Autumn, All the Cats Return

by Philippe Georget

  Jean moves his jacket aside as well. His Beretta is ready.

  The three policemen jump when cousin Jordi’s telephone rings. Despite the Mossos officer’s quick response, Sebag has time to recognize the notes of a melody by Lluis Llach, whose name sounds like Joan’s and who is the greatest living singer of South Catalonia.

  Gilles doesn’t understand anything Jordi says, but the tone is unequivocal: the cousin is angry, and makes a disgusted gesture as he ends the call. With gritted teeth, he utters two curt sentences to Joan, who hastens to translate them.

  “That was a call from the patrol asking him for the address again: the guys wrote it down wrong and they can’t find the place.”

  Sebag takes a deep breath before speaking:

  “Tell him that we find it somehow reassuring to know that there are idiots on their force, too. As for the rest, fuck . . . Insha’Allah!”

  Jean wiggles the fingers of his deformed hand to loosen them up. He’s afraid he can’t make them obey fast enough.

  “You do know that John Wayne died a long time ago?” he asks.

  “I know. Gary Cooper, too. And James Stewart . . . ”

  “Gregory Peck.”

  “Randolph Scott.”

  “Alan Ladd.”

  “Kirk Douglas.”

  “Richard Widmark.”

  Jean hesitates.

  “Dana Andrews.”

  “He’s better known for detective films.”

  “Anthony Quinn.”

  “Karl Malden.”

  This time, Jean comes up empty. Lloret continues on alone. He’s the one who’s a specialist.

  “Robert Taylor, Audie Murphy, Robert Ryan, Rory Calhoun, Robert Mitchum . . . ”

  “Clint Eastwood. He’s still alive.”

  Lloret grimaces.

  “I never liked spaghetti westerns.”

  Jean senses that Georges’ hand is tensing. Then he sees it reach for the gun. He tries to react. His fingers send violent electrical discharges through his body as he grasps the Beretta. At the same moment, he feels another pain in his body. Stronger, more gut-wrenching.

  CHAPTER 37

  They finally left the autoroute, but they still had a couple of kilometers to go before reaching the center of Girona. The two cars moved swiftly ahead despite the density of the traffic. With its siren still blaring, the first vehicle cleared the way and the cars in front of it moved aside like the waters of the Red Sea before the Jews led by Moses.

  Jordi received another call, and the three policemen jumped even more than the first time. Without taking his eyes off the road, Llach was listening attentively and from time to time slipped Sebag an explanatory sentence or two.

  “He’s got the patrol on the line. They’re there.”

  “The Mossos have found traces of blood in the entry hall of the house.”

  “There’s a body in the patio.”

  “They arrived too late.”

  “It’s the body of an old man.”

  For the first time since he’d begun following the Mossos’ blue and white car, Llach shifted down into third gear: he had to cross an intersection and the light was red. Once he’d passed the obstacle, Joan resumed his litany:

  “They say the old man is dead; he’s not breathing.”

  “He was hit by two bullets, one in the belly, the other in the heart.”

  “A doctor will soon arrive to certify the death.”

  Sebag got impatient.

  “Who’s dead? They didn’t find his ID?”

  Jordi had heard the question. He shook his head and continued his conversation for a few more seconds. After ending the call, he said a few angry sentences to Joan, who translated:

  “He asked the officers who are there not to touch anything. If they can no longer do anything for the victim, he doesn’t want them to contaminate the crime scene.”

  Sebag turned his head toward the Mossos officer. Putting his finger to his forehead, he gave him an imaginary salute to indicate that he was in agreement with that way of proceeding. He added a brief “Molt be”17 just for good measure.

  Jordi thanked him with a wink.

  The two cars finally arrived on the scene. Parking behind another police car and an ambulance, they completely blocked the narrow street. Cousin Jordi didn’t seem worried about that.

  An officer in uniform greeted them. He first showed them the traces of blood in the entry and the hall before taking them to the patio. The victim’s body was lying on the soft green grass. His head lay at an odd angle because when he fell he’d hit the nape of his neck on the last step of the fountain. Through the opening over the patio, a ray of sun was whitening the old, parchmentlike face. Sebag thought of a poem by Rimbaud about a pale young soldier lying dead in the grass. But unlike the young soldier, the old man hadn’t died peacefully in this green nook: he’d tried to fight to survive.

  Llach went up to Sebag and pointed to the gun that Georges Lloret still held in his hand.

  “I can’t believe it. You’d think they were playing out the gunfight at the O.K. Corral . . . Two old men settling an old quarrel the cowboy way . . . We’ve seen everything now.”

  Sebag stepped back, saw a bloodstain three meters from the body, then spotted a bullet hole in a corner of the wall. He had to face the facts: the two old men had fought a genuine duel here.

  “Lloret held all the cards. He knew who was after him and why. He didn’t want either our protection or our intervention. He must have thought it was up to him to settle this.”

  “And he died as a result,” Llach said.

  “That was the risk. A risk he was willing to take. May his soul rest in peace. No matter how black it was.”

  After giving instructions to his team, Jordi came back to join them. According to an already well-established ritual, he spoke to Joan, who translated.

  “He’s going to issue a search bulletin throughout Catalonia in the names of Jean Servant, Manuel Esteban, and Juan Antonio Guzman. Hoping that our man doesn’t have a fourth identity in reserve. The bulletin will also be transmitted to the Guardia Civil. An hour from now, every police agency in Spain will have been informed.”

  “Perfect. Now we just have to do the same in France. I’m going to call Castello immediately. “

  Sebag talked for a few minutes with the superintendent, who did not conceal his disappointment. To be sure, his team had largely solved the puzzle, but it hadn’t been able to prevent the third murder.

  “We’re in check. If we don’t want to be checkmated, we’ve got to intercept this Servant. Let’s hope he’ll return to France . . . Otherwise, we won’t have a chance to redeem ourselves.”

  Sebag tried to protest but his boss hung up without giving him the opportunity. He had a deep sense of unfairness. Of course, they hadn’t succeeded in arresting Servant before he killed again. But whose fault was that? They’d been able to identify the third target when he was still alive and they’d tried to protect him. But how can you stop a man who wants to go alone toward his tragic fate?

  Sebag and Llach left in order to let their colleagues in the Mossos work. They went to have a coffee on the terrace of a nearby bar. The sun was shining brightly and there wasn’t a breath of wind. Even though he’d been living in Catalonia for eight years, Sebag still marveled at the mildness of the climate: he had a hard time realizing that it was autumn. He closed his eyes the better to let himself be caressed by the sun.

  And on top of that, the coffee was delicious.

  Between one horror and the next, life occasionally provided some sumptuous moments.

  Llach tried to bring him quickly back to reality.

  “So, the killer is Sigma, their former accomplice! And from the outset we’ve been looking for the murderer among their former adversaries. We were on entirely the wrong track. Or rather: he r
eally fooled us, that little old man. By writing OAS on the scene of his crimes, he made us think that he was giving us the motive. And we walked straight into the trap: We looked in the camp of the enemies of French Algeria. Bravo, Grandpa! Well played . . . ”

  Sebag limited himself to nodding his head. There were still many unanswered questions in this case.

  “I’m not sure I’ve really understood this Sigma’s motives,” Joan went on. “Was it just about money? Nobody kills someone for money fifty years later!”

  “You’re right, money is only secondary here. Betrayal has to be behind it. Sigma must have thought his former buddies had betrayed their cause. Maybe he even suspected them of having betrayed him as well.”

  “Even if he did . . . Half a century afterward?”

  “There are probably other factors that we don’t know about. The only way to know exactly what Sigma’s motives were is to arrest him.”

  “Do you think he’s going to go back to France?”

  “He’s attained his objectives: now his goal is to return to Argentina, where he must have a family. Flights are more numerous and easier from Spain than from France, but what will he think it’s smartest to do? I don’t have the slightest idea?”

  “He could go by ship.”

  “Do you think there are still transatlantic passenger connections?”

  “Ocean liners, I don’t know, but there are definitely freighters. And freighters sometimes take passengers on board.”

  “Secretly?”

  “No, no. Some commercial ships have cabins and do it officially.”

  “That’s interesting. Because I suppose surveillance is far less strict than in airports these days.”

  “Obviously.”

  “That’s a line of investigation we mustn’t neglect. You should talk to your cousin about it. Especially since if he’s planning to take a ship, then there’s hardly any doubt: He’ll be leaving from Spain or Portugal.”

  After they finished their coffee, the two policemen took a little walk through old Girona. The cathedral, the old Jewish quarter, the iron bridge the Eiffel Company built over the Onyar in 1877 . . . Llach agreed to serve as a guide for Sebag’s benefit. Then the two returned and sat down on the terrace of the bar and ordered another coffee. Jordi soon joined them. He showed them a sheet of paper. Sebag grabbed it. It was the page torn out of Lloret’s appointment book. It had been crumpled up.

  “He found it in the victim’s pocket,” Llach explained.

  At the top of the page, Lloret had written in the 10:15 appointment in Girona. The name “Guzman” was scribbled in blue ink right next to it. Then, with a different pen—one with red ink—he’d later written another name. “Sigma.” Followed by a question mark.

  As Sebag was looking at the page from the appointment book, the Mossos officer was reporting the initial results of his team’s investigation.

  “As we suspected, the two grandpas were facing each other when they fired. Hard to say who was the faster. Each hit the other, but Sigma was more precise. He hit Lloret in the abdomen and apparently finished him off with another bullet to the heart. The autopsy should confirm that chronology.”

  “Sigma was wounded, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, but they say the bullet went right through him, because they found it embedded in a door. Given the angle of fire, he was probably hit in the shoulder.”

  “He must be in pretty bad shape.”

  “Definitely.”

  “He’s no longer a young man.”

  “We should be able to find him easily.”

  “We or the Mossos.”

  “Yeah. Or else the Guardia. But I wouldn’t count on his being alive when he’s found.”

  “He’s capable of going to die somewhere where we’ll never find him,” Sebag said anxiously.

  “Do you think?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Always the optimist, aren’t you?”

  Cousin Jordi was following their rapid exchanges, moving his head back and forth like a spectator at Wimbledon. He looked happy when their conversation paused, and he gave them a friendly smile. Gilles smiled back. Then he stood up and held out his hand:

  “Molt gracias.”

  Night was falling on Perpignan, putting an end to a day that had been much too long. Cars were moving at a snail’s pace down the Avenue de Grande-Bretagne, which was congested by Friday night traffic. His forehead pressed against a windowpane in his office, Sebag sighed. For him, there wouldn’t be any weekend with his family. He was going to have to be content with a few moments gleaned here and there. Saturday morning, for instance. Sévérine had asked him to take her to the cemetery in Passa. She wanted to put fresh flowers on Mathieu’s grave. Her friend had been buried two weeks before, and she’d been told that all the flowers set out on the day of the funeral had since been overturned by the rain and wind. She wanted to do this for Mathieu’s parents, who had fled their sorrow abroad. Gilles had promised. They would be there when the cemetery opened. Then he’d take her home before going to work.

  Unless, of course, there was something new in the investigation on Jean Servant, alias Juan Antonio Guzman, alias Manuel Esteban, alias Sigma. The old fellow was giving them a very hard time. He was a tough nut to crack. A methodical man who had been able to organize his crimes masterfully. But there’d been nothing Machiavellian about his planning, and luck had given him a helluva helping hand.

  Sebag had been thinking about the question most of the afternoon. He was now persuaded that by writing “OAS” next to the corpses, Sigma had never intended to lead the investigators astray. He had simply wanted to sign his crimes. To claim them in the name of that organization. The OAS had disappeared long ago, but Sigma had never succeeded in really leaving it behind. He had remained married to it.

  For better and for worse.

  Sebag’s eyes followed a car that parked in the lot in front of police headquarters. Raynaud and Moreno got out of it. With the same movement, they opened the two rear doors to get their old gray raincoats. The color of sadness. Pensive and bored, the two cops then moved toward the building. They climbed the steps and disappeared from view.

  So far as he knew, the two lieutenants were still investigating the destruction of the monument in the Haut-Vernet cemetery. The recent developments in his criminal investigation had made him completely forget that side of the case. Was it resolved with the identification of Sigma?

  He shook his head vigorously. More than ever, he was convinced that this vandalism could not have been committed by the murderer. Why would Sigma destroy a monument to the memory of his heroes? It was inconceivable. The presence of that white hair near the monument had a quite different cause. All they had to do was arrest Servant and ask him about it. All they had to do . . .

  Thus he remained convinced that their initial intuition had been the right one: Other people had taken the opportunity to get people riled up and increase tensions in the city. The same reasoning held for the attack on Guy Albouker and the threats against Jean-Pierre Mercier. Who was behind these acts? The question might never be answered. That wouldn’t be satisfying but they’d have to put up with it. When the murders were cleared up, calm would probably return and the people who perpetrated these acts would probably go back to their usual lives.

  The door opened behind him. He turned around.

  “Hi, François. Happy to be back?”

  As soon as he’d learned that Maurice Garcin was no longer a suspect, Ménard had taken the first train for Perpignan.

  “You bet!” he confirmed. “I couldn’t imagine spending the weekend up there.”

  “It’s a beautiful city, though.”

  “Maybe.”

  Ménard didn’t seem inclined to discuss Marseille’s tourist attractions.

  “So?” he asked soberly.

  �
�Nothing for the moment. No news of Sigma. We don’t even know if we should be looking for him in France or in Spain. Everybody is still mobilized: you can forget about that weekend with your family.”

  “I’ll be home in the evening, that will still be better than in Marseille. You know, he’s a strange fellow, this Sigma!”

  Their telephone conversation that morning had been limited to the strict minimum. Ménard took out of his pocket the sheets of paper on which he’d taken notes. Sebag watched him searching through them; there must have been at least a dozen pages, covered on both sides with his delicate and orderly writing.

  “I see that you’ve got a lot to tell me.”

  “I hope so. If you tell me that you already know everything about Sigma, well, I’m just going to resign on the spot.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t know anything. Except that he’s still alive, and that he’s enjoying a particularly active killer’s retirement. Go ahead, tell me everything.”

  Ménard parked a buttock on one corner of Molina’s desk.

  “In the 1980s, Marie-Dominique Renard, a journalist for a news magazine, began an investigation into the military dictatorship in Argentina. I don’t know if you remember General Videla, it was the time when the Argentine soccer team won the World Cup . . . ”

  “If you’re going to try to awaken my memories of international politics by using sports reference points, I’m going to call a halt right here.”

  “O.K., excuse me. Anyway, the military dictatorship in Argentina lasted from 1976 to 1983. Close parenthesis. Marie-Dominique Renard rapidly discovered that many former OAS activists who had initially taken refuge in Spain had fled to Argentina in the course of the 1960s. The dictatorship had not yet been established but military men were already playing an important role in politics. The governments of the time even gave them land under false names. That’s practically a tradition over there; the country had already welcomed with open arms Frenchmen who had been collaborators during the Second World War. The journalist even claims that these extreme right-wing militants served as . . . Wait, I’m going to find the exact term . . . as . . . as . . . ”