Summertime All the Cats Are Bored

by Philippe Georget

  “During the night of July 4, he puts an anonymous letter in the mailbox at police headquarters. Then he goes to the Deux Margots bar. Sitting near a table where a group of young people are talking, he notices a young woman’s foreign accent. He immediately identifies it. She’s a Dutch girl, like Ingrid. When the young people leave the bar, he plans to follow them. In the meantime, he slips out for a few minutes to call police headquarters to be sure that they will find his letter that very night.

  “The Dutch girl leaves her friends and goes off on her own. A lucky break for our man. He follows her, waiting for a favorable moment, and pins her against a car. He simulates a failed attempt at kidnapping and disappears. But before he does, he takes on the sharpened point of his knife a drop of the young woman’s blood that he will use for his second letter. After having caused the police to focus their investigation on international terrorism, he tries to make them adopt the hypothesis of a serial criminal. He hopes to lead them into utter confusion. And he succeeds in doing so.”

  Sebag stopped writing. Certain things didn’t fit very well. The kidnapper sometimes proved clever in misleading them—the drop of blood, for example—at other times he sent grotesque ransom letters. It was a cat and mouse game. With a cat who constantly hesitated regarding the degree of freedom to be accorded to his victim.

  He returned to his narrative.

  “On July 9, the kidnapper leads the police on a treasure hunt to Perpignan and Argelès. He persists in wanting to make them believe in the existence of a serial criminal, and at the conclusion of the hunt provides a token of his seriousness and determination.

  “On July 17, a second treasure hunt. Informed—probably by the press—that the murder of Josetta Braun has been solved, the kidnapper, after dropping the far-fetched terrorist demands, also abandons the false lead of the serial criminal. In the new itinerary he imposes on the police, the stages are all connected with Ingrid Raven and José Lopez. Playing on the investigators’ nerves, he does everything he can to make them think they’re going to find a corpse, but gives them only a car. A Volvo that was used to transport José Lopez’s cadaver, and in which he has deposited clothing belonging to his prisoner.”

  Again, Sebag hesitated. He looked up. Watched for a moment Molina reading his e-mail. Then he bent over his keyboard again to write in boldface letters a few questions that remained unanswered.

  “Why the car? Why abandon it just then? What is the message?”

  Then he reread what he’d written, corrected a few errors, erased the words “probably” and “maybe.” What he’d worked out wasn’t the truth, but it must come close to it. He checked to be sure he’d saved the text before sending it to his colleagues, asking them to point out any incoherencies.

  “I’ve just sent you an e-mail. Can you have a look at it?”

  “Okay, no problem,” Molina mumbled without taking his eyes off his screen.

  “I’m going to drink a cup of coffee across the street.”

  “Fine. I’ll stay here and hold down the fort.”

  “Com vas?” (“How are you?”)

  “Be, gracies. I tu?” (“Fine, thanks. And you?”)

  “Comme sempre. Vols un cafè?” (“As usual. You want a coffee?”)

  “Amb molt de gust.” (“Love one.”)

  Rafel Puig disappeared long enough to make the drink Sebag had ordered. Emanations of garlic were already mixing with the perfumes of hops and anise. Sebag didn’t need to look at the clock. He knew that noon was approaching.

  He drank his coffee rapidly, put two coins on the bar, and returned to police headquarters. The short break he’d allowed himself had not refreshed his mind. The sentences he’d written that morning continued to get tangled up in his head.

  “You’ve come at the right time. I was just going to go eat,” Molina said when he came into the office. “I wanted to leave a note for you. As I was talking with Ménard a minute ago, I made the connection. You remember, Didier Coll, the owner of the Volvo? Who claimed he knew you?”

  Standing in front of his desk, Sebag moved his mouse to wake up his computer.

  “Yes, but that still doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said distractedly.

  The sound of a diesel engine made Sebag’s office shake. A white flash crossed the computer’s screen. Colors gradually appeared, creating the image of two smiling children.

  “And yet you do know him. Didier Coll, the famous owner of the Volvo station wagon found on the parking lot at Força Real knows you, and you know him, too. Didier Coll is . . . Barry White . . . ”

  Sebag’s eyes moved away from the screen and settled on his colleague. He frowned.

  “What’s all this about Barry White?”

  Molina’s voice descended a few tones below its normal timbre.

  “You don’t remember me, Mr. Sebag? The other day, I needed a top-flight cop for my old junker.”

  Sebag bit his lip.

  “Don’t tell me . . . ”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh, shit!”

  “You can say that again!”

  “That guy’s car was the Volvo station wagon . . . ”

  “Bravo, Mr. Top-flight cop,” Molina laughed. “Good reasoning. A little late, though.”

  Sebag suddenly got up and started walking up and down the office. He was thinking about what could have changed if he’d agreed to deal with this theft as soon as the owner came to seek him out.

  “Don’t fret,” Molina said. “That wouldn’t have helped us advance more quickly. You couldn’t have known that that car was used for Ingrid’s kidnapping.”

  “You’re probably right. All the same . . . It doesn’t look good.”

  “I find it pretty funny.”

  “I can see that. You’ll excuse me for not sharing your gaiety.”

  “No problem. I promise I’ll be as quiet as a tomb. Nobody will know about this. Except me.”

  “That’s already too many,” Sebag said, aware that his colleague would probably regularly remind him of his blunder. For the next twenty years at least.

  Sebag had planned to take advantage of the noon break to do some errands at a shopping center. His fridge was empty. Claire was coming home in three days.

  He left Molina, who still hadn’t gone to eat lunch. His ex-wife had called him and they‘d gotten into a tense discussion. Since their divorce, they’d never been able to talk with each other in a friendly way.

  “What a pity,” Sebag moaned, “never that.”

  In the reception area, two women were waiting on a bench. There was no one in front of the desk. Martine was taking the opportunity to watch television. When he saw her, Sebag stopped short. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself again in the same place a few days earlier: himself, Martine, and . . . Barry White.

  He had the feeling that he was close to something essential.

  “Have you forgotten something, Mr. Sebag?” Martine asked.

  “No, no . . . ”

  He dug into his pants pocket and pulled out his keys.

  “I’ve got my car keys after all, it’s okay. Have a good lunch, Martine.”

  “You too, sir.”

  His car was roasting in the sun. He turned on the fan for a few minutes before starting the air conditioning. Then he switched on the radio. He took Arago Bridge and headed north. The radio station was playing an old American hit from the 1970s. Barry White.

  Life certainly produced some astonishing coincidences. Today, it was Barry White. He didn’t remember the title of the song. But he was sure he’d heard it recently.

  He was bothered by a piece of white paper on the dashboard that was being reflected on the windshield. It was his shopping list. He stuck it in his pocket.

  The last notes of the song were fading away when he felt a new idea being born. Still intangible. Like the glow of a candle flam
e flickering in the wind at the end of a tunnel. He slowed down.

  He felt something. He had to let it come. He emptied his mind of static and let the melody resound.

  The answer was there.

  In Barry White’s warm, deep voice, maybe. Yes, he’d heard this song recently. It was at the Lopez’s home! While he was searching the apartment . . .

  So he’d found it.

  Now what? Where could this discovery take him?

  This time, he decided to pull over. He slowed down and stopped the car on the shoulder.

  In the tunnel of his thoughts, the light had grown stronger. He could try to move forward. Lopez had a complete set of Barry White in his collection. Sebag had put a CD in the player . . .

  It was coming!

  It was almost there.

  There was a connection between the singer and the kidnapping of Ingrid Raven. No, that was impossible; he was nuts. This case was making his head spin.

  And then suddenly . . .

  “Shit! Barry White, of course, it’s Barry White!”

  He looked in the rearview mirror. A truck was coming but he had time. He made a U-turn in front of the truck and roared off. The driver didn’t miss the opportunity to honk at him for making such a crazy maneuver.

  Sebag double parked in the lot at police headquarters.

  “Back already?” Martine said.

  Sebag replied with a broad smile.

  Martine.

  There, too, he understood. Martine . . . on the telephone . . . a voice that was whispering. Without knowing it, she’d found the answer before he did.

  Everything was fitting together.

  He bounded up the stairs and ran to his office.

  Jacques had left. He called his cell phone.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Carlit.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Eating?”

  “Bravo, champ! You’re definitely in top form, Sherlock: it’s half-past twelve, I’m in a restaurant, and I’m eating. Or more precisely, I’m about to order. As soon as I’ve hung up.”

  “Can I join you?”

  “Uh.. sure, if you want.”

  Sebag noticed his colleague’s hesitation.

  “Are you alone?”

  “No . . . But you can come anyway.”

  “I need to talk to you alone.”

  “Okay. As soon as I’ve finished, I’ll be there. Are you at headquarters? You haven’t already done your errands, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t done them yet. I just had an idea Jacques, and I need to talk to you right away.”

  “What do you mean, right away?”

  “Right away means immediately. I have to talk to you, now! And one on one. Please . . . ”

  “Shit, you’re a pain in the ass. What’s going on?”

  Sebag thought about what he could say. He hesitated. And then to overcome his colleague’s resistance he said out loud the sentence he hadn’t yet dared utter in his head:

  “Jacques, I know who Ingrid Raven’s kidnapper is.”

  Sitting at his desk, Molina was waiting for an explanation. He still smelled like food. Sebag was trying to decide what to say. If his colleague had come so quickly, that was because he had confidence in him. He didn’t want to disappoint him, but how could he explain his intuitions?

  “It’s about Barry White . . . ”

  “Excuse me?”

  He was off to a bad start. Molina was already getting annoyed.

  “Let me explain. It’s complicated.”

  “If it’s too complicated for me, I can go back and eat, you know. I can handle that.”

  “Wait! It’s . . . You know, your comparison with Barry White. That’s what you called Didier Coll, the owner of the Volvo, because he had a deep, serious voice . . . ”

  “You want to tell me that you liked my joke? I’m touched, but that could have waited until I’d finished eating.”

  “Please shut up. I don’t find your joke funny. I find it brilliant!”

  “Uh, there you’re going a little too far . . . ”

  “No, not at all. It’s thanks to you that I made the discovery. You’re brilliant, pal!”

  “Okay, if that’s the way you want it, I’m quite willing to be brilliant. But I’m not brilliant all the time, and right now I need you to explain yourself a little more clearly.”

  “Barry White, he’s the kidnapper. The famous BW.”

  “No, are you kidding? You think he doesn’t sell enough albums and he needs money? By the way, did you know he’s dead?”

  “I’m explaining myself badly. As we thought for a while, the initials BW probably don’t correspond to a real name but to a nickname. Barry White, in this case. Lopez was a fan, he had all White’s disks in his collection.”

  “What are you getting at? I’m not sure I understand where you’re going, as Ménard would say. You think that Lopez made the same joke as I did and that he nicknamed his mysterious customer Barry White because he had a particularly deep voice? Why not . . . It’s an idea we could pursue. The identikit sketch is getting more precise, but that still leaves a lot of suspects.”

  “No, now there’s only one!”

  “There is?”

  “Yes. Your train of thought followed the same lines as Lopez’s, and regarding the same person. Didier Coll . . . He’s the kidnapper.”

  Molina’s eyes and mouth became round simultaneously.

  “Uh . . . there, you’re going a little too fast, aren’t you? What’s the connection between Coll and Lopez, apart from the car?”

  “Barrère! When he came to see me here, Coll gave his name as a reference.”

  “If it’s really him, he’s got nerve!”

  “You bet he’s got nerve. We’ve known that for a long time. He’s seeking us out, provoking us.”

  He paused. His reasoning was moving forward as he talked.

  “And I thought there must be a clue in the car that we’d missed. A red Volvo station wagon, his own car: that was the clue!”

  Molina scratched his chin. He was puzzled.

  “This Coll is rather tall and slender, even thin,” Sebag went on. “He’s between forty and fifty years old, has light brown hair, dark eyes. He corresponds to the identikit sketch.”

  “You were the first one to say that thousands of people correspond to that description.”

  “That’s true, but on the contrary there are also tens of thousands who don’t correspond to it. If Coll had been short and fat, I’d have had to revise my hypothesis. But not here. And then there’s his voice.”

  “Barry White . . . ”

  “Yes . . . His voice is so characteristic that he’s forced to whisper on the phone to mask it.”

  “Anybody making an anonymous telephone call would try to disguise his voice. The kidnapper couldn’t have been unaware that we were recording the messages and that we would analyze his voice.”

  “That’s true, you’re right, but he also whispered when he was talking with the receptionist at the hotel in Canet.”

  Sebag sensed that Molina was starting to weaken. He’d kept the best arguments for last.

  “Tuesday, when the kidnapper called headquarters for his second treasure hunt, he got Martine, who was on the switchboard. And Martine, who didn’t know she was dealing with the kidnapper, at first thought it was Coll trying to get me to look for his car again. That’s curious, isn’t it? Don’t you think that’s too many coincidences?”

  Molina looked at his colleague. Sweat was beading on his forehead, his cheeks were red, his upper lip was trembling slightly. Sebag had spoken with fervor, and it was as much his passionate tone as his reasoning that was convincing. During the seven years they’d been working together, h
e’d seen Sebag two or three times in this state of excitement that he would call—were it not for his profound aversion to religious matters—prophetic ecstasy. And each time he’d allowed himself to be possessed by his intuition that way, Sebag had been right all down the line.

  Sebag had la vista.

  “That might hold up, it’s true,” Molina recognized. “It would also explain why the kidnapper wasn’t afraid to use a stolen car for several days. Coll was well placed to know that the owner hadn’t filed a complaint right away.”

  Molina ran his hands through his hair.

  “The problem is that we will never convince the prosecutor with that! There aren’t enough tangible facts. And that means: no search warrant, no phone taps . . . ”

  “You think?”

  “I know you, and I have confidence in you. But if somebody starts being hyper-critical, believe me, the business with Barry White could look pretty ridiculous.”

  “Too bad about the prosecutor. In any case, we can’t proceed to investigate too overtly. If the guy thinks we’ve figured him out, he could very quickly call an end to the game.”

  “Wait . . . I see where you’re going. In a few moments, you’re going to ask me to work on the quiet, day and night, without overtime pay.”

  “You’re really brilliant, Molina. Barry White, working on the quiet, overtime . . . What intuition! Bravo.”

  Sebag gave his colleague a big pat on the back.

  “I knew I could count on you. How about grabbing a quick pizza?”

  CHAPTER 34

  Bits of pizza were still scattered all over their desks, and a tomato stain adorned Molina’s flowered shirt, adding an inappropriate red petal to a white rose. The two men were in the grip of an extreme concentration.

  As he ate, Sebag had reread more attentively all the statements Didier Coll had made when Ménard interviewed him the day before. He hadn’t learned much; the conversation with the owner of the Volvo had been merely a formality. Coll was a personnel officer in a large company specializing in public works. He was forty-three and lived alone in an apartment in the heart of Perpignan’s downtown pedestrian zone. He’d bought the Volvo from his mother when she moved into a retirement home, but he didn’t use it much, because he went to work on his scooter. He parked the car rather far from his home, on the few streets downtown that didn’t have parking meters. He left it parked there for days, even for weeks, without using it.