The Beast of the Camargue

by Xavier-Marie Bonnot

  “There’s one memory I have of those days, it was when we used to come out of the conservatoire on place Carli after our music lessons. Our heads were full of demi-semiquavers. I don’t know why, but in my memories, the sun is always setting … Anyway, we’d walk down to the opera house with our friends. It was magic. We went by the Gare de l’Est and bought slices of pizza from the Italian place that used to be on the corner of the Canebière. Then we’d eat them as we went through the red-light district, staring at the whores in thigh boots who would wink at us.”

  “Why did you go to the opera?”

  “I was an extra.”

  “You used to sing?!”

  “Extras don’t sing, Anne. They’re just part of the crowd, priests, guards or pages, or whatever. They play no part, but without them the show lacks sparkle. They’re magnificently pointless. Can you imagine Aïda without the soldiers? I was a high priest with a ropy wig and foundation all over my face, standing right next to Radames. On another occasion, we executed Mario in Tosca …”

  He fell silent. In the half-light, he was looking for an attitude of pride, something to hide behind while his feelings had time to subside.

  He regaled her with tales from the stage: the terrible flops, when screwed-up programs and loose change would rain down on the boards like drops of humiliation, and the splendid successes that made the lines of velvet seats explode.

  He had spent more than eleven years on the boards of the municipal theater; eleven years of electric warmth in the dark, secretive wings; in the white lights of the Svobodas; the warm shadings of liquid blue and ochre in the distance, stage left or right, or else on the proscenium, the only place where the gleaming, serious, anonymous faces of the audience can be seen.

  Eleven years of interpreting the anxieties of opera stars during the long minutes of waiting before going on stage, the suffering that sends voices wafting above the violins and carries them right to the end, up there in the heights of the big theater.

  Moracchini suddenly realized just how much a man like this must suffer in the Marseille police force. With a gesture as soft as a sigh, she stroked his shoulder. The Baron shrank into himself.

  “The world is divided in two: those who love Callas and those who love Tebaldi.”

  “What about you?”

  “Tebaldi in Aïda and Callas in Norma.”

  “Trying to have it both ways are you?”

  He stretched and poured himself a glass of water. She moved closer.

  “When I was a kid, there were Stones fans and Beatles fans. Two different schools.”

  “I remember that. And so?”

  “All of them were often complete idiots. Some were even top of the class, the sort who understand nothing and feel nothing unless you can stick a label on it. But luckily enough, there are also people who love music.”

  She drew him toward her, kissed him maternally on the lips and forehead and smiled into his eyes. He buried his face in her hair, and moved down the suntanned length of her neck.

  With a heave, she turned onto her back, and a violent stab of pain in his shoulder made him cry out.

  Slowly, he undid her fine silk top, freeing her heavy breasts, which he took into his hands and covered with kisses. Then, he lost himself in the hollow of her stomach and breathed in her pepper-scented closeness.

  17.

  De Palma gave his temples a long massage. For the past two days he had been convalescing at Jean-Louis Maistre’s place, on the heights of L’Estaque. He had left Moracchini’s house to avoid settling into a relationship that still scared him.

  He stood up straight and breathed in deeply. The breeze was blowing the sea air up to the houses on the side of the hill.

  The sky was azure as far as the eye could see. The city in the distance was white, the color of precious shells. The seawall cut its way through the waves, looking like a huge exclamation mark at the end of a long sentence of tiny patches of land, with burning roofs and hills.

  “How’s life, Baron?” Maistre asked. “You haven’t been too bored all day long?”

  “I slept a lot. The boss wants to see me, tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Maistre said, pouring two pastis.

  “I couldn’t give a toss what they say. Anyway, they can’t touch me.”

  “Especially when your 11.43 shells are lying in a drawer in my office.”

  The Baron turned toward his friend.

  “Anne really loves you, I’m telling you. Between you and me, she’s washed you whiter than white. If you feel you’re looking like a fridge door or an aspirin, then it’s down to her.”

  De Palma sat down on the low stone wall that Maistre had built last winter to keep in place the little earth his garden possessed.

  “She even put a few shells from your piece on the scene of the crime. Not bad, don’t you think?”

  “I…”

  “As far as I’m concerned, I could beat you senseless … What the fuck are you still doing with your 11.43? Throwing it away might have been a good idea after what happened.”

  When he got angry, Maistre’s proletarian Parisian accent came back. He had never really lost it.

  “If you’re just going to get in my face, Jean-Louis, then I’m off!”

  “Alright, don’t get into a sulk. Anne will be here soon.”

  “I’m going to need another piece.”

  Maistre disappeared for a moment into the shade of the house, and emerged with a black box which he handed to de Palma.

  “This is clean?”

  “Of course it is, you idiot. It’s mine, I bought it with my police pay.”

  “So what am I supposed to do with it?”

  “It’s a last resort, Michel. It’s never been used, but it’s been around. A Corsican sold it to me. What’s more, I had the barrel and hammer changed. Not bad, eh?”

  It was a snub-nosed Colt Cobra. A marvelous gun. As black as death and as slim as a dream. De Palma weighed it in his hand. He liked its bulk and its varnished wood grip. Both sober and classic.

  He clicked open the cylinder and slipped in six .38 shells.

  When Moracchini arrived on the patio, she glared at the Cobra while placing a soft kiss on the Baron’s neck.

  Just then, his mobile rang.

  “M. de Palma, Ingrid Steinert here.”

  “Hello,” he answered, moving to one side.

  “I’m very worried. I read in the papers that you’ve been shot. And that you killed someone …”

  “You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers, you know.”

  He noticed that Moracchini was watching him and seemed to be trying to lip-read what he was saying.

  “I don’t know … I mean … were you wounded?”

  “Nothing serious.”

  “When will we meet again?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. Right now, I need some rest.”

  “O.K., speak to you tomorrow then. Take care.”

  As he hung up, he felt Moracchini’s gaze on his back. He turned round. She was standing just behind him.

  “Was that Ingrid Steinert?”

  “Yes, I must admit that I’d rather forgotten …”

  “What did she want?”

  “She’d seen in the papers that I’d killed someone and been wounded. That’s all.”

  “We’re going to have to sort a few things out with her.”

  “As you say …”

  Morini lost his balance. He fell flat on his face and it took him some time to get to his feet again.

  Since being locked up in total darkness, this was the second time he had fallen. First his head spun, as though he no longer knew which way was up and which down, then his huge body collapsed.

  The last memory that he had of light was a flat expanse half covered in water and a white-walled hut in the background. What struck him was that his kidnapper had blindfolded him, and had only restored his sight when they arrived in this marsh.

  And then pitch darkness. Not the
slightest gleam of light came in from outside. He had now lost any sense of day and night. Hunger gnawed at his stomach. He was terribly thirsty.

  He felt his way around the walls of his prison and located the door. He hammered on it. Several times. Just as he had done when the judge had put him in solitary in D block of Les Baumettes prison.

  “Open up!”

  The only answer was the enormous silence.

  “Open up!” he screamed, before he broke down sobbing.

  In the car, he had tried to negotiate with his abductor. He was sure he’d seen him before somewhere. Tall, with graying hair around his temples. Well into his forties. With an odd accent. This accent did not match the man’s appearance. Morini had initially supposed that he was a police officer, then he wondered if he might be a mobster from a rival gang. This thought process had lasted for about a minute.

  He had tried to sweet-talk him, then he had got irritated and turned to threats. Until the man gave him a thunderous slap and gagged him.

  Jesus! He’d been caught like a baby. That thought tormented him even more than the thirst. He had mistaken a gangster for a cop. Even worse: he had failed to distinguish between a gangster and a raving lunatic.

  His instinct had deserted him.

  He told himself that he no longer deserved to live.

  18.

  Above La Balme farmhouse, the last glimmers of day were covering the limestone crests of the Alpilles with red lace.

  Maistre’s 205, covered with dust and with wrecked shock absorbers, bounded over the last rock in its path. But it was better than the Alfa Romeo, which everyone now seemed to recognize.

  That morning, de Palma had gone to see Brissonne. His grass had not been very reassuring. Morini had lost it after their visit and had almost killed Lopez with his bare hands. The underworld was buzzing with their meeting. But the contract had been put out by Lopez, not Morini.

  Brissonne also had a warning for de Palma: Morini had well and truly vanished, and people were wondering who was behind his disappearance. The big guns were going to start doing the talking in a few days’ time if he did not resurface. A mob war was going to break out. It was inevitable.

  “You should make yourself scarce, Paulo. Take a few days off!”

  “I’m going on a trip to Italy. I’ve got a few friends there.”

  The mobster frowned at the Baron.

  “Watch out for yourself, Michel. There’s a storm brewing, and you know what that means.”

  Madame Steinert was alone, wearing a black blouse and a thin floral skirt that clung to her slim figure. She was walking slowly beside the pool, with bare feet.

  De Palma got out of the 205. Instinctively, he checked that the Cobra was there on his hip, then glanced all around before going toward her.

  She waved and came to meet him.

  When they were close, she extended her cheek to him. For the first time.

  “It’s good to see you, Michel. Those journalists are idiots. The way they put it, it sounded as though you were at death’s door. It’s furchtbar … awful.”

  “It was just a flesh wound.”

  “I hope so.”

  Her voice was deeper than usual and she did not look straight at him. Instead, she gazed at the turquoise surface of the pool.

  “I asked to see you because I think I’ve got something new to tell you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but first, let’s have a little drink. What do you say, Michel?”

  He felt awkward and simply nodded.

  On the patio, she rang a small bell and a young woman emerged from the kitchen. She said something in German to her, and de Palma realized that this was the first time that he had heard her speak the language. He found it rather pleasant.

  “I’d like you to try the white Muscat that we make here. It was William’s idea. He had preserved an old vine behind the pool house over there. I must say that it’s really good. It’s my favorite.”

  The Baron’s throat was dry. He drank back half of his glass at once. The sweet wine filled his mouth with a bouquet of honey. She winked at him.

  “You’re my guest this evening. Do you know the Val d’Enfer?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a mysterious place below Les Baux. Taven the witch is supposed to have spent time there.”

  “My father used to tell me stories about witches.”

  “Was it him who introduced you to Cathy and Heathcliff?”

  The Baron put down his glass, and clumsily knocked an olive onto the ground.

  “Yes, it was him. How …”

  “I’m good at guessing things. William was always impressed by my gift.”

  “You also have a good memory.”

  “Yes, sometimes. When people interest me.”

  She raised the Muscat to her lips.

  “I wanted to invite you to have dinner with me in a restaurant near Val d’Enfer. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know if I should accept!”

  “Unless you’d prefer to eat here. Our cook, Robert, has made a pistou soup which is like nothing you’ve ever tasted before. So what will it be: gastronomy or simplicity?”

  “Simplicity,” he said.

  “I’m touched by your tastes.”

  She stood up and went into the living room. He watched her supple sway and thought that fate had played a hell of a trick on him between the shanty town of La Capelette and the farmhouse of La Balme.

  He filled his lungs with air full of the fragrance of olive trees and ripe grapes. The image of his mother placing the tub in the kitchen to give him his evening bath crossed his mind. He could picture himself again in that soapy water with his grazed knees and black hands after playing knucklebones in the primary school playground on rue Laugier. The tub and coal stove had four rooms to heat.

  He stood up and walked over to the pool. A cricket was picking out a melody somewhere in the clump of lavender.

  A delicate hand was placed on his forearm.

  “I’d like to show you something, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “No, not at all.”

  She had changed and was now wearing a very simple pale pink dress that revealed her shoulders and stopped above her knees.

  They went into the building through the main entrance. De Palma recognized the reception room where she had welcomed him the first time he had visited the farm. Then he followed her to the first floor up a broad white-stone staircase of a quite surprising sobriety. No decorations, no frills. The whitewash smelled old.

  Here, too, William Steinert had not wanted to change a thing. No doubt to preserve the memory of the mother he had never known.

  “I want to show you a few documents that I found this week while I was sorting through William’s things.”

  She opened the door of a large room which had been furnished as a lounge or reception room, with a billiard table in the middle, settees upholstered in Marseille piqué, and knickknacks all around: a chess set on an occasional table, an old pinball machine and a 1950s Wurlitzer jukebox. There were oil paintings everywhere.

  She noticed that he had paused for a moment.

  “Do you like the style?”

  “It’s one hell of a mixture!”

  “They’re all collector’s pieces. William used to call it his museum. Everything you see here was picked up in markets across the world. They’re real rarities. I wanted you to see them so that you could understand what sort of man he was.”

  In a glass case, he noticed some wax cylinders, a letter signed by Blaise Cendrars and some Egyptian and Greek antiquities. There was also a statue measuring about a meter high.

  “It’s a marble kouros.”

  It was smiling into eternity, its lips raised at the corners of a stone mouth.

  “It’s from the end of the archaic period. It’s magnificent. There are many museums that envy us.”

  “The line is simple, but perfect. It looks like the Rampin Horseman.”

  “Are you a
connoisseur, Michel?”

  “An old memory from history at university. I loved Greek art.”

  “Oh, I see …”

  She drew nearer to him, as though seeking greater closeness.

  “Would you like another glass of Muscat?”

  “Yes please,” he replied, without taking his eyes off the kouros.

  “Come and sit down. Laura will bring us the necessary.”

  She sat down in an armchair and crossed her legs. Slightly embarrassed by her stare, which never left him, the Baron sat down opposite her.

  “Why did you join the police, Michel?”

  “It’s funny. Every time I trot out the little culture I possess, I’m asked the same question.”

  “That’s fair enough, isn’t?”

  “Yes, perhaps …”

  “But you still haven’t answered.”

  “Because I come from a poor neighborhood in Marseille, and I didn’t have much choice.”

  “I think we always have a choice.”

  “Maybe. But you may have to be more courageous than I am.”

  “It isn’t a question of courage. But why did you stay?”

  It was an ordinary question, but it took him unawares.

  “Perhaps because of a girl who looked strangely like you.”

  “Could you explain?”

  “I can’t.”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Laura arrived carrying a tray with two glasses of Muscat. De Palma took one, and took his chance to stand up.

  “She’s dead and you never found her killer. Am I right?”

  “I … I’d rather not talk about it. If you don’t mind.”

  “I quite understand. Come on, I’ll show you something.”

  At the far end of the room, there was an art deco-style table with curved legs, on which Ingrid had placed a whole pile of papers and photographs.

  The photographs were shots of the Camargue. De Palma saw lagoons that disappeared over the horizon in the light of dawn or dusk. There were also some shots of birds: raptors, herons, and other species he did not know.

  He paused over some photographs of large white birds.

  “They’re white spoonbills. The last pictures he took, as far as I know. Laura went to fetch them from Tarascon today.”