Irene (29 page)

“O.K.… ” Le Guen murmured.

“‘She had eaten three to five hours before she died,’” Camille carried on reading, “‘… meat, potatoes, strawberries and milk …’ and earlier in the book: ‘It was a woman. They laid her on her back on a folded tarpaulin out on the breakwater. The deck man …’ No, forget that, here’s the bit I was looking for: ‘She was naked and had no jewellery on. The lines of her tan made it apparent that she had sunbathed in a bikini. Her hips were broad and she had heavy thighs.’”

Together, Louis and Maleval assembled all the information on the canal de l’Ourcq murder. The stumbling block in the investigation stemmed from an inability to identify the young victim. All records and databases had been scoured, no effort had been spared. Seeing the figure of Cob half hidden by his computer monitors at the far end of the room, Camille could not help but reflect on the paradox of a young girl disappearing without trace in a society that was now so comprehensively surveilled. Catalogues, lists, inventories, all the most significant details of our lives documented, every
telephone call, every movement, every payment traceable; only a very few lives, by a series of quirks and coincidences that are little short of miraculous, elude surveillance. A woman of twenty-five who presumably had parents, friends, lovers, employers, had disappeared without trace. A month could pass without a friend becoming concerned that she had not called, a year could go by without a boyfriend, once so in love with her, worrying that she had not come back from a trip. The parents who received no postcards, whose telephone calls went unanswered, had given the victim up for dead long before she actually died. Unless the victim had been a loner, an orphan, a tearaway on the run, so angry with the world that she had severed ties with everyone she knew. Perhaps, even before she died, she had given them up for dead.

Louis had written a summary of the cases on a flip-chart – though this was hardly necessary. In a few short days, each had developed with a rapidity that made it difficult for anyone to keep up.

“The team watching Lesage’s house in Villeréal haven’t come up with anything yet,” Louis said. “They’ve done a brief search of the grounds of the house, but they say it would take months to search it thoroughly.”

“Christine Lesage is back at home now, I dropped her off earlier,” Maleval said.

Things had to be particularly grim for Élisabeth not to nip outside for a quick cigarette. Fernand had briefly absented himself, tottering off with a dignified gait. When he vanished this late in the day, he generally wasn’t seen again until the following morning. Armand did not seem unduly irritated; he had managed to snaffle his colleague’s last pack of cigarettes and had enough to tide him over until he found a fresh victim.

Two teams – Mehdi with Maleval, Louis with Élisabeth – proceeded to cross-reference the information they had on Lesage with the details of the cases at hand. The first team pored over Lesage’s schedule, the second over his accounts. Armand, with some help from Cob – who was furiously multi-tasking to deal with queries from all three teams – reviewed the five cases in the light of information given to him by his colleagues. It would take several hours to complete this complex task, but it would be crucial to the success of the next day’s interrogations. The stronger the connections, the easier it would be for Camille to put pressure on Lesage, and perhaps even get him to confess.

“On the financial front,” Louis said, laying his hands flat on the desk and nodding to each file in turn, “there are a lot of withdrawals, but the dates don’t make a lot of sense. We’re trying to work out how much money would have been needed at each stage of the crimes. In the meantime, we’re making a list of suspicious withdrawals and deposits. This is complicated by the
fact that Lesage has a variety of revenue streams. There are stocks and shares sold or cashed – we have no way of knowing the capital gains involved – cash sales through the bookshop, acquisitions and sales through libraries, other antiquarian booksellers and at auctions. His expenditure is even more complicated. We may need to bring in an expert from the
brigade financière
.”

“I’ll call Le Guen and ask him to get in touch with Deschamps, in case we need to submit a request.”

Cob, meanwhile, had requested a third computer but, having no space on his desk, he was now forced to get up every five minutes to update the searches he was processing.

Maleval and Mehdi were both children of the digital age and rarely made their notes longhand. Camille found them huddled together at a monitor, mobiles glued to their ears so that they could make calls as soon as they found contact details for Lesage’s business associates.

“Some of the diaries go back a long way,” Maleval said while Mehdi was on hold to someone. “We’re having to ask people to check their old diaries and call us back. It’s a pretty lengthy process. Especially since—”

He was interrupted by Camille’s telephone ringing.

“I’ve just had the
divisionnaire
on the phone.” It was Juge Deschamps. “He’s told me about the murder on the canal de l’Ourcq—”

“Where the victim was never identified.” Camille finished the sentence for her. “I know, it complicates things.”

They talked for a few minutes about the best way forward.

“I’m not optimistic that our little tête-à-tête via the classified ads will go on much longer,” Camille said in conclusion. “Right now, our man is getting the publicity he’s always dreamed of. But
I’m guessing we won’t hear from him again after the next ad.”

“What makes you say that,
commandant
?”

“At first it was just a hunch. But now I’m sure of it. Unless I’m mistaken, we’ve now identified all the cold cases. He’s got nothing more to tell us. Besides, it’s become a routine. He’ll get bored, he’ll get suspicious. Any routine necessarily involves risk.”

“Well, right now we have a new case. What do we do next? The media are going to be baying for our blood tomorrow.”

“Well, mine, at any rate.”

“You’ve got the press snapping at your heels, I’ve got the
ministre de la Justice
. We all have our crosses.”

Juge Deschamps’ tone was very different from what it had been at the start of the case. Oddly, the more the investigation flagged, the more obliging she appeared to become. It was an ominous sign and Camille made a mental note to have a word with Le Guen before he went home.

“Where do things stand with this bookseller of yours?”

“His sister seems determined to give him an alibi for every day of the year. I’ve got the whole team preparing for tomorrow’s interviews.”

“Are you expecting to hold him for the full twenty-four hours?”

“I’m hoping I can get an extension.”

“Well, it’s been a long day, and it doesn’t look as if tomorrow will be any shorter.”

Camille glanced at his watch. Immediately he thought of Irène. He told the team to call it a night.

Le Matin
, early edition:

The Novelist keeps detectives guessing

The killer responsible for the double murder at Courbevoie on April 6 last is also suspected of having murdered Manuela Constanza, the young girl whose body was discovered hacked in two on a rubbish tip in Tremblay last November. When, some days ago, it was confirmed that in July of last year, he murdered Grace Hobson in Glasgow, in a homage to Laidlaw, a novel by the Scottish novelist William McIlvanney, the death toll of his “literary achievements” rose to four victims, all of them young, all of them “executed” in carefully staged scenes that are as gruesome as they are macabre.

Today, we can reveal the existence of two further cases.

The killing of a 23-year-old hairdresser stabbed more than twenty times is a meticulous reconstruction of a scene from
Le Crime d’Orcival
, a classic nineteenth-century detective novel by Émile Gaboriau.

The discovery of another young woman, in August 2000, who was strangled after being subjected to horrific sexual abuse is the recreation of a scene from
Roseanna
, a crime novel by Swedish authors Sjöwall and Wahlöö.

In total, five novels have served as a pretext for this monstrous killing spree. Six young women have been murdered, each of them in vicious and bewilderingly violent ways.

The police – clutching at straws as the body count rises – have been reduced to attempting to contact the killer through the classified advertisements of an obscure magazine. Their most recent advertisement: “What about your earlier works …?” demonstrates the ghoulish admiration the
brigade criminelle
seem to have for this butcher.

In recent developments, Jérôme Lesage, a Parisian bookseller, has been held for questioning and is now the prime suspect in the case. His sister Christine Lesage, interviewed yesterday by the
brigade criminelle
, and devastated by her brother’s arrest, angrily commented: “Jérôme was the person who put the police on the right track when they were at a loss, and this is how they repaid him! Given that they do not have a scrap of evidence against my brother, our lawyer has demanded that he be released immediately.”

It would seem that the police have no hard evidence
to implicate this convenient suspect; furthermore, their grounds for arrest amount to a series of trivial coincidences which any one of us might have experienced.

How many other murders have gone unnoticed? How many more innocent young women will be murdered, tortured, raped or brutally executed before the police manage to arrest the killer?

These are the questions we cannot help but ask.

Despite his smug self-assurance, Jérôme Lesage clearly had not slept a wink. His face paler, his posture more stooped, he sat down with a stiff formality and stared at the table, hands tightly clasped to hide a faint tremor.

Camille took his seat opposite him, laid a file on the table and next to it a sheet of paper on which he had scribbled some indecipherable notes.

“We’ve taken a closer look at the entries in your desk diary for the past few months, Monsieur Lesage.”

“I want a lawyer.” Lesage’s solemn, peremptory tone could not quite disguise the anxious quaver in his voice.

“Not just yet, as I have already told you.”

Lesage glared at him as though steeling himself for a challenge.

“If you could simply explain these matters for us,” Camille said
slapping the file with the flat of his hand, “we can let you go home.”

He slipped on his glasses.

‘First, your schedule. Let’s just have a look at the last few months, if you don’t mind. Let’s pick a month at random – December 4, you had a meeting with a Monsieur Pelessier, who also runs a bookshop. Monsieur Pelessier was not in Paris on the date in question, so he did not meet with you. On December 17, 18 and 19 you were supposedly at an auction in Mâcon. No-one remembers seeing you there, indeed you did not register for the sale. In January, on the 11th, you’ve noted a meeting with Madame Bertleman, who had asked for a valuation. She did not meet with you until the 16th. January 24, you apparently went to the Cologne Antiquarian Book Fair for four days. There is no evidence you set foot in the city. On the—”

“Please …”

“I’m sorry?”

Lesage was staring at his hands. Camille, trying to remain detached, had his nosed buried in his notes. When he looked up, Jérôme Lesage was a very different man. The smug façade had been replaced by a terrible weariness.

“It’s my sister,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

“What about her? You pretend to go away on business to keep your sister happy, is that it?”

Lesage merely nodded.

“Why?”

Lesage did not reply and Camille drew out the awkward silence for a long moment before stepping into the breach.

“Your … absences are frequent but erratic. What is incriminating is that so many of them correspond with the dates on which young women were murdered. So you can hardly blame us for being curious.”

Camille gave Lesage a moment to think.

“Especially since these dates also coincide with substantial withdrawals from your bank accounts,” Camille began again. “Let’s see … in February and March of last year, you sold shares from a portfolio your sister had authorised you to administer. In fact, it’s rather difficult to keep track of your activity in the stock market. But at least €4,500 worth of shares were sold. Might I ask what you did with the money?”

“That’s a private matter,” Lesage snapped, suddenly looking up.

“It ceased to be private from the moment we realised that you were making sizeable withdrawals during periods when someone was planning a series of murders which required substantial sums.”

“It wasn’t me!” Lesage roared, thumping his fist on the table.

“Then kindly explain your movements and the substantial withdrawals from your various accounts.”

“The burden of proof rests with you, not with me.”

“Let’s ask the investigating magistrate about that and see what she says …”

“I don’t want my sister to f—”

“Yes?”

Lesage seemed very suddenly to be exhausted, beaten.

“You don’t want her to find out that you haven’t been working as hard as you claimed, that you’ve been squandering her money, is that it?”

“Just leave her out of this. She’s very fragile. Leave her in peace.”

“What is it that you don’t want her to find out?”

Faced with Lesage’s obstinate silence, Camille heaved a long sigh.