Alex

by Pierre Lemaitre

At about three o’clock, they finally find themselves alone in the office. Camille doesn’t stop to think. He says, “Thanks” – this is his first word.

  “Thanks, Louis.”

  He needs to say something more; he can’t just leave it at that.

  “It—”

  But he stops. From Louis’s quizzical expression he realises the enormity of his mistake. This whole deal with the painting – Louis has got nothing to do with it.

  “Thanks for what?”

  Camille ad-libs, “For everything, Louis. For your help … with all this.”

  “Sure,” Louis says, astonished; they’re not in the habit of saying things like this to each other.

  Camille had hoped to come up with the right words, and he just did; he himself is surprised by this unexpected confession.

  “This case, it’s kind of my comeback. And I know I can be an awkward bugger to get along with, so …”

  The presence of Louis, this mysterious young man he knows so well yet hardly knows at all, is suddenly powerfully moving, perhaps more so than the reappearance of the painting.

  *

  Vasseur has been brought up from his cell once more to corroborate a few details.

  Camille goes to Le Guen’s office, knocks and goes straight in. It’s clear from his expression that the divisionnaire is expecting bad news. Camille immediately raises a hand to reassure him. They discuss the case. They’ve each done what they needed to do. All they can do now is wait. Camille talks about the auction of his mother’s paintings.

  “How much did you say?” says a thunderstruck Le Guen.

  Camille repeats the figure, one that he finds increasingly abstract. Le Guen looks impressed.

  Camille doesn’t mention the self-portrait. He’s had time to think now and he’s worked it out. He’ll call his mother’s friend, the man who organised the auction: he must have made a tidy profit from the sale and clearly decided to thank Camille by giving him the painting. It’s no big deal. Camille feels relieved.

  He telephones, leaves a message and heads down to his office.

  The hours tick by.

  Camille had decided to do it at 1900 hours and the moment has come: it is seven o’clock. Vasseur shambles into the office, sits down and stares fixedly at the clock on the wall. He is obviously exhausted; he has hardly slept in the past forty-eight hours, a fact that is starkly etched on his face.

  61

  “This thing is …” Camille begins, “we have a number of little niggles about the death of your sister. Your half-sister, sorry.”

  Vasseur doesn’t react. He struggles to work out what this means, but makes little headway – scarcely surprising given his exhaustion. He considers the possible meanings, the questions that might follow from it. He feels calmer. As far as Alex’s death is concerned, he’s got nothing to reproach himself for. His whole face says as much. He takes a deep breath, relaxes, silently folds his arms, glances again at the wall clock and when he finally says something, it is completely unrelated.

  “The detention period ends at eight o’clock, does it not?”

  “I can see that you’re not much bothered by Alex’s death.”

  Vasseur stares up at the ceiling as though searching for inspiration, as though in a restaurant someone had asked him to choose between two desserts. Embarrassed, he puckers his lips.

  “I’m upset by it,” he says at length. “Very upset, actually. You know how it is with families: blood is thicker than water. But what can you do? This is the thing with depressives.”

  “I’m not talking about the fact of her death, but the way she died.”

  Vasseur understands, he nods.

  “Barbiturates, yeah, it’s terrible. She told me she was having trouble sleeping, said without them she wouldn’t sleep at all.”

  He hears the words as he says them; exhausted as he is he has to struggle not to make some crude joke about her closed eyes. Eventually, he opts for an exaggeratedly concerned tone.

  “That’s the thing about medicines – they should be more tightly controlled, don’t you think? Though I suppose she was a nurse, so she could get her hands on whatever she wanted.”

  Vasseur becomes suddenly thoughtful.

  “I don’t know what death from a barbiturate overdose is like … I assume it causes convulsions.”

  “Unless quickly intubated, victims slip into a coma,” Camille says. “Protective respiratory reflexes are lost; they inhale vomit into the lungs and choke to death.”

  Vasseur gives a disgusted look. Ugh. He plainly thinks it lacks dignity.

  Camille gives him an understanding look. Were it not that his fingers are trembling slightly, one might think he shares Vasseur’s opinion. He leans back in his chair, takes a breath.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to your visit to the hotel on the night of Alex’s death. This was shortly after midnight, yes?”

  “You’ve got witnesses – why don’t you ask them?”

  “We did ask them.”

  “And … ?”

  “Twenty past twelve.”

  “O.K. then, let’s say twelve-twenty, it’s all the same to me.”

  Vasseur settles himself in his chair. His frequent glances at the clock on the wall are plain to see.

  “So,” Camille goes on, “you slipped in behind our two witnesses, and they thought nothing odd about this. Just coincidence … another hotel guest who happened to arrive back at the same time. The witnesses say they last saw you waiting for the lift. After that, they don’t know what happened. Their room was on the ground floor. So, you take the lift …”

  “No.”

  “Really? But … ?”

  “Where would I have been going?”

  “That’s precisely the question we’ve been asking ourselves, Monsieur Vasseur. Where exactly were you going?”

  Vasseur frowns.

  “Listen, Alex calls me, asks me to meet her, doesn’t say why, and then she stands me up! I go to the hotel, but there’s no-one on reception – what am I supposed to do? Knock on two hundred doors and say, ‘Excuse me, have you seen my sister?’”

  “Your half-sister!”

  Vasseur grits his teeth, takes a breath, pretends he hasn’t heard.

  “So anyway, I’d been sitting waiting in my car for ages, and the hotel she called me from is two hundred metres away – anyone would have done what I did. I went there because I assumed there would be a list at reception, that I’d see her name marked somewhere. I don’t know, do I? But when I got there, there was nothing. The reception area was locked up. I saw there was nothing I could do, so I went home. And that’s it.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t think it through.”

  “Exactly, I didn’t think it through properly.”

  Camille is uneasy; he shakes his head from left to right.

  “What?” Vasseur says indignantly. “What difference does that make?”

  The police officers do not move; they stare at him calmly.

  His eyes drift back to the clock. Time is ticking. He smiles, at ease again.

  “No difference,” he says, sure of himself. “It makes no difference, does it? Except …”

  “Yes?”

  “Except that if I had found her, none of this would have happened.”

  “Meaning?”

  He entwines his fingers as though hoping he’s getting this right.

  “I think I would have been able to save her.”

  “But unfortunately you didn’t. And she died.”

  Vasseur spreads his hands, resigned. He smiles.

  Camille focuses.

  “Monsieur Vasseur,” he says slowly, “I have to tell you that the pathologist has his doubts about Alex’s suicide.”

  “Doubts?”

  “Yes.”

  Camille allows this information to sink in.

  “In fact, we believe that your sister was murdered and the murder made to look like suicide. Rather cack-handedly, in my opinion.”

>   “What is this bullshit?” His whole body conveys surprise.

  “Firstly,” Camille says, “Alex’s behaviour was not that of someone contemplating suicide.”

  “Her behaviour … ?” Vasseur echoes, frowning.

  “The ticket to Zurich, the suitcase neatly packed, the taxi ordered for the following morning. On their own these things wouldn’t mean much, but we have other reasons to doubt that this was suicide. For example, her head was violently struck against the washbasin in the en-suite bathroom. Several times. The autopsy notes several injuries to the skull which clearly indicate several violent blows. We believe there was someone else with her. Someone who brutally beat her …”

  “But … but who?”

  “Well, to be frank, Monsieur Vasseur, we believe it was you.”

  Vasseur is on his feet, screaming, “What?”

  “I would advise you to sit down.”

  It takes some time, but Vasseur sits down again, perches on the edge of his chair, ready to spring up again.

  “This concerns your sister, Monsieur Vasseur, and I know how painful this is for you. But, without wishing to offend you by seeming to be overly pragmatic, I have to say that suicide victims choose a particular method. They throw themselves out of the window; they slit their wrists. Sometimes they mutilate themselves; sometimes they swallow pills. But they rarely do both.”

  “What has any of this got to do with me?”

  It’s obvious from the urgency of his voice that this has nothing to do with Alex anymore. His attitude veers from incredulity to indignation.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I said, what has this got to do with me?”

  Camille looks over at Louis and Armand with the hopeless expression of someone who can’t seem to make themselves understood, then he turns back to Vasseur.

  “It has everything to do with you, because of your prints.”

  “Prints? What prints? What fu—”

  The telephone rings, cutting him off, but he doesn’t stop. As Camille answers, Vasseur turns to Armand and Louis.

  “What fucking prints?”

  In response, Louis gives him a puzzled look that says he doesn’t know either; Armand doesn’t even look up – he’s otherwise occupied crumbling tobacco from three cigarette butts onto a flimsy scrap of paper to make a homemade cigarette.

  Vasseur turns back to Camille who is on the telephone, staring out of the window, listening intently to whoever is on the other end. Vasseur drinks in Camille’s silence; the moment seems interminable. Eventually, Camille puts down the receiver, looks up at Vasseur – where were we again?

  “What prints?” Vasseur says.

  “Oh, yes … well, Alex’s fingerprints, obviously,” Camille says.

  Vasseur gives a start.

  “What about her fingerprints?”

  It must be said that Camille can be difficult to follow.

  “It was her room,” Vasseur says, and laughs a little too loudly. “Finding her fingerprints there would be completely normal.”

  Camille applauds, clearly agreeing.

  “Well, that’s the thing.” He stops clapping. “Her prints are largely missing.”

  Vasseur can tell that there’s a question in here somewhere, but he doesn’t know what it is. Camille, in a kindly tone, comes to his rescue.

  “We found very few fingerprints from Alex in the room, you see … We believe that someone was trying to eliminate their own prints and, in doing so, wiped away Alex’s. Not all, but most of them. Some are particularly significant. The door handle, for example. The handle someone who was there with Alex would have had to use …”

  The penny drops. Vasseur doesn’t know which way to turn.

  “What I’m saying, Monsieur Vasseur, is that a person who commits suicide doesn’t go around wiping away her own fingerprints; it makes no sense!”

  Vasseur swallows hard, his mind a jumble of images and ideas.

  “Consequently,” Camille says, “we believe that there was someone in the room with Alex when she died.”

  He gives Vasseur time to digest this information; from the look on his face, it could be a while. Camille adopts a pedantic tone.

  “From the point of view of fingerprints, the whisky bottle is another problem. Alex drank almost half a litre of whisky. Alcohol potentiates the effects of barbiturates; it makes death a virtual certainty. The thing is, the bottle was carefully wiped clean of prints – there are fibres on it from a T-shirt we found on the sofa near the door. Even more curiously, what fingerprints of Alex’s we did find are flattened as though someone forcibly pressed her fingers against the glass. Post mortem, probably. To make us think that she was holding the bottle. What do you have to say about that?”

  “Wha … I don’t have anything to say about it. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Oh, but you must know something about it, Monsieur Vasseur,” Camille says, affronted, “given that you were in the room.”

  “Absolutely not. I was never in her room. I told you already, I went home.”

  Camille allows a brief moment of silence. As much as his height allows, he leans over Vasseur.

  “If you weren’t there,” he says calmly, “how do you explain the fact that we found your fingerprints in Alex’s room, Monsieur Vasseur?”

  Vasseur is speechless. Camille sits back in his chair.

  “It is because we found your prints in the room at the time of her death that we believe you murdered Alex.”

  A sound lodges somewhere between Vasseur’s belly and his throat, a sound like a strangled yelp.

  “That’s impossible! I never set foot in that room! Where were these fingerprints?”

  “On the bottle of barbiturates that killed your sister. You probably forgot to wipe it. Too panicked, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Vasseur’s head waggles like a chicken’s – he can’t get his words out. Suddenly, he roars, “I’ve got it. I saw that bottle! Pink pills! I handled it! With Alex!”

  The meaning is unclear. Camille knits his brows. Vasseur swallows, tries to explain things calmly, but the pressure, the fear is getting to him. He squeezes his eyes shut, balls his fists, takes a long, deep breath, and tries to focus.

  Camille nods encouragingly, as though trying to help him to explain.

  “When I saw Alex …”

  “Yes.”

  “… the last time …”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t remember. Three weeks ago, a month maybe.”

  “O.K.”

  “She showed me that bottle.”

  “Really? Where was this?”

  “In a café near my work. Le Moderne.”

  “Very good, Monsieur Vasseur, why don’t you tell us about it?”

  He’s breathing more easily now. A window has finally opened. Everything will be fine now. He’ll explain; it’s a perfectly simple explanation – they’ll have to accept it. It’s stupid, this whole thing about the medicine bottle. You can’t build a case on something like that. He tries to take his time, but his throat closes up. He articulates every word.

  “About a month ago. Alex asked to meet me.”

  “Did she want money?”

  “No.”

  “Then what did she want?”

  Vasseur doesn’t know. In fact, she never told him why she wanted to see him – their meeting had ended abruptly. Alex had ordered a coffee, and he’d had a beer. And that was when she took out the bottle of pills. Vasseur had asked her what they were. O.K., he’ll admit he was a little tetchy.

  “Seeing her taking shit like that …”

  “You obviously worried about your little sister’s health.”

  Vasseur pretends not to hear the insinuation – he struggles to explain, wants this over with.

  “I grabbed the bottle off her, held it in my hand. That’s why it’s got my fingerprints on it!”

  What’s surprising is that the detectives seem not to be convinced. They wait, hanging on his wor
ds, as though there must be something more, as though he hasn’t finished.

  “What was the name of the medication, Monsieur Vasseur?”

  “I didn’t look at the name! I opened the bottle, I saw some pink pills. I asked her what they were, that’s all.”

  The detectives relax. This sheds a whole new light on the case.

  “I see,” Camille says, “I think I understand. It wasn’t the same bottle. The pills Alex took were blue. Not pink.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “It matters because it means it’s probably not the same bottle.”

  “No, no, no!” Vasseur is agitated again, waving his finger in the air, stumbling over his words. “It won’t hold up, this thing, it won’t hold up.”

  Camille gets to his feet.

  “Let’s recap, if you don’t mind.” He counts the points off on his fingers. “You have a strong motive. Alex was blackmailing you; she had already extorted twenty thousand euros and was probably planning to ask for a lot more so she could survive abroad. You have no alibi: you lied to your wife about the call you received. You claimed you went to an address where no-one saw you. Later you admitted that you went to see Alex at her hotel, something which can be confirmed by two witnesses.”

  Camille lets Vasseur grasp the scale of the problem.

  “None of that is evidence!”

  “It already gives us motive, no alibi, your presence at the scene of the crime. If we add to that the fact that Alex suffered serious blows to the head, that her fingerprints were wiped away while yours were found at the scene, it begins to sound like rather a lot …”

  “No, no, no … it won’t be enough!”

  But however much he shakes his finger, there’s clearly a question lurking behind this statement. This is perhaps what prompts Camille to add: “We also found your D.N.A. at the scene, Monsieur Vasseur.”

  Vasseur is utterly dumbfounded.

  “A hair found on the floor next to Alex’s bed. You tried to get rid of all traces of your presence, but the clean-up wasn’t good enough.”

  Camille stands in front of the man.

  “So, Monsieur Vasseur, now that we’ve got your D.N.A., do you think that will be enough?”

  Until now, Thomas Vasseur has been very impulsive. This statement by Commandant Verhœven should have him bounding to his feet. But he doesn’t move. The men stare at him, unsure how to react since Vasseur is totally withdrawn; he’s thinking hard, oblivious to the interview – he’s no longer in the room. Elbows propped on his knees, he keeps touching his fingertips together in a jerky movement, as though faintly applauding. He is staring at the floor, his foot tapping nervously. They are almost concerned about his mental state. Then suddenly he jumps up, stares at Camille, stands stock still.