On Friday, July 11, at 5:50 a.m., a fine drizzle was blowing in from the bay.
From the dual carriageway overlooking the harbor, you could see the flickering yellow lamps on the bellies of freighters streaming with rain. Anne Moracchini and Daniel Romero were driving in silence, their mouths bitter from the day’s first cup of coffee and their eyes still puffy with sleep.
Capitaine Moracchini, the only woman in the Brigade Criminelle, did not like the rain. It reminded her of her early years with the Police Judiciaire in Versailles.
“Daniel, did you remember the blotting paper?”
“Yes, Anne,” Romero sighed. “It’s in the bag.”
Daniel Romero was wondering whether his boss’s explosive mood was going to cool down, or if she was always like this when she went to grab a gangster while the milkman was still doing his rounds. He did not know that Moracchini could not bear rain, especially not at 6 a.m. when they were about to make a difficult arrest in a lane in the village of Saint-André. It was enough to make you think that criminals had a guardian angel out to ruin the best-laid plans.
“What’s your aftershave, Daniel?”
“Habit Rouge.”
“Tomorrow morning, try Pour un Homme by Caron. It’s just as virile and doesn’t get up my nose so much.”
Lieutenant Romero had just arrived on the brigade. With his good looks and relaxed, feline gait he looked perfect in his new part. He kept his cool in all circumstances, had a brain that still sparked and a true belief in his mission. He had been with the Brigade Anti Criminalité, before taking the officers’ exam and joining the Criminelle in Marseille—his deepest wish come true.
On the church square of Saint-André, Moracchini looked at the clock on the Xsara’s dashboard.
“Jesus, what are the B.R.I. boys up to? They’re not here yet! And it’s six already!”
“Maybe they’re lost?”
“That’s not funny, Daniel …”
At the top of rue des Varces, a Mégane appeared, with its headlights off, followed by a 306.
“Just look at them,” Moracchini said, mechanically checking her Manurhin. “Aren’t they just wonderful?”
“They’re on time, you can say that for them. On the dot of six …”
“Yeah,” she said, spitting her chewing gum out of the window.
A third unmarked car drew up behind the Xsara.
“How many are we altogether, Anne?”
“Eleven …”
She got out and shook hands with Capitaine Bonniol, of the Brigade de Recherches et d’Intervention.
“It’s there,” she said, pointing at number 32, which was half erased.
It was a ramshackle maisonette, set back from the rest of the street. A rusty fence, mended with reinforcings for concrete, stood in front of a small garden of irises and scrubby rose bushes. To the left was a prefabricated garage, and at the far end the house itself, with its bedroom under the rafters; one of those prewar shacks put up by Italian laborers in one weekend, using materials nicked from building sites. A first step out of their shanty town.
Moracchini drew her .357, signaled to the B.R.I. hard cases to hang back and gave four violent kicks that almost demolished the door.
“This is the police, M. Casetti!” she shouted loud enough to crack her voice. “Open up!”
More kicks, then she nodded to her teammate.
“This is the police.” Daniel Romero, in a voice that was almost soft. “Come quietly, M. Casetti.”
“Shall we break the door down, Anne?”
“Why not bring in the anti-terrorist squad and T.V. reporters while you’re at it! Are you joking or what? We’ll do it the old-fashioned way. He’ll come down and open up like a good boy.”
“My ass he will,” said Bonniol.
At that moment, a light shone through the bedroom shutters. A shotgun barrel gleamed in the air.
“This is Capitaine Anne Moracchini, of the Brigade Criminelle. I have a judge’s warrant … You know me, Jean-Luc … come on, open up!”
Events unfolded just as the two had imagined from the start. The door was pulled ajar, a figure appeared and a pair of eyes shone in the half-light. Romero kicked hard at the bottom of the door and Moracchini aimed her revolver at Casetti standing ashen-faced in his underpants.
“No messing now, Jean-Luc. And no sudden moves. Put your hands where we can see them and turn round.”
Jean-Luc Casetti, a crook used to the routine, turned and offered his wrists to the police officer. Bonniol turned on the kitchen light, and a greenish glare came down from the neon on the ceiling.
“Not too tight, please,” Casetti begged.
“Don’t worry, Jean-Luc. We’ve been here before!” Moracchini grabbed hold of Casetti and sat him down on the kitchen table.
“We’ve got a warrant …”
Casetti shook his head and looked skyward.
“We’re here because you’re suspected of taking part in a raid on a security van. So, as of now—and it’s ten past six—you’re in police custody. If you want, you can see a lawyer, and also a doctor. How are you, no problems at the moment?”
“No, I’m fine.”
Jean-Luc Casetti was short, with bright eyes that darted around in all directions. A gypsy called Bagdad de la Cayolle had fingered him as the gunman in the double murder of the Ferri couple. After two lean years in a post in Nice, the Criminelle’s new boss, François Delpiano, had jumped at the chance of solving his first big case in Marseille. But Moracchini was sure that the tip was a phony. She had said as much to Delpiano, but he wouldn’t listen. All he had agreed was to bring in Casetti for a hold-up, so as not to put the wind up the people who had taken out the contract on the couple.
“Casetti, the security van raider …”
“Please Inspector, not in front of the children. Don’t say a word.”
“No, Jean-Luc, I’m a Capitaine now!” Moracchini said, to cool things down a little.
A little girl wearing a blue-flowered dressing gown over her bony shoulders and foam slippers on her feet was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Hello,” Moracchini said, as simply as possible, smiling at the wide-eyed girl.
“Hello, Madame.”
“What’s your name?”
“She’s called Marion,” Casetti butted in proudly.
“You had a son too, no? A big lad …”
“Christophe? He’s in jail.”
“Why?”
“Because he takes after his prick of a father.”
“For a long stretch?”
“Ten years.”
“Jesus, ten years, Jean-Luc! That’s no life.”
Despite her years on the force, it still riled her when a crook spoke so coolly about his family’s troubles. The verdicts seemed to rain down on the Casetti family without ever teaching them anything. They went in and out of prison and seemed to accept these return trips between the free world and “inside” as if they were the terms of a contract. A contract often settled by a bullet.
“We’re going to search the house, Jean-Luc. Have you got anything to tell me before we begin, and find it ourselves?”
“There’s nothing here. Zilch,” he said, gesturing at the corridor from which his wife had just emerged, with the family’s latest addition in her arms.
“Here’s our youngest—Pierre. He’s just turned three.”
Moracchini and Romero looked at each other in silence. Casetti’s wife, her eyes still red with sleep, put her son down. The child immediately went over to his father and grabbed him by the handcuffs, beaming widely. Romero looked away.
“O.K., Jean-Luc. We’re going to have you spit on some blotting paper, so as to take your genetic imprint. You know, your D.N.A…. Then you’ll come along with us, and if you’re clean you’ll be back home tomorrow morning. O.K.?”
“Jesus, you turn up mob-handed with all that artillery! It’s like the Napoleonic wars in here. That one over there’s got a pumpgun loaded with buckshot, and you ask me if I’m O.K.?”
“That’s right!” Madame Casetti almost screamed, raising her hand toward Bonniol. “The last time you turned up, there were just two of you. With that big copper, the one who was in the paper. What’s his name again?”
“Commandant de Palma.”
“Yes, him. He’s a real man. He risks his life. Everyone knows that. He’s got respect for people. No need to come with a squad. I’ve got nothing against you, Madame. I know you’re on the level. But him”—she pointed at a guard from the B.R.I.—“aren’t you ashamed of pointing a gun at children?”
Bonniol made to open his big mouth, but Moracchini glared at him.
Five years ago, on the orders of a nervy magistrate, she and de Palma had come to fetch Casetti on suspicion of murder, but nothing had come of it. Forty-eight hours later, they had taken back home “Casetti the Gangland Killer” as an inspired sub-editor had dubbed him.
“In fact, we nearly brought the T.V. cameras along,” she said, to lower the pressure.
“That’s all we need! The last time, for the lad, we had those local telly shitheads round. I thought it was just the new police procedure to film everything. Then two months later, they showed the boy on T.V., and everyone knew. Fuck the lot of them!”
Moracchini’s mobile rang. She went out into the garden.
“Anne? It’s Michel.”
“What’s up with you? Insomnia?”
“I’m not waking you up, am I?”
“Thanks for the kind thought. It’s six thirty, and you’ll never guess where I am.”
“Go on.”
“At Casetti’s. Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”
“For the Ferri murders? What a prick that magistrate is. Every time there’s a hit he’s going to send us to Casetti’s!”
“No, this time it was the new boss.”
“Delpiano! Good, now I feel better off on leave.”
“What’s more, we’ve picked him up on a Friday, which means we’ll spend all weekend questioning him.”
“That triple bastard.”
“And I wanted to see you a little!”
One of the B.R.I. team came close, so she went out into the alley.
“O.K., so what’s up? You’re going to pop the question?”
“Um, no, but I’ll have to think about it …”
“We’re made for each other, Michel, but only after ten in the morning.”
“I can imagine those nights of passion.”
“Hmmmm …”
“Tell me, does the name Steinert mean anything to you?”
“You never change. I talk love to you, and you talk job. Who do you mean?”
“A guy who’s disappeared. I found the case interesting and …”
“And you want me to ask around! O.K., Baron. But right now I’m going back to Casetti. Who told you that it was the Ferri murders?”
“I know everything, you should know that.”
She went back into the house. Casetti had spat conscientiously onto the blotting paper that Romero had handed him—so conscientiously that the two from the Criminelle realized at once that he must be in the clear. Or at least over the Ferri affair. The rest was quite another story. De Palma had always suspected him of doing jobs for the one-armed-bandit racketeers. Before running his own amusement arcade, Casetti had been a top bank robber. Not the sort who screws up and gets pulled in by the Brigade de Répression du Banditisme every time he fails to make ends meet. But between that and becoming a gangland trigger man lay a gulf that a magistrate fresh in from Lyon was too quick to cross. The credo was to apply constant pressure on the big boys of organized crime. To dig for information constantly, whenever official procedures gave them enough leeway. The police might drag their heels, but the magistrate took himself very seriously.
Moracchini glanced at Casetti’s daughter. She was born during his first spell out of prison. A child of the visiting room, which explained the great difference in age between her and her elder brother. The little girl had the look of a weary Madonna, despite the sparks that occasionally lit up her eyes.
“It’s half-past seven. Are you going to school soon, Marion?”
“Go to school while you take my daddy to prison?”
“If it isn’t him, he’ll be home tomorrow.”
“The last time, the magistrate put him in prison anyway! For my daddy, even when it’s not him, it’s still him!”
“Don’t talk to the police like that,” Casetti said. “They’re doing their job.”
At ten o’clock that same morning, de Palma was driving slowly along Route Nationale 568, northwestward from Marseille, in heavy rain. Visibility was down to about twenty meters, which did not improve his mood.
The thirty-year-old radio in the Alfa Romeo was crackling. De Palma took out his walkman, put on the headphones and swore when he realized that he had forgotten the box set he had bought the day before: a legendary version of the Götterdämmerung with Astrid Varnay and Wolfgang Windgassen, conducted by Clemens Krauss. He wanted to compare it with the ten other versions of The Ring he already owned.
So now he would have to be content with reflecting on the day he was going to spend far from Marseille. That night, he had made the decision to investigate the Steinert case. It had been neither the billionaire’s wife’s money, nor his unhealthy curiosity that had clinched the decision; but rather the simple fact that this woman looked like Isabelle Mercier. De Palma saw it as a sign, something that had risen up from the chaos in order to drive him forward. He was also intrigued by the fact that she had personally sought him out, after the blunt refusal he had made to Chandeler. Something in her story rang false, and de Palma could sense the turbulence in these big-money cases like a weather radar.
The rain redoubled, and he suddenly had the impression of being inside the belly of a snare drum during a parade on July 14, which made him slow down even more, and thus increased his irritation.
He hated this long road, as straight as an American freeway, punctuated with chip vendors, sellers of melons and other local produce, and whores in caravans who serviced truck drivers by the edge of meadows as flat as the sea.
Each time he took the R.N. 568 it was always for some shady affair: bar owners murdered by slot-machine racketeers, or some settling of scores among the gypsies of Arles and its outskirts. All he needed now was a migraine to ruin his day completely.
When he reached Tarascon, by now on Route Départementale 99, the rain stopped abruptly. He parked on rue du Viaduc in front of the commissariat, in one of the spaces reserved for police officers. Straight away the security guard, wrapped in his royal blue outfit, hurried over.
“De Palma, Marseille P.J.,” he said, flashing his tricolor card. “I’m here to see Jean-Claude Marceau.”
“Oh, right. Talk to my colleague then.”
The second security guard behind the grille was not so bad: brunette, about twenty, with an angular build, an inviting smile and big dark worried-looking eyes. The first hint of charm on this gloomy morning.
“Capitaine Marceau? Yes, stay there; I’ll see if he’s free,” she said, poring over her list of telephone numbers.
The hall of the commissariat smelled of stale tobacco and the sour breath of its hundreds of visitors. A winding staircase, pockmarked with chewing gum and cigarette burns, led up to the first floor, where the departments of investigation and public safety lay in a curving corridor with a low ceiling and brick walls. Voices broke out from behind the wall of the drug squad.
“On my mother’s life, it wasn’t me …”
“Fuck your mother, asshole. We’ve been tailing you for six months. Can’t you see yourself in the fucking photos?”
“On my mother’s life …”
That morning, in the Cité des Rosoirs, the drugs squad of the Service d’Investigation et de recherches de la sécurité publique had nabbed a housing estate baron with 40 kilos of dope in the boot of his car, some of it in his son’s cot and the rest in his wife’s vanity case.
De Palma arrived at the door to the investigation rooms.
“Hide everything! The P.J.’s here!” a voice wrecked by filterless Gitanes yelled from behind the half-closed door.
De Palma shoved it open.
“Hi, Jean-Claude, sounds like things are heating up next door!”
“Really? It’s never them, you know how they are …”
Marceau greeted the Baron with a hug and took a long look at him.
“Jesus, Michel de Palma. The Baron … you can’t imagine how pleased I am to see you. It’s been ages.”
“You haven’t changed.”
“And you’ve still got just as much imagination! How are things?”
Jean-Claude Marceau was a year younger than de Palma, and had kept the look of an eternally melancholy teenager, into hard rock and dope. Of course he was into neither, just an excellent police officer who was now rotting in a small commissariat after a brilliant start to his career with de Palma and Maistre in Paris. It had all been down to a fit of nostalgia.
In the early 1990s, Marceau had decided to go back to Tarascon, his home town. He wanted to find his roots again, to unlock the Provence that lay deep inside his body and soul. He had started with the Brigade de Répression du Banditisme in Marseille, before asking to be transferred to the Sécurité Publique.
Through the partition, the din was growing louder.
“I’ve got out of touch with the drug squad,” said de Palma, pointing at the wall with his thumb.
“We’ve got that guy by the short and curlies. His wife and two brothers-in-law are involved in smuggling and they’ve just coughed. Starting with 40 kilos this morning, we’ve now reached one ton. He’s a wholesaler.”
Marceau swiveled round his computer screen, which showed a black-and-white picture of a stairwell.
“This is a live webcam! You can see the stairs of a building in Les Rosoirs, just beside the other bastard’s flat. And it can pivot, and zoom … Look!”
Marceau clicked his mouse and the camera moved.
“We hid it in an air vent. We’re expecting another delivery any day. According to our grass, there’ll be 150 kilos.”
“You’re rolling in it these days in the commissariats.”
“What’s more, it records the whole lot on D.V.D.—it picks out the places when there’s movement. The highlights of these assholes’ lives.”
Marceau occupied the current investigations office. In practice, he dealt with everything.
“You came here specially to see me?”
“No, I wanted your recipe for fake pastis.”
“Come on then, out with it.”
“William Steinert?”
Marceau pointed to the missing person’s notice which was pinned to the wall.
“You’re with missing persons now?”
“I want to do someone a favor. So they can clarify the situation. It isn’t all that clear.”
“Same old de Palma, still the big boss with the know-nothing air … You remind me of a hack I used to give stories to from time to time. He always used to play the ignoramus.”
“Steinert disappeared on the 24th, is that right?”
“That’s what his wife says … it’s not the official account. But there is no official account.”
“What do you know about it all?”
“He’s loaded,” Marceau said, opening his arms. “And he’s been missing since at least June 24. I say that because no one really knows. It could easily have been the 22nd or 23rd.”
“Yeah, I suppose he’s not the sort who goes home from work every evening at the same time. I can just picture all that money.”
“Then multiply by ten and you’re probably closer.”
“Have you seen his wife?”
“Yes. She came here with two heavies and her lawyer.”
“Chandeler?”
“That’s right.”
De Palma’s expression suddenly changed. He stared at his fellow officer sadly.
“It’s a striking resemblance, isn’t it?”
“The case isn’t closed for you either?”
“Not that one.”
“And yet when you look at it, Michel, it’s just a case like any other.”
“Yeah.”
A long silence fell in the room. From the neighboring office, quiet sobs could be heard.
“O.K. I just wanted to know what you made of it. Then I’ll call her, tell her the case is closed, and that’s an end to it.”
“Michel, the guy has disappeared, that’s what I make of it. And nothing is going to be closed before he breaks surface again, dead or alive! The problem is that I can’t do anything about it! If you only knew the amount of work that lands on me day after day: drugs, rapes, muggings, a fucker who’s swindled his wife … it’s all the time the jackpot! And I’m a jack of all trades, my friend!”
Next to Steinert’s missing person’s notice, there were some press cuttings covering the few good results achieved by the local police in Tarascon: mostly about drugs, smack sold by Tunisians from Beaucaire, who regularly got rumbled; there had also been a network of stolen car dealers, with faked number plates on identical models that were chopped by a gang in Paris before being passed on by gypsies during their pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
It was nothing to get excited about, but there were little signs of improvement in the area: for the older locals, a stylish house with a swimming pool in a Provençal village; for the younger, a dwelling of the same sort in an estate by the highway. It would always be better than council housing in Marseille, or worse, the Paris suburbs … De Palma respected this sort of police work. He knew that it was as hard to arrest a middle-league drug dealer as it was a mad-dog killer.
“What’s your feeling about the Steinert case?”
“There are two possibilities. Either he’s dead, or he’s off gallivanting for a few days. There’d be nothing surprising there, with this kind of customer. In the latter case, we don’t give a shit. In the former, we wait to find the body and the cause of death. That’s all.”
“You’re right, Capitaine. In fact, you can’t get any righter. But apart from that, do you know anything about our client?”
“Yes, a couple of things …” Marceau slid his right hand beneath a file and produced a packet of filterless Gauloises. “I know that he’s been buying up land left, right and center, and not everybody likes that. I also know that he’s often been seen in the company of local personalities.”
“What sort?”
“The sort that have been under investigation for decades …”
“For example?”
“Mayors, deputies, a couple of well-known Greens … but only the sort who have friends among the magistrates.”
“That doesn’t mean anything!”
“Of course not, but you asked me what I knew. So I’m telling you!”
Marceau’s gray eyes were sparkling.
“Talking of pastis, I think it’s time.”
“And you leave your magic camera on all day?”
“Twenty-four-seven, my friend. This is real police work here.”
“That’s what Maistre says too, since he started work with the Sécurité.”
“How’s Le Gros doing?”
“He’s fine.”
Outside, now that the rain had stopped, a peppery smell was creeping through the white streets of the old town.
Marceau drew de Palma through the maze of paved sidestreets that glittered in the blue light. The shopkeepers were taking back out their revolving displays of postcards, until the next shower arrived. On place de la Mairie, the owner of the café/tobacconist was sticking his nose outside to inspect the sky, while drawing on a cigarette gripped between thumb and index finger.
The two officers sat down on the terrace of the Guardian, a discreet bar between two plane trees, just opposite King René’s Castle. Marceau surveyed the area several times, before leaning closer to de Palma.
“Michel, in fact there is something that’s been bothering me about this business.”
“I’m listening.”
“Those public figures I mentioned. All of us have already seen or heard their names somewhere, in police reports or files, during phone taps or else in real estate deals. There aren’t many of them, but they are the ones who pull the strings around here. This isn’t Marseille, you know, everything comes out sooner or later.”
“O.K., O.K., but I don’t see what’s so surprising about a businessman like him hanging out with their sort.”
“Steinert isn’t from around here … How can I put it, people here…”
“I see, I see …”
“He’s bound to have upset some of the local big boys. In his neck of the woods, by Maussane, there are some big landowners who are well known for their shady deals … and the price of land has shot up, these last few years, if you see what I mean.”
“So you think he’s been whacked, one way or another?”
“I don’t think anything for the moment. These are just possibilities that shouldn’t be ruled out. You can’t imagine what’s at stake financially in little rustic villages round here!”
From the way Marceau slumped back into his wicker chair, de Palma understood that the confidences were now over. Maybe he did not in fact know anything else. In any case, the time had now come to pay a call at the Steinert residence.
Marceau read his mind.
“I thought you were still convalescing, Michel …”
“I am, more or less …”
“Wait till you’re given the case before getting your hands dirty.”
“Given the case! I’ll never be given this case. No, I’m just out for a little information, that’s all. I couldn’t give a damn about the rest of it.”
“Since when have you been coming out to Tarascon about cases you couldn’t give a damn about?”
De Palma looked up toward the walls of King René’s Castle. On the ramparts, a few tiny tourists were waving energetically at anyone who chanced to look up at them. Instinctively, the policeman waved back.
Christian Rey had no time to react, or to do anything at all. Stuck in traffic on the far side of the pont de Beaucaire, he saw a man coming toward him and soon spotted the automatic concealed under his T-shirt. The man asked him to unlock the door, then he sat down on the rear seat.
“Give me the gun you keep in the glove compartment,” he barked, pressing the barrel of the automatic into the nape of Rey’s neck.
He did so, handing over his snub-nosed Smith and Wesson.
“Good. Now turn round and head for Marseille.”
“Look, I don’t know who you are, but I swear to you that I never touched Nono!”
The man slapped his neck.
“Who mentioned Nono, you lump of afterbirth?”
“Fuck …”
“From now on, keep it shut.”
They left Tarascon heading south, and turned onto the R.N. 568. At the Mas-Thibert junction, the man told him to stop and park behind an abandoned caravan, which must have been used for some years by a whore.
The sea breeze whistled gently in the cypresses, rolling dried grass and strips of greasy kitchen roll along with it. There was a smell of warm car oil, hay and melting tarmac.
“Now get out and put your hands on the bonnet.”
With a violent kick, the man spread his captive’s legs.
“Hands behind your back!”
“I told you to shut up. Stick your conk on the bonnet and put your hands behind your back.”
Trembling, Rey did so. He almost felt reassured when he felt handcuffs being closed round his wrists.
They got into another, smaller car and drove on endlessly along the tracks and roadways of the delta. Rey realized that the man was trying to disorientate him in this maze of byways.
At the tip of the delta, they turned back toward Arles and the sea, crossing the Salin-de-Giraud and passing alongside the huge mounds of white salt that rose up toward the blue sky like chalk pyramids.
They came to a halt on a lane that swerved between clumps of saltwort, lost among the samphire at the end of this world of wind and salt. The man put a blindfold over Rey’s eyes and tied it tightly around the back of his head.
“Now walk.”
They went on for some time. To Rey, it seemed like hours, first on a hard, flat surface, then across a reed bed and finally through a swamp with water up to their waists.
Rey supposed that they were heading more toward the interior of the delta, through an incomprehensible mass of marshland and wild vegetation. At the beginning, there was a smell of sea air, laden with hints of marine plants and oxygen. Then came the stenches of saline earth and stagnating swamps, warm with sun and maceration.
The driveway of La Balme farmhouse was lined with old free stones and described a large S through groves of olive trees. It was an ancient property in the foothills of the Alpilles, with a fine solitary dwelling for the owners and large buildings for the farm workers.
De Palma had had to scour the region to find it. In Mouries, he was told to take the road to Les Baux, but then he had driven too far. So two bends before the entrance to the village he had turned back and asked the way once more from a laborer who was tinkering with the motor of a chainsaw in the shade of an olive tree. The man, as knotty as the tree he was threatening with his saw, shot him a suspicious look.
“La Balme? Go straight down toward Maussane, then turn left onto R.D. 78.” The man gestured broadly, the better to indicate the direction. “Then, after about two kilometers, you’ll see three pine trees, three tall ones that is—round here we call them the Fairy Pines. Then take the track that leads toward the mountain. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Don’t mention it,” the man mumbled, leaning back over his chainsaw.
From the Fairy Pines, a few meters off R.D. 78, the Steinert place looked like something from Tuscany. A few sunbeams broke through the ceiling of the sky which was muffled in darkness, and cut the gloom with broad, gilded shafts.
The property covered over 100 hectares, smoothly sloping down at first, then rising gently up toward the buildings that stood with their backs to the Alpilles. This solid earth, with stones as large as fists, had been constantly plowed through the centuries; it was never sticky or black, and rose in dust beneath the stifling sun.
The homestead of the farm was thirty meters long by fifteen wide, and stood at right angles to the outbuildings. Four huge plane trees framed a fountain and stretched their pollarded branches over what used to be the stables.
From a distance, the sight was impressive, but only the turquoise rectangle of a swimming pool almost as large as the stables suggested that the owners had greater means than the soil would usually support.
As it happened, the Steinert family had maintained most of the buildings in their original functions: the barn door was open on a giant tractor, parked like a crab in its hole; next to it there was a vine tractor, which looked like a scale model with its narrow chassis.
De Palma parked his car beneath a plane tree. To his right, he could see the pool, which was a good twenty meters long, and, beyond it, a green artificial tennis court complete with changing rooms.
Further on, where a green meadow stretched as far as the first white rocks of the Alpilles, three horses were killing time by chasing off the flies that pestered them.
There was no gate or fence. And apparently no bodyguards. If the farmhouse was under surveillance, then it was highly discreet.
Ingrid Steinert was in the midst of three groups sitting around like obedient schoolchildren at small tables on a vast paved patio half covered over by climbing vines and flowering wisteria.
The lady of the manor was radiant, passing from one group to the other, making her light dress swirl with its Provençal motifs. Each group was gathered in front of small phials full of olive oil. The various members were holding tasting glasses and scribbling on notepads.
When she noticed de Palma, Madame Steinert did not look surprised. She gave him a formal smile and graciously beckoned him to join her.
“We’re defining the new collection of our oils,” she said, shaking his hand energetically. “We taste them again and again. They’re last year’s oils.”
“You’re … you’re tasting oil?”
“Of course … it should be savored like a fine wine! In fact, let me introduce you to Eric Bartel, one of France’s greatest wine experts.”
Bartel, a little fellow with a turned-up nose, barely glanced at de Palma before he grimaced and bent back over his glass.
“We taste each variety so as to decide which one we’re going to send to the miller, and which ones we’re going to dilute and flavor, such as Salonenque, Lucques or Grossane, and then sell in bottles. A lot of it goes abroad, especially to the U.K. and Germany.”
Bartel suddenly came alive. He wriggled on his seat, his eyes flashing.
“This one is more mature,” he said, raising his glass in front of his animated eyes. “It has notes of toast and hints of rosemary. Just enough, no more. It’s extremely fine … And beautiful, just beautiful.”
He twisted his glass, while the other tasters adopted serious expressions and confirmed the chief expert’s diagnosis.
“We’re aiming to get an appellation d’origine controlée,” Ingrid said. “That would bring us some sizeable business opportunities.”
De Palma felt about as relaxed as a young actor struck by amnesia. Madame Steinert went over to him, laid a hand on his forearm and said softly:
“I think that we have a lot of things to talk about. If you have the time, of course. As a matter of fact, I was expecting you.”
She turned back toward the tasters, delivered a few remarks, cutting the air with a swipe of her right hand, and arranged to meet them later that afternoon to continue their deliberations. She then beckoned discreetly to de Palma to follow her indoors.
The farmhouse living room was huge and worn by time. Four narrow windows looked out over the terrace and, in the distance, rows of olive trees.
“My husband never altered anything,” she said, with a sweeping gesture. “At least, not in this part of the house. He was rather mystical … He used to say that we shouldn’t change the old ways. Hence the lack of luxury. Simplicity, always more simplicity. Practically the whole place is the same, apart from the few rooms I dealt with myself and decorated as I wanted.”
The whitewashed walls were hung with a hunting rifle, a set of battered copper saucepans and a few paintings, presumably by Provençal artists, which slumbered in the darkness alongside a couple of abstract canvases. These were the only touches of wealth in this decidedly peasant décor.
“William finally agreed to putting up these pictures, after years of arguing … As you might imagine, there were no works of art here originally. People just worked and had no leisure time at all.”
“But you also have a tennis court, horses and a swimming pool!”
“Oh, you noticed?” she said with a broad smile. “But it was I who wanted them, not my husband. Although he did take a dip sometimes, when it was really hot.”
The entire place created an odd impression. Why had Steinert left everything as it was? Why hadn’t he wanted to leave his stamp on it?
De Palma could not help thinking about the former owners. How long had the same family lived in this farmhouse? There were probably still some descendants.
She disappeared for a moment, then came back with a massive photograph album, which she put down on the table before inviting him to sit down beside her.
“I’d like to show you some pictures of my husband. I think it might help you to get to know him better.”
She opened the first page of the album delicately, as though it were an ancient grimoire. De Palma leaned forward and saw a typical marriage photograph: William Steinert, wearing a pearl gray morning jacket, stood to the left, a top hat in the crook of his right arm, and a rather carnivorous grin on his face; to the right, Ingrid, wearing a diadem set with diamonds, and holding a bouquet in her left hand, was pouting at the photographer. The whole thing looked highly conventional.
The second shot she lingered over was a portrait of a young Steinert, with a John Lennon haircut from before the hippy era. He looked like a nice young man, and his long pointed nose gave him a sad and blasé look, which might have seemed pessimistic or melancholy, but which de Palma judged as revealing an excitable, fiery nature.
“This is my favorite photo,” she said, placing her open hand on the portrait.
For the first time, he noticed that she had extremely long fingers, with trimmed nails perfectly lacquered with transparent varnish.
“It’s absolutely him. That blend of strength and melancholy, and you can see the intelligence in his eyes.”
“It’s funny, he doesn’t look German at all.”
“Provenzale … How true. He almost looks Provençal.”
She showed him more photographs of Steinert, posing amid the machinery in a factory in Munich. He was born in 1942 and had inherited a majority holding in Klug-Steinert Metal, one of the largest tool manufacturers in Germany.
“A year ago, my husband handed over most of his responsibilities to his younger brother, Karl Steinert. You can see him here, in this family portrait. He has the same forename as his grandfather, the founder of the company. William had the same name as his great-grandfather …”
“How old is Karl Steinert?”
“Forty-eight.”
“Ten years younger than his brother.”
“That’s right. But the youngest brother is Georg, who was born in 1962. He’s an eternal Bohemian, and revels in it.”
With an agitated gesture, she turned over the page.
“Between Karl and Georg there’s Isabella, who’s forty-two. She was artistic when she was young and started out a career as an actress. But now she deals with part of the family business.”
She gave a scornful look and sat back.
“She never comes here … I mean, very rarely. She has an office in Paris and looks after the watchmaking business—Klug Steinert also makes mechanisms for brands of luxury watches, like the one you are wearing, M. de Palma.”
“Is Karl married?”
“Yes, to the family’s worst enemy. She’s French and comes from an aristocratic family. Her name’s Ann-Sophie de Bingen. Quite a ring to it, no? I find it wirklich lächerlich … absolutely ridiculous.”
“What, the aristocracy?”
“No, I mean … never mind, M. de Palma. What about your name …?”
“I’m from an old Italian family. But my grandfather was just a plain seaman in the merchant navy. My father too … And I’m just a plain policeman.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you, I do apologize.”
A ray of sunshine lit up the room. Through the window, two rows of olive trees were just visible as they disappeared into this fresh stream of light.
“Forgive my asking you this, but your accent … I mean, you don’t have a German accent!”
“My mother’s French, and I’ve spent much of my life in France, in Paris. A good family and a good education …”
Her fingers were drumming on the table. She opened her cigarette case, took one out and turned it between her thumb and index finger.
“And how do you find life in Provence?”
She lit the cigarette and flexed her mouth, which for the first time made her look unrefined.
“You can ask me that again some other time.”
“Sorry, but I’m a police officer, not a confidant. I’m trying to understand certain things.”
De Palma stood up abruptly and walked over to the window. The garage door was open, revealing a brand-new black Mercedes, a metallic gray 4×4 B.M.W. and the latest Porsche convertible, also gray. They all had Bouches-du-Rhône number plates.
“Is there a car missing?”
“Yes, the one my husband used every day. A Range Rover.”
“Do you know its registration number?”
“It’s 8526 VM 13.”
She knew it off by heart, which de Palma found unusual for a woman, especially for a woman of that class.
“I have to leave you now, M. de Palma. The tasters’ meeting will be over in a few minutes’ time, and we have to make our choices by this evening.”
They went out onto the patio and strolled toward the tennis court and swimming pool. A damp, slightly sour smell hung in the air. A tractor appeared at the far end of the drive, pulling a huge chrome-plated tank.
“By the way, why did you go to see the police in Tarascon instead of the local gendarmerie?”
“Because the last time I saw my husband was in Tarascon, not far from his office. In fact, I just followed Chandeler’s advice. He doesn’t have much time for the gendarmes.”
“His office?”
“Yes, he has a huge one, just by the theater. I was going to suggest showing it to you, if it isn’t too late.”
“I don’t think that’s essential. I …”
“You don’t believe me when I say he’s dead, do you? I suppose I don’t seem sad enough for you …” she said, drawing out her words.
He ignored her remark.
“William doesn’t sound very German. It’s more of an English name.”
“Yes, in German it’s Wilhelm … My mother-in-law was English.”
She moved closer to him.
“We should talk about your payment. I thought that a sum of …”
“I don’t want anything, Mme. Steinert.”
He spoke so firmly she was left speechless.
A sound of tinkling bells echoed off the walls of the barn. In the hills just above the farmhouse, a shepherd was leading his flock to pasture, shouting incomprehensible instructions to his dog.
“Look, M. de Palma, my meeting will be over at about six o’clock. We could meet at seven in front of the theater in Tarascon. If you agree, of course …”
“I … alright.”
The shepherd came to a halt. De Palma could have sworn that he was observing them.
“So you have neighbors?”
“That’s Eugène Bérard, an old shepherd. You wouldn’t guess it from looking at him, but he’s ninety-two and he’s a poet, a real, very traditional Provençal poet.”
De Palma took his eyes off the hills and went over to his car. On the way, he noticed a huge rectangular container carved from limestone. He stopped to look at what he first supposed was an old water trough.
“What is this thing?”
“It’s a genuine Roman sarcophagus. My husband discovered it in the Downlands.”
“The what?”
“Some fields we own on the other side of the main road. Nothing of any real interest, apart from their size. About thirty hectares, if you include the woods and hills. We grow a bit of lavender there, that’s all.”
By the Fairy Pines, de Palma turned left then drove toward Eygalières, away from Maussane. He went far enough to be out of sight from any curious eyes in the farmhouse and parked his car in a hollow in the road.
In front of him was a tiny valley, dug out by wind and rain storms, a mineral chaos in which only green scented grasses, a few stubborn mastic trees and oaks could survive.
He plunged into this network of pathways and corridors that usually ended in limestone gulches, overhung with rock faces pitted with skulls of stone, their empty eye-sockets staring out to the void.
From the far side of one such block, de Palma could hear the bells of Bérard’s sheep, but the echo stopped him placing them exactly. He clambered over a large ledge overgrown with brambles and at last emerged from the canyon. An arid slope dotted with charred tree trunks led up to the foothills of the Alpilles.
Suddenly, a sharp whistle and a booming voice echoed off the rock face. De Palma spun round, with the feeling that someone was playing a trick on him.
“Matelot, toque lei.”
He saw nothing and could hear only the rhythm of the bells that was speeding up as though on an infernal merry-go-round.
“Toque lei.”
De Palma turned round once more and, two meters further down, saw a huge mongrel dog, its fur ruffled by the vegetation, and its canines bared.
“Matelot, it’s a friend,” the voice said.
The dog started wagging its tail, and the shepherd emerged at last from behind a bush. He was a short man, gnarled by the years, and wore an ancient black hat, with a ribbed velvet waistcoat of the same color over a gray shirt. Beneath his aquiline nose, his thin, almost white lips were quivering, dropping down in a half-moon over a slightly protruding chin. His extraordinarily bright, jade eyes danced below bushy eyebrows, constantly shifting from his flock to de Palma.
“Good day to you, M. Bérard.”
Bérard gave no reply, but just stared intently at the police officer, leaning his knotty hands on the top of his stick.
“So she told you my name, did she?”
“You mean Mme. Steinert, I suppose … there’s no hiding anything from you, at least! You’re highly observant.”
“Good lord no, I can scarcely see anything any more … not at my age.”
“Well enough to have watched me just now.”
Bérard turned toward his sheep which, driven by some whim or another, suddenly formed a file and vanished behind a rock.
“Matelot, toque lei, aqui, ah … Aqui.”
“Did everything burn here?”
“Yes, three years back. Some business about hunting, and rivalry between federations. That’s the fashion around here, they burn everything down if you won’t toe the line.”
The shepherd sat down and his stare became calm, almost engaging. He took off his hat to reveal steel-gray hair which was still curly above his broad, deeply wrinkled forehead.
“How many head do you have?” De Palma asked, gazing round in the direction of the flock.
Bérard plucked a piece of yellow grass and chewed it.
“Good lord, almost none. Forty-odd. But only old ewes. The young ones are up in the mountain pastures with my grandson.”
The animals came back, driven once again by some unfathomable instinct, and continued to graze, in time and hurriedly. The sound of tearing grass rose up between the two men.
“In the old days, there used to be lots of flocks in the area, but now there’s no money in it. Except down there, on the plain of La Crau. But not up here in the hills … Anyway, they all think of nothing but making oil.”
Bérard stared down at the Steinerts’ fields of olive trees. From there, the property looked huge.
“It’s because the land’s got expensive. Young people can’t afford to start out here nowadays.”
“How much does a farm like La Balme cost?”
Bérard looked at his stick with a cunning air.
“There’s a farm on sale like this one, with its land and machines, over by Mouriès … Say a price, just to see.”
“No idea.”
“Over a billion, young fellow.”
“You mean in centimes …”
“Yes, in old francs!”
“Who can afford such a place?”
“Some Americans are interested. But the youngsters are trying to organize something with the local authorities so that they can turn it into a cooperative.”
“What about the Steinerts?”
Bérard looked at the Baron for a few seconds, knitting his eyebrows, then he turned back toward La Balme.
“That’s not the same. William was a real man, a master, with fine manners. I taught him how to prune olive trees and many other things about the land. I’m going to miss him.”
Bérard licked his lips with his pointed tongue and swayed gently back and forth. Then he nervously slashed at the grass in front of him with the tip of his stick.
“Why do you say that William was a good man? What about his family?”
“They’re not the same. No one knows his wife, and she never speaks to anyone. His brothers are worse. Poor old William! And poor old me, I’m all alone now.”
“All alone?”
“Some things you can’t talk about …”
“Why are you so sure that he’s dead?”
Bérard stood up and walked toward his sheep. De Palma followed him.
“Everything to do with La Balme is cursed.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There are evil stones, from the old days …”
“Evil stones?”
“Goodbye, Monsieur. My sheep are waiting for me.”
The old man vanished into the scrub, just as he had arrived, followed by his sheep, with his huge dog bringing up the rear.
Going back down into the valley, the light changed, becoming grayer and more uniform. The bushes in the rugged rocks looked darker. As he walked, de Palma had the feeling that he could hear a voice. He stopped and listened. It was like a complaint, an ancient vibrato recitation in a language unknown to him, words arising from some mysterious place he could not locate, from behind one of those countless rocks:
“… Alabre
De sang uman e de cadabre,
Dins nòsti bos e nòsti vabre
Un moustren, un fléu di diéu, barruolo … Agués pieta!”*
Anne Moracchini had taken advantage of the perfect calm that reigned in the offices of the brigade to look through some files. At 6:15 p.m. she called de Palma on his mobile.
“Michel, I’ve got some info about your fellow, William Steinert.”
“Go ahead, but don’t ask me to take notes. I’m driving and it’s starting to pour again. I can’t wait to get back to Marseille.”
“I dropped in on the S.T.I.C.,† and they have him on file. Nothing much, just some business about financing a political party …”
“Was he convicted?”
“Just formally questioned, by the boys in Tarascon.”
“Which party?”
“Jacques Chirac’s R.P.R.”
“Really? I would have imagined him more as center left, the champagne socialist type, someone who cares about paupers like you and me.”
“Hang on a minute, that doesn’t mean he was in the R.P.R. What’s more he’s German. Anyway, it was all based on phone tapping and town hall rumors. The sort of thing that smells decidedly fishy.”
Suddenly arriving at a roundabout that he had forgotten existed, de Palma had to brake abruptly. To his right, a brand-new sign indicated the Abbaye de Montmajour and Fontvieille. A truck from a cellulose factory on the banks of the Rhône was concealing the exit for Tarascon. He drove all the way round the roundabout, now breathing heavily into his telephone.
“Are you still there Michel?”
“Shit, I nearly took the road to Montmajour!”
“It’s for holidaymakers … So, as I was saying, he was questioned for corruption.”
“O.K., I’m not deaf! So what had our dear William done?”
“Nothing at all, apparently, he was completely cleared!”
“Hmm. Listen, don’t worry about all that, I’m going to see what I can find out today, and then I’ll let it drop. Maybe he’s the sort of man who vanishes like that, only to reappear a few days later.”
“You think so?”
“It’s possible. He might be a billionaire who likes to treat himself to a little adventure from time to time. He could be sunbathing in the Caribbean while I’m getting drenched in Provence.”
“Whatever, Michel, you should still get some rest.”
“Yes, chérie, I know. What happened with Casetti by the way?”
“He’s here, in Daniel’s office. We’re waiting for the D.N.A. tests to come back from Nantes. He’ll be home tonight or tomorrow morning. That’s all. See you later, Commandant.”
The clock-tower of Saint Martha’s church was ringing the angelus when Ingrid Steinert got out of her B.M.W. in front of the Tarascon theater and adjusted the strap of her sandal.
From the far end of the street, de Palma was watching her. As she approached him, he observed the mane of disheveled hair that fell over her bare shoulders.
“Excuse me,” she said contritely. “I’m a little bit late.”
She had changed her clothes, and was now wearing a yellow cotton dress that fluttered over her body. She had also removed her big diamond and now just a fine gold chain hung around her neck while discreet earrings were hidden by her blond hair.
When she was just a meter away from him, he smelled the perfume that she was wearing on her neck. At that moment, the policeman’s head was about as much in order as a jigsaw violently shaken in its box.
“Let’s go,” she proclaimed, with a hint of anxiety in her voice.
William Steinert’s office was on the second floor of an old nineteenth-century building. She produced a huge set of keys and, as she went over to the door, he could not help admiring the hem of her dress as it swung against her sumptuous legs.
The door was reinforced, as were both sides of the walls, enough to keep out the most determined of burglars.
“I think it’s the round key, the yellow one.”
“Really? If you say so.”
“There’s maybe an alarm. You should be careful.”
“We’ll see.”
She eventually found the right key, which was indeed the one that de Palma had suggested.
“It’s the first time I’ve been here … It’s very upsetting. Please, go in first. I’m feeling rather apprehensive.”
She pronounced the final word with a slight accent, rolling the “r” and aspirating the “h.” De Palma noticed this tiny detail at once. He stopped on the threshold and groped for the light switch.
No alarm went off, even though William Steinert had furnished his office with the latest in security equipment. The detective at once deduced that either the industrialist had forgotten to switch it on—which seemed strange for someone who took such precautions—or else somebody had disconnected it and couldn’t put it back into action. Why not Ingrid Steinert herself? But that didn’t square with the emotion that showed in her gaze.
“Does your husband employ a cleaner, or anyone else who looks after his office for him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll have to find out.”
Steinert’s office was in fact a large flat, presumably dating back to the same period as the theater, and it was made up of three huge rooms that communicated directly one into the other, without a corridor. The ceilings were unusually high, with decorative moldings, like Bavarian cream cakes.
The owner could not have opened the windows for some time: a smell of scented tobacco and accumulated dust filled every nook of the first room, which served as a hall, and was furnished with a coffee-table and four old-fashioned upholstered chairs to take up the space.
Why this furniture? Was it a waiting-room? Did Steinert receive clients in this office?
She crossed the room without stopping. She was worried and seemed to be looking for something in particular.
The second room was very much more spacious. The two high windows and the shutters were closed, and also reinforced. The dying yellow gleam of evening filtered through the blinds. Ingrid turned on the light.
It was a library, with genuine rococo shelves in massive walnut, each shelf crammed to bursting with books, some displaying their spines, others piled up anyhow. The fine layer of dust that covered them showed that they had not been touched for some time, presumably since Steinert’s disappearance.
“My husband used to read a lot,” she said with emotion. “My God, all these books …”
For the first time, de Palma sensed that she felt sad when she thought about her husband.
He glanced at the spines of the books. Steinert did not seem to have arranged his books by subject, or by author, and still less in alphabetical order. Many of them were in German.
On the shelves facing the windows, the books were arranged more neatly, a sign that they had been considered more important, or maybe read less often than the others. However, the layer of dust was thinner than elsewhere.
The Baron’s lips formed the titles on the worn covers: Le musée de sorciers by Grillot de Givry; Sciences occultes et magie pratique; Les admirables et merveilleux secrets du grand et du petit Albert; Le matin des magiciens by Pauwels and Bergier; Les arts divinatoires; Orthodoxie maçonnique followed by La maçonnerie occulte et de la tradition hermétique by Jean-Marie Ragon; La science des mages by Papus …
De Palma gingerly took down the Traité de l’apparition des esprits, a tome written by Noël Taillepied and published in Paris by Guillaume Bichon in 1587. Although knowing nothing of the occult arts, he realized that this must be a very rare work, most probably owned only by initiates.
“Your husband seems very interested in the occult!”
“I didn’t know that. But I can see that most of the books here in German are on the same subject. Do you know much about it yourself?”
“Far from it,” he said, opening Les états multiples de l’être by René Guénon, the most renowned French mystic of the nineteenth century. “Some of these books seem extremely general, and not a high level, while others are far more specialized. This one, for example.”
De Palma was thinking hard. Every time he discovered something, it felt as though he were sinking deeper into molten tar, with nothing to stop this slow and progressive suffocation.
The third room was William Steinert’s actual office. Expensive paintings on the walls: a Léger, a De Staël, a couple of Bascoulès …
What a strange combination, de Palma thought. There was nothing symbolic in all this. But he understood the point of the alarm. On a shelf, there were several statues of Greek gods, which he was incapable of identifying, and two bulky Egyptian ushabtis, funerary figures, standing on a metal mounting; all of this must have been worth a fortune.
On the table lay a disordered pile of manuscript notes, mostly concerning Provençal myths and legends. On one page, Steinert had jotted down in his very fine, neat hand details about the mythical monsters found in the region of Tarascon.
The Drac, an amphibious dragon, used to spirit away big-breasted washerwomen to feed its young … Less interesting than the Tarasque, the heroine of Tarascon became a star of regionalist marketing … A hideous beast that consumed everything in its path … Tamed by Saint Martha shortly after Christ’s death. See monuments and abbey.
“Your husband writes?”
“Yes, he loved writing. Part of the reason why he’d partly retired from business was to devote more time to his passion.”
“A book about the myths and legends of Provence …”
“I didn’t know that.”
De Palma went round the office once again, examining the pictures. He lingered in front of a Bascoulès canvas, a scene of boats being loaded in the port of Oran. For a moment, he had the impression that the tugs were busy pushing at the huge black hulls of the freighters of the Paquet company, while blowing columns of smoke into the burning sky.
He went back into the library and examined every surface. Mentally, he photographed the exact layout of the furniture and of various books that seemed important to him, then he returned to the office to do likewise. He noticed that there was no computer or telephone. But there was a telephone socket on the wall.
“Curious for a man of such importance. I don’t see him casting a laptop around and only using his mobile … Still less, doing without the Internet.”
He took a long look at the office. The placing of the notes didn’t look natural. The pen lay well to the left, while Steinert was definitely right-handed, you could tell from his handwriting. Things had been moved about and then wiped clean.
Beside the pen, there was a feather measuring a good thirty centimeters, which was thin and extraordinarily white. De Palma picked it up carefully, stared at it for a moment, then put it back down where it had been.
“I don’t think that our visit has taught us anything of significance, apart from getting to know your husband’s character better. And first of all, that he was hiding some things from you.”
Ingrid did not reply, and felt ill at ease. Was it because of the presence of this police officer in her husband’s personal space, she wondered. Was it the discovery that he had hidden whole aspects of his life from her? She remembered that once, after the theater, her husband had invited her to visit his den, but she had refused, saying that she felt too tired. It had been one of the few occasions when they had made love late into the night. She felt swamped by emotion and decided to bring this visit to an end.
De Palma waited for her to go back into the hall before unbolting the shutters and the office window and blocking them with two wads of paper—in case he had to come back, without coming in through the front door …
“Did your husband have any enemies?”
“Of course. In his position, you always have enemies!”
He noticed a hammer on the desk, of the sort used by auctioneers, with a black handle and ivory head. It had a rare beauty and looked very old. He picked it up and made to hit out at something in mid-air.
“I mean people capable of taking his life … Had he received any threats? Was he worried the last time you saw him?”
“I’ll think about those questions, M. de Palma.”
He knew from the tone of her voice that she was lying. But as yet he did not know to what extent or for what reason.
As they left, de Palma told her that it was standard procedure to carry out a neighbor inquiry. But it would not be done by him, and for two reasons: first because he wasn’t allowed to, and second because he thought it wiser not to make things public. A neighborhood inquiry would happen, or it wouldn’t. But he sensed that in the end it would serve no purpose.
On the R.N. 568, he drove straight toward the big refineries at Fos. Two clouds darker than night had risen in the distance, above the flares of the oil terminal.
Several questions beset him. Why had Madame Steinert gone out of her way to show him her family photographs and her husband’s office? Why just those two things? Why not the rest of the farmhouse? And the family?
Why did she always talk about her husband in the past tense, as though she was sure he was dead? She could just as easily have said nothing to him at all. So what was going on? He would take care not to ask her these questions for some time.
Third point: he was almost certain that Steinert had a computer and that it had been removed from his office. Was this for no particular reason, or because someone wanted to get at his hard drive? Maybe Steinert had removed certain objects himself, because of some threat or fear?
When he got home, he phoned Moracchini.
“Good evening, my lovely. Where are you at with your holdup?”
“We’ve just got the D.N.A. results. They’re negative. But Delpiano wants us to squeeze him anyway. I don’t like that.”
“You’ll always be a sentimental girl.”
“It’s because of his kids that it gets to me. I don’t give a damn about him …”
“So what about me, in all this?”
“What? You’re not going jealous on me, are you?”
“I’m asking you to dinner this evening.”
“I can’t, commandant …”
“You put your suspect inside for the night, then tell Delpiano that you’ve got a migraine and come and eat with me.”
“Michel, you know perfectly well that I can’t do that.”
He hung up and gazed round his three-room flat. His ex-wife, Marie, had left with the walnut bookcase she had inherited from her mother, who had had it from her own mother, and so on for generations. As a result, the Baron’s criminology books were now piled up on the carpet in two stacks a meter high. On top of one was Précis d’analyse criminelle, and on the other Crime et psychiatrie, which he must have read a good twenty times.
In place of the bookcase and sofa, which had also disappeared in the divorce, two big rectangular patches divided the space like archaeological remains. They were just about all that was left of ten years of marriage. Two rectangular marks and a few poorly framed photos.
Only the C.D.s and unobtainable vinyl had been given new shelves. Dozens and dozens of bootlegs of opera greats sung in marvelous theaters: Del Monaco and Callas in Verona in a superheated Aïda, Flagstad and Melchior in a forgotten Tristan … Then the collector’s albums of the Stones bought in London in his carefree youth; all of Muddy Waters which he had brought back from the States; Jimi Hendrix … they all meant as much to him as his .45, the legendary piece concealed behind the boxed sets of the Beatles and of Rossini, whom he disliked and never listened to.
He slipped Strauss’s last lieder into his C.D. player and sat down in front of it, his eyes fixed on the crystal display. Tomova-Sintow’s vibrato flowed over his tired skin. He remembered that Marie had given him this record on a wedding anniversary. He could picture her with her brilliant smile revealing her extraordinarily white teeth, as she waved the little package at the end of her long fingers. That night, they had made love several times, and she had admitted that she had not used any form of contraception for a month. But nothing happened. The child de Palma wanted and dreaded had not arrived. He would never arrive.
He lay down on the carpet, his hands clasped behind his neck, and fell asleep before the third lied, his mouth bitter with alcohol, with a deep crease down his forehead, alongside a faint scar shaped like a question mark.
A scar that hours of surgery had reduced.
A few months before, the Baron had been disfigured, his fine features split open.
Luckily for him, his nose had not been totally demolished and the bone of his forehead had mended. For the rest, the surgeon had removed strips of skin from his backside and stitched him back together patiently, over several hours, like an old granny patching some workaday jeans.
Looks wise, things had not turned out too badly: a remodeled nose that took a few years off him, and a scar ringed with pale purple streaks on his forehead which made him look dangerous when he scowled.
Inside, it was a different story. Migraines that wouldn’t stop any more and that made him fear the worst of his demons, crude blood-red snapshots of agonies that came back more and more.
In Le Guen’s cave, he had been afraid, with this fear he could no longer expel from inside him. It was a fear that invaded the hazy zone of his awareness, the zone he hardly ever dared to enter. If the Baron had never thought about revenge, it was no doubt to avoid transgressing his own prohibitions, gambling with his own taboos. The incubation time for revenge was far too long. He was a man of anger and storms, not a sneaky obsessive with no statute of psychic limitations.
In the middle of the night, a nightmare caught de Palma in the depths of sleep.
The first anonymous call. A raucous voice.
A supermarket bag hung from a green oak on the hill of Notre Dame.
Inside the bag, a head.
The neck has been severed just under the chin.
He and Maistre examine it: there is a trace of sperm on the forehead, like a diabolical unction, the signature of Sylvain Ferracci, or the “Dustman,” as a hack on Paris-Match called him.
11 a.m. A second call.
A woman’s voice. The trail will now begin.
In a dustbin in Rabatau, some clothes: a woman’s severe hounds-tooth suit, flesh-colored stockings stained with blood.
12 a.m. A third call.
A child’s voice.
Behind it, “Us and Them” by Pink Floyd.
On the jetty of La Pointe Rouge, the torso and legs. The belly has been opened from the pubis to the sternum.
A whirlpool.
Maistre, the crack shot, withdraws a Beretta from the armory.
He weighs the clip in his hand and slips it into the butt.
De Palma watches him stroke the automatic’s black breech.
He is a certified marksman and can bring a man down firing blind at twenty meters.
Maistre wants to get this over with. His eyes are red with fatigue and misery, and his brains a grenade with the pin pulled out.
De Palma hardly feels any better.
If they catch sight of Ferracci, he’s a dead man.
Everything happens so fast.
A street corner, a chase.
A cellar.
De Palma sticks the barrel of his gun into the Dustman’s mouth and shuts his eyes.
He’s going to press the trigger.
He will if this creep doesn’t stop screaming.
Maistre approaches.
De Palma’s whole body is trembling.
Slowly, his friend withdraws the barrel of the Manurhin from the predator’s mouth.
Streaks of light enter the Baron’s head, they hit him, again and again.
Thick blood runs down over his eyes.
It’s Marie’s head in the bag.
No, it’s Isabelle–Ingrid who’s winking at him.
An obscene peekaboo from the hereafter dark dreams.
He got up, swallowed two aspirins and stood in front of the bathroom mirror.
He looked long and hard at his face, made younger by the summer sun and the knife of the surgeon who had spent half a day refashioning his features. He pushed back his hair and examined the scar at the top of his forehead. Then he leaned closer to the mirror and looked at his nose, the only part of his face he had ever liked.
His nose had changed, and now looked like something molded out of plastic: it was an intruder in the picture, a part of himself torn away from him forever. He lowered his eyes and splashed water over his face, as if to purify himself.