by Michel Bussi
I stopped in front of Le Medef’s house. I immediately saw rays of light filtering from under the closed shutters of the first-floor room.
My witness wasn’t sleeping! A depressive insomniac, I would have bet.
The dog sat down on the pavement opposite to wait for me.
I pushed the barrier, then knocked gently on the door.
No reply.
I turned the handle, convinced that it wouldn’t yield, and that I would have to find a way to alert Christian Le Medef to my visit without waking up the whole neighbourhood.
Not a bit!
The door opened as if Le Medef was waiting for my visit. I introduced one foot into the house and said in a low voice, almost a murmur:
“Christian? Christian Le Medef.”
I didn’t want that paranoid loner to shoot at me.
“Le Medef? It’s Salaoui . . .”
No reply. The light upstairs illuminated the top of the staircase. Le Medef was probably stuffed full of sleeping tablets.
Xanax . . .
As I climbed the stairs I made a point of bringing my foot down heavily on each step. The rickety banister shook under my damp hand, I even thought it was going to come away. Wasn’t Christian Le Medef being paid to maintain this house?”
My foot caught on the carpet on the landing.
“Christian?”
Still no reaction.
I carefully pushed open the bedroom door, expecting to find Le Medef collapsed on the bed, drugged up or drunk.
My eyes gazed into the void.
There was no one in the room. The bed was made impeccably. There was a book on the bedside table, just beside the burning lamp. Some clothes, a pair of pyjamas, a T-shirt and a beige pullover folded on a stand.
A bachelor’s room!
I stopped to think in silence. I was distracted by something that sounded like a crackling sound. I went back down the stairs four at a time.
A bachelor’s room, I repeated in my head. But a bachelor who gets up early! Apparently Le Medef was up already. The humming sound that I could hear was a badly tuned transistor radio! Le Medef was probably having his breakfast. I stepped forward on the black-and-white tiles. Apart from the corridor, there was only one room on the ground floor, a kitchen that opened on to a little dining room.
A table in the centre. A chair.
I stayed in the doorway, silent and motionless.
Christ, what could have happened?
There was a plate on the table. A slice of overcooked meat floated in a seat of tagliatelle. A glass of red wine placed in front of it, half full. An almost empty bottle. A knife, a fork, a checked napkin balanced on the edge. A half-baguette.
No trace of Le Medef.
“Christian?” I called again.
“France Bleu, at the end of the night,” the transistor replied faintly, before playing “Mon Vieux” by Daniel Guichard. I called out more loudly, just in case he was in the toilet or the shower.
To no avail.
Le Medef hadn’t slept at home tonight.
He hadn’t even finished last night’s dinner.
My brain stammered.
Christ, what could have happened?
For the next few minutes, I searched every available corner of the cottage. Since it had barely sixty square metres of floor space, that didn’t take long. the only certainty being that Le Medef wasn’t hiding there. And neither was his corpse . . .
Nothing. Just a few of the unemployed man’s personal belongings, some clothes, some books, a laptop for which I didn’t have the code, an almost full fridge, local newspapers, a whole pile of them, medication, anti-depressants, not Xanax: Anafranil.
As if Le Medef had had to leave in a hurry.
When?
Without worrying about leaving fingerprints, I touched the bread on the table. Soft.
I poked the ashes in the fireplace. Warm.
Le Medef had probably disappeared less than ten hours ago, probably at dinner time. That was more or less the time when Mona had joined me in Vaucottes. I glanced around the room once more. It reminded me of Uncle Youssef’s apartment. I was seven years old when I went there with my mother. He had died of a heart attack three hours before, and my mother had to get some papers for the funeral. His cold soup was still in a bowl, along with a barely nibbled slice of bread and two slippers under the chair.
Was Christian Le Medef dead?
Had he been killed? Kidnapped? Forced out of his home?
Why?
His last words, uttered yesterday outside the newsagent’s, echoed in my head.
I’m going to keep on digging, see what else I can find out about Magali Verron.
Had he found something.
He believed in a plot, a stitch-up.
The silence of the newspapers.
The silence of the police.
Had they taken him away to keep him from talking?
“Ridiculous!” a sensible little voice whispered in my head. In France, the police don’t take citizens away in the night, without even giving them time to finish their dinner.
I consulted my watch: 4.35. I gave myself another ten minutes to look around the house before setting off for Vaucottes again. Before Yport woke up. I opened the drawers, ran my hand under the furniture, took the books out of their shelves, the clothes from their wardrobe. Nothing.
Apart from one detail.
A white sheet of paper folded in the phone book, on which someone, probably Le Medef, had scribbled a series of numbers in four boxes.
My fingers trembled as I closed the Yellow Pages. Was Le Medef on the same trail as Piroz? Was that why he had been eliminated?
Droplets of sweat ran from my arms to my hands, drenching every object I touched.
Handles, latches, switches . . .
Litres of DNA that would let them pin the disappearance of Christian Le Medef on me as soon as the neighbours sounded the alert.
I glanced through the shutters. The street was still deserted apart from the three-legged dog under the street light.
I folded the piece of paper with the eight numbers on it, put it in my pocket and left.
21
HAD HE FOUND SOMETHING?
I slept until ten in the morning. It was a text from Mona that woke me.
Cops called at La Sirène.
Looking for you. Said nothing.
Want you alive I think. Phew!
Take care of yourself.
Bonnie
I stood there motionless for several long seconds. I savoured the moment. The rays of the sun hanging over the Valleuse de Vaucottes passed through the panes of glass to gild the linen sheets. I rolled the huge eiderdown under my back and tapped in a reply:
They’ll never take me!
Mystery no. 123: Christian Le Medef, aka Xanax, witness no. 2 to Magali Verron’s suicide, missing since last night.
A trap!
Be careful.
Clyde
I waited several moments for Mona’s reply. Which never came.
Get up. Wash. Get dressed. Have breakfast. Calm down.
Mona must have been limiting our correspondence on purposes. She was right. The cops had met her, they might suspect her. They might be keeping an eye on her.
At about eleven in the morning, after emptying a box of Lotus Speculoos biscuits dunked in coffee, I went down to the basement, the only place in Martin Denain’s house that I hadn’t yet explored.
The next stage in my battle plan was quite vague in my head. To hide out in this villa all day, and use the communication tools at my disposal in the hope of finding a trail. Internet. Telephone. Like that guy in the Hitchcock film who solves an investigation without leaving his apartment, with one leg in plaster.
Given the thick layer of dust
, no one could have set foot in the professor’s basement for months. My asymmetrical footsteps imprinted themselves on the grey concrete, more immediately recognisable than if I had been walking in snow. When the bare bulb hanging from its electric wire came on, a smell of grilled insect spread through the room.
A collection of cumbersome objects whose use was reserved for sunny weekends was piled up in front of me. Bicycles, a parasol, loungers, a barbecue, garden furniture, a badminton net, balls, racquets.
Cardboard boxes were stacked up against the walls.
I had a whole day ahead of me, so I dove in and pulled the brown tape from the first box in the pile. It contained a dozen photograph albums.
I flicked through them, taking my time, as if each volume corresponded to an episode from a sitcom.
The Denain Family, season 1.
The university professor was posing in front of the Étretat Needle, in the 1980s, judging by the orange Renault 5 parked behind them, hand in hand with his wife, a pretty, slender blonde with her hair loose, smiling. His life played out with the photographs, held in place under cellophane. Martin on the beach. Martin the handyman. Martin the fisherman.
Another album. Denain, older now, again posing in front of the Étretat Needle, in the 2000s, judging by the Audi A4 parked behind them, hand in hand with his wife, a slightly stout blonde, short hair, a severe expression. Martin surfing. Martin golfing. Martin playing tennis with his son, a brown-haired boy who must have been my age, and whom we saw growing up with the passing pages, and with the sequence of his holidays in the family’s second home.
I went on looking through albums, at random, until I found what I was looking for: a photograph of Mona. There were two among the hundreds of shots.
In the first, Martin Denain was collecting pebbles with Mona. In the second, the researcher was posing with Mona in front of the Étretat Needle. Their hands didn’t touch, but Mona was prettier than ever.
Professor Denain was a lucky guy.
As if by telepathy, my telephone pinged at that very moment. Bonnie’s reply!
No luck with Le Medef, old pal.
Everything staked on witness no. 3. Old Denise.
Otherwise, next stop straitjacket!
I smiled, then felt for the two-page spread from the Courrier Cauchois in my pocket. Mona was right. Le Medef was out of the game, so only Denise could testify that Magali Verron’s face was identical to Morgane Avril’s. Only Denise could prove that I wasn’t completely insane . . . except that all I knew about her was her first name and her age.
Denise. Seventy years old.
A specimen as rare as a fifty-year-old Nathalie or a thirty-year-old Stéphanie.
I wasn’t going to call all the Denises I could find in the phone book. Or ask Piroz for her address . . .
I nervously tapped in a brief reply. Two simple words in the form of an SOS.
Denise who?
As if Mona could know. Le Medef had told me he hadn’t seen Denise in Yport. She might have lived in a village somewhere in the area.
I carried on exploring the basement.
On one of the highest shelves I found a small red box. I managed to make out the letters that had almost faded away:
Winchester AM Munition
A box of cartridges!
No ammunition without weapons . . . Obviously the professor must have hidden a revolver somewhere in the basement, probably safe from the children.
I searched for a good quarter of an hour before finding what I was looking for, in a chest to hidden away behind a step-ladder and a ping-pong table. First I cleared away piles of clothes. Designer items, tossed there as if they were rags. Out of fashion? Too small? Forgotten? Worn Vuitton gloves. A pink Eden Park polo shirt. An Armani T-shirt for a teenager. A cotton Vichy-check tie with a Burberry label.
I let the piece of fabric slip between my fingers, reflecting that everyone with a bit of cash must own accessories like this in their wardrobes. I wasn’t about to let my imagination run away with me and assume I was rummaging through the basement of the red-scarf killer AKA Martin Denain, professor of molecular chemistry.
The revolver was hidden under the clothes.
A King Cobra, according to the inscription on the black metal. New. At least I assumed so—it was the first time I’d held a gun in my hand.
The message echoed around the basement just as my finger was testing the sensitivity of the trigger.
Ask the dog!
It had taken me a few seconds to understand Mona’s message.
The dog? What dog?
At first I imagined a message with a double meaning, then I remembered Arnold, Denise’s Shih Tzu.
The fourth witness?
Mona was making fun of me!
I was trying to come up with a witty reply, along the lines of: “If you have time on the beach, ask the seagulls,” when my thumb froze above my phone’s keyboard.
The solution exploded in my head as if it had been perfectly obvious all along.
Mona wasn’t making fun of me!
Her advice couldn’t have been more explicit. Ask the dog! With a bit of nerve and a lot of luck, it might work.
I raced up from the basement four steps at a time, without taking the time to tidy up the mess I’d left behind me. There must be a telephone directory in this house; I walked around the room looking for it, opening all the drawers in all the pieces of furniture.
The crunch of tires in the garden of the villa made me freeze, as if an iron hand had scraped all the thoughts out of my skull.
The cops?
I instinctively ducked below the window.
I clearly heard the sound of a door opening. Footsteps on gravel . . . I wasn’t going to let them find me here, like an idiot. I got cautiously to my feet and peered through the pane.
The car was parked outside the front door. The man was walking confidently towards it.
Even though it seemed completely impossible, even the police hadn’t got there:
He had found me.
He took the time to light a cigarette, then he didn’t wait for a second.
The postman walked to the letter box and slipped through a big brown envelope, then got back into his yellow Kangoo and continued on his round.
22
A DOUBLE MEANING?
Jamal Salaoui
c/o Martin Denain
La Horsaine
123 Chemin du Couchant
Vaucottes
76111 Vattetot-sur-Mer
Shaking, I reread the address.
Jamal Salaoui
c/o Martin Denain
The handwritten lines danced in front of my eyes.
Who could have known that I was hiding here?
No one! No one apart from the one who had provided me with this hiding place.
The only person who was helping me to escape the police.
The only person in the world who believed me.
Mona.
Had she been play-acting with me since the beginning, since we met at the police station?
I looked again at the valley through the window, and my eye fell to the beach. What connection could my pebble-picker have with the death of Magali Verron? With the deaths of Morgane Avril and Myrtille Camus? It made no sense. Only Mona could have posted this letter, but by sending me here, to the house of her thesis supervisor, she was clearly putting pointing the finger at herself.
Once again I gave up trying to understand. Curiosity overwhelmed me; I guessed that this envelope contained additional details about the Avril–Camus case, details that hadn’t been mentioned on the internet or in the press.
I was sitting in the most comfortable armchair in the drawing room, beside the unlit fire. My hands were still trembling as they tore open the envelope.
It contai
ned two pages.
Record of the statement of Frédéric Saint-Michel.
Exhibits MC-47, MC=48, MC-49, Mc-50.
Myrtille Camus case—Monday, August 30th, 2004
Ellen Nilsson had asked Commander Bastinet to let her take a statement from Frédéric Saint-Michel, the fiancé of Myrtille Camus. The commander had agreed to the criminal psychologist’s request. He had his hands full with stacks of files, Judge Paul-Hugo Lagarde’s demands, the guerrilla war orchestrated, via her lawyer, by Carmen Avril, who refused to believe that the police were doing everything in their power to find her daughter’s murderer. And to add to the pressure, Bastinet was living with the fear that another corpse might turn up.
During the morning’s impromptu debriefing by the coffee machine, Bastinet had noticed that his wrinkled features and the bags under his eyes contrasted with the psychologist’s smooth forehead and delicate cheekbones. “Five thousand euros!” Béranger, his deputy, had chuckled under his breath. The standard rate for a facelift.
Well out of Bastinet’s price range!
How had a girl so preoccupied with her appearance ended up in a profession that consisted in delving into other people’s private lives?
“Monsieur Saint-Michel?” the criminal psychologist asked, “is this a letter from Myrtille?”
“Yes. The last one I received from her. She sent it to me from the camp, a few days before she died.”
Frédéric Saint-Michel was standing beside Alina Masson. She confirmed his words with a nod. The combative energy of Myrtille Camus’s best friend contrasted with the brooding melancholy of Saint-Michel’s expression.
“You didn’t send each other texts?” Ellen pressed him.
“That too. But . . .”
Frédéric Saint-Michel found it difficult to talk about his fiancée. His fingers were gripping a cigarette pack in the depths of his pocket, and his eyes were pleading for permission to smoke in the station.
