Autumn, All the Cats Return

by Philippe Georget

  Sebag knew very well. His son wore the same kind.

  “Were they young?”

  “Fairly young, yes, but I’m not real sure. Everything happened very fast. I was taken by surprise, I didn’t have time to understand what was happening before they’d already left. And then they were wearing sunglasses that hid their eyes.”

  “Did they say anything?”

  “The bearded one shouted something like ‘dirty Pied-Noir’ while the other one stabbed me with his knife. Afterward I collapsed on the floor of the lobby. They kicked me a couple of times before taking off.”

  “What time was it?”

  “Around 6 P.M.”

  At that point Molina came into the cubicle. He’d just been talking with the paramedics who had taken care of the wounded man. Sebag continued his questioning.

  “They left you a note, a letter, I don’t know what to call it . . . ”

  Albouker pointed to his jacket hung on the back of a chair.

  “In the right inside pocket.”

  Molina was closest. He dug around and pulled out of the pocket a wrinkled sheet of paper. He carefully unfolded it and handed it to Sebag. It contained three lapidary sentences and two spelling mistakes. It was written with letters cut out of a newspaper and glued to the sheet of paper. Not very original. Sebag though he recognized the typeface of the local newspaper. He read the message out loud:

  “You were driven out of Algeria. You should have all been killed, you gang of murderers. It’s not too late. Death to Pieds-Noirs.”

  “I’m not happy about that, but it shows that I wasn’t entirely wrong,” Albouker commented, with an apologetic smile on his lips. “They’ve got it in for Pieds-Noirs who were killers, that is, for the OAS. More people who have fallen for the simplistic amalgamation. And when I think that they attacked me—a guy whose parents were active in the SFIO . . . ”

  Sebag remained pensive. He didn’t know how to interpret this latest event. Or especially how to relate it to the others. The two murders and the destruction of the monument. Did there absolutely have to be a connection?

  “Had you already received threats of this kind?”

  “Personally, no. But at the Circle we’ve received some disagreeable mail over the last few years.”

  “Did you keep it?”

  “No, I don’t think so. If we’d had to worry every time . . . ”

  “To come back to the men who attacked you today, can you tell us anything more about them?”

  Albouker hesitated.

  “It’s just that . . . ”

  “It’s just that what?”

  “I don’t know how to put it. Unless I borrow the comedian Coluche’s famous line: ‘They weren’t downright shady but they were downright dark-skinned.’”

  “Were they North Africans?”

  “Probably. I had the impression that they also had the accent.”

  “They didn’t say very much . . . ”

  “That’s why I spoke rather of an impression.”

  “What did you do after your attackers left?”

  “I called the emergency services and then the police.”

  “Why didn’t you call me, too? I’d given you my card.”

  “I didn’t have it on me.”

  Sebag turned to Molina:

  “Did the emergency service tell you anything?”

  “They received the call at 6:07 and they got there at 6:16. They didn’t notice anything unusual. They found Mr. Albouker alone in the lobby, leaning on a step of the stairway. He was lucid and didn’t seem to be suffering too much. They saw right away that the wound was superficial.”

  “Any news from the police patrol that was sent?”

  “It arrived in the area at 6:27. They didn’t see anything suspicious but it was probably too late. They didn’t find anything abnormal in the lobby, either. Do you think we need to bring in the forensic team?”

  “That would be pointless. After the emergency team, our colleagues, and probably a few residents of the building, they won’t be able to do anything significant.”

  A nurse’s aide came into the cubicle with the prescription and the sick leave form signed by the doctor. Marie Albouker appeared immediately afterward. Her face was haggard and she collapsed in her husband’s arms.

  “Papa, you’ve got an SMS.”

  Sévérine’s voice coming out of Sebag’s pocket startled everyone. Molina stared at his partner as if he had farted. Sebag excused himself and took out his phone. He had a message from Claire asking when he expected to be home. “In about an hour,” he wrote with his clumsy index finger.

  Albouker was patting his wife’s back.

  “Excuse me,” the president of the Circle implored her. “I’m sorry to have given you such a fright . . . ”

  Marie Albouker sat up to blow her nose.

  “It’s not your fault, for heaven’s sake.”

  “No, of course not. But when I see you like that, I feel guilty.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “You took a long time to notice that.”

  Sebag cleared his throat to remind them of his presence.

  “I think we’ve bothered you long enough,” he said. “I’ll write up the report on the attack tomorrow morning and bring it by for your signature. Will you be home tomorrow?”

  “I’m on sick leave, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll give you a call first, just in case.”

  Back in the car, Molina didn’t miss the opportunity to tease his partner.

  “So, when are you going to change your ringtone?”

  “Did you change yours?”

  “No, why?”

  “Guess . . . ”

  Molina discussed again, and at length, the merits and defects of their respective ringtones. But Sebag let him talk. He finally had the impression that he was beginning to understand where this business about the car might lead. Clio, SEAT. And what if it wasn’t a coincidence? An idea had sprouted and he let it grow before daring to contemplate it. Yes, of course, it was possible . . . They’d stupidly failed to see the obvious and today’s hypothesis still seemed to him valid.

  However, fearing that Molina’s sarcastic remarks might extinguish it like the flame of an ordinary candle, he decided to keep it to himself. He still had to think about it, support it, argue it. Tomorrow, things would be clearer.

  Yes, tomorrow would be the time to talk about it again.

  CHAPTER 24

  He was walking painfully through the steep streets of the village of Cadaqués. To admire an opening onto the Great Blue between two white façades and to catch his breath before beginning a stretch dangerous for his old legs, he paused on the path to the Santa Maria church. Gray schist paving stones lay on the ground, but when the slope got steeper, they gave way to pieces of slate set in cement. The architects had come up with that idea to prevent pedestrians from slipping on rainy days. For the old man, however, these random asperities represented so many traps and possibilities of falling.

  It would be pretty ridiculous of him to break something now!

  The sun was going down fast. It would soon disappear behind the mountain barrier that had for centuries isolated Cadaqués from the rest of Catalonia. Up until the 1950s, the village could be reached only by sea.

  He finally came to the square in front of the church. The view proved disappointing. He’d hoped for a 180-degree panorama, but had to make do with a little opening bordered on one side by terraces and canal-tile roofs. In the distance, he could still make out a brown, pointed rock that rose out of the water like a single canine tooth in the mouth of a poor man.

  Jean sat on a bench and warmed his face in the last rays of the sun. When the light dimmed, he got up and went down toward the port.

  At the seaside, the terraces of the c
afés were still bathed in sun. A few French, Spanish, and German tourists were savoring the return of good weather after a week of wind and rain. On the pebble beach, a young dog was pushing a ball among the beached fishing boats. The old man strolled down the beach and then continued walking east down the road that ran along the seacoast. Four-story houses, all lined up, gleamed in all their radiant whiteness. Regularly whitewashed, they testified to the present prosperity of the village, which had become a prime tourist site on the Costa Brava.

  He enjoyed seeing the place, even though the reasons for his coming here had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with tourism.

  The street wound along the coast. He walked with more assurance on the asphalt. He consulted a map affixed to a wall. He had already passed Es Poal, then the Playa es Pianc. The avinguda Rahola wasn’t far away.

  He stopped in front of the slender metal figure of a woman. With a jar on her head and her hair blowing in the wind like a banner, the statue faced away from the houses and looked out toward the sea. He sat down on a broad stone bench that was still warm from the sun. Huddled around its church, the village rolled up on its butte was awaiting the night. The man took out of his coat pocket the little camera he’d bought in La Jonquera before leaving. He started rapidly shooting pictures around him.

  After taking a dozen snapshots at random, he stood up and started walking up the avenue again. But this time he stopped often to take photos. Not of the sea, not of the village, but of the houses along the road.

  He’d arrived at the swankiest part of the village. The continuous wall of narrow, white façades had given way to luxurious villas partly hidden by high walls made of flat stones. These residences for the wealthy had sumptuous second-floor terraces with priceless views of the sea.

  Jean pretended to be admiring a splendid prickly pear that raised its thorny leaves as high as ten feet. He took numerous photos, moving little by little toward the neighboring villa. One of the most fashionable in the area. The apartment he occupied in Buenos Aires would have filled only a third of its terrace.

  The old man spotted three surveillance cameras around the building, which must also have a sophisticated alarm system. This confirmed what he’d already expected: he wouldn’t be able to strike his third target at home. He wouldn’t be able to get in here as easily as he’d gotten into Martinez’s apartment. And this target, he knew, would be much tougher than the other two. Whether or not he knew about what had happened to his former accomplices.

  His mouth and his lips opened in a malicious smile. He had a backup plan. Obviously. The war years had taught him foresight. A single weapon in his hand but all the solutions in his head, that had been the key to his success. Yesterday in the streets of Algiers, today in those of Cadaqués.

  And then he was ready for anything. To be sure, he would have preferred to carry out this last mission without problems so that he could go die—as late as possible—alongside his beloved Gabriella. He’d so much like to see her grow up . . . But nothing could weaken his determination. It was a question of honor. He owed it to all the companions in arms that these bastards had betrayed.

  He owed it to their memory.

  He owed it to his ideals.

  He owed it to his youth.

  He owed it. Period.

  CHAPTER 25

  This is quite a change from the meeting room at headquarters, isn’t it?”

  Molina was proud of his idea. Sebag congratulated him by raising his espresso to him. Castello was in Montpellier for a regional seminar for superintendents, and Molina had proposed to his colleagues that they hold their morning meeting at the Carlit.

  “After all, our bosses are having their big wingding in a luxurious hotel, so we can certainly have our meeting in a little bistro,” he’d argued.

  Llach, Lambert, and Sebag had approved the idea with enthusiasm, Julie Sadet with reservations, and Ménard, who was still in Marseille, had not been able to contest it. As for Raynaud and Moreno, they would surely not have been opposed to it, but faithful to their habits, they were taking advantage of the boss’s absence to play hooky.

  Sebag swigged with undisguised pleasure the excellent mocha Rafel had made. Then he took the floor. Everyone thought it was natural that he lead the discussion in Castello’s absence.

  “The officers sent yesterday to the site of the attack on Albouker found nothing. No material evidence, and no testimony about the two perpetrators, either. Examination of the message left by the attackers yielded nothing; only Jacques’s prints and those of the victim were found on it.”

  “Clearly, we’re floundering here,” Joan Llach lamented.

  “Hard to disagree with you there,” Sebag admitted.

  He chose to take up immediately a question that seemed to him indispensable for what was to follow.

  “In what way does this attack change our ongoing investigations?”

  “In no way,” Llach replied frankly. “Apart from the fact that the victim is a Pied-Noir, this attack with a knife has nothing in common with the double murder we’re working on.”

  “In the message the attackers left, there is, however, a direct allusion to . . . to the OAS,” Lambert said.

  “An indirect allusion, rather,” Joan corrected. “If the message mentioned the OAS, it would be a direct allusion. But it refers only to ‘murderers,’ and that’s an indirect allusion.”

  “You can always quibble, but that doesn’t change anything in what I mean,” Lambert insisted.

  “And what exactly do you mean?” Molina asked bluntly. “That everything is connected?”

  “No, I don’t know. I just mean that we have to be careful before rejecting everything. I mean before excluding the possibility that all these cases are connected.”

  “But we have to try to see things more clearly,” said Llach, irritated. “And we won’t be able to do that by mixing everything up.”

  Julie Sadet spoke up in her calm voice.

  “Everything is connected, in fact.”

  Skillfully, she waited until all eyes were on her before continuing.

  “I believe we have before us, on the one hand, a double murder, and, on the other, people who are trying to take advantage of this case to sow discord in Perpignan. The two cases are distinct, but they are also connected: without the murders, there would probably have been no attack on Albouker and no destruction of the OAS monument.”

  The silence that followed showed that the inspectors found their new colleague’s argument pertinent.

  “The other day we had trouble understanding the coincidence, which seemed strange to us,” Molina reflected out loud. “But on your hypothesis, it wouldn’t really be a coincidence.”

  “I find that interesting,” Llach confirmed, seeking approval in Sebag’s eyes.

  Sebag nodded pensively. Yes, he found the idea attractive. But one thing bothered him. A question of chronology. Martinez’s murder had been discovered on Monday and revealed by the press on Tuesday. The monument had been destroyed on Wednesday night, before the news about the painted letters OAS that had been found in Martinez’s apartment had circulated in the city. If people wanted to sow panic in the city’s Pied-Noir community, they had been well-informed and had acted very quickly. Sebag preferred to keep his reservations to himself, and took up the other subjects. He conveyed to his colleagues the reports that Castello had left for him. André Roman’s autopsy confirmed that he had been killed by a bullet to the heart—the second bullet fired, and the ballistics analysis certified that the weapon used was in fact a 9 mm Beretta 34, the same weapon that was used to kill Martinez.

  “In addition, I reviewed the situation with François this morning, on the telephone. There’s a new development in Marseille: François was supposed to meet with his barbouze, but the guy disappeared several days ago.”

  The policemen opened their eyes wide in surprise.

>   “Let’s not get excited too fast: Maurice Garcin is eighty-one years old, suffers from Alzheimer’s, and it was from the retirement home where he lives that he disappeared. Or rather wandered away. It seems that he does that often. According to his two sons, whom François contacted, Garcin is coping very badly with his decline. Whence his repeated escapes.”

  “So if the guy is senile, he’s no longer a suspect?” Llach asked.

  “He was never really a suspect, he’s a witness like many others. Well . . . I mean, among many others. We don’t have as many as it seems. Isn’t that right, Julie?”

  “That’s right,” the young woman acknowledged. “Among the former barbouzes who are still alive that François and I have identified, Garcin seems to us the only one who has retained a robust hatred of the OAS for the past half-century.”

  “Since he can’t talk to the father, François is going to meet with the two sons today. He’ll find out from them what Garcin’s exact state of health is. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disorder, one doesn’t become senile from one day to the next. Above all, I believe there are now treatments that attenuate its effects.”

  “What if he isn’t sick at all,” Llach suggested. “Can’t one simulate that illness?”

  “I’m not very well-informed on that subject,” Sebag admitted. “I don’t know whether there are irrefutable tests or clinical examinations.”

  “That may also depend on the degree of the illness,” Julie pointed out. “You said that he was still fairly lucid.”

  “That’s the impression I got from François, but if the guy is in a retirement home, it’s because he’s actually sick.’

  “He could be the one,” Lambert ventured. “At eighty-one, he’ll necessarily have white hair.”

  “He could also be completely bald,” Molina countered. “We’ll have to ask Ménard to check.”

  “Send him an SMS right away,” Sebag proposed. “Then it’ll be done.”

  Molina took out his cell phone and tapped on the keyboard. Gilles thought this was the moment to bring up the question of the killer’s car. He hadn’t stopped thinking about it since the day before. He wanted to see if some of his colleagues, with new eyes, would arrive spontaneously at the same conclusions as he had.