Irene (30 page)

“O.K., let’s start again.” Camille peered at him over the rims of his glasses. “On the date Grace Hobson was murdered in Glasgow
you have no alibi, having last been seen in Edinburgh. Edinburgh to Glasgow is a short hop. So at the very time that Grace—”

Louis had entered the interrogation room so soundlessly that Camille did not notice him until he leaned down and whispered:

“Could you step outside for a minute? You have a call. It’s urgent.”

Camille got slowly to his feet, staring at Lesage’s bowed head.

“Monsieur Lesage, either you can provide a convincing account of your movements – and I’d suggest you do so as soon as possible – or you cannot, in which case I have some rather personal questions to put to you.”

Irène had taken a tumble on the rue des Martyres. She had misjudged the kerb. Passers-by rushed to help. Irène told them she was fine as she lay on the pavement, clutching her belly with both hands, trying to catch her breath. The owner of a delicatessen called the ambulance and, some minutes later, the S.A.M.U. arrived to find her sitting, legs splayed, in the shop where the owner’s wife was regaling anyone who would listen with details of the accident. Irène had no memory of what had happened; she felt only a nagging anxiety and a dull ache spread gradually through her body.

“Would you ever shut your trap, Yvonne,” the deli owner pleaded. “We know what happened.”

He had offered Irène some orange juice, and she cupped the glass in her hands like a sacred relic, without taking a sip.

The paramedics laid her on a stretcher and, with some difficulty, managed to clear a path to the ambulance.

*

Camille, out of breath from racing up the stairs, found her in bed on the second floor of the Clinique Montambert.

“Are you alright?”

“I fell,” Irène said simply, as though her mind could not quite absorb this obvious yet unbelievable fact.

“Are you hurt? What did the doctors say?”

“I fell.”

Staring up at him, Irène began to cry quietly. Camille took her in his arms. He would have cried himself were it not for the fact that in that moment her face looked just as it had in his dream when she said, “Can’t you see he’s hurting me?”

“Are you hurt?” Camille said again. “Are you in any pain?”

But Irène kept crying, holding her stomach.

“They gave me an injection.”

“She needs to rest, she’s still in shock.”

Camille turned. The doctor looked like a first-year medical student. He had small round glasses, hair a little too long and the lopsided smile of an overgrown teenager. He came to Irène’s bed and took her hand.

“You’ll be fine, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Irène said through her tears. “Yes, I’ll be fine.”

“You had a little fall, that’s all. And it gave you a scare.”

Camille, relegated to the end of the bed, felt excluded. He choked back the question on the tip of his tongue and was relieved when the doctor continued.

“The baby didn’t care much for all that commotion. He’s a little uncomfortable right now, and I think he might be in a hurry to find out what it was all about.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it. I think he might be in a great hurry. We’ll know more in a couple of hours.” The doctor smiled. “I hope you’ve got his room ready.”

Irène looked up anxiously.

“Will he be alright?”

“Three weeks premature is nothing to worry about.”

*

Louis called Élisabeth and asked her to come to Camille’s apartment. They arrived together, as though synchronised.

“So?” Élisabeth smiled. “You’ll be a father soon?”

Camille had not quite managed to collect himself. He hurried between the bedroom and the living room, trying frantically to gather some things for Irène, only to promptly mislay them.

Élisabeth, who was calmer and more organised, swiftly located the little suitcase Irène had packed some days before, which contained everything she would need for a stay in hospital. Camille was astonished, though Irène must have mentioned the suitcase; she had probably even shown him where it was, just in case.

“There we go, I think that’s everything.”

Slumped on the sofa, Camille let out a long breath then looked up gratefully at Élisabeth and smiled awkwardly.

“Thanks, that’s really sweet,” he said. “I’ll take it to her.”

“Maybe Élisabeth could do it?” Louis suggested. He had just come back from fetching the post.

All three of them stared at the envelope he was holding.

Dear Camille,

So nice, as always, to see your advertisement.

“Your earlier works …?” you ask. I expected rather more subtlety on your part. Even so, I can’t bring myself to hold it against you: you are flailing and floundering in a labyrinth of my devising – one from which you will be freed when and as I decide – you are flailing, as I said, but I know that you are doing your best. Indeed, I would go further, Camille, no-one could do better.

Even so, I have to say that your recent advertisement was a little presumptuous. How naive! At the risk of stating the obvious, I shall write to you only about the cases you have identified so as not to spoil my surprises. Otherwise, where would be the fun? And I can tell you I have many more surprises in store.

So, Glasgow. You have not asked me about Glasgow, but I can tell that you are
dying
to know. The process was simple. McIlvanney’s magnificent novel gives most of the details of the case, whose sophistication you will have noted. He mentions that the book was inspired by a real-life murder. I adore those loops which perfectly fuse literature and life.

I noticed Grace Hobson in the doorway of the nightclub as I parked my rental car. I chose her without a second thought. That
childlike face, those slender hips obviously destined to thicken by her thirties, she was a living embodiment of that troubling and wistful city. It was already late, the street long since deserted when I saw her step out onto the pavement, nervous and hesitant. I had not expected such a stroke of good fortune. I had planned to follow her, to track her movements, learn her habits and later abduct her. I had not planned to stay long in Glasgow, but still I did not expect her to offer herself to me so freely. I got out of my car, map of Glasgow in hand, and asked her for directions I did not need in an English I hoped was gauche and charming. I smiled awkwardly. We were outside the nightclub and I did not wish to stand there for very long. And so, as I listened to her explanation, frowning as though trying to decipher her fluent, rapid English, I steered her towards the car. We laid the map on the bonnet. I told her I needed to get a pen from the glove compartment. I left the car door open. Then, pulling her roughly towards me, I pressed to her face a rag I had liberally soaked in chloroform and, a moment later, we were on our way. I drove cautiously through the empty streets while she slept peacefully, trustingly. I did something I had not planned to do. I raped her there in the back of the car. She woke with a start as I entered her, just as described in the novel. I was obliged to put her back to sleep. I strangled her then, while still inside her. Together we were united in sensual pleasure and in death, which, as you know, are one and the same.

I had to return to my hotel to fetch the tools I needed. I remembered to take her panties.

Your Scottish colleagues have undoubtedly shown you the photographs of the little scene I staged in Kelvingrove Park. Without wishing to boast, I would like to hope that William McIlvanney, who lives in Glasgow, felt a satisfaction equal to my admiration for his work.

Laidlaw
was the first work I decided to sign. I did so because I was weary of police officers who appeared utterly incapable of recognising my artistry. I realised I had to put someone on the right track, that I had to leave a sign which would connect my homage to
Laidlaw
with my future works. I considered a number of distinct approaches. Leaving a false fingerprint on the body struck me as the most satisfying solution. Actually, though I was concerned I might not be equal to the task, I was already deliberating a tribute to Ellroy’s novel in which a fingerprint is brazenly applied to the body. In leaving this distinctive mark, this signature, I nurtured the hope that, if not the police (who, aside from your good self, Camille, are brutish dolts if truth be told), the aesthetes, the true aficionados, might discover my art and come to appreciate its true value. Besides, the fingerprint left on Grace Hobson’s toe did not in any way despoil the magnificent tableau I succeeded in creating in Kelvingrove Park. Everything was in its rightful place. It was, I like to believe, as perfect as it could have been.

I know that by now you have also discovered the wonderful novel by our Swedish friends. Reading
Roseanna
was a revelation, you know? Thereafter, I forced myself to read other works by these twain. Alas, none afforded me the truly vertiginous pleasure of that first volume.

What is so magical about the book? Therein lies another mystery. There is a stillness to it akin to the still waters of the canal de l’Ourcq; very little happens. It is an extended game of patience. The detective, Martin Beck, at once sullen and appealing, is utterly unlike the miserable detectives of so many American authors and the dreary, pedantic investigators of too many French writers.

Obviously, transposing
Roseanna
to a French setting, as I did, was a daunting challenge. The scene had to be rendered in a manner that
was convincing, so that the finished work would be imbued with the atmosphere of the original. To achieve this, I used all the means at my disposal.

You can well imagine my joy, Camille, indeed my jubilation, on the morning of August 25 when, standing amid the crowd of onlookers on the bridge above the lock, I watched the bucket of the crane swing towards us like a theatre curtain rising, heard the man leaning on the railing next to me shout “Look, there’s a woman’s body in there!” The news trickled through the little crowd like a flame along a powder trail. Imagine my delight!

My young recruit … I am sure you will have noticed that she was a perfect likeness for Roseanna: the same heavy, graceless body, the same delicate limbs.

Sjöwall and Wahlöö are maddeningly elusive on the precise cause of Roseanna’s death. We are told only that it was “death by strangulation in conjunction with gross sexual assault”. We learn: “The culprit was brutal. Signs of perverse tendencies”. This obviously gave me considerable freedom. The authors, however, are precise on one point: “There wasn’t that much blood”. These, then, were the elements I had. The most disconcerting was the passage that reads: “She could have received some of the injuries after she was already dead, or at least unconscious. There are things in the autopsy statement that suggest it could have happened that way.”

Obviously, there was the “red scratch” extending from the waist to the hipbone, and how was one supposed to interpret that?

I decided on a scratch made using a small block of concrete I fashioned in my cellar. I truly believe the authors would have admired the simplicity of this solution. Otherwise, I strangled her with my bare hands having sodomised her using a shoehorn which,
I believe, conveniently ruptured the mucous membrane but spilled little blood.

The trickiest part was, of course, in creating the false birthmark. Forensic analysis will no doubt have told you that I used the most commonly available products. In fact I had to search long and hard before finding an animal stencil that matched Roseanna’s birthmark. Unlike your good self, I am not an accomplished artist.

I took the body to the canal de l’Ourcq using a rental car. Do you know, Camille, I had waited almost a year for the municipal authorities to dredge the section of the canal I had chosen as my location? Bureaucracy can be so infuriating. My little joke, Camille, you know me by now.

I assume that at this stage you must be seething with impatience to know the answer to the question you have been asking yourself since you first reopened this case: “Who was Roseanna?”

In life, Roseanna was called Alice Hedges. She was a student or something of the sort (please find enclosed her I.D. so that, should you have a moment, you can trace her family in Arkansas and pass on my thanks for their daughter’s collaboration). An important, not to say key element of this work was that the victim should not be identified too quickly since, in the novel, the crucial mystery is that of the victim’s identity. Roseanna is, first and foremost, the story of this quest and it would have been ridiculous, indeed indecent, if you had managed to identify her immediately. I met her on the Hungarian border six days previously. She was hitchhiking. My initial conversations with Roseanna apprised me that she had not been in touch with her parents for more than two years and had been living alone prior to embarking on a European jaunt, of which none of her friends were aware. This made it possible for me to create the minor masterpiece that, to my great pleasure, has at last been acknowledged.

Doubtless you find me rather garrulous. As might be expected, there are few people to whom I can talk about my work. From the time when I first realised what the world required of me, I have been tirelessly doing its bidding with little hope of conversation. God, how ignorant the world is, Camille. And how evanescent. How rare are those things that truly leave their mark. No-one understood what I wanted to give to the world and there were times, I confess, when I was angry. Times when I forbore, more tirelessly than you can possibly imagine. Forgive the platitude; anger is a poor counsellor. I found myself compelled calmly to reread the classics; only in their company could I find the strength to persevere until some elevation of the soul stilled the rage within me. Months and months passed before I abandoned any thought of being other than I am. It was an arduous struggle, but I prevailed and, finally, I have been rewarded. For the dark shadows of that period were followed by the dazzling light of revelation. I do not use the word lightly, Camille, I assure you. I remember as though it were yesterday. My rage against the world suddenly fell away and I knew what was required of me, I realised my purpose, understood my mission. The unparalleled success of crime fiction clearly demonstrates the visceral need people have for death. And for mystery. People frantically seek out such imagery not because they need images, but because this is all they have. Aside from sundry wars and the gratuitous butchery provided by governments to assuage their unquenchable thirst for death, what do they have? Images. Mankind seeks out images of death because he desires death. It is a thirst only the artist can slake. Writers write about death for those who dream of death, they write tragedies for those who yearn for tragedy. And always the world clamours for more. The world is not content merely with stories, it thirsts for blood, for actual blood, not fictional gore. Humanity does its best
to justify its desires by transfiguring the real – surely it was to this mission of appeasing the world with images that your mother, a brilliant artist, devoted her career? – but the desire is insatiable, unanswerable. The world wants what is real, what is true; it wants blood. Between the transfiguration that is art and brute reality, there must surely exist some narrow way for those with enough compassion for humanity to wish to sacrifice themselves. Oh, Camille, I do not think myself a saviour. Nor a saint. I am content simply to make myself heard; if everyone did likewise the world would be more bearable and much less disagreeable.