Their love resembled this old leather. It hadn’t grown weaker over time. Just a little more flexible. You could get rid of it, throw it away, destroy it. You could never replace it. Gilles and Claire had twenty years of closeness behind them. Two children. A family. What Claire had experienced with him she would never experience with anyone else. That certainty lent him strength.
He was proud of their love.
Happiness, after all, was compatible with a few compromises.
He stood up, filled with a new energy.
He poured himself another glass of whisky and went outside to drink it. The moon had come up and was bathing the yard in an unreal pale light. They hadn’t watered the lawn. They’d do it tomorrow.
Tomorrow . . .
Tomorrow, Ingrid might be dead. He looked at his watch. It was already tomorrow.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.
A person in good condition could go almost seven days without eating or drinking. But how long could Ingrid hold out? Her three weeks of captivity had doubtless already exhausted her. And for her, it was more a question of hours than of days. Where could she be at this advanced time of night? Was she able to sleep, or had she already slipped into a semi-coma?
A sea breeze was carrying sound to Saint-Estève from the superhighway a few miles farther east.
He heard whistling sounds. Followed by a hoarse cough. The neighbor woman was calling her cat. Gilles saw two green, almond-shaped eyes looking at him. The tomcat was hiding out.
He decided to go inside.
He took a sheet of paper, sat down at the dining room table, and rewrote Didier Coll’s poem from memory. He studied his notes for a long time, his head full of awkward rhymes.
He didn’t find the solution.
During the afternoon, he’d thought for a moment that he was getting close to the truth. He tried to re-create the atmosphere of that moment, but failed.
He felt an imperious need to move. The clock in the living room showed 3:00 A.M. He still had time before he had to go to headquarters. He grabbed the car keys and went out.
Sebag started the engine and slowly backed up. He turned on the headlights only after he’d left the driveway. He drove through the empty streets of Saint-Estève, crossed the Têt and headed for the chapel of Sant-Marti de la Roca.
He passed through Thuir, followed the highway toward Ille-sur-Têt for a mile or so, then turned off on a little road that led to Camélas. At the entrance to the village, he parked in the lot next to the cemetery. His first steps were accompanied by the lugubrious hooting of an owl. He walked through the sleeping village. The moon shone on the carefully maintained façades of the houses. Sebag looked up. Two hundred yards farther on, atop its pointed hill, the chapel was waiting for him.
The little paved road became a forest path. He followed it as far as the La Roque saddle. From there, the path led back down toward the medieval village of Castelnou. Sebag left it and took instead a rocky trail that set out courageously for the summit of the hill. Sebag usually ran up this last steep climb.
The last time he’d been up to Sant-Marti, he was still blissfully ignorant of everything that was going to spoil his summer. Didier Coll had kidnapped Ingrid Raven, but no one knew it.
The chapel soon appeared, sitting peacefully on its stone foundation. More enchanting than ever in the moonlight.
Sebag wished he believed in God.
He slowly approached the church. The door was locked. He went around the building and leaned against a rock. The lights of a series of villages gleamed on the plain below. In the distance, the coming dawn was already brightening the sky, separating it from the dark waters of the sea.
Sebag took out of his backpack the bottle of mineral water he’d brought with him. He drank at least two-thirds of it before taking another breath.
The horizon was on fire, casting bright glows on the azure sky. The sun was coming up for Ingrid, too, somewhere on that plain. Perhaps quite nearby.
Sebag spotted the windmill that dominated the Perpignan area. He looked down on the Têt and tried to follow its course upstream. Le Soler, Saint-Féliu d’Avall, Millas. Above, the hill of Força Real proudly displayed its two camel humps, one for the hermitage, the other for the television relay antenna. The Middle Ages had scattered chapels, hermitages, and watchtowers on most of the summits in Roussillon; on the others, the twentieth century had erected its wretched masts that spread their evil waves on all the homes below.
Sebag froze. He stopped breathing. By casting its rays on the metallic parts of the antenna and making them sparkle, the sun was giving him a wink.
The evil waves . . .
How could he have failed to see the obvious?
He swallowed with difficulty. Breathed in again the early morning air. And a broad smile spread across his face. It wasn’t yet time for reproaches.
There was a hope.
He jumped to his feet and put his bottle in the backpack, which he then attached firmly to his back. Then he rushed down the rocky path.
On his way down, he twisted his ankle twice, but he ignored the pain. Nothing, no one, could have stopped him. Never had he run so fast. On his bristly cheeks, tears mixed with sweat. She was going to live; he was certain of it. His panting was punctuated by laughter and words that surged out of his mouth involuntarily. His steps resounded on the asphalt of the little streets of Camélas. Fortunately, he met no one in the village. This early morning runner who was muttering abstruse words would have been taken for a madman.
“House of stone,” “Mast bobbing o‘er the wave.” Coll had been clever. The clue, far from helping them, had led them astray.
But everything was clear to him now.
He roared off in a cloud of dust. The tires squealed on the curves. He took shortcuts by way of small roads to go directly to Millas, which he crossed at full speed. He still hadn’t caught his breath when he parked his car in the lot at Força Real.
In his view, the hermitage lacked the charm of the chapel of Sant-Marti. To renovate the walls of the building, the masons had plastered them with great loads of mortar that not only bound the stones together but partly covered them. The result was that the whole now looked like a cheap nougat candy.
Sebag climbed a flight of stairs. The entry porch sheltered three doors. All locked. A sign indicated that restoration would soon begin inside the building. The work was supposed to begin in September, and the building was closed to visitors for the whole summer.
By examining the main entrance more carefully, Sebag noted that the lock had recently been broken. A chain and a padlock now blocked the way in. A brand-new chain and padlock. Anyone could have put them there and thus made the hermitage his personal property during the summer. Or his substitute prison.
Sebag put his ear against the thick wood of the old door. But he could hear no sound.
He went back down the stairs and searched the area around the hermitage. It was now getting light and he easily found what he was looking for. He returned to the big door with a large, pointed stone. A few powerful blows rapidly sufficed to split his finger but also broke the padlock.
Sebag pushed the heavy door open. A ray of light passed through the opening, but he had to wait a few seconds for his eyes to get used to the darkness. He still didn’t hear anything.
He flicked his lighter and, protecting the flame with one hand, advanced cautiously into the nave. He looked between the rows of pews, but saw nothing suspect. A clatter of beating wings made him jump. Flying out of a dark corner of the choir, a bat crossed overhead and found refuge in a cavity hidden by the stone vault. Sebag turned around. He thought he’d heard something like a rustling of fabric behind the altar, where the bat had come from.
An old, moth-eaten cloth covered the ancient stone table. The greasy drippings from a candle had completed the soiling of the fab
ric. Sebag went around the altar and made out a dark form lying behind it.
Made red-hot by the flame, the flint of his lighter burned his thumb. Sebag swore. Just on principle. He was no longer capable of feeling pain. He’d reached the goal of his quest. The dark form had just moved.
He bent down and flicked his lighter again.
The body was lying on its side, bound from head to foot. A rough canvas sack concealed the head, but by the light of his flame, Sebag could see a bird tattooed on the bare shoulder. With trembling hands, he removed the sack. He saw an emaciated face with terrified eyes.
“It’s over,” he said softly as he started undoing her bonds one by one. “It’s over. I’m a policeman. I’m going to take you home. Your parents are waiting for you.”
EPILOGUE
The house was silent but it had recovered its soul.
Gilles put on the kitchen table a fresh baguette, a paper sack containing two hot croissants, and a national newspaper. He opened the French doors in the living room and went out onto the terrace. The neighbor’s cat came to rub against his legs, meowing raucously.
“Are you hungry? You should go home to your mommy, that would be better for everyone. You know that you and I, that would never work.”
He firmly pushed the cat away with his foot, then walked on into the yard. The sky was a pitiless blue. It was already hot. Gilles crouched at the edge of the pool and lifted the basket of the skimmer. He’d have to put in some more chlorine.
He went back toward the house, and the cat, running between his legs, almost tripped him. He took the carton of milk out of the refrigerator. He poured himself a big glass. And also put a few drops in a dish that he put on the terrace.
Gently, he opened the door to the bedroom. The sun was filtering into the room despite the closed shutters. A ray drew a golden line from Claire’s shoulders down to the small of her back. Gilles sat down beside his wife and ran his finger along the ray of sunlight. Claire turned her head toward him, opened her eyes, and smiled.
Gilles’s finger moved back up to her face. Caressed her rounded chin. Lingered on her lips. Traced their curve.
“Did you sleep well?
“Very well. It’s good to be home.”
He nodded pensively. His finger brushed across the soft furrows her smile made in her cheeks.
“How about you?” she asked. “Did you sleep a little?”
“Not really.”
His finger had stopped on a hollow between her pink lips and her pointed nose. She put her hand on it to urge him to continue caressing her.
“What did you do?”
He traced the contour of her nose to the sweet place between her eyes. Caressed her eyelids. Slipped over her temples. Stopped on an earlobe. Then he went back to her mouth.
“I found her.”
He felt Claire’s lips tremble. His finger caressed the swell of her cheeks. Returned to the eyelids. “I drove her to the hospital. She’s going to live.”
The crow’s feet around her eyes lengthened. There was more than love in the dark eyes that were staring at him.
No, that look couldn’t lie.
He felt his vision blurring and closed his eyes.
Claire sat up in the bed. She put her lips on his eyes and wet them with the nascent tears.
“I love you,” she whispered.
They’d devoured the two croissants and all that was left of the baguette was a few crumbs. The pages of the newspaper bore the marks of this morning orgy. Butter, jam, and a little honey on the Culture section.
Claire stretched with the voluptuousness of a cat in the sun. Gilles filled two big cups with a mellow, fruity aroma. A Colombian coffee. Léo had called while they were in the shower. He’d left a message. He was no longer going to Toulon. He’d had a fight with his friend. So he’d be coming home as planned, the day after next.
“He’s not going to spend the rest of the summer here, I hope,” Claire said.
“That might seem a little long,” Gilles agreed.
“But if he doesn’t stay there . . . ”
“It’s out of the question for Séverine to be all alone in the house.”
Claire seemed as delighted as Gilles was at this prospect. A summer, another summer. All together.
“What do you suggest?”
“Everybody gets in the car, we throw our stuff in the trunk, and we leave.”
With her elbows on the table, Claire rested her chin on her hands.
“To go where?”
“To see your parents?”
A light went out in her eyes. She stood up and crossed her arms.
“I was joking . . . I’d like to go to Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest . . . ”
“Warsaw?”
“Si vols.”
“Is that Polish?”
“Almost.”
“Are you sure?”
“In any case, the other day, at Le Perthus, I met a Polish truck driver who spoke like that.”
“We’re not getting anywhere . . . ”
“No one can be dissected to do the implausible.”
She frowned.
“That’s ridiculous, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know, but I like it. Don’t you?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philippe Georget was born in Épinay-sur-Seine in 1962. He works as a TV news anchorman for France-3. A passionate traveler, in 2001 he traveled the entire length of the Mediterranean shoreline with his wife and their three children in an RV. He lives in Perpignan. Summertime, All the Cats Are Bored, his debut novel, won the SNCF Crime Fiction Prize and the City of Lens First Crime Novel Prize
Summertime All the Cats Are Bored Page 39
