Above La Balme farmhouse, the last glimmers of day were covering the limestone crests of the Alpilles with red lace.
Maistre’s 205, covered with dust and with wrecked shock absorbers, bounded over the last rock in its path. But it was better than the Alfa Romeo, which everyone now seemed to recognize.
That morning, de Palma had gone to see Brissonne. His grass had not been very reassuring. Morini had lost it after their visit and had almost killed Lopez with his bare hands. The underworld was buzzing with their meeting. But the contract had been put out by Lopez, not Morini.
Brissonne also had a warning for de Palma: Morini had well and truly vanished, and people were wondering who was behind his disappearance. The big guns were going to start doing the talking in a few days’ time if he did not resurface. A mob war was going to break out. It was inevitable.
“You should make yourself scarce, Paulo. Take a few days off!”
“I’m going on a trip to Italy. I’ve got a few friends there.”
The mobster frowned at the Baron.
“Watch out for yourself, Michel. There’s a storm brewing, and you know what that means.”
Madame Steinert was alone, wearing a black blouse and a thin floral skirt that clung to her slim figure. She was walking slowly beside the pool, with bare feet.
De Palma got out of the 205. Instinctively, he checked that the Cobra was there on his hip, then glanced all around before going toward her.
She waved and came to meet him.
When they were close, she extended her cheek to him. For the first time.
“It’s good to see you, Michel. Those journalists are idiots. The way they put it, it sounded as though you were at death’s door. It’s furchtbar … awful.”
“It was just a flesh wound.”
“I hope so.”
Her voice was deeper than usual and she did not look straight at him. Instead, she gazed at the turquoise surface of the pool.
“I asked to see you because I think I’ve got something new to tell you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but first, let’s have a little drink. What do you say, Michel?”
He felt awkward and simply nodded.
On the patio, she rang a small bell and a young woman emerged from the kitchen. She said something in German to her, and de Palma realized that this was the first time that he had heard her speak the language. He found it rather pleasant.
“I’d like you to try the white Muscat that we make here. It was William’s idea. He had preserved an old vine behind the pool house over there. I must say that it’s really good. It’s my favorite.”
The Baron’s throat was dry. He drank back half of his glass at once. The sweet wine filled his mouth with a bouquet of honey. She winked at him.
“You’re my guest this evening. Do you know the Val d’Enfer?”
“No.”
“It’s a mysterious place below Les Baux. Taven the witch is supposed to have spent time there.”
“My father used to tell me stories about witches.”
“Was it him who introduced you to Cathy and Heathcliff?”
The Baron put down his glass, and clumsily knocked an olive onto the ground.
“Yes, it was him. How …”
“I’m good at guessing things. William was always impressed by my gift.”
“You also have a good memory.”
“Yes, sometimes. When people interest me.”
She raised the Muscat to her lips.
“I wanted to invite you to have dinner with me in a restaurant near Val d’Enfer. What do you say?”
“I don’t know if I should accept!”
“Unless you’d prefer to eat here. Our cook, Robert, has made a pistou soup which is like nothing you’ve ever tasted before. So what will it be: gastronomy or simplicity?”
“Simplicity,” he said.
“I’m touched by your tastes.”
She stood up and went into the living room. He watched her supple sway and thought that fate had played a hell of a trick on him between the shanty town of La Capelette and the farmhouse of La Balme.
He filled his lungs with air full of the fragrance of olive trees and ripe grapes. The image of his mother placing the tub in the kitchen to give him his evening bath crossed his mind. He could picture himself again in that soapy water with his grazed knees and black hands after playing knucklebones in the primary school playground on rue Laugier. The tub and coal stove had four rooms to heat.
He stood up and walked over to the pool. A cricket was picking out a melody somewhere in the clump of lavender.
A delicate hand was placed on his forearm.
“I’d like to show you something, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“No, not at all.”
She had changed and was now wearing a very simple pale pink dress that revealed her shoulders and stopped above her knees.
They went into the building through the main entrance. De Palma recognized the reception room where she had welcomed him the first time he had visited the farm. Then he followed her to the first floor up a broad white-stone staircase of a quite surprising sobriety. No decorations, no frills. The whitewash smelled old.
Here, too, William Steinert had not wanted to change a thing. No doubt to preserve the memory of the mother he had never known.
“I want to show you a few documents that I found this week while I was sorting through William’s things.”
She opened the door of a large room which had been furnished as a lounge or reception room, with a billiard table in the middle, settees upholstered in Marseille piqué, and knickknacks all around: a chess set on an occasional table, an old pinball machine and a 1950s Wurlitzer jukebox. There were oil paintings everywhere.
She noticed that he had paused for a moment.
“Do you like the style?”
“It’s one hell of a mixture!”
“They’re all collector’s pieces. William used to call it his museum. Everything you see here was picked up in markets across the world. They’re real rarities. I wanted you to see them so that you could understand what sort of man he was.”
In a glass case, he noticed some wax cylinders, a letter signed by Blaise Cendrars and some Egyptian and Greek antiquities. There was also a statue measuring about a meter high.
“It’s a marble kouros.”
It was smiling into eternity, its lips raised at the corners of a stone mouth.
“It’s from the end of the archaic period. It’s magnificent. There are many museums that envy us.”
“The line is simple, but perfect. It looks like the Rampin Horseman.”
“Are you a connoisseur, Michel?”
“An old memory from history at university. I loved Greek art.”
“Oh, I see …”
She drew nearer to him, as though seeking greater closeness.
“Would you like another glass of Muscat?”
“Yes please,” he replied, without taking his eyes off the kouros.
“Come and sit down. Laura will bring us the necessary.”
She sat down in an armchair and crossed her legs. Slightly embarrassed by her stare, which never left him, the Baron sat down opposite her.
“Why did you join the police, Michel?”
“It’s funny. Every time I trot out the little culture I possess, I’m asked the same question.”
“That’s fair enough, isn’t?”
“Yes, perhaps …”
“But you still haven’t answered.”
“Because I come from a poor neighborhood in Marseille, and I didn’t have much choice.”
“I think we always have a choice.”
“Maybe. But you may have to be more courageous than I am.”
“It isn’t a question of courage. But why did you stay?”
It was an ordinary question, but it took him unawares.
“Perhaps because of a girl who looked strangely like you.”
“Could you explain?”
“I can’t.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Laura arrived carrying a tray with two glasses of Muscat. De Palma took one, and took his chance to stand up.
“She’s dead and you never found her killer. Am I right?”
“I … I’d rather not talk about it. If you don’t mind.”
“I quite understand. Come on, I’ll show you something.”
At the far end of the room, there was an art deco-style table with curved legs, on which Ingrid had placed a whole pile of papers and photographs.
The photographs were shots of the Camargue. De Palma saw lagoons that disappeared over the horizon in the light of dawn or dusk. There were also some shots of birds: raptors, herons, and other species he did not know.
He paused over some photographs of large white birds.
“They’re white spoonbills. The last pictures he took, as far as I know. Laura went to fetch them from Tarascon today.”
“They’re magnificent.”
“Yes they are, aren’t they?”
“Did the photographer say which day your husband dropped the film off?”
“The day he disappeared. June 24. I thought that might tell you things.”
“And you’re quite right. So we’re now sure that he vanished on the 24th. What are these documents?”
“They’re notes he left in his car. The police didn’t take them away.”
De Palma read:
1—La Capelière. At the far end of the large meadow? Turn left then right toward the dead tree in the water. Ten meters to the left. In the coppice.
2—From the guardian’s hut, toward the marsh.
“They look like directions, don’t they, Michel?”
“One of them gives the exact place where he was found.”
“I hadn’t noticed that.”
On another piece of paper, which was folded in four, Steinert had written:
Rush hut number 2, well hidden after the reed bed. A good place for sunrise. Mention it to Christophe.
“Did your husband often make notes like this?”
“All the time. His memory wasn’t very good, he was always forgetting things, so he kept notes.”
“Do you know this Christophe?”
“It’s Texeira, the director of the reserve. We’ve met once or twice.”
She put the photographs back into their envelope.
“There, that’s all I wanted to show you. The rest is just snippets of his existence, nothing of any great interest.”
“In a life, everything is of interest.”
She stared at him with a little girl’s eyes.
“Come on, Michel. Let’s have some of that famous pistou soup. We’ll talk about something cheerful. William wouldn’t have liked us to be sad.”