Irene (28 page)

“Sometimes I need a breath of fresh air.”

“You seem to get rather a lot of fresh air. Do you visit prostitutes?”

“Sometimes. No more than you, I expect.”

*

“Then there are the discrepancies in his finances.”

“Significant sums?”

“Cob is going through the books now. There are tens of thousands of euros involved. Almost all cash payments. Five hundred here, two thousand there. It all adds up.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Five years at least. We don’t have authorisation to go back further than that.”

“And the sister didn’t notice?’

“Looks that way.”

*

“We’re going over your accounts. I think your sister is in for a surprise …”

“You leave my sister out of this!”

Lesage looks at Camille as though for the first time he has let slip a detail that might be considered personal.

“She’s not a well woman.”

“She seemed hale and hearty to me.”

“She’s suffered from depression ever since her husband died. That’s why I brought her to live with me. It’s quite a burden, believe me.”

“One for which you reward yourself handsomely, from what I’ve seen.”

“That’s between her and me – it doesn’t concern you.”

“Can you think of anything that doesn’t concern the police, Monsieur Lesage?”

*

“So, where have we got to?”

“Well, the thing is, Jean, we’ve got a bit of a problem …”

*

“We’ll come back to that, Monsieur Lesage. We have all the time in the world.”

“I have no intention of staying here.”

“That will not be your decision to make.”

“I want to see a lawyer.”

“Of course, Monsieur Lesage. Do you think you need one?”

“I think anyone dealing with people like you would need a lawyer.”

“Just one question. We sent you a list of unsolved murders. I was most intrigued by your reaction.”

“What reaction?”

“Precisely. You did not react.”

“I had already told you I had no intention of going on helping you. So how do you think I should have reacted?”

“I don’t know. You might have spotted the similarities between one of those cases and
The End of the Night
by John D. MacDonald, for example. But perhaps you’re not familiar with the book.”

“I’m perfectly familiar with it, Commandant Verhœven.” The bookseller suddenly loses his temper. “And I can tell you right now that the case you’re referring to does not relate to
The End of the Night
. There are too many discrepancies. I checked it against the book.”

“So you
did
check? Well, well. It’s a pity you didn’t think it pertinent to pass on that conclusion to me.”

“I have already given you help. Twice. And look where it got me. So from now on—”

“You gave the same ‘help’ to the media. Twice. For good measure, I suppose.”

“I’ve already explained that. My comments to the journalist do
not constitute a statutory offence. I demand that you release me immediately.”

“Even more surprisingly for a man of your erudition,” Camille carries on as though he has not heard, “among the eight cases, you did not recognise a classic like Gaboriau’s
Le Crime d’Orcival
!”

“You clearly take me for an imbecile,
commandant
.”

“On the contrary, Monsieur Lesage.”

“Who said I didn’t recognise it?”

“You did, in so far as you failed to mention it.”

“I recognised it immediately. Anyone would have – anyone except you, obviously. There’s a great deal I could have told you.”

*

“A problem? Don’t you think we’ve got enough problems as it is, Camille?”

“I was thinking the same, Jean, they just keep coming.”

“So what’s the problem this time?”

*

“What, precisely, could you have told us, Monsieur Lesage?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“That only makes you look all the more suspect, and you’re already on rather shaky ground.”

*

“I talked to him again about our list of unsolved murders. At that point, he clammed up. But you know how it is, we all have our pride.”

*

“What exactly is it that you would rather not say?”

“No comment.”

“Oh, come on,” Camille goads him. “You’re dying to tell us.”

Lesage glowers at him with unconcealed contempt.

“One of your cases … the girl whose body was found in the dredger.”

“Yes?”

“Before she was murdered, had she been wearing a swimsuit?”

“I believe so, judging by the tan lines on her body. What are you trying to tell me, Monsieur Lesage?”

“I think … I think it’s
Roseanna
.”

Periphériques, autoroutes, boulevards, canals, so many tragedies and crimes, so many accidents and fatalities occur on busy thoroughfares. To the naked eye, things are constantly moving, never stopping; but anything thrown here disappears without trace, as though sucked down by the waters of a river. The list of curious objects that do turn up is endless: shoes, aerosols, clothes, money, pens, cardboard boxes, dog bowls and petrol cans.

Even corpses.

25 August, 2000. The Department of Public Works dispatches a bucket dredger to clear silt and debris from the canal de l’Ourcq, scooping foul-smelling mud into a barge.

A crowd soon forms – fishermen, pensioners, neighbours and passers-by – on the Pont Blériot, the bridge above the lock.

At 10.30 a.m. the engine roars and splutters, belching exhaust fumes as black as soot. The collection barge floats like a dead fish
in the middle of the canal. A few minutes later the crane is in position beside the barge. The gaping maw of the scoop is trained on the bridge where a dozen people are watching the operation. Standing next to the crane, Lucien Blanchard, the foreman, gives the signal to the operator who flips the lever. There is a dull, metallic rasp. The huge bucket lurches violently. Still facing the bridge, it inches towards the water.

The bucket has been lowered barely a metre when Blanchard suddenly notices a commotion among the people on the bridge. They are babbling to each other, pointing to the bucket. Three or four people shout something to him, flailing their arms. As the bucket hits the water, the people shout more loudly and Blanchard realises that something is wrong. Without quite knowing why, he yells to the operator to stop. Half submerged, the bucket comes to a halt. Blanchard stares at the bridge, trying to work out what the people are shouting. One of the men at the front mimes pulling on a rope and Blanchard assumes they are telling him to raise the bucket. Irritably, he tosses away his cigarette. He is a foreman, not used to being interrupted in his work. He is uncertain what to do. Now everyone on the bridge is imitating the first man, pumping their hands and yelling, so finally he gives the order. The bucket emerges from the water, sways for a moment, then hangs, motionless. Blanchard steps forward, gestures to the crane operator to bring the bucket closer so he can see what is going on. As soon as he sees what is inside, Blanchard realises the magnitude of the problem. In the bucket, half buried in black sludge, is the naked body of a girl.

Early statements described the woman as being between twenty-five and thirty. Camille spread out a dozen large photographs on his desk. Even in life, it was clear she had not been
particularly beautiful. Her hips were broad, her breasts small, her thighs flabby. She looked like a rough draft, as though Nature had put her together without really paying attention, combining elements of large and small: a broad backside and the dainty feet of a Japanese girl. The woman must have been using a sunbed: analysis of the epidermis indicated her colouring was unlikely to have come from natural sunlight. Distinct tan lines indicated that she had been wearing a bikini. There were no obvious signs of violence to the body apart from a red scratch extending from the waist to the hipbone. Traces of cement indicated that the body might at one point have been laid on a concrete surface. Her face had been softened by time spent in muddy water. She had thick, dark eyebrows, a wide mouth and shoulder-length brown hair.

Led by Lieutenant Marette, the investigation determined that the woman died of strangulation after being subjected to depraved sexual abuse. Although the killer had been savage, the body had not been mutilated or dismembered. The victim had been raped and sodomised and then strangled.

Camille was making slow progress through the case file. From time to time he looked up, as though trying to commit the information to memory before moving on, as though hoping it might trigger some insight. Nothing came. The case file was crushingly sad. It told him nothing, or almost nothing.

The autopsy report did little to enhance his mental picture of the victim. She was about twenty-five, five foot six, weighed 58 kilos and had no distinguishing marks or scars. The tan lines left by the U.V. lamp indicated that she had worn sunglasses and sandals as well as a bikini. She was not a smoker, and had never borne a child or had a miscarriage. Though neat and well-groomed, it was evident that she did not worry unduly about her appearance.

*

There was no indication that she had been wearing jewellery that might have been taken by the killer, and she was not wearing nail polish or any other form of make-up. She had eaten about six hours before her death. Her last meal included beef, potatoes and strawberries, and she had drunk a considerable amount of milk.

The body had been half buried in the silt for some twelve hours before being discovered. There were two points which intrigued the investigating officers, two unusual details for which the report offered no conclusions beyond what was self-evident.

The first was that the body had been discovered, partially covered in mud, lying in the bucket of the dredger. The presence of mud in the bucket was surprising since the body had been placed there before dredging began. The bucket had been lowered into the canal, but it had not gone deep enough to account for the mud. The only possible conclusion – however implausible – was that the killer had dumped the mud into the bucket after putting the body there. What motive could a killer have had for doing such a thing? Lieutenant Marette offered no answer, he simply drew attention to the anomaly.

On closer consideration, the entire crime scene seemed curious. Camille tried to picture it in his mind, considered every possible solution and concluded that the murderer would have been faced with a bizarre problem. After hoisting the body into the bucket of the crane (which, according to the report, was suspended about five feet above the ground), he would have had to scoop mud from the canal (samples of the mud conclusively proved its provenance), and then tipped it over the body. The quantity of mud involved would have required the killer to make several trips, assuming he was using a household bucket or something of the kind. The investigating officers at the time were
undecided as to what this ritual might mean.

Camille felt a strange tingling down his spine. This detail was unsettling. He could see no logical reason why the killer would have done what he did – unless he were recreating a scene from a book.

The second peculiar detail was something Louis had highlighted in his summary report: an unusual mark on the body of the victim. At first glance, it looked like the sort of birthmark one might find on any body. Indeed initial reports had described it as such. The investigation had been done in haste. Photographs had been taken at the scene, the usual overview and close-up shots, the usual measurements. The body had only been properly examined after it arrived at the mortuary. According to the autopsy report, the “birthmark” was in fact a fake. About five centimetres in diameter, with a brownish pigmentation, it had been applied using a paintbrush and common acrylic paint. The shape was vaguely animal. Various detectives – according to the dictates of their subconscious – had favoured a pig, or perhaps a dog. One of the team well-versed in zoology – an officer named Vaquier – had gone so far as to imagine a warthog. The “birthmark” had been painted over with a clear, matt varnish containing a siccative of the kind used for finishing paintings. Camille considered this detail carefully. It was a technique he himself had used when working with acrylics. Later he had given them up in favour of oils, but he still remembered the varnish he used, the heady solvent fumes, at once pleasant and sickly, which could provoke crippling, crushing headaches if used – as it said on the label – over prolonged periods. To Camille, this could mean only one thing. The murderer had wanted to ensure that the “birthmark” was not washed away while the body was submerged in the mud and water.

At the time, a search on the missing persons database had produced no result. The victim’s description had been widely circulated, but nothing had been forthcoming. The victim had never been positively identified. The police investigation, despite meticulous work by Lieutenant Marette, had also led nowhere. Both paint and varnish were commonly available and so did not constitute a lead. As for the mud in the bucket, it remained unexplained. The case had eventually been closed for lack of evidence.

“For God’s sake, how exactly are you supposed to pronounce them?” Le Guen said, staring at the names Sjöwall and Wahlöö.

Camille did not reply, he simply opened the copy of
Roseanna
and read aloud:

“Page 14: ‘Death by strangulation,’ thought Martin Beck. He sat and thumbed through a bunch of photographs which Ahlberg had dug out of a basket on his desk. The pictures showed the locks, the dredger, its bucket in the foreground, the body lying on the embankment, and in the mortuary … he saw her before him as she looked in the picture, naked and abandoned, with narrow shoulders and her dark hair in a coil across her throat … She was … 5 feet, 6½ inches tall, had grey-blue eyes and dark brown hair. Her teeth were good and she had no scars from operations or
other marks on her body with the exception of a birthmark, high up on the inside of her left thigh about an inch and a half from her groin. It was brown and about as large as a 10-øre coin, but uneven and looked like a little pig …’”