The Beast of the Camargue

by Xavier-Marie Bonnot

  Anne Moracchini tapped de Palma on the shoulder.

  “Well, for a night at the opera it was quite a success!”

  “I’m sorry, Anne. I did try to get seats for …”

  She looked at his mobile and pulled a wry face.

  The police capitaine was wearing a black pencil skirt that revealed her knees, and a silk purple top onto which her dark hair tumbled down. Her legs were clad in sheer stockings that clung to the curve that rose from her fine ankles to her knees. When his cheek brushed against hers, he recognized the peppery notes of Gicky, and felt a thrill.

  “You left before the end! Didn’t you like it? I thought it was really good,” she said, laying a hand on his forearm.

  He did not want to disappoint her on their first night at the opera together by telling her what he thought of the cast.

  “Yes, yes, it was fine,” he replied, with a wink at Merlino.

  He had never seen her look so beautiful, so elegant. Usually she wore trainers or flat shoes, jeans, and a bomber jacket over a T-shirt or pullover, depending on the season. And of course the Manurhin revolver that she wore in the small of her back, to keep it inconspicuous.

  “Come on, let’s have a drink,” said de Palma at last, rousing himself from this trance of admiration. He ordered two glasses of champagne and they went back to the main hall.

  “It’s marvelous here! All this art deco stuff. What’s that on the ceiling?”

  “A painting by Augustin Carrera, Orpheus Charming the World …”

  “I sometimes wonder what the hell you’re doing in the force,” she said, with a sideways glance.

  “So do I. But I have my reasons.”

  “I hope you do.”

  Moracchini gazed at the huge Carrera fresco, before examining the details of the metalwork and gilt masks along the cast-iron balconies. The Baron’s mobile rang.

  “Change that ring tone, Michel. It grates!”

  “M. de Palma?”

  He knew the voice at once.

  “Speaking. One moment please.”

  The Baron sat down on a purple divan, set a little apart from the crowd.

  “This is Yves Chandeler. I’m a lawyer.”

  De Palma paused for a moment, taking control.

  “Yes?”

  “Um … did you get my message?”

  “I did.”

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  He did not like the way this plummy voice prolonged each open vowel it came across. It suggested a childhood spent in Marseille’s best private schools, in a society that de Palma knew nothing about, but tended to despise.

  Again, he imposed a moment’s silence.

  “Not at all.”

  “I’ll get straight to the point. When can I see you?”

  He felt like saying that people seldom asked him questions that were more like barely concealed orders, that he had no idea why this man was calling him and that he did not want to see anyone except Anne Moracchini. Instead he replied perfunctorily:

  “Monday, 4 p.m. in your office? Does that suit you?”

  “Today’s Saturday so … yes, that will be perfect. I’m at 58 cours Pierre-Puget. I suppose you know where that is.”

  “Indeed, not a very original address for a lawyer.”

  “No, you’re right. Next door to the high court!”

  “See you on Monday, then.”

  He hung up without a goodbye. Moracchini walked over to him, holding her glass of champagne.

  “I suppose that horrible ringing means that the interval’s over? And are you planning to let me go back to seat number 35 all on my own?”

  “No, Anne, certainly not!”

  He slid a hand around her waist.

  It was 2 a.m. when de Palma drew up in front of the little house Moracchini owned in Château-Gombert, at 28 chemin de la Fare, the last remainder of her marriage.

  “How about a nightcap?”

  The air was alive inside the car. She looked at him hard. He lowered the window for a breath of air.

  “No, I’m going home … I need to sleep. I don’t feel so good. In fact, I’ve …”

  “You’ve got another of your migraines. Come here and I’ll give you a massage.”

  She laid her long fingers on his temples and rubbed gently.

  “What does your doctor say?”

  “He says he doesn’t know, like all the doctors!”

  Moracchini continued her massage, tracing small circles above his eyebrows, then she withdrew her hands like a caress, took hold of his temples and squeezed them gently.

  “Do you remember, Anne?”

  “Yes, I do, but I don’t want to talk about it …”

  “Nowadays, I think about it less, but a month ago I kept on playing the film in my head like a loop from hell. Non-stop.”

  She pressed the top of his skull softly and raked through his hair with her nails.

  “I can still see myself going into the Le Guen cave and reaching the bottom. I’ve never told anyone, but if you only knew how frightened I was. Guts in a knot, balls on the ground.”*

  “That’s pretty …”

  “So to speak.”

  He breathed deeply and shut his eyes.

  “I can still see those marvelous paintings, how impressive they were. I can’t describe how I felt, seeing the hands of prehistoric men. And then I saw her. And he was behind me. I turned …” De Palma’s breathing speeded up. He closed his eyes and turned his head in a circle. “I can see myself spinning round on my left leg, and firing at him … Then he hit me smack on the forehead. It was like being struck by lightning.”

  “It’s made you into a top cop, with a medal and accolades and all. Plus a good deal of jealousy. Well done. And I might add it’s not done away with your charm.”

  “His strength was superhuman. I often think about that. My aim was straight, I can see myself lining it up … I’ll never get it out of my mind that he managed to dodge a bullet. He had the reflexes of a great prehistoric hunter, I’m sure of it. He was stronger and quicker than a normal man. Compared with him, we’re all degenerates.”

  “You’re talking as if you admired him!”

  “He dodged a .38 bullet! Lightning versus lightning. At incredible speeds. You can’t help respecting something like that. Do you see?”

  “What I see is that he’s going to go down for life, and that it’s thanks to you.”

  “You could also say that I missed him!”

  “I’ve never said that.”

  “In any case, I didn’t arrest him on my own.”

  “Thank you, from all the little cops like me, Michel.”

  Almost imperceptibly, she drew him against her breasts. He sensed that they were tense beneath the thin fabric. She stroked his forehead tenderly, just where the man who called himself “the Hunter” had hit him with his tomahawk.

  “I’m going home, Anne.”

  “As you want, boss.”

  She moved her hands down to the nape of his neck, and met his mouth with lips swollen with desire.

  Isabelle has just had her third child.

  The Baron has received an invitation.

  A pale blue card with a photo of the little fellow.

  He is called Michel, just like him.

  Isabelle wanted that. In memory of that firebrand policeman who crossed her path.

  Isabelle has always been a friend to him.

  And it is true that he has never let her down.

  NEVER.

  He has always prized the memory of the beautiful teenager he loved.

  ALWAYS.

  How could he ever forget her?

  Isabelle wants Michel to be her third child’s godfather.

  He is not sure if he will accept.

  But he is thinking about it. He’s already refused twice.

  She will end up thinking that he doesn’t care about her any more.

  Poor Isabelle.

  If only she knew how much the Baron thinks about he
r.

  Night and day.

  Day and night.

  The paper had yellowed with the years.

  It was written in the muscular hand of Commissaire Boyer, the father of police headquarters. Boyer the magnificent, who made people grow up in a single burst.

  De Palma was naked on his bed. He still had Anne’s perfume on his lips. He could hear Boyer’s voice: “Bring him to me. Bring him in. Right here. I want to see him before the big farewell. De Palma, you go to the crime scene with Maistre. I think she’s still there. You’ll see about all that with Marceau. I want your opinion. You young people sometimes have new ideas.”

  And Boyer the boss had written across the sheet of paper, with his big fat pencil, one end blue, the other red:

  RAPE AND MURDER, in red.

  And at the bottom, in blue: CASE UNSOLVED.

  Name: Isabelle MERCIER.

  Fair hair, 16 years old. 1m 63cm. 56 kilos.

  28 rue des Prairies. 20th arrondissement.

  Date of discovery of the body: December 20, 1978, at 9:56 p.m.

  Case followed by Inspectors de Palma, Marceau and Maistre.

  “Case unsolved,” the Baron repeated, smoothing the sheet between his thumb and index finger. The letters U.N.S.O.L.V.E.D. burned into his eyes.

  “Bring him in!”

  In his first notebook, the Baron had written: Isabelle Mercier.

  And that was all.

  *

  At the top of the page, Isabelle’s photograph is stuck on with a paperclip.

  It is an identity shot.

  Black and white.

  Isabelle is sixteen.

  She is smiling shyly.

  Her hair makes two commas on her velvet cheeks.

  Maistre and de Palma arrive at 28 rue des Prairies.

  It is the first time that Boyer the Terrible has entrusted them with a case.

  And this one seems to mean a lot to him.

  Isabelle is lying on her stomach.

  Jean-Claude Marceau is looking out of the window.

  The official photographer is staring at her, the corners of his mouth trembling.

  “Maistre and de Palma …”

  “Hello, lads. The old man is throwing you in at the deep end. Take a look. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  De Palma bends down.

  He raises a lock of hair caught in the coagulated blood.

  It is like a piece of caramel.

  Beneath it, an eye stares at him dumbly.

  An eye in the middle of nothing.

  An eye without a face.

  Jean-Claude turns round.

  “To do that to a face, you really have to hit it hard. Fucking hard. Never seen anything like it, lads.”

  Jean-Louis Maistre has gone to throw up.

  De Palma swallows back his saliva.

  He wants to keep the horror inside him.

  And the horror is inside him.

  Never forget.

  “Hello, Maistre?”

  “Have you seen what time it is, you bugger?”

  “She’s back, Le Gros.”

  “Isabelle?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s never been away …”

  “I dreamed she sent me a card for the birth of her third child.”

  “That’s funny, Baron. I had a dream just like that, too.”

  3.

  La Capelière, two old buildings standing side by side, belonged to the Société nationale de protection de la nature. In 1979 this ancient property, hidden away among the tamarisks that skirted the lagoon of Le Vaccarès had become the information center for the National Reserve of Camargue.

  At the entrance, a notice on the ramshackle dry-stone wall displayed a pair of flamingos, face to face, and the acronym S.N.P.N. in the middle. The paint was wrinkled by the rising damp from the stagnant water, and baked into strips by the sun.

  On the ground floor there was a small museum, the administrative offices and a laboratory. The first floor held a dormitory for students who were in residence, as well as the flat of the institution’s head, Dr. Christophe Texeira, a researcher and lecturer at the University of Provence. He was forty-five; his hair was speckled with gray and his face was dominated by his prominent chin and two dark eyes that kept in perpetual motion beneath his bushy eyebrows. His thick lips brought him great success with his female students. He seemed the happiest of men.

  That evening, alone in the office that was also his laboratory, Christophe Texeira was finding it hard to concentrate: a report on the latest survey of the insects of the Reserve of Vigueirat, on the far side of the Rhône, had raised a tide of weariness inside him.

  Texeira had come to the Camargue for its birds, but for the past two years he had been regularly asked to count its mosquitoes and spiders, not to mention the frogs and toads. That night, he was pacing up and down and occasionally glancing out of the window.

  The moon was setting.

  On the surface of the reed bed, the tips of the rushes were quivering in the lingering brightness. In the gusts of the salty breeze they intermeshed like lines of silver blades.

  He peered through his binoculars, then slumped into his chair. What intrigued him that evening were the photographs laid out on his desk, beside the pink and green files of reports.

  The pictures were magnificent.

  A walker who had called by the previous weekend had managed to photograph some white spoonbills: two near Grenouillet and another which had strayed into the grass that runs between the canals toward Sambuc, near the stud farm at Loule.

  It was incredible! This hiker had taken several pictures of these mythical birds while he, the head of the nature reserve and with a doctorate in biology, had hardly seen any on this side of the delta. Usually they gathered on the south bank of the Vaccarès, near La Gacholle. But not always.

  “I’m looking for white spoonbills,” the visitor had said.

  “That will be difficult,” Texeira had replied.

  “They need to be told of love and marvels.”

  Marvels!

  The man looked distinctly eccentric: shoulder-length black hair, smooth face, as stocky as a prop forward, with the air of someone who doesn’t know what to do with all his muscles. What was more, he was dressed like something the cat had dragged in: Viet Cong sandals, a heavy wool sweater despite the heat, scuffed jeans and a patched-up haversack.

  On the other hand, the Zeiss binoculars, the 200 mm narrow aperture zoom lens and the Nikon digital camera that hung around his neck made the biologist green with envy. Not to mention the pair of periscopic binoculars he glimpsed in the man’s bag.

  These rare photographs had arrived through the letter box of the S.N.P.N. and had been postmarked: Tarascon, July 1.

  The biologist could not remember the walker’s name, otherwise he would have telephoned to congratulate him.

  In fact, had he ever got his name?

  Texeira went into the entrance hall of the center, turned on the lights and glanced at the bulky visitors’ book on the table, beside the till.

  Each page was divided into six columns, in which the visitors could note down the species they had observed, the places, dates and of course their names, and their addresses and jobs as optional extras.

  On the page for Saturday, there were a good ten names, but they were just tourists, who had wanted to leave a trace of their visit and find something witty to say.

  He looked at his watch again. It was nearly 1 p.m. He decided to get down to work and polish off the figures in his insect survey.

  A few minutes later, he noticed that his new assistant had made yet another mistake: he came across a Cassida viridis and a Cassida sanguinolenta, two larvae, beside a Polistes gallicus, a variety of wasp. He would have to go back over the whole thing, label by label. He decided that it was high time to sleep on the problem and go up to his flat on the first floor.

  As he closed the shutters in his bedroom, he noticed that the gate of the reserve was open. Gr
umbling, he pulled on his trousers and trainers, then went out into the gray night air.

  He could have sworn he had closed the gate before going into his office. This gave him pause for thought: his memory was utterly infallible. He could see himself lifting the latch and could even remember thinking once again that he really should get it fixed because for some months now the accumulated rust had been making it ever harder to close.

  So someone had entered the park after 7 p.m.

  He decided to check, took the torch from the cupboard and set off down the path that ran alongside the Fournelet canal—the only practicable route for a visitor to this miniature bayou.

  After five minutes spent weaving through creeks overgrown with ash trees and monstrous brambles, he came to a halt beside the observation hut of Les Aulnes, overlooking the swamp. He listened to the night air. At first, there was total silence, then, as the seconds crept by, the little sounds of nature swelled again.

  A short while later, he felt everything stirring around him: there was a gentle slapping of stagnant water nearby, the scurry of tiny rapid feet among the clumps of rock samphire; no doubt a rodent fleeing some pressing danger.

  Like a wild cat, he sprang up the wooden steps of the hut. The quiet waters gleamed like old silver beneath the moon. In the middle, a dead oak had slumped into the mud, poking its branches out of the filthy water like a drowning man waving for help. Up on its trunk, a little wader was sitting up for the night, surveying the glittering pond around it.

  It took him a moment to realize that the song of the frogs had stopped. He was so used to their incessant racket that he hadn’t been paying attention. But now, Texeira pricked up his ears: he could still hear them, further off, by the Vaccarès, but not in his immediate vicinity. Experience told him that some other presence was close.

  Then he heard the sharp sound of footfalls and snapping reeds on the far side of the swamp, in the direction of the salt meadows. In fact they were coming from the old warden’s hut, which lay about two hundred meters away, beyond the reed bed.

  With all of his senses alerted, Texeira listened. The sounds of footsteps stopped. His first thought was of some big game, a wild boar perhaps, or a roebuck escaped from a hunting reserve, or else a bull which had managed—as they quite often did—to break through the barbed wire around the Loule estate.