Irene (15 page)

“But then, maybe the cases we deal with are not as elegantly plotted as fiction …”

“Maybe not,” Camille thought.

“I don’t think the
juge
is going to like it, Camille.”

Courbevoie–Tremblay

Juge Deschamps, investigating magistrate in the double murder committed in Courbevoie, has revealed that a fake fingerprint found at the crime scene links the killing to the murder of Manuela Constanza, a 24-year-old prostitute whose mutilated body, hacked in two, was discovered on a rubbish dump. It would appear that Commandant Verhœven, the officer in charge of the case, is dealing with a serial killer. However, this new information, which should theoretically have made solving the cases easier, seems to have made it more complex. The first surprise is the killer’s
modus operandi
. Usually, serial killers dispatch their victims in the same way, but the details of the two cases show no similarity. In fact, the manner in which the women have
been killed is so dissimilar that one cannot but wonder whether the fake fingerprint found in Courbevoie is a red herring.

Unless there is some other explanation, one in which the disparities between the killings are precisely what connects them. That at least seems to be the theory of Commandant Verhœven, who has suggested a startling link between the Tremblay murder and an American crime novel by James Ellroy. In the novel …

Camille threw the paper down.

“Fucking hell!”

He reopened it and turned to the last paragraph of the article.

It is probably safe to assume that, despite these unsettling similarities, Verhœven’s somewhat cerebral theory is unlikely to find favour with famously pragmatic Juge Deschamps. Right now, and in the absence of hard evidence, Commandant Verhœven should perhaps be focusing on leads that are less fictitious.

“The guy’s an arsehole.”

“Maybe, but he’s a well-informed arsehole.”

Le Guen, lolling in his vast armchair like a beached sperm whale, stared hard at Camille.

“What do you think?”

“I’m not sure. But I don’t like it.”

“Deschamps isn’t exactly thrilled either,” Le Guen said. “She called first thing this morning.”

Camille shot his friend a questioning look.

“She’s reasonably calm. She’s seen it all before. She knows it’s not your fault. But you know how it is, shit like this will get to everyone eventually.”

Camille knew only too well. Before coming to see Le Guen, he had gone to his office. Half a dozen newspapers, several radio stations and three T.V. channels had already requested confirmation of the details published in
Le Matin
. While waiting for his boss to arrive, Louis – in a smart grey suit, matching shirt and pale yellow socks – had been forced to play receptionist, fielding inquiries with a very British stiff upper lip and pushing his hair back – left hand – every twenty seconds.

“Get in here!” Camille said in a low growl.

Ten seconds later, Maleval and Armand trotted into his office. Sticking out of Maleval’s jacket pocket was a copy of
Paris-Turf
, odds already scrawled in the margins in green biro. Armand was clutching a carefully folded sheet of paper and an IKEA pencil. Camille did not look up. The atmosphere was explosive.

Camille opened the newspaper at page four. “We are dealing with a reporter who seems to be
very
well informed,” he snarled. “This is going to make our work a little more complicated.”

Maleval had not yet read the article. But Camille was pretty sure Armand would have seen it. He knew Armand’s routine: he
left home every morning with half an hour to spare, then sat on the station platform keeping an eye on three wastepaper bins. Every time a passenger threw away a newspaper, Armand would get up, check which paper it was, then sit down again. Armand was very particular about his reading matter: he only read
Le Matin
. For the crossword.

Maleval gave a low whistle as he tossed the paper onto the desk.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Camille said. “Now, I know there are a lot of people working on this case: the forensics team, the lab technicians, the
juge
’s assistants … the leak could have come from anywhere. But I need you all to be extra careful. Am I making myself clear?”

He immediately regretted the question which hung in the air like an accusation.

“All I’m asking is that you do what I do: Keep your mouths shut.”

The team mumbled their agreement.

“No news on Lambert?” Camille asked in what he hoped was a conciliatory tone.

“We haven’t got very far,” Louis said. “We’ve been asking around, but discreetly so as not to alert his friends. We’ve managed to confirm that he left town, but so far we have no idea where he might have been heading.”

Camille thought for a moment.

“If we don’t turn up something in the next couple of days, we’ll round up his known associates, see if we can’t get to the bottom of this. Maleval, I need you to draw up a list in case we need it.”

Camille glanced at the pile of Ellroy novels and heaved a sigh. On his desk blotter, in a blank space between the countless sketches he made – because drawing helped him to think – he wrote:
Tremblay – Black Dahlia – Ellroy
.

As he tried to concentrate on what he had just written, his eyes fell on another book, one he had bought from the Librairie de Paris and promptly forgotten:
Themes and Tropes in Crime Fiction
. He turned it over and read the back cover:

“It’s excellent,” the bookseller had said when he noticed Camille
leafing through the book. “Ballanger is a real connoisseur, an expert. It’s a pity he never wrote anything else.”

Camille stared out of the window for a long minute. What did he have to lose? He glanced at his watch and picked up his telephone.

From the outside, the university looked a little like a hospital where no-one would want to be treated. From floor to floor the signage gradually petered out and the Department of Modern Literature was apparently lost in a labyrinth of corridors plastered with lecture schedules and posters soliciting support for various marginalised communities.

Luckily, information on “The Detective Novel: Noir Fiction”, the course offered by Fabien Ballanger, occupied a niche at the bottom of the noticeboard, the perfect height for Camille.

He spent half an hour looking for the room where the class was taught to some thirty students he chose not to disturb, and a further half-hour finding the vast student canteen, ripe with the smell of weed. He returned to the lecture room in time to take his place in the line of students queuing to talk to a tall, thin man who answered them laconically while constantly rummaging in a black briefcase stuffed with papers. A few students were chatting in small groups, talking so loudly that Camille had to raise his voice to be heard.

“Commandant Verhœven. I phoned earlier …”

Ballanger glanced down at Camille and stopped rummaging in his briefcase. He was wearing a baggy grey cardigan. Even when he was still, he seemed harried and anxious, the kind of man who is constantly engrossed in his own thoughts. He frowned to indicate that he remembered no such call.

“Commandant Verhœven. Of the
brigade criminelle
?”

Ballanger glanced around the room as though looking for someone.

“I don’t have much time,” he mumbled.

“I’m investigating the deaths of three young women, all of whom were dismembered, so I’m a little pushed for time myself.”

Ballanger looked at him again.

“I don’t see what I can possibly—”

“If you could give me a few minutes of your time,” Camille interrupted, “I’ll explain.”

Ballanger pushed up the sleeves of his cardigan the way someone else might adjust their glasses. At length he smiled begrudgingly; it was a facial expression that clearly did not seem to come easy to him.

“Very well. Give me ten minutes.”

Ballanger re-emerged only three minutes later to find Camille still waiting in the corridor.

“I can spare a quarter of an hour,” he said, shaking Camille’s hand as though they had only just met. He strode down the hall and Camille had to jog to keep up. Ballanger stopped at his office door, extracted a bunch of keys from his pocket and methodically opened the three locks.

“We’ve had our computers stolen,” he said. “Twice last year.” He ushered Camille inside. Three desks, computer monitors,
a few bookshelves and a deathlike hush. Ballanger gestured to a chair, then took a seat facing Camille and studied him in silence.

“A few days ago, the bodies of two young women were discovered in an apartment in Courbevoie. We have very little to go on. We know that the victims were tortured, sexually abused and dismembered …”

“Yes, I heard something about the case,” Ballanger said.

His chair pushed away from his desk, his elbows resting on his splayed knees, Ballanger’s gaze was solicitous, supportive, as though he were trying to encourage Camille to make some particularly painful confession.

“We’ve linked the crime to an earlier case. The murder of a young woman whose body was found on a rubbish tip, sliced in two at the waist. Does that ring any bells?”

Ballanger suddenly sat bolt upright, the colour draining from his face.

“Should it?” he blustered.

“No, don’t worry,” said Camille, “I’m here to talk to you as a
professeur
, not as a suspect.”

Human relationships can be like train tracks: when they diverge, it takes a switch point before the two can once again run parallel. Ballanger felt threatened; Camille offered a change of course.

“You may have heard something about the murder. November 2001, in Tremblay-en-France.”

“I rarely read newspapers,” Ballanger said.

Camille could feel the man’s tension.

“I don’t see what I could possibly have to do with two—”

“Nothing at all, Professeur Ballanger, don’t worry. I came to see you because I believe the two crimes could be connected –
though this is only a theory, you understand – with crimes from detective novels.”

“How, exactly?”

“We don’t know
exactly
. The Tremblay murder is eerily similar to one described by James Ellroy in
The Black Dahlia
.”

“That’s original!”

Camille could not tell whether Ballanger’s reaction was one of relief or astonishment.

“You’re familiar with the novel?”

“Of course. But what makes you think that—”

“I cannot go into detail about the investigation. Our theory is that the two crimes are linked. Since the first murder seems to have been directly inspired by Ellroy’s book, we were wondering whether the others …”

“… might have been drawn from some other book by Ellroy!”

“No – we’ve checked, and that doesn’t seem to be the case. I think the crimes might have been taken from some other novel. Not necessarily anything by Ellroy.”

Ballanger’s elbows once more rested on his knees. He cradled his chin in his hands and stared at the floor.

“And you’re asking me …”

“To be blunt, Professeur Ballanger, I’m not much of a fan of crime fiction. My knowledge of the genre is … well, rudimentary. I’m looking for someone who might be able to help me, and I thought of you.”

“Why me?”

“Your book on noir fiction.”

“Oh, that,” said Ballanger. “It’s something I wrote ages ago. It really needs updating. The genre has evolved considerably since then.”

“So, can you help us?”

Ballanger scratched his chin. He had the embarrassed air of a doctor bearing bad news.

“I don’t know whether you’ve been to university, Monsieur …”

“Verhœven. Yes, I did my law degree at the Sorbonne. Though that was a while ago.”

“Oh, I’m sure nothing has changed much. These days, we’re all specialists.”

“Which is precisely why I’m here.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant … I did my dissertation on crime fiction. It’s a vast field. I focused my research exclusively on novels published in Gallimard’s
Série Noire
. I limited the scope of my analysis to the first thousand titles. These I do know intimately, but they are only a thousand in a genre that encompasses untold numbers of titles. My study of the hermeneutics of the detective novel unavoidably led to some forays beyond the limits of my subject matter. Ellroy, for example, was not published in the
Série Noire
; he is not – or at least not yet – considered part of the core canon of noir fiction. I know the man’s work, I’ve read his books, but I could hardly claim to be an expert.”

Camille was beginning to get irritated. Ballanger seemed to be talking like a book just to say that he had not read enough of them.

“Your point being?”

Ballanger shot him a look of exasperation mixed with astonishment, a look he clearly reserved for his most recalcitrant students.

“My point is that if the cases you mention fall within the ambit of my corpus, then perhaps I can help you. Though, as I said, it is but a fraction of the canon.”

Camille fumbled in his pocket, extracted two folded sheets of paper and handed them to Ballanger.

“Here’s a brief description of the case I mentioned earlier. If you could just take a look. You never know.”

Ballanger unfolded the sheets, decided to postpone his reading until later and tucked them into his pocket.