Irene (35 page)

“And the publisher?”

“No idea.”

“I’m going to send someone round to talk to you right now and I want you to tell him everything you remember, got that?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“It’s possible that in the process of talking about it, you’ll remember something, some detail that could help us. In the meantime, I want you to stay put. Try thinking about the physical book itself, where you were and what you were doing the first time you saw it. It can help to jog your memory. Take notes. My assistant is going to give you some phone numbers and if you remember anything – anything at all – you call me immediately, is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Camille said, then before swapping phones again with Louis, he added, “Sylvain?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. Do your best to remember. It’s important.”

Camille telephoned Crest and told him to go to Villeparis.

“The kid seems intelligent, and he wants to help. We need to win his trust, see if anything comes back to him. I’d like you to go.”

“I’ll set off now,” Crest said calmly.

“Louis will call you on another line to give you the address, and he’ll arrange a car and an officer to drive you.”

Ballanger was now sitting behind his desk, intently following the various conversations. Louis, who had just finished his call, was pacing in front of the
professeur
’s bookshelves.

Camille punched a number into his phone. Though no-one
seemed to answer, he let it ring.

“Jérôme Lesage.” The voice sounded petulant and irritable.

“Monsieur Lesage? Commandant Verhœven. I can understand why you might be reluctant to help us.”

“Can you indeed? If you’re looking for help, I suggest you go elsewhere.”

Louis turned to Camille, tilting his head to one side, alert to every flicker in his expression.

“Please, listen to me. Please …” Camille said. “My wife is eight and a half months pregnant …” His voice faltered. He swallowed hard. “She was abducted from our apartment this afternoon. It’s him, I know it, he did this. I have to find her.”

There was a long silence.

“He’s going to kill her.” Camille choked. “He’s going to kill her.”

And for the first time this thought, on which he had been brooding for hours, suddenly seemed so real, so tangible, so inevitable that he almost dropped the telephone and had to lean against the wall for support.

Louis did not move, he was still staring at Camille’s face as though looking through him. His expression was frozen, only his lips trembled.

“Monsieur Lesage …” Camille finally managed to utter the words.

“How can I help?” the bookseller said, his tone somewhat perfunctory.

Camille closed his eyes, overcome by a wave of relief.

“A novel.
Shadow Slayer
. By Philip Chub.”

Louis, meanwhile, had turned back to Ballanger.

“Have you got a French-English dictionary?” he asked in a leaden voice.

Ballanger got to his feet and stood next to Louis at the bookcase.

“I remember the book, yes,” Lesage said finally. “It was published back in the ’70s or the ’80s – late ’70s I think. Bilban were the publishers, they went bust around 1985. No-one bought the backlist.”

Louis laid the Harrap’s dictionary Ballanger had just given him on the desk. He turned to Camille, who was ashen. Camille stared back, his heart hammering in his chest.

“I don’t suppose you have a copy?” he asked, without thinking.

“I’m just looking … No, no, I don’t think so.”

Louis looked at the dictionary then back to Camille mouthing a word Camille could not make out.

“Where would we find a copy?”

“That kind of book is difficult to track down. It was published in a cheap edition, the books themselves were cheap. No-one really collects or keeps them. You stumble across them from time to time. It’s really just a matter of luck.”

Still staring at Louis, Camille asked, “Do you think you might be able to get hold of it?”

“I’ll look into it tomorrow.” The moment he uttered the words, Lesage realised how callous they sounded. “I’ll, um, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Camille said, then, holding the phone at arm’s length, “Louis?”

“Chub …” Louis said, “In English, it’s the name of a fish.”

“And …?” Still Camille stared at him.

“In French it’s
chevesne
.”

Camille’s mouth fell open and he dropped the telephone which clattered to the floor.

“Philippe Buisson de Chevesne,” Louis said. “The reporter
from
Le Matin
.”

Camille whipped round and looked at Maleval.

“Jean-Claude, what the fuck have you done?”

Maleval shook his head, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes welling with tears.

“I didn’t know … I didn’t know.”

No sooner had cars pulled up outside the building on the boulevard Richard-Lenoir than the three men were racing up the stairs, Maleval leading Louis and Camille by several steps.

Camille peered over the banister, but saw nothing but the rising curve of the stairwell and the staggered landings of the five floors. Reaching a yawning doorway seconds after he heard the gunshot Maleval used to blow the lock, Camille saw a shadowy hallway lit only by a single lamp. Drawing his own gun, Camille stepped in slowly. To his right, Louis was advancing, his back to the wall; to his left he saw Maleval disappear into the kitchen, only to immediately reappear. Camille gestured for him to help Louis, who was kicking open doors and quickly taking cover. Maleval moved swiftly towards them. Camille found himself standing in the doorway to the living room. He put his head around the door and glanced to left and right, suddenly, inexplicably, convinced the apartment was empty.

He gazed at the windows overlooking the boulevard. From
where he stood on the threshold, the whole room was visible. It was all but bare. Groping for the light switch, he heard the soft thud of footsteps and sensed Louis and Maleval behind him. He flicked the switch and a table lamp glowed faintly. The three men stepped into the room, which immediately seemed much larger. There were anaemic patches on the walls where pictures had been taken down, two or three cardboard boxes – one of them open – were piled next to the windows and beside them was a ladder-back chair. The floor was polished parquet. Camille’s eye was caught by a ramshackle table and next to it another chair.

They holstered their guns as Camille moved towards the table. There was a sound of footsteps from the landing and Maleval rushed back to the door. Camille heard whispered voices. The only light in the room came from a lamp placed on the table whose lead ran along the wall to the socket next to the fireplace.

On one corner of the table lay a red cardboard folder whose bulging contents strained against the elastic strap. A single sheet of paper was visible, placed carefully in the centre. Camille snatches it up.

Dear Camille,

I’m happy you could make it. The apartment is a little empty which, I grant, is not very convivial. But you know it is in a good cause. Doubtless you must be disappointed to find yourself alone. You probably hoped to find your charming wife here. But for that touching reunion, you will have to wait a little longer …

In a few moments, you will finally realise the vast sweep of my project. Everything will become clear. How I wish I could be there to see your reaction.

As you perhaps suspect, and as you will soon realise, my “masterwork”, our “game” was rigged. From the very beginning.

I think I can safely say that we are guaranteed a bestseller. I feel sure people will be falling over themselves to read “our” story. It is already written. You will find it in the red folder on the table. Complete, but for a few finishing touches.

With the infinite patience you have come to recognise, I recreated crimes from five novels. I could have done more, but nothing would have been gained. Five is not a large number, but with murders it seemed adequate. And, oh, what murders! The last will be a fitting culmination, I assure you. Even as I write these lines, your charming wife Irène is on hand, ready to play the starring role. She is a lovely woman. She will be perfect in the part.

The crowning glory of my work was to have written my own perfect murder … before recreating murders from the most perfect novels. A magnificent achievement, is it not? In this closed circle, so perfectly contrived, there is something of the Platonic ideal, don’t you agree?

What a triumph, Camille! A harrowing, true-to-life tale, a metafiction that recounts the murderous machinations of its own creation … Before long, people will be desperate to get hold of this novel by a man no one could abide. They will grovel, Camille, you shall see … And you will be proud of me, proud of us, and you can be proud of the delectable Irène who has been truly marvellous.

Fond wishes. You will forgive me if, on this occasion, I sign the name that will catapult me to fame – as it will you.

Philip Chub

Camille pulled out the chair and sat down heavily. His head was pounding. He rubbed his temples and sat for a long moment in silence, staring intently at the folder. Finally, he pulled it towards him and struggled to open the strap. He read:

He flicked through the loose pages:

He grasped a sheaf of pages between thumb and index finger and turned them over.

He flicked forward.

Camille suddenly flipped the whole manuscript over, and read the words on the final page:

Dazed, Camille turned towards the far end of the room where Maleval was posted while Louis went on reading over his shoulder. He grabbed a sheaf of pages and began reading through them, skipping over passages, stopping here and there, pausing for a moment to think before reading on.

Camille could not think, his mind was flooded by a surging tide of violent images.

Buisson’s “masterwork”, his book.

A novel that was an account of Camille’s investigation.

It felt as though he were banging his head against a brick wall.

How much of it was true? How would he ever disentangle truth from fiction? One thing, however, was certain: Buisson had murdered at least seven people. Most chilling were the five murder scenes inspired by five different novels. They tended inevitably towards a grand finale, a sixth murder inspired by his own novel,
Shadow Slayer
.

A murder yet to come.

The perfect crime.

In which Irène is to play the leading role.

How had he put it? “The crowning glory of my work was to have written my own perfect murder … before recreating murders from the most perfect novels.”

He has to find her.

But where is she?

*

Brigade criminelle
, 10.45 p.m.

The red cardboard file lies on the desk. Gutted. Armand has taken the contents to be photocopied.

Everyone is standing, from behind his desk Camille looks around at the assembled officers. Only Le Guen is seated, nervously chewing on the end of a pencil, using his pot belly as a support for the pad on which he is idly taking a few notes. He broods, he listens, and he stares intently at Camille.

“Philippe Buisson …” Camille begins. He covers his mouth with one hand and clears his throat. “Buisson is still out there. He still has Irène with him. What we need to know is where they are, what he plans to do. And when. That’s a lot of unknowns, and we have very little time.”

Le Guen can no longer detect a trace of the blind panic he saw
etched onto Camille’s face when he arrived two minutes earlier. He is no longer Camille, he is Commandant Verhœven, the focused, resolute senior officer of the
brigade criminelle
.

“The manuscript we discovered at his apartment is a novel written by Buisson. It gives his imagined account of our investigation. This is our primary source. But as for what he plans to do next, there is a second source, one we don’t have: the novel Buisson published under the name Chub, which contains the scene detailing—”

“Are we sure of that?” Le Guen says without looking up.

“If what we already know about the plot is true, then yes: a pregnant woman murdered in a warehouse.”

He glances at Cob, who has emerged from behind his bank of computers for the briefing. Next to him, Dr Viguier, buttocks perched on the edge of a desk, legs stretched out, arms folded in front of him, is listening attentively. He is not looking at Camille, but at the other members of the team. Cob shakes his head and says, “We’ve still got nothing on the book.”

Armand comes back with five sets of photocopies. Meanwhile, Maleval has been shifting his weight from one foot to the other for almost an hour, as though he is in desperate need of a piss.

“There’ll be three teams,” Camille says. “Jean, Maleval and I will go over the manuscript with Dr Viguier. Armand will lead a second team looking into likely warehouses in the Paris region. I realise it’s a thankless task since we’ve no way of narrowing it down, but we have to make do with what we’ve got. Louis, I want you to look into Buisson’s background: relationships, acquaintances, anything you can dig up. Cob, you carry on trying to track down a copy of Philip Chub’s book. Any questions?”