Autumn, All the Cats Return

by Philippe Georget

  Sebag stopped; his argument had left him breathless. Like Albouker just before, Mercier took the time to reflect before giving out any information.

  “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call one of my brothers, Gérard. He was . . . he knew certain members of the OAS in Algiers. He now lives in Paris. I’ll let you know.”

  While he waited, Sebag opened his inbox and consulted the log for the weekend. Mercier quickly called back.

  “My brother is making inquiries. He promised me he would phone you in the course of the morning.”

  Sebag occupied himself by rereading all the reports on the case. As soon as he started in on the first one, he screwed up his face and kept it that way all morning. Really, he’d never get used to the formatted, conventional language of these reports, his own as well as those of his colleagues. Police reports always left him unsatisfied. They filtered reality to give it the smooth, even appearance of objective and rigorous information that he considered stupid and sanitized. The police report is to sensible, complex reality what industrial food is to French cuisine.

  The formula pleased him and he wrote it down in a corner of his blue notebook.

  Around 10:30 his telephone rang. Gérard Mercier had kept his word.

  “I’m able to confirm that Martinez was in fact a member of our organization and that he was not a simple activist but a combatant.”

  Sebag knew that already. He expected more. Mercier must have sensed his disappointment.

  “I wanted to get back to you as quickly as I could, and I haven’t had time to collect a lot of information.”

  “What I need is a list of former members of the OAS who live in Perpignan. If possible, people who were part of the group to which Martinez belonged, for instance.”

  “You’re asking for a lot. Even those who haven’t repudiated their convictions aren’t very fond of talking about those years.”

  “I know, your brother already explained that to me at length a little while ago. We aren’t getting very far this morning. I didn’t think it would be so hard. What I’m looking for is not simply a witness, it’s a potential victim!”

  To shake up his interlocutor, he’d deliberately painted a dark picture.

  “Do you think the murderer is going to attack other activists?”

  Gérard Mercier had taken the bait. Now Sebag didn’t need to go any further.

  “To tell the truth, I don’t know. It’s a hypothesis we’re working on because we can’t yet exclude it. When I know what the killer’s motives are, then I’ll be able to say whether he has targeted other people. But in order to know more about his motives . . . ”

  “ . . . you have to meet with people from the OAS!”

  “Precisely!”

  Mercer paused, and to Sebag that seemed a good sign. In more than twenty years on the job, he’d never met a witness who could give a cop names without taking time to think it over, even if only for form. This held true even when it was a matter of drawing up a list of possible victims rather than suspects.

  “A friend gave me one person’s name. I haven’t been able to check it out, and I don’t know whether he was part of the same group as Martinez, but he will be able to tell you that. Especially since, according to my friend, the guy lives rather close to Perpignan. His name is André Roman.”

  “Where exactly does he live?”

  “I don’t know, near Perpignan, that’s all my friend knew. But you should be able to find him easily.”

  “Probably, yes.”

  Sebag suddenly felt in a hurry to hang up.

  “I have one last thing to ask of you, Mr. Mercier. Could you continue to gather information about this group for me?”

  Gérard Mercier chose to reply frankly and directly:

  “The case interests me and I definitely plan to talk to all my contacts to find out more about it. I will continue to gather information, but first of all for myself. I don’t guarantee to tell you everything I find out: that will depend on how events develop and how you conduct your investigation.”

  Sebag thanked him and hung up. He had no trouble finding Roman’s address and phone number on the internet. The man lived in Canet. Sebag immediately dialed the telephone number. A woman’s voice answered. He asked to speak to André. The voice broke, and Sebag understood.

  “André? No, I . . . I can’t put him on the line . . . ”

  The flat voice was replaced by another, more male and more assured.”

  “Why do you want to talk to André Roman? Who are you?”

  “Gilles Sebag, Perpignan police.”

  “Sebag? We know each other! This is Lieutenant Cornet of the gendarmerie. We met last summer in Collioure.”

  “Yes, I remember it well. How are you?”

  The question had slipped out even though he’d understood that this was no time for polite chitchat. Anyway, Cornet didn’t give him any news about his health but instead confirmed what he had feared.

  “André Roman has been murdered. I’m at his home. I’ll wait for you here.”

  A navy blue car from the gendarmerie was parked on the sidewalk in front of the gate to the villa in Canet. Sebag pushed the button twice and waited. The door of the house opened and Lieutenant Cornet’s tall, slender figure came out. The head of the gendarmerie’s criminal investigation unit came to meet him. He extended a long and delicate hand.

  “I’d tell you how glad I am to see you again, but I’m not sure that would be fitting, under the circumstances.”

  Cornet was only twenty-five, but his brown hair was already starting to go gray.

  “Would you mind if before we talk about what happened to Roman, I ask why you called him?”

  “Not at all.”

  Sebag told him about Martinez’s murder and gave him a complete account of the main lines of the ongoing investigation. Something in the lieutenant’s sparkling eyes and his tone of extreme politeness led him to think that the gendarmes had already connected the case with the information that had appeared in the press. It was better to be open about it in order to obtain full collaboration.

  After he’d finished, Cornet made no commentary. He limited himself to an invitation.

  “Roman was not killed in his home but in his car, on the road to Saint-Cyprien. Shall I give you a ride?”

  As they drove there, the two men exchanged a few banal observations on the weather. Sebag didn’t want to rush his colleague. The time for questions would soon come.

  They soon saw, at the end of the long, straight stretch of road, two spots of blue: a gendarmerie van, and next to it, André Roman’s lighter-colored Audi. Cornet parked his car nearby. The gendarmes had finished their investigation and the body of the victim had been taken away. The two officers still watching over the vehicle greeted them. Sebag examined the surrounding area. He spotted tire tracks in the soft sand.

  “Given the amount of rain that fell yesterday morning, these tracks must be recent,” Cornet explained. “We took casts of them, and I hope to have the results before the end of the day.”

  Sebag cautiously approached the vehicle. He walked slowly around it without seeing any sign that it had been broken into.

  “We found Roman’s body in the driver’s seat. We think he let his murderer get in the car. They must have had a rendezvous.”

  “A rendezvous that required discretion,” Sebag remarked. “There can’t have been very many people who passed by here yesterday.”

  “Mme. Roman contacted us yesterday evening. Her husband had not come home; she’d had a telephone call from him that afternoon but there was no one on the other end of the line. She tried to call him several times but couldn’t reach him. She got worried. But you know how it is when a grown-up doesn’t return to the conjugal home . . . Usually, it’s a matter of an inconsequential escapade. We called the hospital emergency rooms, and since there
hadn’t been an accident, we tried to reassure her and recorded her call. This morning, a resident of Saint-Cyprien who was going to work in Canet spotted the car and in particular a dark form slumped in it. He notified the local brigade of the gendarmerie, which sent out a patrol car.”

  Sebag would have liked to open the door to inspect the interior of the car but the seals had already been put on it. He squinted through the passenger side window.

  “It’s especially the headliner that you need to look at,” Cornet advised him.

  Sebag bent his head. The inside was dark but he could easily read the three white letters on the headliner: OAS. Sebag shivered. There was no doubt: this was the beginning of a series.

  On the way back to Roman’s house. Lieutenant Cornet was more talkative.

  “It appears that the murderer took no precautions, and the prints we took from the passenger side of the car are probably his. It won’t take long to compare them with the ones you found in Martinez’s apartment.”

  A gust of wind shook the car. The tramontane was clearing the sky, and the sea, far offshore, was gradually regaining its blue color.

  “André Roman was shot at point-blank range, once in the stomach, and once in the heart. The ballistic analysis will tell us if the same weapon was used. A 9 mm Beretta 34, I think?”

  Sebag confirmed what Cornet said and was glad he’d been frank with him, since he seemed to know the Martinez case well.

  “He probably died late yesterday afternoon,” Cornet continued. “After 5:12.”

  The young lieutenant was amused by Sebag’s astonishment.

  “That’s the time of the call Roman made to his home. The cell phone was found on his body. I’m inclined to think that Roman called home just before he died. He probably dialed the number without his murderer noticing.”

  “Why didn’t he call the police?”

  “He probably acted automatically, he didn’t have time to think. In any case, it was too late, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  They were coming to the first apartment buildings in Canet, and Cornet slowed down. The road turned away from the beach to go around the town. The lieutenant from the gendarmerie continued his account.

  “Roman has his papers on him, his credit card, and cash. The motive was not money, but you already suspected that. The body was transferred to the forensic lab. The autopsy is supposed to take place tomorrow.”

  At a traffic circle, Cornet turned right and headed back toward the sea. He had to stop at a crosswalk for a couple of retirees being dragged along by two dogs.

  “The widow, Mathilde Roman, is in shock. She hasn’t yet told us much. Except that they had just come back from a vacation in Tunisia. They go two or three times a year. They have a small family house over there.”

  Cornet parked his car in front of the Romans’ villa again. Then he led Sebag down the garden path. When they got to the front door, he knocked softly before opening it.

  “Mme. Roman, it’s the gendarme again. I’m coming in.”

  Sebag followed him to a large, opulent living room where an elderly lady was slumped on a tawny, leather-covered sofa. Her dyed blond hair, green blouse with a little collar, and her bent head made her look like a faded sunflower.

  “Mme. Roman, I’d like to introduce you to Lieutenant Sebag of the Perpignan police. We have a few questions to ask you.”

  Mathilde Roman looked up at Gilles with empty and indifferent eyes. She furtively blew her nose on the tissue she held in her hand. Cornet sat down alongside her, but Sebag remained standing, looking at the numerous photos hung on the wall. He lingered a few seconds in front of a group portrait that had probably been taken in the summer on the beach at Canet. He counted twelve persons lined up in a row, clearly arranged by age. At one end the two grandparents seemed to be happy and beaming. He realized that he was seeing for the first time the face of the victim.

  “You have a fine family, Mme. Roman,” he said.

  “Yes. We have three children: two boys and a girl. And we have seven grandchildren. That photo dates from a few months ago. This summer we were lucky enough to be able to bring them all together at the same time. That’s not always possible: our elder son lives in Montpellier, the other in the United States, and our daughter has been living in Toulouse since she married.”

  “Seven grandchildren, that’s very good,” Sebag complimented her. “They must also keep you busy, don’t they?”

  “Not as much as I’d like. Since their parents don’t live in Perpignan, we don’t see them very often.”

  “What are their names?”

  Mathilde followed Sebag’s finger as it moved from one face to the next on the photo.

  “Bénédicte, Léon, Martin, Camille, Chloé, Lucie, and Antoine. Antoine is the baby, he’s five years old, my daughter’s second child. We often take care of him.”

  She sniffled noisily before continuing in a more muted voice.

  “He had been with us for two weeks. We took him with us to Tunisia. My husband lived part of his childhood over there and we often went back. Once again, we had a wonderful vacation. If we could have known . . . Antoine loved his grandpa so much. He called him ‘my Dédé,’ a nickname he invented all by himself. He started calling him that when he was still very young. It was Antoine who picked up the telephone yesterday when André called for the last time. He thought it was a game and I still haven’t had the heart to tell him what happened. I left him with a neighbor this morning. Laurence, his mother, is supposed to come this evening from Toulouse to pick him up and to . . . help me. She’ll have to be the one to tell him. I won’t have the strength.”

  Sebag decided this was the right time to begin a more professional conversation. He sat down on the chair opposite the sofa.

  “So your husband lived in Tunisia. I thought he was a Pied-Noir from Algeria?”

  Mathilde Roman laid her tissue on the coffee table and took out another one from a packet that she kept clutched in her hand.

  “Yes, he was born in Algiers, but his father was a government official who was later assigned to Bizerte, in northern Tunisia. The family found that country calmer and more hospitable, and they would have liked to stay there. That’s why they bought a house, the one we inherited. But eventually André’s father was transferred back to Algeria. That was a few years before the war began.”

  She spoke quickly and volubly about the past, with the unconscious hope of forestalling the policemen’s other questions. The ones that would certainly plunge her back into this dreadful present.

  Sebag met Lieutenant Cornet’s eyes and signaled to him to take over. The gendarme gladly accepted the invitation.

  “A little while ago you told me, Madam, that your husband had a meeting and that was why he left the house shortly before 5 P.M. Is that correct?”

  Mathilde Roman took the time to blow her nose before nodding her head in assent.

  “A meeting with a writer, you said?” Cornet persisted.

  “Yes, that’s correct, with a writer, for a book . . . ”

  “A book on what subject?”

  “The Algerian War.”

  Sebag took out his notebook and starting writing in it.

  “What was this writer’s name?”

  “I don’t recall, but I saw that André wrote it down in his appointment book. He didn’t say any more about it because I don’t like him to talk about that past in front of me.”

  “Where is the appointment book?”

  “Probably on his desk.”

  She started to get up but Cornet stopped her.

  “We’ll look into that later. In any case, it’s surely not the man’s real name.”

  She gave the gendarme a terrified look.

  “Do you think it was that man who . . . ”

  She didn’t dare say more. Not giving expression to the unbea
rable is a classic defense mechanism that seeks to deny the inevitable. Sebag decided to help her confront reality.

  “Yes, we assume that your husband’s murderer contacted him under this false pretext.” He had uttered the word “murderer” very slowly and distinctly. Mathilde Roman bent her head, resuming the position of a faded sunflower. In alternation with Cornet, Sebag asked the usual questions, even though he already knew the answers. Had André Roman seemed uneasy lately, did he feel threatened, did he have enemies? She limited herself to replying by sadly shaking her head.

  Sebag finally decided to get to the heart of the matter:

  “Did you know that your husband had belonged to the OAS?”

  Mme Roman looked up at him.

  “Do you think that is related to . . . to his . . . ”

  This time, Sebag didn’t help her out. But she stopped and didn’t utter the word.

  “We have every reason to think so, yes. Did your husband often talk about the OAS?”

  “Never. Never in front of me.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you that I didn’t like him to talk about Algeria in front of me. I even forbade him to do so.”

  Mme. Roman’s voice grew stronger.

  “The Algeria we knew is dead, and I moved on a long time ago.”

  “Were you born over there, too?”

  “Yes. I met André on the boat that was taking us from Algiers to Port-Vendres.”

  “What do you think about the fighting he did in Algeria?”

  “Nothing. At the time, I considered him a hero. Now I don’t know. No one here in France sees things as we did then. So I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

  “Does it surprise you that his death might be connected with that past?”

  “I don’t know. Yes and no . . . It’s all so long ago. But on the other hand, what else could it be? André has been retired for ten years. We belong to a Scrabble club and go to a gymnastics class twice a week. Sometimes we also help out at the Catholic Aid Society. What could anybody hold against André in all that?”