“Are you coming to eat with us at the Carlit?”
Sebag had just parked their car in the police station’s parking lot. It was barely noon, but Molina was already hungry. The Carlit, a restaurant near police headquarters, served as a cafeteria for them. Sebag declined his partner’s offer.
“No thanks, I’ve got an appointment.”
Molina’s eyes lit up with hope.
“Well, well, a romantic rendezvous?”
Sebag didn’t bother to reply. The joke wasn’t new. Jacques did not understand why Gilles had remained faithful to his wife for over twenty years.
“I’ll see you back at the office in the early afternoon.”
“You’re sure you don’t need more time?” Molina continued. “I can cover for you if you want.”
“I’ll be there around 2 or 2:30.”
Sebag tossed him the keys to their vehicle and went to look for his own car. On the way, he zipped his jacket all the way up because the wind out of the north made the air feel even colder. This time, there was no doubt about it: autumn had arrived in Catalan country.
At the wheel of his Citroën Picasso, Sebag entered the midday traffic jams. He turned onto the boulevards that ran around the downtown area, drove alongside the Moulin-à-Vent quarter and, after waiting a good ten minutes at the traffic circle in front of the Multiplex movie theater, headed for Argelès. Five kilometers farther on, he took the exit for Villeneuve-de-la-Raho. Pascal Lucas, the Chevrier Company’s driver, lived in that community. Sebag had made an appointment with him that morning before going to work.
The old village of Villeneuve-de-la-Raho was huddled around a water tower on a hill overlooking an artificial lake and a sea of modern tract houses. Sebag parked his car at the entrance to a subdivision. Pascal Lucas lived in a little Mediterranean-style house, part of whose attractive, bright yellow stucco façade was hidden behind a wall of plain concrete blocks. That was one of the main architectural blemishes on the Roussillon of the early third millennium. On smaller and smaller lots, people were trying to preserve some semblance of privacy by building veritable perimeter walls. But for lack of money or will, they often left them bare, which made the department’s numerous residential subdivisions look perennially unfinished and temporary.
A big, stocky man was waiting for Sebag in front of his house.
“Pascal Lucas?”
“Yes,” the man said. His bloodshot eyes owed their condition as much to sorrow as to alcohol. Lucas stepped back to let Sebag pass. Gilles went into the living room and immediately sat down in a large armchair. His host perched on the edge of the sofa.
“I wanted to review a few details with you, but first I have to explain one little thing: my visit is in no way official, and I am not in charge of this case.”
Lucas fidgeted and ran his big hand through his thick brown hair. Seeing his astonishment, Sebag added:
“I’m a friend of the family. Mathieu’s parents would like to be sure that we know all there is to know about the accident.”
The driver suddenly stood up:
“I want this cleared up, too! But your colleagues don’t want to believe what I told them!”
He started pacing around the room.
“Since the beginning, I’ve been telling them that a car ran a stop sign as I was coming along. That’s why I swerved to the left, for Christ’s sake! Why else would I have done that?”
“Because you were drunk.”
Lucas stopped in his tracks. His arms moved instead of his legs.
“I know I’d been drinking, I didn’t deny that. But I wasn’t dead drunk, either. I remember exactly what happened.”
“You had 1.2 grams of alcohol in your blood, that’s quite a lot.”
“I know it’s far too much when you’re driving, but I also know what I saw, right? Why won’t anyone believe me?”
“Because no witness confirms the presence of that car. What kind of car was it, according to you?”
“Not according to me,” the driver said testily and started pacing again. “That car exists, it’s a white Renault Clio.”
“I don’t suppose you got the license number?”
“As if I had nothing to do but that . . . After I hit the scooter, I stopped and rushed back to help the kid. When I saw him get right back up, damn it, I was relieved, I can tell you that. If only I’d known what was going to happen next.”
Still pacing, Pascal Lucas told Sebag what was already in the file. Mathieu’s sudden collapse. His death. After he’d finished, Lucas calmed down. Three seconds. No more.
“Did you see the car drive away?” Sebag asked while Lucas started walking around the room again.
“No. At the moment, I wasn’t thinking about that car anymore. Only the kid mattered to me. When I believed he was O.K., I went back to the van to look for the papers for the accident report, and that’s when I realized that the bastard had taken off. The Clio was gone! However, I swear to you that that car exists, goddamn it. Your colleague doesn’t want to hear about it, doesn’t give a shit. I’d been drinking, I’m responsible, for him that’s clear.”
His heavy body stopped in front of Sebag. His hands curled into fists and his arm muscles swelled. Lucas had an imposing physique but he was trembling like a leaf. His eyes were pleading.
“How about you, Monsieur, are you going to believe me?”
“Sit down, please,” Sebag said. “You’re making me dizzy with all your pacing back and forth.”
The driver docilely sat down on the edge of the sofa again. He stared at the coffee table in front of him and licked his lips. Sebag noted that the coaster on the coffee table was still damp. Lucas had already been drinking that morning.
“Do you drink often?”
For a moment, the driver covered his face with his powerful hands. Then he gave himself a clap on both his cheeks at the same time.
“I can’t stop; I’ve tried, but I just can’t do it.”
“Has it been like that for a long time?”
“About ten years, maybe longer, it’s hard to say. I didn’t walk into a bar one day telling myself, O.K., today’s the day I become an alcoholic. It happened gradually, one glass at a time, slowly.”
“It was dangerous for your line of work.”
“Most of the time I manage not to drink while I’m working, or at least not too much.”
“Too much? What does that mean?” “An aperitif and a half-liter of red wine with lunch, but nothing before.”
“And nothing afterward?”
“It depends . . . ”
Lucas couldn’t help standing up again. He took a step but then changed his mind and sat down again.
“You didn’t answer my question: are you going to believe me?”
Sebag looked at him for a few seconds before responding. The driver put his hands on his knees, forcing himself to adopt an immobility contrary to his nature. But he couldn’t control the constant blinking of his eyes. Sometimes long, sometimes short. Like an SOS.
Sebag got up. The driver bounded to his feet.
“You seem to me sincere, Mr. Lucas, and the primary goal of my visit was to assure myself that you were. It’s just that my job is not to believe but to determine the facts. I’m going to try to look into this business of the Clio.”
“Thanks,” Lucas breathed.
“I’m not doing this for you, but for Mathieu’s family. And then, even if I find this car and the driver who goes with it, that will not completely absolve you of responsibility. You were drunk, you didn’t retain control of your vehicle, and Mathieu is dead. You won’t get your driver’s license back, or your job.”
“I know that. But as we said a little while ago, what matters is that we know all there is to know, right?”
The driver extended a damp hand that Sebag shook gingerly.
“How are you going to find that car?”
“It won’t be easy. First I have to prove that it exists, and a witness will be enough to establish that. But finding the driver . . . ”
“Anything you can do will already be great.”
Sebag was grateful that Lucas wasn’t expecting the impossible. He said to himself that if he only half-succeeded, Sévérine wouldn’t hold it against him, either. But he wanted more: he wanted his daughter to be proud of her father. And there was only one way to ensure that: he had to find the other driver.
CHAPTER 7
Abadie, Abdelmalek, Achou, Aguilar . . .
His big, gnarled fingers slipped over the cold marble, deciphering the names of the dead one by one. Hundreds of names.
Babou, Bakti, Balaguer . . .
Hundreds of French people living in Algeria hadn’t had time to reach metropolitan France after the war. They’d disappeared without a trace. They were just names in the survivors’ memories. And now names engraved in marble on a wall in Perpignan.
Berthelot, Bianchi, Bokhtache . . .
They were fathers, mothers, friends, cousins, or maybe neighbors.
Couraqui, Claus, Delamare, Dominguez . . .
The old man’s parched lips silently pronounced the syllables. In his head, the names sang their musical sonorities, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Arab, or Jewish.
Elbaz, Escriva, Esteban . . .
Hey! His finger stopped for a moment. The old man smiled, amused by the coincidence.
Gaadoui, Garcia, Hebrard, Humbert . . .
The old man had had a hard time finding the former convent, even though it was located in the city center. He’d walked past its roof several times before he realized that he had to go down a stairway to reach its entrance. He’d pushed open the tall gate and gone up to the wall. Nine marble plaques were attached to the wall, revealing an endless list of victims, but also a silhouette of a man with a missing heart and a quotation from Chateaubriand that he’d found a little pompous.
Inversini, Janowski, Juan . . .
He stepped to the side, moving to the next plaque.
Lagrange, Lopez, Lorenzo, Maillard . . .
Holding his arm up so long made it hurt. He allowed himself a short break to massage his shoulder, elbow, and wrist. He finished by massaging the compact, knobby form with vague hooks that still served as his hand. He pulled up the collar of his overcoat to protect himself from the wind that was blowing through the courtyard and chilling him to the bone. Then he resumed his litany.
Malleval, Mansouri, Maricchi, Martinaud . . .
His hands looked like those of his grandmother. She too used to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis but had never known its name. At the time, no doctor had diagnosed her problem, her “martyrdom,” as she herself called it on evenings when she was very tired. The only moments in her life when she was weak enough to complain.
Melchior, Muller, Navarro, Oubata . . .
He’d never suspected that there were so many of them. What had happened to all these people who had mysteriously disappeared? Had they been kidnapped? Murdered by Arabs or by jealous friends taking advantage of the confusion during the last days of French Algeria? Had they died of starvation or illness in an internment camp? Or had they simply died of old age, alone in an apartment in Algiers, without anyone coming to bid them a last farewell or give them a decent burial and a name on a tomb?
Pacinotti, Palumbo, Pipitone, Pons . . .
Name by name, he was getting there. She couldn’t be much farther, now.
Poujade, Pradelle . . . Prietto . . .
My God . . . There were so many Ps.
Prudhomme, Roland, Romero, Rokvira . . .
His fingers caressed the letters. They jumped from one name to the next, more and more feverishly.
Ruiz, Saïd, Sanchez . . .
He was almost there. His lips closed, the names stopped singing in his head, the world fell silent. Just a little further. There, she was there. Grandma Henriette. Not everyone had forgotten her. He choked up as if a mighty hand had gripped his throat. He could hardly breathe.
He retreated to a bench and sat down. A tiny stream of air finally filtered down to his aching lungs. He raised his head toward the marble plaques. From where he was, he could no longer read the name but now he knew that it was there. In raised, gilt letters. He felt his shoulders shake with sobs and his eyes that had been dry for too long began to weep again. Two big tears rolled down his wrinkled cheeks. They bounced off the sides of his chin and fell silently to the tiles of the little courtyard.
The wind was still blowing but he no longer felt it.
CHAPTER 8
Sebag had spent the afternoon at police headquarters. First he wrote up a report on that morning’s interview with the officials of the Pied-Noir Circle, and then read his colleagues’ reports as they came in. Molina, for his part, was interviewing the winegrowers in Terrats. This task had been assigned the day before to Raynaud and Moreno, but the inseparable duo had ended up working on another case.
Lambert and Llach had talked with Josette Vidal, the victim’s woman friend, who had hurried back from Barcelona. Born in Prades seventy-two years before, she had gone to work in one of the Bella doll factories when she was sixteen, and remained there until the firm went bankrupt and closed in 1984. Then she and her husband had taken over a tobacconist’s shop in Moulin-à-Vent. That was how she met Bernard Martinez, initially as a customer. After her husband died in 2002, they had naturally become closer and finally became intimate. “Intimate”—the word made Sebag smile. The report said no more about it. The term had probably been used by Josette Vidal herself. Had they been talking to a younger witness, the policemen would certainly have asked her to explain the nature of their relationship more precisely. The question “Were you lovers?” would surely have been asked. But Llach and Lambert had remained very discreet. Sebag didn’t hold that against them; he would probably have done the same thing.
Josette Vidal wasn’t aware of anyone who might be her “companion’s” enemy. She hadn’t noticed that he seemed worried recently, and knew nothing about his past in Algeria, not to mention about any possible ties to the OAS. The lady’s statements left hardly any doubt regarding her antipathy toward Pieds-Noirs in general—“people who are always brooding on their misfortunes.” Martinez was the only one she liked. Go figure. Love has its mysteries, and in that respect, age doesn’t change anything.
Llach and Lambert had taken Josette to Martinez’s apartment, but she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Nothing was missing. She was categorical about that.
Sebag reread the report. The policemen’s conventional expressions and standard formulas nonetheless conveyed a glimpse of a strong personality, but they told him nothing about the atmosphere in which the conversation had taken place. He picked up the receiver of his office telephone and dialed the number of Llach’s cell phone.
“What did you think of our double widow?”
“The old lady’s a tough cookie. She doesn’t mince words. At first I thought she wasn’t upset at all, but that was just a façade. As soon as we got to the apartment, she broke down. Especially when she saw the bloodstain in the living room.”
“She really doesn’t know anything about the OAS?”
“No, nothing at all. There’s no reason to doubt what she says. She dislikes Pieds-Noirs so much that when he was with her Martinez must have acted as if he’d been born in Perpignan.”
“And where does that hostility come from?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask her.”
Llach interrupted himself and paused for a few seconds.
“You know, they are a little odd, those people. They left Algeria fifty years ago and they still haven’t gotten over it!”
“As a Catalan, how would you feel if you’d had to leave your native coun
try?”
“You can’t make that comparison, it’s completely different!”
“It is? Why?”
“Algeria wasn’t their country!”
“They were born there, and their parents and grandparents, too, sometimes.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t change anything: it wasn’t their country. It couldn’t last. The crusades didn’t last either. They should have known that.”
Sebag didn’t know what to reply. He said goodbye to his colleague and hung up. Then he plunged into Ménard’s report.
Ménard had talked with a professor at the University of Perpignan who had outlined for him the Algerian War and more particularly the OAS. Its birth in February 1961. Its historical leaders, Susini, Lagaillarde, Salan, Gardy. The soldiers it lost, Degueldre, Sergent, Bastien-Thiry, and a few hundred more. Its targeted assassinations of French policemen, FLN militants, and Pieds-Noirs it considered too moderate. And then above all its blind terrorist attacks: car bombs, plastic explosives, and assaults on Arab immigrants. It even used mortars to bombard a Muslim neighborhood on March 25, 1962: on that day, about forty people died, including women and children.
The OAS had committed its last attacks on territory that was by then Algerian in July, 1962. It had later carried out other actions in metropolitan France, aimed almost exclusively at its sworn enemy, General de Gaulle. Its principal leaders had been arrested; some were given death sentences, others were given long prison sentences. A few had succeeded in going into exile, usually in Spain, but sometimes as far away as Argentina. Finally, in 1968, an initial amnesty had been promulgated, supplemented by a second in 1974.
The name of Bernard Martinez had meant nothing to the Perpignan university professor. But he was not a specialist on the OAS, and had advised Ménard to contact one of his colleagues who taught in Marseille. Thus Ménard hoped to learn more the following day.
Autumn, All the Cats Return Page 6
