BECAUSE THEY HAD come up with nothing, Duvalier and Arnaud decided upon a tactic they had been taught in training and that they and every recruit had hoped never to use. If everything you have is unavailing, the foundation of your investigation must be faulty. Therefore, you remove the strongest support, as upon it the rest of the edifice depends. In the bridge murders, the strongest element was negative. The DNA evidence ruled out all the suspects, including, most recently, Jules. What if the blood that had pooled on the bridge deck had come not from the perpetrator or any of the victims but from someone else? The blood at the bottom of the stairs didn’t match the blood on the deck. The killer rode the second victim down to the Île aux Cygnes as if on a sled, but even if he left no blood on the way, had he stopped bleeding enough so as not to leave a trace on the second victim, or a trail as he ran? The forensics people had grid-searched a meter on each side of his path as reported by the witnesses and police, and found not the tiniest droplet.
Ignoring the DNA led to an even deader end, so they started over, which involved viewing the surveillance tapes and investigating more thoroughly each member of the rowing club who might have been physically able to mount the attack, take to the Seine, and survive. That it was a rowing club meant that nearly everyone was strong enough to have done so. They combed databases and started the long process of re-interviewing their prospects, from the top of the list down, even though, purely from intuition, they had drawn redlines under four of the names. They wanted to take these – of which one was Jules – as they came, so as to disallow a bias and yet not disallow anyone who might seem unlikely.
They started in May, alternating the numbing review of tapes (though these were hard drives, they still called them tapes) and doing interviews. Often they walked to the interviews, for exercise and to be in the open air, and so that they could have lunch in various interesting restaurants and sit in parks afterward, as they read the paper, discussed the case, or just took in the sun. Sometimes they did necessary shopping. They knew the case so well that they could read one another’s thoughts about whatever passed before them.
In the first days of August, with Paris largely empty of the French, they persevered automatically. Most of their subjects had left the city, everything was slow, they were almost forgotten, no one was looking over their work, and it was so hot that the birds sang less. Finishing in the middle of the afternoon of August 10th, a Monday, they returned to the office in a half-trance after the blazing light of the street. Dead leaves littering the parks because of heat kill were a reminder that fall would soon bring bright colors and cool wind.
Arnaud went off to splash water on his face, and as Duvalier, not even trying anymore to think of the case, sank into his chair he noticed a manila envelope on Arnaud’s desk. When Arnaud came through the door, Duvalier told him that something had arrived from his commissariat.
Arnaud sat down. “Probably changes in regulations. They’re always pestering us with crap like that and more things to do.” Leaning back in his chair, he opened the envelope the way one deals with the tenth piece of junk mail in a stack, his chief concern being to avoid a paper cut.
“What’s this?” he said as an envelope fell out, and a note from the commissariat. The envelope had Turkish stamps on it. “What is this?” he asked Duvalier, holding up the envelope.
“‘Türkiye Cumhuriyeti.’ That’s just like Arabic – jumhuriyatu: meaning republic.”
“And this building?”
Duvalier looked at the picture of a building on one of the stamps. “I don’t know, but it says ‘Askari Yargitay,’ and ‘a hundred years.’ It’s the hundredth anniversary of Askari Yargitay. Askari were soldiers. Yargitay I think is a court. Maybe it’s some sort of military court. So what? That’s just a stamp. What does the note say?”
“It’s from Koko,” Arnaud answered, displeased.
“Who’s Koko?”
“He’s the idiot who …. They can’t send him on patrol so they keep him at the office. He does secretarial work. I don’t know how he got through training. The second or third day he was on duty, he was sitting in a patrol car and he shot himself in the thigh and calf.”
“Through the thigh and into the calf?”
“No, two shots.”
“How can you shoot yourself by accident, twice?”
“He said he thought someone had shot him so he shot back. He limps, of course.”
“He says, ‘My dearest Arnaud ….’”
“What’s his native language?”
“French. ‘This letter came to you about two weeks ago from the DGSI, with no explanation. I left it on your desk but you never showed up so I’m sending it. They opened it and sealed it with the kind of tape you try to fix tears with when you mistakenly tear a letter or something. I didn’t read it. No one did. Hope to see you soon, Koko.’”
“Maybe you should try to transfer to this commissariat,” Duvalier said.
“Maybe I should.” Arnaud cut through the tape but before he took the letter out of the envelope he read the postmark. “It came into France in the middle of April. This is August, so it’s undoubtedly urgent.”
In the envelope was a letter and a folded receipt from a restaurant in Paris: Chez Renée, 14 Boulevard Saint-Germain. Arnaud swept his eyes to the bottom of the letter. “It’s from Raschid Belghazi. He was cleared to travel. He wasn’t at all a suspect.”
“I’ll be he went to Syria,” Duvalier said. “Am I right?”
“Yes. What does this say?” He passed the letter to Duvalier.
“It says ….”
“I thought you didn’t know Arabic?”
“I know enough to know this. It says, ‘La Allah illa Allah, wa Muham- madu Rasul’ Allahi. La qanun illa ashariyatu.’ ‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the prophet of God. There is no law but the shariya.’” He handed it back to Arnaud.
“And this?” Arnaud turned the letter and held it up for Duvalier to translate.
“‘In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate.’ The Arabic handwriting is pathetic, like a five-year-old’s – not that I can do much better.”
The rest was in French. Arnaud read, haltingly. He hadn’t much practice reading aloud, in that he was a policeman and he had no children. “He writes: ‘By the time you read this, I hope I will be a martyr. The caliphate is growing. In your lifetime France will be Muslim. There will be no unbelievers. Notre Dame will be a mosque of Allah, and the only book will be the Holy Quran.
“‘You gave me your card to tell you if I thought of anything. Now that I am waging jihad and will be a martyr I am proud to say that the three of us went to rob and kill a Jew. We found one on the bridge and beat him, but before we could cut off his head a man came from behind, the one you’re looking for. He was older than I said, and his description was what you said. He did yell something in German, but I don’t know what. I made a lot up because I didn’t want you to find him. Then he would have said that he saved the Jew, so I changed things. I threw our knives in the water and picked up this, which he dropped. Now maybe you can find him so he will die in prison at the hand of the brothers even before the armies of the Caliph enter Paris and clean it of all such filth when they come. And they will, God willing.
“‘Raschid Belghazi.’”
Arnaud and Duvalier were still for a moment before they turned their attention to the receipt, which they handled by pinching it at the edge. It was stained with blood.
“Get a plastic envelope,” Arnaud said.
“Why don’t you get a plastic envelope?” Duvalier asked.
“Because I don’t know where they are.”
“After all these months?”
“In which I haven’t had to use one.”
“They’re right next to the DNA pouches, in the cabinet,” Duvalier told him as he left, “the one near the copy machine.”
“Good to know,” Arnaud said, “for the next time we get a bloodstained restaurant check from Syria.”
When the evidence was encased, they examined it more carefully. In a rapid, feminine hand, it read: ‘Crécy, boeuf, eaux gaz 2g, saucis, pain, mousse choc 2, tasse, serv.’ The whorls of the letters looked like roller-coaster loops and pigtails, and after each entry was a number, the total being €83. Not surprisingly, the date was the same as the date of the murders, although the waitress had not written the year.
“Two people, Duvalier, one of whom is ours.”
“Maybe they paid with a credit card. Let’s go.”
“Later,” Arnaud said.
“Why Later?”
“I have to go to the dentist. The restaurant will be open in the evening. It might even be closed now.”
“All right. I’ll copy the check to show them, and give the original over for blood and prints. How can you wait? How can you stand it?”
“Because my tooth hurts. We’ve been at this for months. Nobody’s going anywhere. He says to eat fewer things with sugar. He’s right. I don’t even like it, really. It’s too sweet. I like flavor. I should be able to do without it, don’t you think?”
WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the restaurant it was early and almost no one was there. An old lady who had to have remembered the conquest and liberation of Paris was drinking red wine at a corner table. She wore a blocky black hat of the forties and, in the heat of August, a dark coat. Someone like that, both detectives sensed, whose husband was probably long gone, whose children, had she any, were old, and whose life had wilted, had reason to drink in a corner as she waited for nothing and knew it.
The head waiter’s pencil mustache made him look like he should have been in a silent film. As Renée’s husband or father, or whoever he was, approached them, menus in hand, they took out their identification.
“Is this familiar to you?” Arnaud asked, handing over the receipt.
“Did you write it?”
“No. Josette.”
“Is she still employed by you?”
“She’s right there,” he said, pointing to a woman polishing drinking glasses. All the two detectives had to do was pivot.
“Yes?” she said.
“Did you write this?” Duvalier asked. He handed her the receipt.
“I did.”
“What can you tell us about it?”
“It’s an order for two. Purée Crécy. We serve that in season due to the quality of the carrots harvested at Crécy. Boeuf Bourguignon, twenty Euros. Two Badoits. Saucisson de Lyon, fifteen Euros. Bread. Two mousses au chocolat. Tax. Service. You know, we don’t use carrots from Crécy, but no one can tell the difference. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that, because you’re policeman, but he didn’t know the difference.”
“Who?”
“The guy who ordered it.”
“Did he pay with a credit card?”
“Cash. We note credit cards.”
“Do you remember who he was?”
“Of course I do. He’s famous.”
“He’s famous?”
“Yes. I’ve seen him on television. Sometimes on the news, sometimes late at night. Once he was on for an hour, just talking. I don’t think I could talk on television for more than a second.”
“Who?”
She looked at them with contemptuous sheep eyes. They could see that she thought they were really stupid for not knowing the person she was thinking about. Then her expression changed to one of happy superiority. “François Ehrenshtamm.” She smiled as if to say, ‘What unbelievable idiots!’
Duvalier answered, “François Ehrenshtamm, really?”
“He comes in.”
“Do you remember whom he was with?” They were excited, because they were narrowing it down: Ehrenshtamm, perhaps, or his dining companion.
“Who he was with,” she corrected (she thought). “Different people. Sometimes alone.”
“But this time?”
She shook her head to say that she didn’t, and added a shrug of the shoulders as confirmation.
THE OVERWHELMING COLOR in François’ apartment was red. It was as if he and his young wife and the beautiful, blue-eyed, baby girl in her arms lived inside a rose in summer. It must’ve been on purpose, part of his philosophy – while one was alive, at almost any cost, to seek heat, warmth, blood, vitality, fecundity. Who else would paint walls deep red? It was simultaneously comforting, enveloping, and exciting – just full of life. The baby’s aquamarine-blue eyes against the red made Duvalier and Arnaud feel that they had exited the world they knew, and they envied the beauty and warmth of that into which they suddenly had come.
Like most famous people, whose many surpluses allow them to be generous, François welcomed his visitors graciously. He brought the two detectives into the living room – where immense bookshelves stretched from floor to ceiling four meters high – and, because dinner was over, offered them dessert. The rules didn’t oblige them to refuse, so they didn’t. Young Madame Ehrenshtamm – the baby content in a sling in front of her and curious enough to turn her head to the guests each time her mother changed direction – brought chocolate mousse and tea.
“Your favorite,” Duvalier said.
Only somewhat surprised, because it was not exactly a wild guess, François answered, “Yes.”
“You like it at Chez Renée?”
“Absolutely.” Unthreatened, François waited for the line of questioning. He enjoyed the prospect, as he was used to questions, challenges, and verbal sparring, and justly thought himself at least the equal of even the most skilled advocate. He had triumphed once at a trial, emerging from hostile cross-examination the complete master of the proceedings.
“I do, yes. It’s a childhood food, like madeleines.”
“Proust,” Arnaud said.
“Proust,” François echoed, not quite condescendingly.
“So,” Duvalier went on, “do you remember the last time you had purée Crécy, and mousse au chocolat at Chez Renée?”
“Not really. It must’ve been quite a while ago.”
“Last fall?”
François looked like it was coming back to him. “Maybe.”
“And your dinner companion had boeuf Bourguignon.”
“How do you know that?”
“We have witnesses and documentation.”
“You have witnesses and documentation? For my dinner at a restaurant?”
“Yes. We know the time and the date, that you were there. All we need to know is who was with you.”
“Why?”
“That’s the subject of investigation.”
Feeling that he had already done enough to damage Jules, François grew reticent.
“Who was it?” Arnaud asked.
“It was a long time ago. I often eat out with friends, colleagues, interviewers, editors.”
“Yes, but you know who it was.”
“How do you know I know?”
“Your expression. You’re covering.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I am. This is what we do. Sorry,” Duvalier told him, “but the penalty for obstructing an investigation is not nothing.”
“The investigation is not about something serious, is it?” Madame Ehrenshtamm asked.
“No,” Duvalier lied, “just a stolen car.”
Knowing that Jules could not be possibly have stolen a car, and with his own interest and that of his new family in mind, François told Duvalier who it was. But when he saw the stunned, pleasurable look on the faces of his guests, which, though they were professionals, they could not suppress, François knew that he had betrayed Jules once again.
DETERMINED TO DIE within a week, Jules had already made a partial step into another world. Had he felt a need to describe this, which he did not, he might have said that it was like heading out to sea with only a glance at the land left behind. The rhythm of the waves was smooth and reassuring. He had no fear. The music he heard, rising from a lifetime, was seductive and comforting. He had discovered that to die with a purpose made death far less daunting than merely to die at its whim.
It was nine or ten – he was not sure – but it was dark as he sat on his terrace, near the row of pines, breathing steadily and calmed by their scent. He had said goodbye to Cathérine. He had embraced and kissed the baby, whose skin was flushed and salty. He loved Cathérine very much, but he didn’t give her the slightest reason to suspect that she would never see him, alive, again, except to say that he would be making arrangements that would help Luc. Cathérine’s expression was that of the child to whom the parent is once again the mystery that the adolescent imagines she has dispelled.
Lost in thought and remembrance, Jules didn’t notice that someone was knocking on the door. But because the gardener, who knew François, had told him that Jules was in, François persisted until Jules was roused. He walked slowly through the big living room to the hall, and opened the door with so little energy it suggested disdain.
François thought Jules was looking past him. “Jules?” he said, as if it were not Jules.
“François.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Jules said dispassionately.
“May I come in? I have something important to tell you.”
Jules turned and, without closing the door, led François into the living room.
“Where’s the piano?” François asked.
“I sold it. Shymanski is finally out. I have to leave by the first of September.”
“Where will you go?”
“I have the perfect place to go, really, the most perfect place.”
“I see. The house is nearly empty. Have you begun moving already?”
“I sold a lot of stuff.”
“The cello,” François said, eyeing the cello. “You’ll carry it out yourself?”
“The cello will be the last thing to go, just before me, but, no, I’ve arranged for it to be sent.”
“Where?”
“The fourth arrondissement.”
“That could be expensive.”
“Yes. Remember the girl I told you about? She lives there.”
“Oh. You’re going to start a new life?” François was surprised and curious, and was about to ask more questions when Jules, who had much the upper hand, cut him off.
“François, why have you shown up, at night, without calling?” Jules never would have said that to him before.
“They told me not to, the police. They threatened me.”
Jules nodded.
“You know?”
“I think so.”
“You stole a car?!”
“No, I didn’t steal a car. Do you think I would steal a car?”
“Of course not. They must be crazy. They really threatened me, but I owe it to you. I hope they haven’t followed. I took an extremely roundabout route. I went all the way down to fucking Disneyland.”
“Did you have a good time?”
I didn’t go in. They couldn’t have followed me, I took so many turns.”
“François, you’re a philosopher and an intellectual, so I suppose it might not have occurred to you that to see if you contacted me, apart from tapping your telephones they would just park outside my house and spare themselves a trip to Disneyland.”
“I didn’t think of that. I must be an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot, you’re a philosopher. You don’t fix enough faucets or do enough laundry. Those things teach you the kind of things you never learned. Why did you come?”
“They showed up at my apartment.”
“Arnaud and Duvalier?”
“You know them?”
“They came here as well. What did they want?”
“Last fall, in the rain, after we ate at Renée and you walked home, you dropped the check from your pocket. I paid for it only after a struggle, but you wouldn’t let go of the check.”
“I dropped it in the restaurant?”
“I don’t know where. The restaurant sent them to me. They wanted to know with whom I ate. They say you stole a car. I knew that was impossible, so I gave them your name. I didn’t think it could hurt. Are you sure you didn’t steal a car?”
“Maybe I stole a car while I was sleeping. Why would I steal a car? François, I have a car. I’m a cellist. Cellists don’t steal cars.”
“I really didn’t think so, but I went out in the hall as they left and I heard them talking. They’re going to get a warrant, but the judge in the case is in Honfleur for August, so they’re driving up there tomorrow. The next day, they said, they’re going to arrest you. One of them thought they should bring other men, but the other told him you weren’t dangerous and they didn’t need to. What’s going on? What are you going to do?”
“’It’s of no account.”
“No account? They’re going to arrest you!”
“No, no one’s going to arrest me.”
“How do you figure that?”
“The past will arise and the pace will speed up. In the gross and scope of things, it’ll hardly be perceptible. I have eternity on either side, so how much can it matter?”
François looked at Jules in complete perplexity, not because he didn’t understand what he called “the Bergson stuff,” but because Jules seemed as happy as if he had just been injected with morphine.
“I’ll look down upon Paris, the traffic on the streets and boulevards, the city breathing like something alive, and Arnaud and Duvalier will seem as small as grains of sand. Past and present will combine into one. I’ll see troop trains going to Verdun, Hitler on the empty ChampsÉlysées, the Liberation, century upon century overlaid all at once.”
“Jules, are you all right?”
“Yes, and I can see. Music is the only thing powerful enough to push aside the curtain of time. When it does, everything becomes clear, perfect, reconciled, and just, even if only for the moments when we rise with it. Nineteen forty-four, François. The world is still alive.”
AFTER HIS VISIT TO Jules, in which he had wanted to think of himself as a kind of French Paul Revere, François believed that Jules had gone mad, but that, despite this, Jules was safe.
The next day, Arnaud and Duvalier drove north to Honfleur, taking Duvalier’s Volkswagen Jetta instead of a police cruiser. It was light, and even though the engine was not powerful the acceleration was like that of a sports car. And it had a sunroof, as police cars do not. On their way, just east of Lisieux, they passed Armand Marteau, who was heading toward Paris. They wouldn’t have known Armand Marteau, and he wouldn’t have known them had they been stuck in the same elevator or elbow to elbow at a bar, even though the three of them were focused on Jules. Still, when their vehicles passed at a collective 190 kilometers per hour, only ten meters apart, had there been a little bell devoted to marking such things it would have sounded.
The judge was an elegant old man with, nonetheless, gaps between his teeth. They caught him completely by surprise as he was returning from the beach, dressed in shorts and a Dr. Seuss T-shirt. They were in summer suits, with ties. Less embarrassed than they were, he invited them into his garden, from which they could vaguely hear the waves. The judge pulled out of his flip-flops and swung his feet onto a big ottoman with a square cushion. His wife brought out caviar on toast, and a pitcher of sangria.
“We have to drive home, Monsieur Juge,” Arnaud said upon his third glass.
“Why don’t you stay for a swim and work it off. Do we have enough chicken?!!” he screamed so loudly that Duvalier’s drink spilled.
Because the judge had been looking straight at Duvalier when he shouted the question, Duvalier said, sheepishly, “I don’t know.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to my wife. I have arthritis and I can’t turn my head. Do! We! Have! Enough! Chicken!!!”
“For what?!”
“For four!”
“No. But we have ham, too!”
It was a very strange hearing, which ended when the two policemen – a Muslim and a Jew, who had had a nice lunch of ham – left their guns with the judge and went off to the beach. The judge’s bathing trunks fit Arnaud decently enough, but to keep the pair loaned to him from falling off, Duvalier had to use a rope tied around the bunched-up waistband.
Before they went swimming, however, they told the judge what they had, including the most recent information, which was that the blood on the receipt was the same as that on the ground, that Raschid Belghazi’s prints were on the receipt, as were two other sets, one of which they were sure would be Jules’.
“But you don’t know,” the judge said.
“When we take him in we’ll know. Our theory about the boathouse seems to be correct.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“We’re very sure. We accept the risk.”
“Before you arrest him, it has to be cleared with the DGSI.”
“We would have broken the case much sooner had the DGSI not intercepted the letter from Belghazi.”
“They didn’t. The letter was caught by the DGSE, who got it from the Turks before it even left that country. And what do you mean, it shouldn’t have been intercepted by the DGSI? That’s their job. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Do you think he’s a flight risk?”
Arnaud expressed skepticism. “He’s old, he’s lived all his life in Paris, he has no one to go to and nowhere to go. The old almost never run.”
“I’ll sign,” the judge told him, “but only after I run it past the DGSI.”
“Can you reach them now?”
“Not the person to whom I speak. Tomorrow. Why don’t you stay overnight? It’s not a weekend, and there won’t be much traffic going back. Once I have clearance, you can be in Paris in time to arrest him.”
“You can’t do it independently of the DGSI?”
“No. Your Raschid Belghazi is with Islamic State. They take that very seriously, and the DGSI has much more information than we do, so we’ve got to defer. Besides, I promised them.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I did. The letter was forwarded to you a while ago. I thought you were working on it.”
ARMAND MARTEAU DROVE around Saint-Germain-en-Laye for almost an hour trying to find a good parking space. He had driven from Normandy to tell Jules something he could have related in a phone call of less than a minute, but he didn’t want to leave a record. Yes, someone might have recorded his appearance, but he knew that it wouldn’t be Nerval. Even were no one watching Jules, Armand didn’t want an accidental parking ticket to mark his whereabouts, so he took the time to find a good space.
When he appeared at the door, Jules wasn’t surprised. “Marteau,” he said. “Come in.”
“Better to walk in the garden.”
“All right,” Jules agreed, closing the doors and starting out in that direction. “Why?”
“Bugs.”
“It’s August,” Jules told him. “There are more bugs in the garden than in the house. Or is it the other kind of bug?”
“It’s the other kind.”
“In my house? There aren’t any.”
“How do you know?”
“Who would do it?”
“The DGSI.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know. First the police then the DGSI ordered Nerval to lay off. The police were crude, and threatened him. He was going to work around them, but as soon as he started the DGSI flattened him. It came from above, in our company. Evidently you have the attention of ministers, which made sense to everyone, given that you live here, and would be the kind of person who would – excuse me, who could – pick up the phone and call the Élysée.
“I came here to tell you that Nerval is off your case, and the DGSI’s on it. There was a delay in wiping the servers because of vacations in August. It can happen. But they did it at the end of last week. Your policy exists only as it is written. The investigative materials and notes are gone forever.”
Armand looked back at the palatial house. “You don’t live here, do you. I mean, it isn’t yours.”
“How did you know?”
“By accident. We’re fixing up our farm, and I’ve been there since late July. There are a lot of old magazines lying around, and in one of them was an interview with Shymanski after he was accused of bribery. They didn’t show the outside of the house or say where it was, but I recognized the study where you received me, and the painting. It’s his house, isn’t it?”
“Now it’s his sons’, and they’re selling it.”
“So you have to move. But you’re not going to move, are you?”
“No.”
“This is your last stop, and where I come in.”
The fate of Cathérine and Luc now depended on a rotund blond farmer from Normandy, whom Jules hardly knew.
At times of stress and danger, the truth always shone out to Jules, which was partly why he had never quite succeeded in the world. Truth had always been more alluring than success. “Yes,” he confirmed. “This is my last stop, and it is where you come in. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going back to Normandy, to work my farm.”