Irene (33 page)

“What the hell are you on about?” Le Guen turned back to Camille.

“I want you on the case. It’s well within the rules and you know it, so don’t try to fob me off.”

“Look, Camille, it’s been too long since I was a serving detective. I don’t have the reflexes, you know that. It’s crazy to even ask me.”

“It’s either you or it’s no-one. So?”

Le Guen scratched the back of his neck, then stroked his chin. His eyes belied any notion that he was thinking. They flashed
with stark terror.

“No, honestly, Camille, I don’t th—” “It’s you or no-one. Are you up to taking the fucking case or not?” Camille tone was peremptory.

“Look … I don’t know … I swear, I don’t think—”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes, but …”

“But
what
, for fuck’s sake?”

“O.K., fine, I’ll do it. And, while we’re on the subject, screw you!”

“Right,” Camille said quickly.
“So you’ll take the case. Problem is, you’ve got no hands-on experience, your reflexes are shit, you’ll be completely out of your depth.”

“Jesus Christ, Camille! Isn’t that what I just said?” Le Guen yelled.

“In which case,” Camille looked him in the eye, “You’ll need to delegate to an experienced officer. I accept. Thanks, Jean.”

Le Guen did not even have time to react before Camille turned and strode away.

“Bergeret! Let me show you what I want you to do.”

Le Guen stuffed a hand into his pocket, dug out his mobile and dialled.

“Divisionnaire Le Guen, put me through to Juge Deschamps. Right now.”

Waiting for the call to be connected, he glowered at Camille, who was deep in conversation with the boys from
identité judiciaire
.

“Crafty little sod,” he muttered.

Morin’s team turned up a couple of minutes later. In order not to disturb the techs, a quick briefing was held on the narrow landing which had room only for Le Guen, Camille and Morin. The five remaining officers perched on the lower steps.

“I’ll be leading the investigation into the disappearance of Irène Verhœven. Having consulted with Juge Deschamps, I’ll be delegating policy decisions to Commandant Verhœven. Any comments?”

The tone in which Le Guen conveyed this news brooked no criticism. An awkward silence followed, one that Le Guen deliberately allowed to drag on to reiterate his determination.

“They’re all yours, Camille,” he said at length.

Camille gruffly apologised to Morin, who held up his hands in resignation, then the two of them divided up the teams and everyone headed back down the stairs.

The technicians from
identité judiciaire
raced up and down several floors carrying aluminium flight cases, field kits and a large trunk. Two officers stood on the landings above and below Camille’s apartment, keeping track of the neighbours’ comings and goings. Le Guen posted two more officers on the street outside the front door.

“Nothing,” Élisabeth explained. “Between 4 p.m. and now,
only four apartments were occupied. Everyone else is at work.”

Camille stationed himself on the landing, toying with his mobile phone and turning back every now and then to stare at the wide-open doorway of his apartment. Through the frosted glass window intended to allow a little light into the stairwell, he could see the fitful ballet of blue lights from the cars parked on the street.

The apartment building was about twenty metres from the corner of the rue des Martyrs. Roadworks to lay new pipes had made the opposite side of the street impassable for more than two months and though the workers had long since finished the stretch in front of Camille’s building and were now digging some three hundred metres away where the street joined the boulevard, barriers preventing parking opposite the building were still in place. Though no work was being done on this stretch of road, it was used as a parking space for earthmovers and dump trucks and for three Portakabins where tools were stored, one of which also served as a makeshift canteen. Two police cars were parked crossways on the street to cordon it off. The remaining squad cars and the two vans from
identité judiciaire
had made no attempt to park, and were now lined up down the middle of the street, attracting the attention of passers-by and the residents of neighbouring buildings, who leaned out of their windows.

Camille had never especially noticed before, but now, as he stepped out onto the pavement, he took a long moment to consider the street and the road works; he crossed the street to study the alignment of the barriers, turned to look back at the doorway to his building, glanced to the end of the street, then up to the windows of his apartment, then back to the barriers.

“Of course …” And then he ran to the corner of the rue des
Martyrs while Élisabeth, clutching her bag to her chest, struggled to keep up.

He knew the woman though he could no longer remember her name.

“Madame Antonapoulos,” Maleval said, gesturing to the shopkeeper.

“Ant
ano
poulos,” the woman corrected him.

“She thinks she saw them,” Maleval went on. “There was a car parked outside the building and Irène got in.”

Camille’s heart began to hammer, the pounding echoed in his head. He almost clung to Maleval for support, but instead closed his eyes and dispelled the teeming images from his mind.

He asked the woman to recount the scene. Twice. What she had seen could be summed up in a few words, confirming what Camille had suspected some minutes earlier as he surveyed the street. At about 4.35 p.m., a dark-coloured car had pulled up outside the building. A tall man, whom she had only glimpsed from behind, got out and moved one of the barriers so that he could park without holding up the traffic. When she had looked out at the street again, the back door of the car was open. A woman was getting in. The shopkeeper had only seen her legs as the man helped her into the car before closing the door. She had been distracted for a moment and when she looked again, the car had gone.

“Madame Antanopoulos, can I ask you to go with my colleague?” Camille said, nodding towards Élisabeth, “We’re going to need your help. We need you to remember.”

The shopkeeper, who felt she had said all she had to say, looked at him in surprise. This eventful afternoon would provide enough gossip to last her for weeks.

“And you,” he said to Maleval, “I want you to go from door to
door all the way down the street. And I want you to track down the road workers. They knocked off early. Get in touch with the contractor. And keep me informed.”

Bereft of officers, since they were all out working on the case, the squad room seemed as though it were in a state of suspension. Behind the bank of monitors, Cob went on with his search, poring over maps of the city, lists of public works contractors and the register of employees at the Clinique Montambert and relaying information to the various teams.

Louis and a young officer Camille did not recognise had already completely rearranged the room, the noticeboards, the flip-charts, the case files. He was sitting at a vast table on which he had laid out all the open files, and half the time he spent on the phone, passing on information to the various officers working the case. He had called Dr Crest the moment he got back to the
brigade criminelle
and had asked him to join them as soon as possible. Crest would no doubt have his own agenda, and was probably worried about the support Camille would need in the hours ahead.

As soon as Camille arrived, the doctor got up and with great gentleness went to shake the
commandant
’s hand. Crest’s face was like a mirror; in that calm, attentive expression Camille saw
himself, the deep lines and the dark circles etched into his face by terror, his whole body taut and rigid.

“I’m so sorry …” Crest said in a calm voice.

The words Camille heard were different, futile. Crest returned to his chair at the end of the table, where Louis had cleared a space for him to lay out the three letters from the Novelist. In the margins of the photocopies, Crest had scribbled notes, arrows and footnotes.

Camille noticed that Cob had added to his panoply of equipment and was now wearing a hands-free headset, so that he could talk to officers who called without having to stop typing. Louis came over to suggest something, but seeing the grim expression on Camille’s face he baulked.

“We’ve got nothing yet,” he said. The hand moving to push back his fringe stopped, hovered in mid-air. “Élisabeth is in an interview room with the shopkeeper. She doesn’t seem to remember any more than what she told you earlier, nothing has come back to her. A man, about six foot tall, wearing a dark suit. She doesn’t know the make of the car. There’s a gap of about fifteen minutes between when she saw him park the car and when it disappeared.”

“And Lesage?” Camille said, thinking about the interview room.

“The
divisionnaire
had a word with Deschamps and I was given orders to release him. He left about twenty minutes ago.”

Camille looked at his watch: 8.20 p.m.

Cob had drawn up a rapid report on what each of the teams had been doing.

At the Clinique Montambert, Armand had learned only that Irène had apparently left by herself and of her own free will. To set
his mind at rest, Armand had taken the details of the two nurses and two attendants on duty at the time. He had not been able to speak to them because by now they had finished their shift, but four teams had been dispatched to their homes to question them. Two of the teams had already called in to say that noone remembered seeing anything unusual. The door-to-door enquiries on the rue des Martyrs had turned up nothing either. Other than Madame Antanopoulos, no-one had seen anything. The man she saw had moved in a cool, calm manner. Cob had traced contact details for a number of the roadworkers and three teams had been sent to talk to them. So far there was no news.

Shortly before 9 p.m., Bergeret arrived in person to bring the preliminary results from the scene. The man had not used gloves. Aside from those belonging to Irène and Camille, they had found a number of as yet unidentified fingerprints.

“No gloves, nothing, he took no precautions. He doesn’t give a shit. It’s not a good sign.”

Immediately realising what he had just said, Bergeret looked flustered.

“Oh God, I’m sorry …” he muttered.

“Don’t worry about it,” Camille said, patting his shoulder.

“We ran the prints through the system straight away.” Bergeret struggled to find the words. “The guy’s got no police record.”

It had not yet been possible to reconstruct the scene entirely, but a number of facts had emerged. Given his recent slip-up, Bergeret was now weighing every word, sometimes every syllable.

“It’s likely that he rang the doorbell and your w … and Irène went to answer it. We think she had just set down her suitcase in the hall when … well … we think … we’re fairly sure it was a kick that—”

“Listen,” Camille interrupted, “we’re not going to get anywhere at this rate. Not you, not me. So, let’s just refer to her as ‘Irène’, and for the rest, just give it to me straight. A kick … where?”

Relieved, Bergeret went back to poring over his notes and did not look up again.

“He must have struck Irène the moment she opened the door.”

Camille felt his heart lurch into his throat. He clapped his hand over his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut.

“I think it might be best,” Dr Crest intervened, “if Bergeret gave the details to Monsieur Mariani. In the first instance.”

Camille was not listening. His opened his eyes again, let his hand fall from his face and got to his feet. As the three men watched, he walked over to the drinking fountain, drank two glasses of ice-cold water, then came back and sat next to Bergeret.

“He rings the doorbell. Irène answers. He kicks her. Do we know exactly how it happened?”

Bergeret looked wildly to Crest for approval and, seeing the doctor nod, he continued.

“We found traces of bile and saliva. She obviously felt queasy and doubled over.”

“Is there any way of knowing where he hit her?”

“No, there’s no way we can tell.”

“And then?”

“She must have run back into the apartment, probably to the window. She was the one who pulled the curtain down. The man ran after her and knocked over the suitcase, which popped open. There’s no sign that either of them touched the contents. Then, Irène would have run into the bathroom, which is where we think he cornered her.”

“The blood on the floor.”

“A blow, probably to the head. Not particularly severe, but enough to stun her. She bled a little, either when she fell or as she was struggling to get to her feet. It was Irène who knocked all the things off the bathroom shelf. After that, we don’t know exactly what happened. All we know for certain is that he dragged her to the door. We found heel marks from her shoes on the wooden floor. The man had a look around the apartment. We assume he did this just before he left. He was in the bedroom, the kitchen, he touched a number of things.”

“What things?”

“He opened the cutlery drawer in the kitchen. We also found his prints on the window catch and on the handle of the fridge.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He was nosing around, waiting for her to come to. His fingerprints were found on a glass in the kitchen, and on the tap.”

“Did he use it to bring her round?”

“I think so, I think he gave her a glass of water.”

“Or threw it in her face.”

“No, I don’t think so. There was no sign of water being spilled. No, I think she drank it. We found a number of Irène’s hairs, we think he had to hold her head up. After that, we don’t know anything. We swept the stairwell, but it was pointless. Too much traffic, too many people coming and going, we found nothing useful.”

Rubbing his forehead, Camille tried to imagine the scene.

“Anything else?” he said finally, looking up at Bergeret.

“Yes, we have a number of hair follicles belonging to the intruder. He has short, light-brown hair. We’ve sent them down to the lab. And we know his blood group.”