Summertime All the Cats Are Bored

by Philippe Georget

  At the Oleanders campground he parked his car next to the office. The telephone booth was by the entrance. It was empty. He went into it. In the age of the cell phone, he was the only one who dared to enter this solar furnace on a summer afternoon. He left the door half-open to avoid being dried to a crisp.

  The campground was supposed to be full, but in the heat at this hour it was quiet. Sebag spotted Raynaud and Moreno parked in a shady lane next to an immaculate trailer from Germany. Smoke was coming out of the driver’s-side window. He could make out a slender figure behind the windshield. Hmm, Moreno has started smoking again, Sebag thought.

  “I’m in position,” he said in a low voice.

  He was ten minutes early.

  He took out his cell phone. He’d put it on silent mode and had felt it vibrate while he was driving. He had in fact received a message. A new photo of Léo on a quad.

  Two teenage girls in swimsuits walked by. They were pretty, though their thighs were a little heavy. They looked him over and he felt ridiculous with his shirt, street shoes, and jacket thrown over his shoulder, sweating heavily in an overheated telephone booth as he stood there holding a cell phone. He smiled to them,;they giggled. Kids that age had no pity.

  Fortunately it was time.

  The telephone in the booth rang. He picked up the receiver and heard calm breathing at the other end of the line.

  “Hello,” Sebag said.

  No answer. Only the breathing. Deep and self-assured.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s hot, isn’t it?”

  The voice that was whispering to him seemed muffled and distant. Sebag immediately recognized it from the recording of the telephone call that had accompanied the first message.

  “You could have found a more comfortable place, yes. I know a bar near here where they serve very cold beer. We could meet there, if you like.”

  Silence again. More breathing. His interlocutor wasn’t the humorous type.

  “In the shade of Força Real you’ll find a gift. It’s all you can buy with the contents of your bag.”

  The mysterious caller hung up. Sebag suddenly felt cold. He went back to his car but did not immediately drive away. What did that mean? Like an echo to his thoughts, he heard Castello’s voice in his earbud.

  “What do you think he meant?”

  Sebag wasn’t the only one to foresee the worst. He didn’t want to be the first to put it into words.

  “What about you, what do you think?”

  Castello reflected for a few seconds before answering.

  “He knows there can’t be 150 million euros in small bills in that bag.”

  “Conclusion?”

  The first reply was a long sigh. Then the tense voice of his boss.

  “I’m not sure that we’re going to like his gift very much.”

  Sebag started the car, drove out of the campground, and took his place in the long line of cars slowed by the dense crowd of pedestrians. The summer visitors were starting to leave the beach.

  “Damn, it’s going to take an hour,” he grumbled.

  Castello heard him.

  “The treasure hunt is over, I think. We’re also leaving for the hermitage at Força Real. Join us there as soon as you can. If you need to speak to me again, use your cell phone.”

  Sebag was getting impatient. He’d always hated traffic jams. When he’d had enough of drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he got out his flashing light, turned on his siren, and tried to go around the cars on the cycle path on the right. In his rearview mirror, he saw that Molina and Ménard had moved up and were following him.

  When he got to Elne, Sebag decided to go through Thuir to avoid Perpignan. Bad choice. On the way they were blocked by firemen fighting a brush fire and arrived in Força Real after 7:00 P.M. The two cars stopped side by side. Sebag, Molina, and Ménard got out and headed toward a group of men among whom they had spotted Superintendent Castello’s white mane.

  On the summit, a light wind was blowing but the air was still muggy. The Força Real mountain has two peaks. The higher of the two is topped by a television relay antenna, the other by the hermitage. Standing in front of the little religious building, the view was splendid. At the foot of Le Canigou, Sebag immediately located the Sant-Marti chapel he liked to run up to.

  Molina was talking with his childhood friend, the gendarme from Millas. Ménard was trying to make a place for himself among the officials who were talking with Castello. Sebag recognized a colonel from the gendarmerie and the director of the prefect’s cabinet, a small, very neat young man who had recently graduated from the National School of Administration. This group also included Lefèvre.

  Castello got away and approached his men.

  “We arrived only a short time ago: I had to take care of a few formalities. The hermitage is closed for repairs. We had it opened but found nothing. Now we’re going to search the surrounding area.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Molina asked.

  “Anything we can find,” Castello replied.

  “We’re looking for a gift,” Sebag explained.

  The colonel from the gendarmerie was directing the operations. Policemen and gendarmes deployed in a circle around the hermitage.

  “First, we’re going to search the accessible places,” Castello explained. “If we don’t find anything, then we’ll go look at the base of the cliff.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Sebag said. “On the way here, I thought about what our interlocutor said. He uttered only three sentences in all. He chose his words carefully.”

  The sun had begun its slow descent. The summit of Le Canigou was wreathed in pink. Around the hermitage, the shadows were slowly growing longer. Lefèvre had come up. Four pairs of eyes were now fixed on Sebag.

  “He said we’d find a gift in the shade of the hermitage. In my opinion, we should take what he said literally: it’s in the shade of the hermitage that we’ll find something. Or in what will be in the shade a few minutes from now. We might be early with respect to his estimated timetable.”

  All eyes turned toward the hermitage, then followed its shadow as far as a copse of live oaks alongside the asphalt parking lot. Two gendarmes were already walking over the area. One of them easily picked up a bush of dried flowers. The other scratched the earth with the tip of his boot.

  “Have you found something?” Castello shouted to them.

  Deep in his thoughts, the elder of the two gendarmes jumped:

  “Yes . . . well, maybe . . . It looks like the soil here has recently been dug up and that the bush was pulled up and then put back.”

  That was the signal for action. They used pickets and an orange plastic ribbon to delimit the area to be searched. Two husky gendarmes took up their tools and set to work. The soil was dry and light. In a short time, a pickaxe tore into a piece of shiny paper. Then a piece of multi-colored ribbon appeared.

  “Damn,” Molina said. “It really is a gift-wrapped package.”

  Time seemed to stop. Policemen and gendarmes had gathered around the area. They were all silent but the birds, unperturbed, continued to sing their ode to the evening coming on.

  The police lab technicians took over. Jean Pagès put on his old, faded white smock. He was supposed to retire in August. Along with his young colleague, Eva Moulin, he slowly unwrapped the present. Under the shiny paper they found a large plastic bag. They carefully opened it by cutting the top of the bag like a package of grated cheese. Sebag had prepared himself to be gagged by strong odors of putrefaction, but that didn’t happen. The aroma of the brush continued to hover over the scene. An arm suddenly emerged from the opening, a muscular arm covered with brown hair. At its extremity, a large, powerful hand wore a wedding ring. Then the policemen cut the bag lengthwise. Ice crystals covered the corpse. The cold had swollen the f
eatures of the face and coils of ice had formed in the eye sockets. But the inspectors had no trouble identifying the body.

  CHAPTER 24

  Assembled in the fourth-floor meeting room, the policemen listened to the coroner, Dr. Roger, present the results of the autopsy. In José Lopez’s lungs, which were swollen like balloons, water mixed with mud had been found; in his stomach, dark beer and massive doses of a sedative. The cab driver’s body bore no trace of violence apart from a black mark on his neck left by someone’s fingers. The coroner had also noted reddish spots under the arms.

  “The murderer got his victim to drink a beer containing a powerful sedative,” Dr. Roger explained. “Once the victim was unconscious, he drowned him by holding his head under water with his right hand. The mark is visible but not too pronounced. I think the victim regained consciousness, but too late to offer any real resistance. The drowning took place in a pond or lake. The marks under the armpits suggest that the body was transported just after death. Since no similar marks were found on the ankles, we can conclude that the body was moved post mortem by one individual.”

  “The corpse was dragged, in fact,” Jean Pagès confirmed. “I found unusual signs of wear on the back of the heels of his shoes. The murderer grabbed Lopez under the arms and pulled him.”

  “The victim’s legs were frozen in a bent position,” the coroner went on. “According to my calculations, the body was kept in a freezer whose length was less than five feet.”

  Roger also estimated that Lopez had been dead for no less than a week, and about ten days at most. He wasn’t able to be more precise because freezing the body threw off the parameters. On the other hand, it was certain that the body had been taken out of the freezer the night before it was discovered.

  The coroner put away his notes and tried to smile. He was a small man, puny and timid, whose only bold element was his hair: long brown bristles poked in wild tufts from his nostrils and ears.

  “First, I’d like to thank Dr. Roger for having presented in person the results of his autopsy,” Superintendent Castello said. “I know he doesn’t much like doing this sort of thing, but it has allowed us to gain precious time. You will have his complete report, in official written form, on your desks tomorrow morning.”

  Dr. Roger nodded in agreement, looking down at his dirty fingernails. Sebag didn’t dare imagine what materials could have blackened them that way. He’d already noted that contrary to the most elementary rules of hygiene, the coroner didn’t always wear gloves while doing autopsies.

  The superintendent turned to Pagès.

  “Anything to add?”

  “Not much. The clothes we found on the body were the ones Lopez was wearing the day he disappeared. We can therefore assume that he was killed very early.”

  Castello nodded his head several times.

  “The main conclusion I want to draw from these first elements is reassuring,” he said. “Lopez has been dead for a long time and his body was already buried at Força Real when the macabre treasure hunt began. The kidnapper wanted to make us think he was punishing us for not having brought the ransom he demanded, but that was only a maneuver. Everything was planned. To what end? Apart from driving us up the wall, I don’t quite see . . . ”

  Sebag liked the idea put forth by the superintendent. The day before, Castello had already said something that had made him think along a certain line. Speaking of the sports bag, he’d said something like: “We have to play the game.”

  “The second conclusion,” Castello went on, “concerns Lopez’s status. If we can assume that he took part in Ingrid Raven’s kidnapping in the role of an accomplice, he is now clearly a victim of the kidnapper. You’ll note that I said ‘kidnapper,‘ not ‘kidnappers,‘ because I think we can also now say that the perpetrator was acting alone. That’s my third conclusion. What else is there, in your opinion?”

  The superintendent had just opened the traditional brainstorming session. The inspectors understood. They knew that when their boss appealed to their imaginations in that way, they mustn’t hesitate to speak their minds. The craziest ideas were never mocked. Only silence was not acceptable.

  “José Lopez knew his murderer,” Llach began. “Well enough to feel like drinking the beer he gave him.”

  “The killer must have a van or large station wagon,” Molina went on. “Lopez’s frozen body wouldn’t have fit in the trunk of an ordinary car.”

  The coroner began to give a sign expressing disagreement, but Ménard spoke first.

  “Not necessarily. Dr. Roger told us that the folded-up body had probably been put in a freezer about five feet long. So it should have been possible to put it in the trunk of a sedan, shouldn’t it, Doctor?”

  “Yes, you’re right,” the coroner said. “The trunk of a large car would have been big enough.”

  “All the same,” Molina persisted, “it’s easier to get a frozen body out of a station wagon than out of the trunk of a sedan. You don’t need to lift it.”

  “Especially if the murderer acted alone,” Moreno said in a hardly audible voice.

  It was Castello’s turn to take notes. He wrote down all the ideas put forth, reserving the right to eliminate the less pertinent ones later on, and to take up again the discussion of the others.

  Lefèvre, who had been absent up to that point, entered the room, a happy smile on his lips and a fax in his right hand. He was wearing navy blue slacks and a yellow polo shirt adorned with the famous green crocodile. Sebag said to himself that he must have brought not a suitcase but an actual trunk that would allow him to dress like a fashion model every day. No, Claire was ultimately wrong: never, even at the beginning of his career, had Sebag resembled in any way this . . . Kevin Costner.

  Lambert continued:

  “He’s a man who’s, uh, pretty strong, maybe. He must have carried Lopez several times.”

  “He must live on a large property,” Raynaud said. “Big enough to have a pond, and isolated enough to be able to drown someone without running the risk of being seen.”

  “His house must have a cellar,” Moreno added. “That’s the most practical kind of space for holding a prisoner.”

  “He may have two freezers,” Molina remarked.

  His cynical comment momentarily extinguished the fire fed by the suggestions, and despite the heat a shiver ran through the inspectors. Lopez’s frozen face still haunted their minds, with the ice crystals crushing his eyes and the stalactites sticking out of his nostrils. They’d all dreamed about it the night before, and some of them would dream about it for a long time.

  After a silence, Ménard asked for the floor again.

  “By the way . . . One question has been bothering me since last night and I suppose I’m not the only one: why did he choose to freeze the body?”

  “Because he’s a sicko,” Llach replied, peremptorily. “I don’t see any other explanation.”

  “Maybe he wanted to eat him later on.”

  Molina’s joke was no more successful than his last one. Nobody smiled, but neither did anyone take umbrage at his lack of taste: everyone had his own way of managing his fears.

  “In general, you freeze something in order to preserve it,” Moreno noted.

  “But why would he want to preserve the body?” Ménard asked.

  This time it was Sebag who answered the question.

  “In order to be able to give it back to us at the moment he’d chosen. That was the only way to transport it in a suitable condition two weeks after the murder.”

  Molina was nervously drumming on the table with the pen he was holding like a cigarette. Sebag put his hand on his teammate‘s to make him stop drumming.

  “In the superintendent‘s quick presentation, I noticed two things that seemed to me particularly interesting.”

  He glanced at his notes.

  “First, you said—I’m quo
ting you verbatim, Superintend­ent—that ‘everything was planned.‘ That’s also my impression: the kidnapper is following a plan known to him alone. Then you wondered whether the main goal of the maneuver wasn’t to drive us up the wall, and I think that just might be the key to understanding this whole thing.”

  “You have a theory,” Castello smiled.

  Sebag had mulled the question over and over in his head the night before. He’d ended up finding what seemed to him the right angle from which to see the case. Everything was beginning to fit together. He was fairly happy with himself, but his idea still had to pass the test of broad daylight and then the test of criticism. He knew that theoretical constructions could seem marvelous in the echo chamber of the mind and then collapse like a house of cards at the first critical comment.

  “In my opinion, if this case is particularly complicated, that is no accident.”

  He took a few seconds to reflect on how to formulate his thought as clearly as possible.

  “Fantastic claims made in the name of foreign terrorist organizations and an exorbitant sum demanded in small bills, then a kind of treasure hunt from Perpignan to Força Real by way of Argelès to finally lead us to the place to which he’d decided from the outset he’d make us go: the kidnapper is playing with us. In fact, he’s putting up smokescreens with the sole objective of confusing us. I think he’s having a lot of fun.”

  The honk of a car horn interrupted Sebag’s comments. The air conditioner was on the blink again, and the sounds of the city were coming into the room through the half-open window.

  “If the kidnapper really wanted to be paid a ransom,” Sebag went on, “first, he would have asked for a reasonable sum, and second, he would have addressed the demand to Ingrid’s parents, not the French police.”