“I’ve just looked in my mailbox and I didn’t find any new threats,” the treasurer of the Pied-Noir Circle told him. “I didn’t notice any suspicious people in the neighborhood, either, but I have to admit that I haven’t gone out much today. My brother was able to get free; he’s arriving tonight on the 9:22 train.”
Sebag told him what they had learned during the afternoon regarding the anonymous letter.
“There were no fingerprints on the letter or the envelope, that is, nothing that would allow us to find the people who wrote it. As I promised, patrols in the neighborhood have been increased. But be careful anyway.”
Then he called Pascal Lucas. It was time to tell the van driver the news. A shout almost burst his eardrum.
“Wahooo! I told you that car existed, goddammit! You were right to believe me. You’re brilliant, Inspector! A champ, a real ace.”
Lucas went on and on in the same vein. Sebag felt it necessary to curb his enthusiasm.
“You’re welcome, Monsieur Lucas, but I remind you that although your responsibility for the accident will probably be reduced, one fact remains unchanged; Mathieu is dead and won’t be coming back!”
The van driver’s jubilation stuck in his throat.
“Excuse me, Inspector,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Even if it is now proved that a car forced you to swerve, you’re still the one who hit the scooter, Monsieur Lucas. And you were driving under the influence of alcohol. If you hadn’t been drinking, you probably could have avoided it.”
“I . . . uh . . . You’re right.”
“Goodbye, Monsieur.”
He hung up without giving Lucas time to continue his excuses. Then he called Josette Vidal to give her the telephone number of the real estate agency in Cadaqués.
“I think you can take your time clearing out the apartment. The owner is not in a hurry.”
“All the same, I’m going to move out Bernard’s things and the furniture as soon as I can. Thanks for your help, Monsieur Sebag.”
After he put down the receiver, Gilles contemplated the photos on his desk. They were all at least three years old; he had to replace them. Léo and Sévérine had changed, grown a little, and matured a lot. Claire hadn’t changed at all—at most, a few wrinkles at the corners of her eyes were slightly more pronounced. What was no longer the same now was his relationship to her, his doubts . . .
He felt dark thoughts starting to invade him. He didn’t struggle against the rising tide.
In the photos, Claire seemed to be smiling for him alone. That was true at the time. Now their intimate connection seemed to have evaporated and this loss was as painful to him as infidelity itself. Behind his back, Claire might have exchanged sweet words with another man, she might have met him for secret rendezvous. Behind his back, she had perhaps told her girlfriends, Pascale and Véronique, about her affair. They might have laughed about it together. How had she presented this adventure? As a folly that could endanger their marriage or as a nice interlude that had awakened her from a long sleep?
Jealousy gnawed at his stomach. Being excluded from all these secrets made him feel sick. His hands closed into fists. He felt he could become violent, he was usually too calm and too levelheaded. He thought about Cardona and the pleasure he’d felt in taking him by the neck.
But jealousy wasn’t a pleasant feeling, and these days it was no longer regarded favorably. A husband who was a cuckold was already ridiculous; if he was jealous as well he became laughable. It used to be that in French courts of law, jealousy and drunkenness were considered attenuating circumstances for all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors. Today, they had both become aggravating factors.
A sign of the times. Adultery had ceased to be a mortal sin.
Could one still swear eternal fidelity when the length of that eternity never ceased to grow? In a century, individuals’ life expectancy had doubled. That of couples had potentially tripled, even quadrupled. Did fidelity still make sense? Did it have synonyms other than frustration, boredom, and sacrifice? He had found statistics that said that in the United States 70 percent of people admitted having been unfaithful at least once in their lifetimes. What if one day he himself . . .
Every time the tempest of his feelings buffeted him, he clung to that idea as if it were a life buoy. Claire’s infidelity gave him back his freedom. He could also allow himself, without feeling any pangs of conscience, a little sensual adventure, a romantic interlude. He thought of the female faces that were part of his everyday life. Elsa Moulin, Julie Sadet, Martine the woman cop at the reception desk. Jeanne, the boss’s secretary . . . Ah, Jeanne and her enticing clothes, Jeanne and her provocative double entendres. A smile flickered on his lips, but he immediately repressed it. No point in thinking about that. Every skirt chaser at police headquarters had tried and failed. So, Jeanne? In your dreams.
And then, the idea of deceiving Claire didn’t attract him. Lying, inventing stories, going to some seedy hotel at noon for a quick fuck . . . He didn’t like that sort of thing, didn’t want to do it. He felt too tired for that.
He knew that lassitude’s name but refused to utter it.
If only he’d been able to talk about it with someone. A friend? He didn’t have any, and then in any case he would never have talked about such intimate matters with a friend. A priest or a psychologist? Impossible: he distrusted the former’s ready-made solutions as much as the latter’s absence of response. He’d never believed in those two religions.
Morality couldn’t be of much help to him, either. There were no longer any norms in that domain, Good and Evil didn’t exist anymore. Today, it was up to each individual to set his own rules, to work things out on his own with his conscience, his temptations, and his feelings. Claire had found her path; Gilles didn’t find it reprehensible and would have so much liked to simply come to terms with it. His concern was that his reason dictated a path that his gut rejected. Whatever he thought, whatever he told himself, jealousy was still crouching in his belly, ready to attack him whenever his vigilance lapsed. He’d thought himself a free, thoughtful man, but in reality he was no more than the plaything of the obscure forces that inhabited him.
His weakness also undermined him.
He suddenly gave himself a slap that surprised him. Letting his ruminations have free rein didn’t help him in any way. He had to get a grip on himself, otherwise . . . Otherwise he felt he might send everything flying. Claire, the children, his job . . . Yes, that state of mind had a name. He didn’t want to hear about it.
He tried to breathe calmly. To stop thinking about all that, especially not to think at all. His wife loved him and he loved her, his children were growing up without major problems, they were all in good health, he had a job. He took a breath. There were worse things in life. He took another breath. He had to resume the normal course of his existence. Beginning with his investigation. There was still one thing he could do that would put his mind on another track.
He concentrated on Cardona’s mocking face. He had an account to settle with him. He was still breathing. Deeply. But above all, no violence. He’d won his wager with that imbecile. He had to control his nerves.
Afterward, he’d join his colleagues at the Carlit. He’d sit down with them and drink an aperitif. Then he’d quickly drink another one.
He brusquely put the photos in the drawer of his desk and stood up.
Sebag gave three sharp knocks on the door.
“Come in,” Cardona’s voice ordered.
He entered his colleague’s smoky office and couldn’t help coughing.
“Excuse me,” Cardona said, crushing out his cigarette in a plastic cup in which a small amount of cold coffee was stagnating.
Cardona got up, opened the window, and then came back and held out his hand. Surprised, Sebag shook it without saying a word.
“You’ve come at the right
time, I was just about to go see you. Sit down, please.”
Gilles was disconcerted by this sudden friendliness. He took a chair and cautiously sat down on it.
“I’ve got something new,” Cardona declared.
“I do, too.”
Cardona repressed an annoyed grimace.
“You go first, if you want.”
“No, no, please go ahead.”
Cardona didn’t have to be asked twice:
“O.K., fine.”
He ran his hand through his greasy hair and swept it back. He took a deep breath. Apparently what he had to say wasn’t easy.
“I’ve thought a great deal since our . . . ” Unconsciously, he put his hand on his neck. “Since our conversation the other day. I re-read my file with fresh eyes and noticed . . . let’s say . . . a few . . . things that weren’t fully explored.”
He leaned on the edge of his desk, picked up the cup and twirled the cigarette butt around in the remaining coffee.
“So I decided to resume the investigation and I went back to the neighborhood.”
He put down the cup and finally looked at Sebag. He smiled, embarrassed.
“I went there several times, hell, I spent hours there. Damn, it wasn’t easy!”
He stopped, seeming to be waiting for encouragement. Sebag gave him no sign. Confronted by his colleague’s friendliness and embarrassment, all his aggressiveness had disappeared. But for all that he wasn’t going to make the task easy for him. Cardona cleared his throat before going on:
“I finally found a witness. Finally! Just one, despite all my efforts. A single witness, but that’s enough. He’s a young man of eighteen who was waiting for his girlfriend in front of her apartment building.”
Cardona paused again.
“The kid saw the car—the Clio, I mean—he saw it run the stop sign. You . . . you were right. There was in fact another driver who caused the accident.”
“I never insisted that there was another car,” Sebag said. “I just said that we had to look for it. I looked, and I found evidence that suggested that it existed. Evidence you refused to consider.”
Cardona nodded gravely. He realized that he’d been wrong.
“Tomorrow I’ll go talk with the van driver and I’ll rewrite my report.”
“Just between us, I’d advise you to rewrite it this afternoon.”
“Really? Why?”
Sebag explained how they had managed to prove that the Clio existed.
“So, that way the reckless driver would be a murderer, and a little old man into the bargain . . . How is that possible?”
Sebag shrugged. He wasn’t going to tell Cardona right now all about the case that been occupying him for almost two weeks. Cardona understood and stood up.
“I’ll rewrite my report immediately, then. My wife will complain, she’s waiting for me, but that’s how it is! When you have to work, you have to work, right?”
He forced himself to laugh and then cleared his throat again.
“Otherwise . . . uh . . . you haven’t said anything to Castello about our little . . . quarrel?”
“He doesn’t know anything about it, no.”
“So he’ll never know . . . I mean, it’s as if I’d found the Clio all by myself!”
“As if we’d each worked independently and arrived at the same conclusion, yes.”
“Super!”
He began to rock from one foot to the other.
“I think that . . . I should thank you somehow.”
“Is it so hard as that?”
Cardona put his hand on his neck again. Consciously, this time.
“A little, yeah. There’s no love lost between us. And then . . . it’s never easy to admit your mistakes.”
“And do you admit them?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“Bravo! I find that very admirable on your part. You surprise me.”
Cardona’s face lit up. His mouth opened wide, revealing tobacco-stained teeth.
“Is that true?”
“Affirmative.”
Cardona huffed.
“It’s true that I’m don’t usually do that kind of thing. When I was a kid, my father always told me: ‘Never make excuses, son, it’s a mark of weakness.’”
“My father told me that, too, but I’ve grown up since then. I’ve understood that above all it’s a proof of stupidity!”
Sebag was wandering idly around his house. His return had not been in any way triumphal. Since Sévérine had complete confidence in him, she didn’t need a confirmation to know that he’d been right. Now she was with her mother, watching her favorite cop show, which was full of heroes almost as good as her father. Léo was spending the evening as usual, holed up in his room in front of his computer.
An ordinary evening for an ordinary family. A happy family, no doubt. On the table in the entry hall, Gilles found a packet of cigarettes that had already been opened. He put on a jacket and went outside
Sheltered from the wind, he lit a cigarette. He rarely smoked and had opened this packet two weeks earlier. At the time of Mathieu’s funeral. He felt a need for tobacco only on important occasions. Great joys or great sorrows. And also during periods of boredom, moments of ill humor, or anxiety.
This evening, there was a bit of all of those.
The aperitif he’d shared with his colleagues had not allowed him to escape his preoccupations. When he’d entered the bar, Molina was proposing a toast to Ménard, “who is bored stiff in Marseille instead of taking advantage of the break he’s being given.” Then the discussion had moved on to the Pieds-Noirs who were “never satisfied” with their situation. Llach and Molina hadn’t foregone making further allusions to the fortunes of certain repatriates. Sebag had tried to start a separate discussion with Julie about her reasons for coming to Perpignan, but failed because his two pals were talking too loud and the young woman cop didn’t seem inclined to talk about personal matters.
He crossed the driveway and started walking through the deserted streets of Saint-Estève. A little exercise would do him good. He hadn’t run often enough lately. In the autumn, it got dark early and his workdays had turned out to be too long. Usually, he managed to get away at noon, but with this investigation that had not been possible. He missed running. He felt it in his body and in his head.
He needed to air himself out. He just had to avoid letting the great tide of dark thoughts sweep over him again.
He’d stayed at the Carlit for only a quarter of an hour. He’d tried to turn the conversation to the investigation but hadn’t succeeded. For his colleagues, the day was over. He hadn’t persisted so as not to appear to be a spoilsport.
The metallic and irritating buzz of a little scooter took him by surprise in his cogitations. He heard it coming before he saw it. At night, that wasn’t acceptable. When the scooter neared him, Sebag saw that the kid on it, not content just to ride without his lights on, had also pushed his helmet to the back of his head, with the chin strap on his forehead instead of his chin. That was the latest fashion among kids. Ultracool. Sebag had already warned Léo that if he caught him doing that even once, he’d immediately sell the scooter.
He took a furious last drag on his cigarette and then threw the butt in the gutter. He was trying to decide whether to light another one or start out for home when his cell phone rang. A fortunate diversion. It was Ménard.
“Am I bothering you?” the inspector asked politely from his exile.
“Not at all. Have you got something new?”
“Nothing special. I was calling mainly just to talk.”
“Are you bored in your little hotel room?”
“Kind of, yes.”
“Any news from home?”
“Not much. My wife is at the movies with a girlfriend and my son is with one of his pals.
”
Sebag thought about the inappropriate comments that Molina might have made in his place. Look out for the tide.
“It’s depressing here in the evening,” Ménard went on. “I’ve never liked hotels: they give me the blues.”
“What does your historian say?” Gilles asked to get Ménard to think about something else.
“Not much. Michel Sonate and I tried to run down other barbouzes. But we didn’t find any interesting leads.”
“And there was no Manuel Esteban among them?”
“Obviously. Otherwise I’d have called you. But Sonate also put me in contact with a journalist who has done a lot of work on the former participants in the Algerian war, both the barbouzes and the members of the OAS. Some of them got together again in Argentina during the dictatorship of the 1970s.”
In turn, Sebag told him about his day and the latest developments in the investigation.
“Interesting,” Ménard commented. “We’re moving ahead slowly, but we’re moving ahead.”
“Nothing new about Maurice Garcin?”
“No. His sons are getting more and more worried.”
There was a silence. They’d said what they had to say. But Ménard didn’t feel like hanging up yet.
“Apart from that, thanks to my historian, I’ve been learning more about the last years of the Algerian War. It’s fascinating. My father fought in that war, but he never talked to me about it.”
Gilles recalled that his father had also had to leave at the age of twenty to do his military service in La Mitidja.15 He’d never said anything about that, either. Besides, Gilles had never really talked with his father. He remembered mainly their quarrels.
“The last months of French Algeria were really tragic,” Ménard went on. “There were countless deaths in both camps. Today, it would be unimaginable. Nobody controlled anything anymore, with gunfire and explosions everywhere. Genuine anarchy! I wouldn’t have wanted to be a cop over there at that time. Not to mention the fact that crime also literally exploded. All kinds of crime. Including bank robberies. It’s true that the OAS needed money.”
Autumn, All the Cats Return Page 31
