Sebag saw his partner’s face close up. The first part of his assignment pleased him, the second much less. The superintendent finished the distribution of tasks with Llach.
“Joan, up to this point we’ve been operating on the principle that this affair began a few days ago in Perpignan, but we can’t exclude the possibility that it is only one geographical and chronological stage in a larger case. So you will carry out a search at the national level: I want to know where and when another Pied-Noir has been murdered in, let’s say, the last three years.”
“That’s an enormous job,” Llach protested, “especially since the victims are never classified by the community they belong to. ‘Pied-noir’ doesn’t mean anything; I’ll never find anything that way . . . ”
Castello swept the argument aside with a gesture.
“You’ll start with the date and place of birth, that’s not so hard. A victim who is of French ancestry and was born in Algeria before 1962 is a Pied-Noir. Period. It’s not that complicated.
“Still . . . ”
Molina winked at Sebag. He wasn’t going to miss the opportunity.
“I can get along by myself. If Joan needs help, he can take Lambert with him.”
“That’s a good idea,” Castello said.
Llach couldn’t repress a grimace, while Molina grinned. Lambert was delighted to feel that he was indispensable.
“This is a kind of double-or-nothing case. It’s going to make people talk about us, and that’s worth all the statistics in the world. On the condition, of course, that we succeed in solving it. Otherwise . . . ”
Castello rubbed the tip of this nose vigorously:
“Otherwise, as I said, we’re in deep shit! Gentlemen, dismissed.”
CHAPTER 13
He was walking slowly through the streets of the old Spanish village of La Jonquera. He’d thought it prudent to put a border between him and the police investigation being conducted in Perpignan. On this side of the Pyrenees, the rain had stopped in the late afternoon and he could take his daily walk. The doctor had warned him a thousand times: given his condition, inactivity was the worst possible thing for him. In spite of the pain, he had to move.
He approached a small shop whose display window was decorated with small posters in bright colors. They boasted about unbeatable telephone rates and listed a series of exotic places one could call: Caracas, Manila, Lima, Mexico City, Buenos Aires . . . Exotic for someone from south Catalonia, but not for him.
He opened the door of the shop, making a bell ring softly. Behind the counter, a young man smiled at him warmly.
“Bon dia,” he said in Catalan.
“Bon dia,” the old man replied.
This was his sole concession to the second official language of south Catalonia. He didn’t recognize the Spain where he had lived for a few months, long ago. Franco had unified the country, what a stupid idea it had been to want to go backwards. And then Spanish—Castilian, as some people treacherously preferred to call it—was such a beautiful language. When had it supplanted French in his heart and on his lips? He no longer remembered. As early as the 1970s, perhaps. And certainly after the birth of his daughter, thirty-three years ago. He’d never uttered a single word of French in front of Consuela, and she didn’t know a single word of the language of Voltaire.
She didn’t even know who Voltaire was.
He’d found his return to his native language disappointing. After so many years, he’d been afraid he would feel a terrible nostalgia. But he didn’t feel anything. Nothing at all. The French that people spoke today in the streets and in the media had nothing in common with the language he’d spoken earlier. And the Perpignan accent did not have the charm for his ears that the accent of his youth had had. A matter of music and tempo. And also of passion.
He gave his daughter’s number to the young man, who pointed him toward a booth. It was 10 P.M. in La Jonquera, 5 P.M. where his family lived. Gabriella had just come home from school. He took great pleasure in hearing her voice again. It was difficult to go several days without talking to his granddaughter. It hadn’t been like that with Consuela. Maybe that was one reason for their estrangement.
The tinkle of a marimba came over the line for several long seconds. Then the ring. So close and yet so far.
“Hola.”
Consuela’s voice sounded happy.
“Hola, it’s Papa.”
“ . . . ”
“Are you O.K.?”
“ . . . ”
“I’m fine. I’m still traveling in the old country but I often think of you and Gabriella. Is she O.K.?”
The connection was good but the receiver pitilessly conveyed the echoes of a hostile silence. He hadn’t been able to communicate with his daughter for ten years, and that had nothing to do with the caprices of modern technology.
“Could you put Gabriella on the line, please?”
The disagreeable sound of a telephone slammed down on a table broke the silence and attacked his left eardrum. The pain soon stopped under the caress of a soft and melodious voice.
“Hello, Grandpa.”
Spanish was really the most beautiful of languages when it was spoken by his granddaughter.
“Good evening, my little Gabriella.”
“Good evening?”
“Yes, here it’s late, you know. It’s night already. How are you doing?”
“Very well. Today I got an 18 in math. Aurelia only got a 15. How are you?”
When she asked that kind of question, he realized that his granddaughter was growing up. A few months earlier she would never have inquired about his health.
“I’m fine.”
“Your bogeyman’s hands aren’t hurting you too much?”
“From time to time, yes, but it’s bearable. What’s hard is being so far away from you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have left, Grandpa. I miss you, too.”
“How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine. She often says that she’s tired out by her work, but I think it’s going O.K.”
“Do you think she misses me, too?” Gabriella hesitated to reply and her loving grandfather was immediately sorry that he’d involved her in their adult quarrels.
“I don’t know, she never says so. Why don’t you get along?”
“It’s complicated. Grown-ups’ problems are always complicated, you know.”
“Then I don’t want to grow up. Never. I don’t want to not get along with you.”
He reassured Gabriella and turned their conversation toward the trivial subjects that constitute the daily life of an eight-year-old girl. Friends, games, meals, school.
Then he regretfully said goodbye and hung up.
On the way back, he thought again about the rest of his mission. The first part had gone as planned. He’d hit his first target, and located the others. He just needed a little patience. But he’d never lacked that quality.
The second target would soon be back. Soon he would be within his grasp. There had been a little problem. Without importance. He even thought that this unforeseen delay would ultimately make his task easier. But he wasn’t wasting his time because he had begun to prepare the third part of his mission.
The most delicate one.
He returned to the hotel and had a snack brought up to him. Two slices of bread rubbed with garlic and tomatoes. Pa amb tomàquet. Delicious and more than enough. Since Maria’s death, he’d lost the habit of eating in the evening.
After this frugal dinner, he took his sleeping pill and then his medicines for blood pressure and rheumatism. He liked to go to bed early, and he wasn’t used to staying up so late. The time difference had forced him to make this exception, but he didn’t regret it. The voice of his little Gabriella was still singing in his head. For once, sleep came immediately.
CHAPTER 1
4
Sebag had finished shaving and was looking at his face in the mirror. He gently ran his finger over the vertical wrinkle that had been developing between his eyebrows for several years. He got that from his father.
He didn’t like it.
He detested everything that came to him from that man who had betrayed them, left them, him and his mother.
“What are you thinking about?”
Claire had pressed herself up to his naked back. He hadn’t heard her coming.
“Nothing.”
“Liar . . . ”
She pinched his cheek.
“Do I know her?” Gilles couldn’t keep from pouting. Claire, who was watching him in the mirror, noticed it. Gilles turned around and took his wife in his arms.
“We’ve been together for almost twenty years and there has never been anyone but you,” he said, looking deep into her eyes.
“And . . . you’re beginning to find that a long time?” Claire said evasively, smiling.
“When you’re in love, you’re always twenty.”
“That’s nice . . . ”
“What about you? Does it seem a long time to you?”
She put her lips on his. Their mouths opened and their tongues caressed each other. A few seconds of eternity. Despite the taste of peppermint toothpaste that they exchanged.
“Did you like my response?”
“It was nice, too.”
It was hard for them to part from each other.
“I’m going to be late,” she said.
Gilles watched her put on her makeup. Here nascent wrinkles didn’t come from anyone. Or maybe from her joyous heart and her good nature. He admired his wife and especially he envied her. He loved her steady temper, her easygoing ways, and her joie de vivre. She knew how to take things as they came without letting herself be invaded by pointless fears and useless worries. In contrast, he was often melancholic and uneasy. It had always been like that. But it had become even more pronounced since he’d started down the other side of forty. And even more since he’d started being suspicious last summer.
In the kitchen, Gilles allowed himself a second cup of coffee. The children had given him a professional espresso machine for his birthday, the kind that made coffee that turned an Italian green with jealousy. He opted for a mocha that he stirred with his eyes closed.
Claire’s purse started to vibrate. She had set it open on a corner of the table. Gilles approached it as if he were dealing with a wild animal. He spotted the telephone stuck between the card holder and the coin purse. The temptation was strong. These days, cell phones were the best confidants but they were also the worst traitors. In the call list, the text messages, and the e-mails, secrets were often hidden, the little and intimate ones, the serious and more painful ones. He was in a position to know that people showed no prudence with this new accomplice, which was as featherbrained as it was indifferent. How many cases had been solved just because the criminal hadn’t been careful enough in cleaning out an electronic memory? And how many adulterous affairs had been revealed by a simple indiscreet manipulation?
It would be so easy. Just tap a key and consult her phone.
If Claire had had a lover, she probably wouldn’t have erased all the text messages. She would have kept at least one, for the ecstatic pleasure of remembering. If Claire had had a lover, she would never have thought to erase the repository of all the calls. If Claire had had a lover, she would surely have mentioned him somewhere in her messages to her girlfriends.
The telephone finally fell silent. The temptation remained.
All the questions he’d been constantly asking himself for weeks had their answers in the circuits of this damned telephone! He just had to make a move. A simple move.
He quickly retreated before this ferocious beast that was taunting him.
Outside, the sky was continuing to weep hot tears. Its sorrow had known only short pauses during the night, and the earth could no longer soak up all that sadness.
Lost in his thoughts, Sebag was no longer paying attention to where he was going and he set his foot in a mud puddle as he was getting into the car.
“Shit!”
He used the bottom of the car’s body to scrape as much of the mud as possible off the sole of his shoe and especially around it. Then, fairly annoyed, he started the car.
The radio helped him calm down. He’d turned it to a continuous news station. Always the same tone, often the same rhythm, sometimes the same words. Similar voices with identical intonations. He was no longer listening. Whatever the subject, the journalistic logorrhea lulled him better than the sweetest of melodies.
The Arago bridge leading to the center of Perpignan was already almost bumper to bumper. Why was it that the more the speed of the water passing under a bridge grew, the more that of the cars passing over it slowed? He tried to concentrate on the investigation, but only partially succeeded.
Parts of the case passed through his mind without really sticking there. He’d just turned right after crossing the bridge when his cell phone rang.
“It’s Castello. Where are you?”
“I’m on my way to headquarters. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
“No point in going any further. I need you to go to the Haut-Vernet cemetery right away. Our guys are waiting for you there.”
“What’s going on over there, Superintendent?”
“You’ll understand when you get there. I don’t have time to tell you more. I’m in Paris and I’m going into a meeting. And hang up quick—you’re not supposed to be on the phone when you’re driving, it’s dangerous!”
Surprised by the facetious tone his boss had adopted just as he was about to go into an important meeting in the course of which he was supposed to be reprimanded, Sebag made a U-turn in front of police headquarters and drove back over the Arago bridge.
He noted with pleasure that it was easier to go upstream in traffic than in a rising river. “Hmm, I’m becoming facetious myself,” he mumbled to himself, astonished by his change in mood in the course of a few minutes at most. He recalled a famous quotation whose author he didn’t know: “Humor is the politeness of despair.” He turned the sentence over and over in his head before finally deciding to reject it. It couldn’t be suitable for his reality, it was too exaggerated. And then his marital situation was in no way desperate. It was just dreadfully banal.
As for his humor . . .
He was at that point in his reflections when he arrived at the entrance to the Haut-Vernet cemetery. A young police officer in uniform was waiting for him under the entry porch. He came up to the driver’s-side window. With his index finger, Sebag lowered the glass.
“You can drive your car in,” the policeman suggested. “With this weather, that will be more convenient. My colleagues are already there. You can’t miss them.”
He turned around to point the way:
“You see that fork there? Take the right-hand lane, and afterward it’s straight ahead.”
Sebag thanked him, closed the window, and went ahead. He drove slowly about a hundred meters to reach a large traffic circle where a police car was already parked. He grabbed the raincoat on the passenger seat and put it on before going out into the downpour.
The door of the other car opened at the same time as his. An umbrella came out first, then a stocky silhouette. Next Sebag saw coming towards him a face that looked like a stunted grape. Officer André Ripoll. His whipping boy. The only one. His favorite!
Ripoll greeted him rapidly and came to stand next to him in the praiseworthy intention of letting him share his umbrella. Sebag’s nostrils immediately took in an acrid odor of gamy meat. Instinctively, he took a step backward. He found himself back in the rain and took out an old running cap. With his free hand, Ripoll pointed to a dark gray marble stele.
“That’s the mo
nument to the memory of the men who were shot,” he explained, taking a step forward to put his superior back under the protection of his ridiculous bit of fabric. “It’s called the OAS monument.”
Followed by Ripoll’s umbrella, Sebag went up to the damaged monument. The vandals had attacked the man’s face, which had completely disappeared, probably under the blows of a hammer. Despite other damage here and there, the rest of the design was recognizable: it represented a man with his hands tied behind a post. The names of the former combatants for French Algeria must have been inscribed on the base, but the furious hammering had made them illegible. On both sides of the monument, the vandals had broken flower pots.
“You didn’t cordon off the area,” Sebag remarked.
“We stayed here, it really wasn’t necessary,” Ripoll said. “And then no one has come into the cemetery since we’ve been here—who would want to come here with this weather?”
“All the same, it would be better,” Sebag insisted.
The stunted grape grew red. Ripoll had trouble controlling his annoyance. He puffed noisily before yielding to authority:
“Whatever you say.”
As he was returning to his car, Sebag called Elsa Moulin on her cell phone.
“Castello already informed me, I’m on my way,” she said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“See you in a moment. I hope you’ve brought along an oilskin.”
“Oilskin, boots, and hood. I spent my last vacation in Brittany, and I’m fully equipped.”
He hung up and then put his cell phone in the pocket of the jacket he was wearing under the raincoat. Water was running down the headstones and Sebag said to himself that this year even the least well-maintained of them would be shiny for All Saints’ Day. The monument, on the other hand, was ruined, and this act of vandalism was in danger of setting the whole city on fire.
Autumn, All the Cats Return Page 10
