The Beast of the Camargue

by Xavier-Marie Bonnot

  Texeira picked up his bag and strode toward the reed hut, with its whitewashed walls, in the only clump of trees on the reserve at the far end of the little canal.

  He stopped twice to observe a redshank that seemed to be following him along the other side of the canal. He knew this nesting pair. His former assistant had pointed them out to him last spring, before going to join the team in Vigueirat. This specimen didn’t look afraid, it must have got used to tourists and other lovers of high-class bird life.

  Once at the hut, he put his bag onto a table half consumed by earwigs, took out his thermos and poured himself some coffee.

  The window provided a discreet view over the entire marsh. He raised his binoculars and made a slow panoramic scan of its greenish waters. Nothing. Just plain solitude, slightly disturbed by a soft morning wind that ruffled the occasional tufts of reeds.

  He would have to wait, perhaps for an hour, for the insects to come out of their hide-outs and offer themselves to the neighborhood’s gourmet beaks. Making the most of the calm, he placed his Zeiss on a tripod. Just at that instant, a black stork, an extremely rare bird, landed thirty meters from the hut, just below the haggard tree that had been sinking slowly into the swamp since time immemorial.

  The large bird was so close that he could hear the heavy beat of its wings stirring the humid air. He did not have time to grab his Nikon before the stork flew off again, ponderously, toward the east.

  Its sudden departure surprised him. He had been so careful not to make a sound.

  Two squadrons of rooks landed behind a tamarisk and started squabbling over what was presumably a scrap of carrion lying there. The rooks’ verbal jousting was disturbing his morning observations. He had to put a stop to it.

  In less than two minutes, he had covered the distance. The rooks flew off to the far side of the marsh. At first he saw nothing unusual, and looked for their feast for some time among the twisted roots, wary of the deepish mud around the area.

  Near the tree, there was nothing to be seen, but looking up he noticed a round shape, like an old leather football, just emerging from the water about three meters in front of him, out of reach.

  He went back to the hut, fetched a long herdsman’s pole and returned to the scene.

  It took same effort not to sink into the muddy slime. The stick glanced off the surface of the object, so he tried to get at it from beneath and the pole caught onto what he took to be a bit of bone or a piece of a large bird’s wing. Then, slowly, he dragged the thing back toward the edge.

  At first, its weight surprised him. It wasn’t a bird, but perhaps it was some big game animal, a boar maybe, which had drowned in the marsh.

  Suddenly the object turned over in the water, in a peculiar slow motion. Texeira tried to step backward, but the warm mud sucked at his boots and kept him glued to the bank.

  A nervous shudder captured him, before he finally dragged himself free.

  The stringy weeds receded and the face of a man appeared, swollen, with empty eye-sockets and jutting teeth, as though smiling at his terrible end.

  At 2:30 p.m., the offices of the Tarascon gendarmerie were deserted. All that could be heard was the purring of computers awaiting the next rounds of questioning.

  Marceau was alone, busy typing out the final report of an unpleasant case: a man who had been stabbed to death outside a bar by a gypsy after some row about slot machines. He had reached his final sentence when Commissaire Larousse rushed in, his tie askew, with a haggard look and rumpled hair.

  “Marceau, I’ve just had a call from the boys in Le Sambuc. They’ve fished a dead man out of the marsh. It might well be our guy, what’s his name again …?”

  “Steinert, William … Could be.”

  “O.K., I’m coming with you. Give me a couple of minutes and we’ll take your car. Mine’s had it.”

  Marceau had always been fascinated by the way his boss could suddenly shift gear in response to events: but it had to be worth his while, he had to feel certain.

  Conclusion: it really was Steinert who was floating somewhere in the Camargue surrounded by a squad of gendarmes in combat dress.

  When the two officers parked on R.D. 36b, the sun was a white ball dancing over the Vaccarès lagoon. The air tasted of rusty metal, laden with rancid mud and the scent of hyacinths.

  Marceau already felt nauseous.

  Capitaine Nicolaï shook hands with his two colleagues.

  “Hello, Larousse. It’s Steinert alright.”

  Nicolaï was a real military type, with a three-braided kepi screwed onto a shaved head, and a paratrooper’s badge pinned to his camouflage jacket. It was all a bit over the top. He had a piercing stare, cheeks hollowed by the strains of combat and a jutting nose like a Gothic hero, which made him seem stern all the time.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Gendarmes know their job,” said Nicolaï, working his smile.

  “Give us a break, Capitaine,” Marceau butted in. “That’s just state prosecutor bullshit.”

  Larousse twisted his mouth into a grimace, which might mean any number of things that his men still had problems working out. He squeezed his nose between his thumb and index finger. Marceau had already noticed during other investigations that this implied that he was worried.

  “As a matter of fact, the prosecutor is already on the scene, gentlemen. Come with me.”

  “If that’s an order,” said Larousse, shifting in the damp heat.

  The gendarmes had done a decent job: there was a taped-off safety area, with technicians in waterproof body suits, down on their knees examining the marshland with scrupulous attention. Plus an inflatable dinghy, divers, a helicopter …

  The prosecutor was standing beside the red tape that sealed off the area, talking to Colonel Audouard, the gendarmerie commander, who had come especially from Marseille to supervise the forensic teams.

  Larousse coughed gently when he spotted the prosecutor, adjusted his tie and walked over with his hand extended.

  “I came as soon as I got your message, sir. This is Capitaine Marceau. He took Mme. Steinert’s statement.”

  “Very good, Commissaire. I was talking with the Colonel here while waiting for you, and I told him of my wish to have your unit deal with the case. After all, you’ve practically started working on it already! What do you think?”

  “I think that will be fine. We … we still have enough men available. I would even suggest appointing Marceau as chief investigating officer.”

  “O.K. No objections, Colonel?”

  “None. It will allow me to put more men onto the Vidal case in the Var.”

  “Good, for once the gendarmerie have no complaints … I must leave you now, gentlemen. Forgive me if I remind you of a few extremely important points. I don’t want any journalists poking around, either from the T.V. or the press. Given the identity of the victim, I don’t want to take any chances. I shall be paying close attention to the case, and I won’t conceal the fact that the chief state prosecutor rang me up earlier to have a word about the matter.”

  The prosecutor raised his hand and pointed a finger skyward.

  “There’s no need to tell professionals like you that the Steinert family has a long arm. And when I say long, I do mean long …”

  He paused for a moment and rolled his eyes behind his square glasses. The policeman and the gendarme both nodded.

  “Commissaire Larousse, all I can do now is to wish you luck. And let’s all just hope that it was simply an unfortunate accident.”

  Larousse and Marceau were unsure how to interpret this final point but, knowing the prosecutor, they took it as a covert order.

  “There’s a spare seat in the helicopter, sir,” the colonel quickly added, with a broad smile. “If you want, it’s all yours.”

  Larousse watched the blue lark rise into the sky, and could not help saying to Marceau, through clenched teeth:

  “What a tosser that prosecutor is. As soon as he sees a blue uniform he g
oes weak at the knees. It’s as if they turn him on.”

  “That’s normal enough. His father was a gendarme.”

  “Well, you certainly are in the know. I thought he was more into gay S&M.”

  “Anyway, we can really thank him for this case. Any more rotten and you die!”

  “Come on, let’s go and see our customer.”

  Before he uncovered the corpse, the gendarme who was guarding the bodybag said to Marceau:

  “I warn you, it’s not a pretty sight.”

  “Really?” he replied. “Thanks, it’s the very first time I’ve seen a stiff …”

  The gendarme swiftly unzipped the bag and pushed its two halves apart.

  William Steinert’s face was swollen, and still splattered with mud and little brown weeds; a liquid that looked like white dribble was oozing from between his teeth.

  The small carnivores of the marsh had already started devouring the tenderest parts: the lips, parts of the cheeks and the eyes had already vanished. But Steinert was still recognizable.

  Marceau bent over the body. The smell of decomposition was unbearable, and there was a stink of lukewarm sludge.

  “The back of the neck and head don’t seem to have been touched. There are no traces of a struggle on his hands, and no broken fingers. On the abdomen, there are no apparent wounds. Nothing to speak off on a superficial level. Neither on the back nor on the legs. The stomach is bloated. He must have drunk quite a lot of water.”

  “I think he must have drowned,” the gendarme said.

  Marceau did not answer, but looked toward the marsh. A few bubbles rose from the silt and burst on the surface.

  “Where was the body?”

  “Right here, in front of us. According to Christophe Texeira, he was about three meters away from the edge. In fact, the pole used to drag him in is just that length, so he could even have been nearer.”

  “Who pulled the body up onto the bank?”

  “Some colleagues.”

  “And who put it in the bag?”

  “Some colleagues.”

  “And where’s the forensics report?”

  “Um, there isn’t one for the moment.”

  “Great, that makes three foul-ups in one. You’ve beaten your own record, lads. Congratulations. Where are his belongings?”

  “We found a rucksack with a wallet, purse, car keys, cash … the usual stuff you find in a bag. Then there was some photographic equipment, binoculars and a folding spade.”

  “A folding spade?”

  “Yes, like the ones commandos carry. But we’re not sure if it was actually his. We’ll have to check the fingerprints, if there are any. In fact, we found it by the hut. If you come with me, I can show you everything.”

  “Later, later.”

  “Can I close the bag again?”

  “O.K., and put him on ice at once. He stinks like hell.”

  Marceau moved away from the group and called de Palma on his mobile. The Baron answered at once.

  “We’ve got him, Michel.”

  “Who, Steinert?”

  “Yeah, in the marshes, just by a dump called La Capelière, in the Camargue. Stone dead, and in an advanced state already.”

  “How long?”

  “About a fortnight, I reckon. That also fits with the dates.”

  “Thanks for telling me so soon …”

  “Listen, Michel, I only heard an hour ago. Ever since then, I’ve had Larousse on my back, so sorry if I couldn’t call you in secret. We also had to deal with the gendarmerie.”

  “Don’t worry, my boy!”

  “I’ve got the case.”

  “Why you? That’s the gendarmes’ patch!”

  “It’s a funny business. The prosecutor was out here in person earlier.”

  The Baron whistled.

  “Speak to you later, Michel. We’ll have to inform the widow. I’ll go as soon as they give me the green light.”

  A 4×4 B.M.W. appeared on the road, followed by a cloud of dust.

  “It looks like I won’t have to bother, Michel. I’ll bet you anything you like that she’s just showed up. Thanks again, the gendarmerie.”

  The B.M.W. drew up next to the group of vehicles and Ingrid Steinert got out, along with a man in a suit and tie, presumably the family’s lawyer. A brigadier went over to her. They exchanged a few words, then shook hands. Jean-Claude Marceau’s expression changed, and the veins in his neck tensed slightly. He frowned, took a step forward, but Nicolaï held him back.

  “Leave it, Jean-Claude. Let the brigadier handle the widow. He’s used to it. We’ll see about her later.”

  Marceau went back to the body and tried to imagine its last moments of life in the slime of this outlandish place.

  From what the gendarme had told him, the body had had its back to the bank, as if it had fallen into the water head first.

  “That’s one hypothesis,” the officer said to himself. “But I don’t see why he would have thrown himself flat on his face into this shitty pond. There’s no reason at all. Unless the body moved over time … But there’s no current in this marsh. Unless it was the wind. Or some animal.”

  He looked for traces in the earth and mud beside the bank, but all he found was a mass of boot and shoe prints, presumably left by the investigators. Nothing else. He walked over to the clump of reeds, parted a few canes and noticed that a couple were broken.

  “A man did this. And longer ago than yesterday …”

  Marceau kneeled down amongst the reeds. The earth here was particularly dry and cracked in places, even though barely a meter from the marsh.

  He thought of Boyer, the guru of the force back in Paris: “Move outside the problem, lads. Go and stick your nose where no one else would stick it. Even at random. Widen the circle. There’s bound to be something. Remember Locard’s exchange principle. They always leave something behind and always go away with something.”

  Just as he was about to rejoin Larousse, he saw the print of a shoe, deeply encrusted in the dry earth. He spread his fingers wide in the hollow of the print and saw that it measured almost two spans long. It was a fairly big man’s shoe and he must have been running, to judge by the deep impact of the heel and the smearing at the toe.

  Marceau had done enough mountaineering and hiking to recognize at once a Vibram sole, as used on a large number of walking boots. He followed the direction of the step and noticed a second, half-formed print, as if the walker had been perched on the tip of one foot. It was almost outside the reeds, close to Steinert’s supposed place of death.

  Marceau went back along the path and found two more prints on the way to the hut. The way they were pointing showed that they came from the hut.

  “He walked this way without stopping,” he murmured to himself. “Otherwise somewhere or other there would be two prints practically side by side. He walked, then he jumped into the water. As though he was running away from something. Try turning that into an accident!”

  He called to the gendarme and asked to see William Steinert’s shoes. They had Vibram soles. Of the right size.

  “Mme. Steinert has just identified her husband’s body,” Nicolaï said. “I spoke to her for a few seconds. It looks like she’s getting over the shock.”

  “Yes,” said Marceau vaguely, still lost in his thoughts.

  “She’s just gone, look.”

  “She gets over things quickly, you’re right. I’ll go and see her soon.”

  Commissaire Larousse arrived, flapping his arms and staring into space.

  “Finished, Marceau?”

  “Nearly, boss.”

  “Stop calling me ‘boss.’ We went to the academy together.”

  “Yes, but I’m not a Commissaire Divisionnaire.”

  “Commissaire or not, I’m still getting devoured by mosquitoes. Found anything?”

  “Nothing at all. Anyway, we got here when the party was already over.”

  “I talked with widow Steinert. She’s extremely beautiful and
a pain in the ass. She could make trouble. She wanted me to know that she knows people who know people. I wouldn’t have minded leaving this business to the gendarmes. To be honest, with just a few days to go before the holidays, it looks decidedly iffy to me.”

  When the two policemen left the Camargue, the sun was beginning to ripple its twilight colors across the surfaces of the ponds: the pale pink of the horizon, the gold of the reeds burned by its beams, the dark gray of the endless Vaccarès.

  A hint of coolness settled on the sleeping waters.

  Marceau had just dropped Larousse by his Golf when his mobile rang.

  “You don’t waste time, Michel. How did you guess I was in my car?”

  “Turn round and you’ll see.”

  De Palma was standing a few meters away, in front of the Tarascon commissariat.

  “You’re back for a breath of Provençal air?”

  “I was looking up an old colleague … Can we talk for a few minutes?”

  “Let’s take a stroll around the block. I need some fresh air.”

  They walked for some time without saying a word. The roads in the center of Tarascon were lit by reddish streetlights.

  “Do you know what this street used to be called, Michel?”

  “No idea.”

  “The rue des Juifs. There used to be a Jewish ghetto here.”

  “They can’t have had much fun in the days when the pope lived in Avignon,” de Palma remarked.

  “Unhappily, the worst was yet to come.”

  They passed some tourists, the heels of their camel-leather sandals clacking on the still-warm paving stones: a couple of old Englishwomen, their noses raised, scrutinizing the façades.

  On place de la Mairie, they ordered two double whiskies. Marceau knocked his glass back in one and ordered another.

  They swapped small talk. Marceau looked rather on his guard, as though the thread of their friendship had not stood up to the frictions of life and the horrors of their profession.

  Marceau sank his second glass just like the first. He was a man who rarely displayed his inner troubles, and this trait had always impressed the Baron; he seemed to stow away the worst things he experienced in his career on the force in some part of himself that was insensible to emotions, like an attic where people store what they no longer want to see and will end up throwing out.