Irene (12 page)

“It was a curious choice,” his father said thoughtfully. “But Camille always was a curious boy.”

Curious indeed: the young Camille confounded all expectations and succeeded against all odds. He clearly enjoys turning up where he is least expected. One imagines that the recruiting board must have needed some persuading to accept a candidate who is barely four foot eleven, requires a specially adapted vehicle, and must depend on those around him to accomplish many everyday tasks. But Camille, who knows what he wants, achieved first place in the entrance exam, and, as though this were not enough, he went on to be top of his class. It was the start of a glittering career. Already circumspect about his reputation, Camille Verhœven sought no preferential treatment; indeed he has volunteered for some of the most gruelling postings in the Paris suburbs, knowing that sooner or later they would lead him to the
brigade criminelle
.

It so happened that Commissaire Le Guen, a friend with whom he worked previously, wielded considerable influence within the
brigade
. And so, after only a few years working in suburban sink estates, where he is remembered as being affable if not particularly outstanding, our hero
found himself leading a team within the
brigade criminelle
where he finally showed what he is capable of. I say “hero”, because already the word was being bandied about. Who first suggested it? No-one knows. But it is true that Camille Verhœven proved himself equal to the depiction. He continued to be a diligent and conscientious officer and managed to solve a number of high-profile cases. He would say little, allowing his actions to speak for him.

If Camille Verhœven tends to keep the world at arm’s length, he is also content to think of himself as indispensable and enjoys cultivating an air of mystery. Both within the
brigade criminelle
and without, all that is known about him is what he is prepared to tell. Behind this façade of modesty is a shrewd man: he is only too happy to show his reticence and his discretion on national television.

Currently, he is leading the investigation into a bizarre and shocking crime which he has described as particularly “feral”. No further details are forthcoming. But the word – as short, powerful and effective as the hero himself – makes it clear that we are dealing not with routine misdemeanours but with heinous crimes. Commandant Verhœven, who understands the power of words, is a past master in the art of understatement and feigns surprise when the media time-bombs he leaves in his wake explode. A month from now our hero will become a father, but his child will not be his only gift to posterity: already he is what they call “a consummate professional”, the sort of man who, with infinite patience, fashions his own legend.

Camille folded the newspaper carefully. Le Guen was unsettled by his friend’s sudden calm.

“Just let them get on with it, Camille, do you hear me?”

And, since Camille said nothing: “You know this hack?”

“He ambushed me yesterday. I don’t know anything about the guy, but he seems to know a lot about me …”

“He certainly doesn’t seem to like you very much.”

“I don’t give a shit about that. What bothers me is the snowball effect – now every other reporter will jump on the bandwagon and—”

“And the
juge
wasn’t exactly ecstatic about the T.V. coverage last night … The case is barely underway and you’re already all over the media. I know it’s not your fault, but this article …”

Le Guen gingerly picked up the newspaper and held it at arm’s length, like a sacred icon. Or a lump of dog shit.

“A full page! With your photo and everything …”

Camille stared at Le Guen.

“There’s only one thing to be done, Camille, and you know it as well as I do – we have to solve this case, and fast. Very fast. The connection to the Tremblay case should help matters and—”

“Have you read it, the Tremblay case file?”

Le Guen scratched his cheek. “Yeah, I know, there’s not much to go on.”

“
Not much?
That’s a euphemism. We’ve got fuck all. And what little we do have only complicates things. We know we’re dealing with the same guy, if it is just one person, and that is far from certain. In Courbevoie, he rapes his victims every which way; in Tremblay, no signs of sexual assault – can you see the connection? In Courbevoie he dismembers the victims using a butcher’s knife and an electric drill, in the earlier case he takes the trouble to wash the intestines – or at least those he left behind. Please feel free to stop me when you see a connection. In Courbevoie …”

“O.K., O.K.… ” Le Guen sighed. “The connection between the cases may not be directly useful.”

“Not directly, no.”

“But that doesn’t mean that this theory of yours about some book …” Le Guen flipped the book over again, clearly unable to remember the title. “
The Black Dahlia
—”

“No doubt you’ve got a more persuasive theory,” Camille interrupted. “I’m all ears.” He fumbled in his inside jacket pocket. “I’ll take some notes if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t take the piss, Camille,” Le Guen said.

The two men were silent for a moment, Le Guen staring at the cover of the book, Camille staring at his friend’s furrowed brow.

Le Guen had many faults – this was something on which all his ex-wives agreed – but no-one could accuse him of being stupid. In fact, in his day he had been a talented and exceptionally intelligent officer, one who – following the Peter Principle – had been promoted into an administrative role until in due course he rose to the level of his incompetence. The two were old friends and it pained Camille to see him in a position in which his real talents
languished. For his part, Le Guen did his best not to mourn a past when he had been so obsessed with his work that it had cost him three marriages. Camille considered the weight his friend had piled on in recent years to be a form of self-defence. He believed Le Guen was arming himself against future marriages, content merely to manage those which lay behind him, and this meant watching his salary slip through the cracks of his life.

The rules by which their arguments were conducted were well established. Le Guen, faithful to his place in the pecking order, would stonewall relentlessly until he was eventually won over by Camille’s arguments. At that point, he would switch from pain in the arse to partner in crime. In either role, he was capable of anything.

This time he was hesitating. Which was not good news as far as Camille was concerned.

“Listen.” Le Guen looked Camille in the eye. “I don’t have a better theory. But that doesn’t mean your theory is right. So, you’ve found some book that describes a similar crime? So what? Men have been murdering women since the dawn of time and they’ve run through every possible scenario. They rape them, they rip them limb from limb, I defy you to find a guy who hasn’t at least thought about it. Even me, but let’s not go there … So it’s obvious that after a while you’re bound to find similarities between cases. And you don’t need to go ferreting about in your library, Camille, you’ve got the whole sad circus of humanity right in front of you.”

He looked at his friend sadly.

“It’s not enough, Camille. I’ll do everything I can to support you, but I’m warning you now that for Juge Deschamps it won’t be enough.”

“James Ellroy. Well, obviously it’s a little unexpected …”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“No, no,” Louis protested, “I agree, it is a little …”

“… unsettling? Yes, I know, that’s what Le Guen said. He even elaborated a brilliant theory about men killing women since the dawn of time, you get the picture. I don’t give a damn about that.”

Leaning in the doorway to the office, hands stuffed in his pockets, Maleval was sporting a wearier than usual version of his morning face, though it was not yet ten o’clock. Armand, scarcely visible against the coat rack, was staring thoughtfully at his shoes. Louis, sitting behind the desk since Camille had asked him to read the relevant passages, was wearing a lightweight green linen jacket, a pale cream shirt and a club tie.

Louis’ approach to reading was rather different from the
commissaire
’s. When Camille gestured to his chair, Louis settled himself comfortably and read fluently, his hand resting on the facing page. The pose reminded Camille of a painting, but he could not remember which.

“What made you think of
The Black Dahlia
?”

“Difficult to say.”

“So you think that the Tremblay murder was a homage to the book?”

“A
homage
? The words you come out with … He cuts the girl in two, he guts her, he washes both halves of the body, shampoos her hair and then dumps the corpse on a rubbish tip! If this is his idea of homage, I’d hate to see what happens when this guy starts writing his own parts.”

“No, what I meant was …” Louis blushed furiously. Camille looked at the other members of the team. Louis had begun reading in a calm voice gradually distorted by the nature of the text. By the final pages, his voice had dropped so low they had to strain to hear him. No-one seemed particularly voluble and Camille wondered if this was because of the text itself or because of his theory. An awkward silence lingered in the office.

Verhœven suddenly realised that the atmosphere might have less to do with his theory than with the fact that, like him, everyone on the team had read the article in
Le Matin
. Copies had probably already done the rounds of the
brigade
and the
police judiciaire
, infiltrated the office of Juge Deschamps and even the Ministry itself. Gossip spread of its own accord, like a cancerous cell. What were his team thinking? What had they inferred or deduced? Their silence was not a good sign. If they were sympathetic, they would have mentioned it. If they were indifferent, they would have forgotten it. Saying nothing meant they did not know what to think. That it had been a full-page profile, while certainly not flattering, was good publicity. Did they believe he had been aware of the piece, had actively contributed to it? There had been no mention of his team. Complimentary or otherwise, the article had talked only about Camille Verhœven, the man of the moment, and now here he was with his crackpot theories. The world around him seemed to have disappeared, and that disappearance was met with a silence that was neither
censorious nor indifferent. It was merely disappointed.

“It’s possible,” Maleval ventured cautiously.

“But what could it mean?” Armand said. “I mean, what does any of this have to do with what we found in Courbevoie?”

“I’ve no idea, Armand! We’ve got an eighteen-month-old murder case where every detail seems to come out of a book, that’s all I know.”

When this was greeted with a resounding silence, Camille added, “You’re right, it’s a stupid idea.”

“So,” Maleval said. “What do we do now?”

“We go and get a woman’s point of view.”

“I have to agree, it is curious …”

Bizarrely, on the phone Juge Deschamps’ voice did not have the sceptical tone Camille had been expecting. She said the words as though she were thinking aloud.

“If you’re right,” the
juge
went on, “the Courbevoie murder should also show up in Ellroy’s book, or in some other novel. It’s worth checking …”

“Not necessarily,” Camille said. “Ellroy’s book is inspired by a real murder case. A young woman called Betty Short was murdered in precisely this way in 1947 and the novel is a fictionalised account of a case that would have been notorious in America. He
dedicated the book to his mother, who was murdered in 1958 … There are a number of possibilities …”

“Yes, that does throw a different light on things.”

The
juge
took a moment to think.

“Listen,” she said at last, “there’s a risk that the
procureur
’s office won’t take this lead seriously. I agree that several details in the two cases tally, but I can hardly suggest a bunch of hard-nosed detectives read the collected works of James Ellroy and turn the
brigade criminelle
into a reading room …”

“No indeed,” Camille agreed, realising that he had had no illusions as to her response.

Juge Deschamps was fundamentally a good person. From her tone of voice Camille could tell she was disappointed not to be able to suggest something further.

“Look, if this theory is backed up later by other evidence, then we’ll see, but right now I’d be grateful if you could pursue … more traditional lines of inquiry, do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“You have to admit that these are … exceptional circumstances. If it were just you and me, we might use this theory as the possible basis for the investigation, but we’re no longer alone …”

“Here it comes,” Camille thought. His stomach was in knots. Not because he was scared, but because he was afraid of being hurt. Twice now he had been blindsided. First when the boys from
identité
had had the dumb idea of carrying out body bags right in front of a mob of journalists, and the second time by one of those journalists who had wormed his way into Camille’s private life at just the wrong moment. Camille didn’t much like being a victim, he didn’t much like denying blatant cock-ups when he made them, which meant right now he didn’t much like what was
happening, as though suddenly he’d been side-lined. No-one – not Le Guen, not the
juge
, not even his team – gave his theory any credence. But Camille felt strangely relieved at not having to follow up a lead which was so far beyond the scope of his usual procedure. No, what hurt were those things he could not talk about. The words from Buisson’s article for
Le Matin
still rang in his head. Someone had been poking their nose into his private life, someone who had talked to his wife, to his relatives, someone had mentioned Maud Verhœven, had talked about his childhood, his studies, his sketches, had told the world that he was about to be a father … This, he felt, was grossly unfair.

*

At around 11.30 a.m., Camille took a call from Louis.