She’d decided to do exercises. She’d begun by doing standing warm-ups. Stretching her arms, relaxing her back, then running in place. She’d rapidly gotten out of breath. She’d always hated sports.
She took the time to recuperate by walking up and down before beginning a series of abdominal exercises on the floor. Pain appeared very quickly, but she gritted her teeth. She recalled the last time she’d suffered so much. She’d been sixteen years old and was in love—like all her girlfriends—with a well-built high-school student, the regional gymnastic champion. The girls admired the athlete’s rippling muscles and his broad chest, but it was especially his feline way of walking that captivated Ingrid. He moved through the school corridors slowly, with a powerful and supple gait. The crowds of students opened up before him as the Red Sea opened before Moses. Ingrid had persuaded a girlfriend to go with her to enroll in the same club. During their first—and only—training session, she’d endured the abominable torture without attracting a single glance from the champion. Her nascent love had not been equal to the atrocious cramps that had followed. Her girlfriend had been more persistent, and Ingrid seemed to remember that for a time she had been on their hero’s list of favorites.
After working on her abs, Ingrid started walking up and down in her cell. Five paces in one direction, turn around at the wall, five paces in the other direction.
Her head was spinning but she no longer wanted to stop.
Five paces in one direction, turn around at the wall, five paces in the other direction.
She was going back and forth in her cage imagining that each step took her a little closer to her parents. Papa . . . Mama . . . The words escaped her lips. She didn’t even notice.
Her head was spinning more and more, she was beginning to feel sick, but she could no longer stop.
Five paces in one direction, turn around at the wall, five paces in the other direction.
She told herself that if she ever managed to get out of this cellar, she would be capable of walking three hundred miles to escape her tormentor. That was absurd. But she didn’t care.
Five paces in one direction, turn around at the wall, five paces in the other direction.
She finally had the feeling that she was doing something useful.
She had to cling to that.
Five paces in one direction, turn around at the wall, five paces in the other direction.
CHAPTER 30
Gilles Sebag was looking for inspiration on site. After roaming around the cab stand at the Perpignan rail station and then strolling down Avenue Poincaré, he got into his car. He drove as far as Força Real, admired the view once again, and then took off for Canet. But at the hotel where Ingrid had stayed after she left Collioure, no one remembered seeing the young woman.
Toward noon, Sebag allowed himself the pleasure of drinking an orgeat soda on the terrace of a restaurant on the Place de la Méditerranée. Then he decided to eat lunch there.
At a nearby table, two lovers were holding hands and smiling at each other with their eyes as much as with their lips. They were both over forty. The man was wearing a wedding ring. An adulterous couple, Sebag thought, making fun of that old-fashioned term that his mother might have used. Weren’t they right to want to experience several love affairs? And wasn’t it nonsensical, not to say perverted, to hope to spend one’s whole life with the same person? Who could claim to stand the test of time?
By early afternoon, he was back in the old center of Perpignan. The Deux Margots bar had just opened. It was kept by two women who had been prostitutes on the Place Blanche in Paris. They’d chosen to retire in Roussillon and had kept their stage names to pun on that of a famous café-théâtre in Paris.
Sebag observed with care the place where a few days earlier the kidnapper had chosen his prey. His bait. He went up to the bar.
“What would you like, darling?”
With her drawl verging on vulgarity, her voice made hoarse by alcohol and cigarettes, her bleached blond hair, and her enormous mouth smeared with bright red lipstick, this Margot flaunted her past as a hooker. Sebag slammed his badge on the bar.
“Excuse . . . uh, excuse me, I didn’t know. But your colleagues already came by last week.”
He nodded to signify that he was aware of that. Raynaud and Moreno had gone to talk to the two owners as soon as it was learned that the kidnapper had called headquarters from this bar.
“They gave you a description of a suspect, right?”
“Yeah. Some description: a big skinny guy at least forty . . . ”
“And if I add that he had a very deep voice and breathed heavily?”
Margot limited herself to an eloquent frown.
“Sorry, no, that doesn’t help.”
Sebag took out his wallet. He laid out a few photographs on the bar. José Lopez, Ingrid Raven, Anneke Verbrucke. After hesitating for a moment, he also put down a photo of Claire. He thought it was better to add to the sample someone who had nothing to do with the case.
“Do you recognize one of these people?”
Margot bent over the photographs. She squinted.
“Excuse me,” she said, going to take a pair of glasses from a drawer.
She put them on her nose.
“I can see better like this.”
She examined the images attentively. When her finger fell on one of them, Sebag couldn’t hide his surprise.
“I seem to remember this woman. She came here at least once.”
Her chubby finger was pointing to Claire’s face.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure? Let’s not exaggerate. A lot of people come here. We can’t remember everybody. Do you want me to call my partner? Margot!”
“What?” a voice replied from the back of the room.
“Can you come up here? It’s the . . . uh . . . it’s important.”
Margot 2 didn’t have to be asked twice. She’d understood. She looked just like her partner, except that she was a brunette.
“This gentleman would like to know if you recognize someone. I told him that this face was familiar.”
Margot 2 took the photo and held it at arm’s length, but she didn’t need to put on glasses.
“Yes, I’ve seen this woman. Several times, in fact. One evening, she knocked over a glass.”
Sebag felt his stomach being tied in knots. He thought again about the couple in the restaurant.
“Was there someone with her?” he asked in an expressionless voice.
Margot 1 looked at him over her glasses.
“Women rarely go to bars alone at night,” she replied. “At least in the provinces.”
“I seem to recall that she came mainly with other women,” Margot 2 added.
Gilles began to breathe again. His reprieve didn’t last.
“But the night she knocked over a glass, she was with a man. I remember: she spilled the glass on his suit and I sort of had a feeling that she’d done it on purpose.”
“It wasn’t that man,” Margot 2 explained, pointing to José Lopez.
Sebag gulped painfully.
“And . . . what did they look like? I mean, the man and the woman, did they seem to be . . . ”
He couldn’t get the word out.
“Lovers?” Margot 2 said, helping him.
“For example.”
“I don’t know but if they were, they were about to have a fight.”
“When a man comes here with a woman, if he hasn’t already slept with her he’s hoping to do it,” Margot 1 said, philosophically.
“Or to do her,” her comrade added, bursting into loud stage laughter.
Sebag forced himself to return to his investigation.
“And you really haven’t seen any of these other people?”
The two Margots confirmed their initial judgment.
“No, we’d have liked to be able to help you, but we don’t see how.”
“Okay, thanks anyway.”
He was about to pick up the photos when the brunette put her finger on Claire’s again.
“On the other hand, I might know who the other man is.”
“What other man?”
“The one who was with the little lady with the curly hair.”
Sebag almost choked. The man who was with Claire . . .
He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He took the call before it began to ring.
“Hello Inspector Sebag. It’s Martine at the reception desk. I’m sorry to disturb you but there was a telephone call for you. I think it’s important. The man who called said it was urgent, that he wanted to speak only to you, and that he would call back in half an hour.”
“Did he give his name?”
“He refused. He told me you would understand. At first, I didn’t take the call very seriously; I thought it was the guy from the other day.”
“Who?”
“The one whose car was stolen.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“Apparently not. He said several times that it was urgent. He said something about a treasure hunt, that’s why I thought at first it was a joke. And also, I had a hard time understanding what he was saying. It was weird: he was whispering.”
Sebag felt a kind of electric shock.
“How long ago did he call?”
“Five minutes. I had another call right afterward.”
“Good. Tell Superintendent Castello, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
He hung up. The two Margots had listened to every word of his conversation.
“I’ve got to go. Thanks for your help, ladies.”
To their great surprise, he immediately turned on his heel and left.
“But . . . don’t you want to know?”
He stopped. He already had his hand on the door.
“Know what?”
“The name of the man that was with the lady.”
He thought. Just three seconds.
“Another time. It’s not as important as I thought.”
The responsiveness of the police was astonishing. As soon as he returned, Sebag noticed that the whole headquarters was ready for action. Officers in uniform or in mufti were already fanning out over the city to set up surveillance on telephone booths. With the exception of Raynaud, Moreno, and Llach, who were still under way, the inspectors had come to the meeting room to receive instructions. While Castello was speaking, members of the crime lab staff were equipping Sebag as they had the last time. Gilles hoped that the kidnapper would show some imagination and that he wouldn’t send them out to search the neighborhood garbage cans again.
“This time, we’re not trying to pretend,” Castello explained. “There’s no need to put crumpled newspaper in a big sports bag. Since it’s a treasure hunt, we’ll just play the game, and hope to win. We’ll see where that takes us.”
Concerned faces were looking at him. Everyone remembered the outcome of the first inning. Castello chose to address the collective anxiety:
“Hoping that it doesn’t lead us to another corpse.”
But he abstained from giving a name to this corpse. The ring of a telephone resounded in the room. Conversations stopped. People stopped breathing, as well. Castello signaled to Sebag to answer the phone.
“Hello?”
“It’s for you,” Martine said. “It’s the guy who called a little while ago. I’m connecting you.”
There was a silence, and then slow, heavy breathing. The superintendent turned on the loudspeaker.
“Hello?” Sebag said again.
“Hello, Inspector.”
A muffled whisper.
“Hello, everyone. Is everything ready? Can we begin?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Silence. Breathing.
“Good. The Moulin à vent housing development. A mailbox. You can guess which one.”
Another silence. Then the shrill sound of the dial tone. In unison, the inspectors started breathing again at the same time.
Castello roused his troops.
“Is the rendezvous clear to everyone? José Lopez lived in Moulin à vent. We’re going to contact his wife immediately.”
Castello leaned over to speak into the microphone in front of him.
“Gilles, you’re up.”
That sentence crackled in Sebag’s earphone, and he gave a thumb’s up to confirm that the system was working properly. They all stood up immediately.
Sebag drove back up the Boulevard des Pyrénées, then started once again down the Avenue Poincaré. In the Moulin à vent quarter, he found a parking place in front of the building where the Lopez’s had lived, almost happily. The young widow was waiting for them in front of the door to the building, holding a white envelope in her hand. The inspector’s name was written on it
“I found it in the mailbox a little while ago. It wasn’t there this morning. I was going to call you when your superintendent called me.”
Sebag tore open the envelope. Hôtel du Sud, Canet. Still the same type face. Still the same economy of expression.
“It’s odd. You’d think it was a game,” Sylvie Lopez commented. She’d read the message over Sebag’s shoulder.
“It is a kind of game, yes. But it isn’t fun.”
“Are you going to arrest him?”
Sebag noticed the doubt in the young woman’s voice.
“It’s just a matter of time.”
“And you’re going to save her?”
“I hope so.”
She nodded, pensively.
“I hope so, too. It’s strange, I should probably be angry with her. But I have the feeling that if she dies, it will be as if José died a second time. Do you understand?”
Sebag thought of his own situation. He now knew that Claire had a lover, but he felt no resentment. All he felt was pain.
“Yes, I understand.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Castello interrupted, through the earphone. “We have other things to do.”
Sebag said good-bye to Sylvie Lopez and got back in his car. He headed for Canet and the hotel where he’d stopped a few hours earlier. On the way, Castello brought him up to date on the latest information.
“We know that the kidnapper is calling us from a cell phone. We have the number, and we’re looking for the owner. But I’m continuing the surveillance of the phone booths; you can never tell. Raynaud and Moreno have just returned to headquarters. I’m going to send them to Moulin à vent to question the neighbors. People don’t put envelopes in mailboxes in the middle of the afternoon every day, and somebody might have noticed.”
Sebag put his rotating light on the roof of his car and drove at high speed down the four-lane road that connected Perpignan with Canet. The Hôtel du Sud looked out on the sea, and was separated from the beach only by the street. He parked in front of it. He unfolded the sun-shade on the back of which the word “POLICE” appeared in capital letters. He locked the car and went into the coolness of the lobby.
The employee at the reception desk recognized him.
“You seem to like our hotel,” he said.
“It’s all right. But I’ve got a meeting here. I don’t suppose you have a message for me? Inspector Sebag.”
“Not so far as I know. Ask my colleague.”
The young woman he pointed to was on the telephone. He listened to what she was saying.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have a guest by that name, you must be mistaken . . . What do you mean, in the lobby? But . . . ”
Sebag handed her his business card and took the receiver out of her hands.
“Hello?”
The same heavy breathing.
“You aren’t too warm this time?”
“No, thanks for asking. The hotel is air-conditioned. It’s better than the telephone booth at the campground.”
“I think I’m treating you too kindly.”
“If you say so . . . ”
He sensed that at the other end of the line the kidnapper was dying to continue the conversation. He was the one who had designated him as his main contact. He must have had his reasons. Sebag decided to ask him the question directly.
“Why me?”
“ . . . ”
“Why did you choose me? Do we know each other?”
Sebag had the impression that the man began breathing faster.
Imperceptibly.
“Not really.”
“Then why?”
“Because I think you’re a good cop.”
“What makes you say that?”
“An impression. Am I wrong?”
“It’s not for me to say.”
“I have to admit that at one point I had my doubts. But you reassured me.”
“When?”
“When you solved the murder in Argelès. That was good.”
“I also understood about the attack on Avenue Poincaré.”
Silence. This time, Sebag was sure: he was breathing faster.
“Do you think it was committed by a third party?”
Sebag discerned a certain disappointment in the whisper.
“No. It was you who attacked Anneke Verbrucke. But you did it only to put us on the wrong track.”
The breathing seemed to stop. The kidnapper must have taken the receiver away from his mouth.
“Are you still there?” Sebag joked.
The breathing resumed.
“I wasn’t mistaken. The game is interesting.”
Sebag decided to pursue his counter-attack. He was tired of being on the defensive.
“We’re going to arrest you, you know.”
“That’s possible. That’s part of the game.”
Summertime All the Cats Are Bored Page 28
