules. Its back-up lights came on. The driver had found a place to park. Sebag waited.

  A brown-haired young man, not very tall, slightly plump, crawled out of the car. He was wearing a shirt and tie and had his jacket draped over his arm. While he was following him, Sebag got out his cell phone to call police headquarters. The young man went into a small four-story apartment building that looked out on Avenue Poincaré on one side. At headquarters, Sebag’s call was taken by the officer on duty. That was Sergis, a young inspector who had just arrived from Cahors. Sebag knew he was efficient. He gave him the car’s license number.

  “It’s urgent,” he explained.

  He went to have a look at the car. It wasn’t a luxury model but its interior made it look like an expensive car: seats in light-colored leather, steering wheel and gear shift knob in wood. The body was lemon yellow, clean, even immaculate, without a trace of a scratch or dust. Its owner probably went over it with a chamois several times a week. There couldn’t be many yellow 306 sport coupes on the road in the department. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  He went back to wait under the apartment building’s windows.

  The Peugeot’s driver did not correspond in any way to the description of the attacker given by Anneke Verbrucke. That didn’t surprise Sebag. He re-read his notes from his interviews with the Dutch student. His opinion was confirmed: the attack on Anneke couldn’t have been an attempt to kidnap her.

  A dog came along pulling a man in his sixties who was holding his leash. The dog sniffed Sebag’s shoes. He found them so interesting that Sebag wondered if he’d stepped in something. He glanced at the dog’s master but the latter had clearly chosen to look elsewhere. The inspector took advantage of that to give a gentle kick to the dog, who immediately lost all interest in his shoes. In the end, dogs are like people—it’s the lack of proper training that sometimes makes them disagreeable. Sebag had always had a tendency to think that a little slap now and then would put humanity back on the right track. The problem was to know who would be capable of properly distributing the slaps.

  His cell phone rang while the mutt and his master went on to bother someone else.

  “Your driver’s name is Marc Savoy,” Sergis informed him. “He’s a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. He’s married to Isabelle Savoy and they live on Jean Rière street, at the foot of the palace of the Kings of . . . ”

  “I know where it is, thanks. Can you see if this guy is in our files?”

  “I’ve already looked and didn’t find anything. Do you want me to start a national search?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s necessary. Thanks for acting so quickly.”

  “You’re welcome. For the moment, it’s a quiet night, don’t hesitate to give me something to do.”

  Sebag went up to the door of the building. “Savoy” was the first name written on the doorbell panel. He pushed the button next to the name.

  “Hello?” said a woman’s voice.

  “Hello. I’m a police officer and I have a few questions I’d like to ask you in connection with an investigation.”

  There was no answer, but after a few seconds he heard a metallic click. He had only to push the door open. In the entry hall, he found the Savoys‘ mailbox. They lived on the fourth floor. Sebag chose to take the stairs.

  The door to their apartment was located at the end of a little corridor. He rang. The door opened immediately. Through the half-open door, Marc Savoy looked at him mistrustfully.

  “What exactly is this about?” he asked. “My wife didn’t quite understand.”

  “It concerns an investigation. I’d like to ask you a few questions. I’m a police inspector.”

  Savoy looked at his watch. It was almost 9:00 P.M.

  “Are you allowed to do that at this hour? Do you have a warrant?”

  Sebag repressed a sigh. French citizens’ knowledge of the law was often limited to two or three replies they’d heard on television serials, usually American. It was disastrous.

  “I don’t have a warrant, but I have the right to come to your home and ask you to let me in.”

  “Ask me? So I don’t have to accept?”

  He closed the door a little more.

  “No, you don’t have to.”

  Sebag found it exhausting to have to go to such lengths to obtain what should have been taken for granted. The French did not find their police efficient, and at the same time did everything they could to make it difficult for them. What did this Savoy guy think? That he had nothing better to do than to work until nine in the evening while his wife was running around somewhere, and that he’d showed up at his house at this late hour just to annoy him? Sebag took out his notebook.

  “In that case,” he began, pretending to be filling out a form, “I’m going to leave you an official summons. You will have to come by police headquarters at ten tomorrow morning.”

  He stopped for a moment, chewing on his pen.

  “‘Savoy,’ you do write that with a ‘y,’ don’t you? Bring your identification papers, of course, and expect to have to wait a bit, because lines are often long at headquarters, and we’ve got a lot of work, you know, with all the people who prefer to go there rather than receive us in their homes for a few minutes in the evening. You’d probably better expect to be there all morning.”

  He put away his pen and ostentatiously tore off the sheet of paper.

  “Just to be sure, it would be wise to block out part of the afternoon as well. In any case, no matter how it goes, you’ll be out before five o’clock. After that, we close . . . ”

  “Five o’clock . . . ”

  The door opened again.

  “What is it, anyway? Is it serious?”

  “It’s about your car.”

  Sebag couldn’t have come up with a better opener. Savoy stepped completely aside to let him come in.

  The woman greeted him in the living room and politely asked him to sit down on the couch. He refused to fall into such a crude trap and chose instead a brown leather chair with wooden arms. Savoy was forced to sink into his sofa.

  “What were you doing last Tuesday night?”

  Since his interlocutor liked the dialogue on television, there was no reason to disappoint him. Savoy opened his eyes wide and turned toward his wife.

  “We didn’t do anything special Tuesday night, did we?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  She opened a TV magazine.

  “There was a Louis Funès film on channel 1. We watched it and then went to bed. Though you got up later to take a shower because it was so hot.”

  “Yes, I remember. It was very hot. It’s a little better today. But Tuesday it was really hot.”

  Sebag hastened to put an end to questions about the weather. Though they could sometimes make laborious discussions go more smoothly, many interrogations also got bogged down in them.

  “Do you always park your car outside?”

  “Often, unfortunately.”

  “Even though your apartment building has garages?”

  “We have one, but my wife puts her car in it. She comes home earlier than I do, around five P.M
., at a time when it’s still hard to find a parking spot in the neighborhood. I get home much later—if fact, I’d just come in when you rang—so I park mine on the street.”

  His tone made it clear that it broke his heart that his car had to spend the night outside. Even though he didn’t share Savoy’s concern, Sebag felt he had to show sympathy.

  “Isn’t it a little dangerous to leave such a beautiful car on the street?”

  Before answering, Savoy glanced at his wife. His look said: “You see, he thinks so, too.”

  “We really don’t have a choice. Isabelle comes home with our son—he’s sleeping there in the other room, he’s six months old—and she has to park somewhere close. We’ve tried to rent another garage but they’re hard to come by in this neighborhood.”

  “And so on Tuesday night your car was outside?

  “Yes, of course. But what exactly was it that happened on that night?”

  Sebag deliberately ignored the question.

  “Where did you park it when you came home Tuesday evening?”

  “Well . . . Tuesday . . . I don’t know. Probably on Rière Street, as I do most of the time. That’s where there’s usually a place.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He’d asked the question while looking at Isabelle Savoy. Women were better at remembering everyday things.

  “Tuesday, your mother came to keep the baby because I had errands to do. Wasn’t it that evening that you ran into her outside? She was leaving when you came home . . . ”

  “That’s right! I waited until she left and then took her parking spot.”

  “And where was that?” Sebag asked.

  “On the avenue. Avenue Poincaré. Right across from our building, next to the service station. I like to park there when I can, because I can see the car from the living room window. But is that really important? What exactly are you investigating? What does my car have to do with all this?”

  Sebag gave them a general description of the attack on Anneke Verbrucke. They listened to him religiously.

  “That’s unbelievable,” Savoy commented, “I always lock my car—you can count on that!”

  “Someone might have tried to break into it. You didn’t notice anything?”

  “No, nothing at all. In any case, I’ve got a car alarm. This guy is sick. How could he hope to force someone to get into my car?”

  That was just the question Sebag was asking himself. He felt that the key to solving the puzzle was somehow to be found in it. He drew an enormous question mark in his notebook and then bade his hosts good-bye. He had no more questions for them.

  Savoy put his hand in the pocket where Sebag had put the “summons.”

  “So I won’t need to come to police headquarters tomorrow?”

  “No. We’ve said everything that needs to be said, I think. We can just throw that paper away.” He took back the sheet of paper, crumpled it into a ball and lofted it toward the wastebasket—his form was impeccable, but he missed. On the paper was written: “Gotcha.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Prairies in dots of orange and green tumbled down toward Collioure. Terrified by the artist’s brush as by the blowing of the wind, the grasses were moving in all directions. Farther down, white houses with flat red roofs formed a barrier. They blocked the way to a sea of a dark, intense, pure blue.

  To escape the shadows that populated her damp prison, Ingrid tried to think in colors. She took refuge in the universe of the fauvist painters. Revisited in her mind the Museum of Modern Art in Céret. The memory of the works by Matisse and Derain illuminated her darkness with an almost joyful light.

  She also filled her tedium with memories of her childhood. Elementary school, high school. She tried to recall the names of her classmates. Those of her teachers. She remembered in particular a math teacher. He had an angelic face and long, curly hair that fell on his shoulders. Her first love. Platonic. He was flirting with the boys instead.

  She perceived more and more clearly the sounds that came from outside. The distant hum of a highway that reached her on windy days. Birdsong in the gentle peace of early morning. One night, she’d heard rain falling. But from the house overhead she never heard anything.

  Every day, she was allowed to take a shower. Sheer joy. The door to the cellar was cracked slightly. Toward evening, in general. She pushed it wide open. The door creaked. On the other side was a small room with a white tiled floor. An immense closet on one wall and a shower in the corner. The shower was rudimentary. A faucet and a basin. The wall was tiled up to waist level to prevent the water from splashing on the wall. No curtain. Maybe he was watching her from behind a door. She didn’t care. She no longer had any modesty in front of him.

  Washing herself had become as important to her as eating and drinking.

  This morning, she had found clean clothes. A flowered blouse, beige pirate pants, a lacy bra and a g-string. Her own clothes, which her kidnapper had found in her traveling bag. The last time she’d seen that bag it was in the taxi. José had just put it in the car. He’d slammed the trunk shut and then come up to her. He’d kissed her. Afterward he’d opened the door and she’d taken her seat. She’d quickly fallen asleep as he drove off.

  She’d never been able to resist handsome, dark-haired men. She especially liked their hairy hands on her body. But she’d never succeeded in keeping one for very long. There was something about her that attracted them. And probably something else that made them run away. She’d never had much luck with men, but this time she’d really touched bottom.

  She wouldn’t have thought José capable of harming her.

  She ran her hand over her blouse. Her friend Rebecca had given it to her for her eighteenth birthday. The clean smell made her dizzy.

  CHAPTER 20

  Gilles Sebag was in a very bad mood when he arrived at police headquarters. The preceding night, when he’d returned from his conversation with the Savoys, Claire wasn’t home. Around 1:00 A.M., she’d silently slipped into bed alongside him. Her leg felt for his. Half-conscious, he snuggled up to her. Her hair and body reeked of alcohol and cigarettes. The smell penetrated his nostrils and reached his brain, where it woke him up completely. He listened as his wife’s breathing gradually calmed down. He didn’t move. But he couldn’t go back to sleep. So he got up. He drank a glass of whisky, smoked a cigarette. Then he lay down on the chaise longue in the yard. He counted the stars and dozed off from time to time.

  When he got up again, she was still asleep. He hadn’t taken care not to make noise, but she hadn’t woken.

  Or else she had pretended to still be sleeping.

  It was Saturday. The superintendent had asked them to be there. At least during the morning. On Monday, Claire was leaving on her cruise: they still had a day and a half. Giles had planned a hike in the Albères.

  He stopped at the service de quart. The officers on duty were trying to question a young man. Arrested during an ordinary roadside check, the boy had resisted the police. He was drunk and was driving without a license in a stolen car. He was only seventeen. The police had left him in the drunk tank all night, but he was still giving off bitter fumes of alcohol. He was handcuffed to a radiator. He replied to every question with volleys of insults and his strong foreign accent was getting on the officers’ nerves. Sebag could see that soon they would start hitting him. Patience had its limits. Young people’s hatred for uniforms was steadily increasing in the immigrant neighborhoods and was ultimately equaled only by the cops’ scorn for these street kids.

  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

  “What’s new, this weekend?” Sebag asked.

  “You’re looking at it . . . routine,” an officer answered.

  Sebag sensed that his presence had created a diversion. He pointed to the boy and added:

  “At first, I thought he had a big vocabulary, but in the end it’s
always the same horrors coming out again and again. We ought to lend him a slang dictionary, that would make the conversation more interesting.”

  “I’d be surprised if he could read,” an officer snickered.

  “Screw you, you stupid cop, I fuck your mother and she sucks me . . . ”

  “That’s a Kama Sutra position I didn’t know about,” Sebag joked.

  Laughter mixed with insults, and the inspector disappeared, satisfied that he’d obtained a few minutes of reprieve for the young man.

  In the corridor leading to his office, he met the superintendent‘s secretary. She was wearing a leather skirt and a flowered blouse wide open at the top. He tried to look her in the eyes when he greeted her.

  “I was just on my way to see you, Mister Sebag,” she said with a winning smile. “I’ve got mail for you this morning.”

  When she handed him the white envelope, Sebag stopped breathing. The address was complete this time. The envelope had come through the regular mail, as the stamp proved. But he’d recognized the typeface. To Jeanne’s surprise, Sebag grabbed a tissue and took the envelope very carefully out of her hands.

  It was opened in the crime lab. It contained a message consisting of a few words:

  Monday 4:00 P.M. 150 million euros. Ten-euro bills.

  And the message was signed:

  Armed Brigade of the Surinam Bush Negroes

  “This is complete nonsense,” Sebag snorted.

  There were four of them leaning over the laboratory bench. Pagès had temporarily put the letter under a glass slide. In the upper right, like a kind of inscription, there was a brown stain. It looked like blood.

  “What can it possibly be, this ‘Armed Brigade of Surinam Bush Negroes‘?” Castello asked.

  “Another joke,” Sebag replied.

  “Surinam is a country in Latin America,” Lefèvre explained. “For a long time it was called Dutch Guiana.”

  The room fell silent. Had Lefèvre announced the winning number for the next drawing of the lottery he wouldn’t have captured more attention.