The First Fingerprint (16 page)

“Why not! He cut off Weill's leg.”

“But he didn't leave the same signature. In fact there wasn't one at all. No hand, remember? Generally they sign their murders in the same way.”

“That depends. Sometimes things develop.”

“Anyway, for the past year we've made no progress on Aubagne. All we've found out is the woman's identity.”

“Agnès Féraud?”

“That's right. She was forty-three and lived alone. No family, nothing. Quite a sad existence!”

“Did you manage to find out anything about her past?”

“No, nothing at all, except what was in the report.”

“I was just checking. I'll read it this afternoon.”

“You want a coffee, Michel?”

“Oh yes, my lovely. I never say no to you. NEVER, understand?”

“Cool it, Michel.”

That afternoon, Vidal and de Palma put together the few pieces of information they had gleaned. The fingerprints found in Christine's car probably belonged to a man. They did not match those in her flat. Computer records had shown up nothing.

Of the information gathered by Vidal in Mazargues and Les Goudes, only one thing really interested them: according to Le Guen's statement, Christine's body had not been in Sugiton prior to December 6. Apart from that, nothing.

Then there was the information about Luccioni. De Palma said they should be patient. He did not want to proceed any further until the state prosecutor had been convinced of the value of their investigation. They would have to wait for the right moment, when the two cases would converge of their own accord.

They spent the rest of the day going through Christine Autran's finances. They did not find out very much. No suspicious movements of money had taken place. Her lifestyle had not changed all of a sudden.

From France Telecom, Vidal had obtained a record of every call that had been made in the past two months. The most frequent were from de Palma himself, who had rung five times, and Palestro, with eight calls in late November and early December. Apart from that, there were very few. But what puzzled the young officer were the calls from phone booths scattered across most of Marseille.

De Palma and Vidal took this extremely seriously. They tried to pinpoint the booths on a map. The result showed that they really were spread out all over the place. With no apparent coherence.

“Tell me, Vidal, do you notice anything?”

“Come on, beat me up again, Michel.”

“Don't be daft. Are we working together or aren't we?”

“Sometimes I feel a bit out on a limb …”

“O.K., what about the calls from Palestro?”

“They stop at the presumed moment of Autran's death.”

“Spot on.”

“But that doesn't make him guilty. We won't get very far with that in court.”

“If he stopped phoning, it's because he knew something. I'm sure of it. And it does make him a suspect because theoretically he couldn't have known she was dead until he read about it in the papers.”

“Yes, but we're not sure about the date she died. There's a possible span of almost ten days. He might have stopped phoning when he realized that she'd disappeared, after a couple of days. And in fact that was about the time she was declared missing.”

“I know, I know. I'm just trying to build up a scenario. Otherwise, we'll get nowhere.”

“O.K., but we might end up in a dead-end, and zilch!”

“I'm going to see the famous Professor Palestro tomorrow. I'll try and discreetly take his prints. Who knows?”

De Palma left La Capelette at 8:00 a.m. To get to Aix-en-Provence, he had to negotiate the huge four-lane boulevards linking the south of Marseille to the north motorway. He plunged into heavy traffic between the gray blocks built at the end of the '60s, then proceeded, bumper to bumper, along the metal flyover which snaked above the shabby neighborhoods of Plombières and La Belle-de-Mai.

He opted to go widescreen: a plunging, panoramic view over the bay of Marseille. At the spaghetti junction at the end of avenue de la Capelette he headed directly into the flow of cars, and took the Prado-Carénage tunnel to avoid the morning congestion. Ten minutes later he was at La Major cathedral, just by headquarters. From there, the tentacles of the flyovers above the docks looked down on to the immense port to the left, and further out over the seawall to the Frioul archipelago. It was his favorite view.

Despite the sun, the temperature had plummeted. Official forecasts were even predicting snow. This was unusual for March. De Palma drove slowly, making the most of the splendid view. In Mourepiane harbor he noticed a huge crane dipping into the guts of a cargo ship to deposit a heavy, navy blue container. In the distance, the rising sun gilded the hills of L'Estaque, still covered by a light layer of mist from the night. He had time for one last glance at the landscape before diving into the half-light of the tunnel which ran beneath the heights of Marseille, and eventually reached the Provençal hinterland. The city's microclimate had no hold beyond the circle of rocks which surrounded it. The plain was covered with a fine frost, as though silvered over on the cheap.

The Baron had a noon appointment with Professor Palestro, Head
of the Prehistory Department at the Université de Provence. The great man had asked him to be as brief as possible because he had to go to Italy that evening; he had been invited to a congress of prehistorians. Out of courtesy the Baron had requested permission to attend his lecture. The old fellow had replied in a jovial voice:

“Room 105 at 10:00 a.m. I warn you, it lasts two hours. But it's quite a general undergraduate course for students from other disciplines. It might even interest you!”

De Palma arrived early, to soak up the atmosphere and to penetrate Christine Autran's universe. He wanted to get to grips with that last Wednesday in November, the last day she had been seen alive. Professor Palestro had told him: “The prehistory department is at the end of the corridor facing the top of the main staircase.”

A long, unheated corridor led away into the shadows, crowded with students silhouetted against a rectangle of gray light, the sole vanishing point in this closed-in universe. He made his way between the groups chatting outside the classrooms. At the end, he turned right, went through a fire-door and found himself in the prehistory department.

Some sections of wall had been repainted with dubious colors, with no apparent attempt to make them match, as though someone had wanted to finish off some pots of old paint. The university was still a decidedly stingy place: on some walls there was straw yellow beside bright orange and lime green; on others he could still see the original cream paint flecked with gray, even though it went back to the '70s. Noticeboards indicated the dates of the future exams. On one sheet printed with the university crest, de Palma read:

It is with great sorrow that the Chairman of the Université de Provence, the Director of the Faculty of History, the Head of the Department of Prehistory and its teaching staff inform you of the death of their friend and colleague, Christine Autran, aged forty-three. Her funeral will take place on Friday January 28 at 10 a.m. at Saint Pierre cemetery.

In this strict universe devoted entirely to the sweating of gray matter, de Palma suddenly smelled the notes of a sweet perfume. He turned his head a little and saw a woman aged about forty standing beside him. She was staring at the announcement.

“Did you know her?” de Palma asked.

“She was a colleague. I really admired her.”

“Could you tell me about her?”

“Why, are you from the police, or are you a journalist?”

“Take your pick.”

“If you're a journalist I'm not telling you anyhing.”

“In that case, I'm from the police and I'll buy you a coffee. If you agree, of course. Just for a quarter of an hour. After that I have an appointment with Professor Palestro.”

“Let's go then. I know a quiet little café just behind the university. And you are …?”

“Michel de Palma, from the Marseille murder squad.”

He reached for his card, but she stopped him.

“I believe you, officer. My name's Sylvie Maurel.”

He followed her to a shabby bar, next to the railway which ran alongside the literature department. The place was owned by a beatnik who had seen better days.

“It's funny,” she said, sitting down. “You don't look like one of them. More like an intellectual.”

“How flattering. But I am one of ‘them' really.”

“Don't be offended. I've got nothing against the police. In fact, my grandfather was in the force. He was even a Commissaire. So, in a way, we're all part of the same family. Inspecteur de Palma has a good ring to it.”

“We say Commandant now.”

“Like in the American movies?”

“Exactly.”

Sylvie Maurel was a tall, slim brunette with strong Mediterranean features which betrayed her Italian origins, despite her Provençal surname. Her face was narrow, with a small, pointed nose, high cheekbones and strikingly beautiful, large, dark eyes. As she sipped at her coffee with her full lips, she peered in amusement at de Palma, her
eyes lingering for a moment on his mouth. To keep his cool, he took a slurp of coffee. Beneath her Irish sweater, he could make out her firm, unfettered breasts and the smooth skin of her stomach. Without really knowing why, he found himself thinking about Bérengère Luccioni, so fragile beneath her mobster's doll appearance. He looked at this self-confident intellectual who spoke so casually without a southern accent. He could so easily have loved these two women if his life had not set an enormous gulf between him and each of them. If there was no Marie …

“Could you tell me about Christine Autran?” he asked dumbly, to break the silence.

“She was an excellent researcher. She was passionate about what she did. I don't understand how this could have happened to her. I read in the newspaper that she'd been murdered. It's been a terrible loss for me, for our department and for prehistory studies in general.”

Sylvie Maurel spoke without emotion, without the slightest hint of sorrow or grief in her voice. De Palma supposed she might be the kind of woman who can control herself perfectly, or else an egocentric monster who saw in her colleague's death a position which was now open to her. He decided to rattle her cage a little.

“It's funny, you speak about Christine as though you don't feel a thing. But just now you told me she was a friend.”

“Yes, but you don't have to wear your heart on your sleeve all the time. Especially in front of a policeman.”

The researcher was not as cold as she seemed. There must have been a reason for her sudden aggressiveness.

“Did you see her on Tuesday November 30?”

“Yes,” she answered curtly.

“Do you remember anything in particular?”

“No, not really. We spoke for a while about the hearth found in Le Guen's Cave.”

“The hearth?”

“Yes, Monsieur Policier, the place where they made fires,” she said with a sneer.

“They made fires at that time?”

Sylvie Maurel smiled at his question.

“Yes, indeed. They weren't as thick as they look.”

She smiled at him derisively, but she didn't appear to be mocking him. In fact she seemed to be smiling at herself, at her obscure studies which were of interest to hardly anyone. She wasn't mocking this policeman's ignorance.

“What was Christine Autran like as a teacher?”

“I don't know. I never attended her lessons. But I do know that she spoke without notes during seminars and they were extremely entertaining. She was certainly no bore. When she talked of her favorite subject, Le Guen's Cave, you felt like you were inside it. She was really impressive! Especially when you know that she never set foot in it.”

Sylvie Maurel stared at the table and sipped her coffee. Her face was extremely beautiful, even without a trace of make-up.

“Do you often go diving, Sylvie?”

“Yes, why, is it written all over my face?”

“No … well, yes, a little. Your nose is slightly red. I bet you've got chronic sinusitis.”

“That's right.”

“What's right?”

“That I'm a diver and have chronic sinusitis, like everyone who goes diving regularly,” she replied with a nod.

“And you often go diving with Palestro, I suppose?”

“Yes, generally in the summer. Last year he showed me two undersea caves where he'd found flints.”

“And Christine stayed in the boat,” de Palma went on confidently.

“That's right. But so what? She always stayed in the boat. Sunbathing. She hated the water. Why are you asking all these silly questions?”

Sylvie Maurel's face flushed slightly.

“I just wanted to understand her psychology a little better,” de Palma replied, as though apologizing. “I saw some photos of her. She was very beautiful.”

Sylvie seemed somewhat embarrassed. Her expression had changed. He had just touched a nerve.

“What does it matter to you if she got her bum wet or not?”

“It's far more important than you imagine …”

“Don't play mister know-all with me …”

“I'm not … Just don't take me for a fool. I'm not as thick as I look either. Here, take my card. Call me this afternoon. Without fail. I've got lots more questions for you.”

De Palma tossed two coins on to the table and stood up, without listening to what Sylvie was saying.

“Last week, I spoke to you about Upper Paleolithic man, or
Homo sapiens sapiens
, who is essentially represented by Cro-Magnon man. This species which, do not forget, cohabited with Neanderthal man, was in fact the first human! And this first human was surprisingly tall: between one meter seventy and one seventy-seven. Sometimes more. He could be as tall as one meter ninety or more.”