Moracchini put down the headphones beside her Toshiba, the service laptop.
She read back the sentence she had just typed, then she frowned and blinked.
The beast is coming … The old witch will dance …
The number dialed belonged to Chandeler, to his office line. And the call had been made from a telephone box in the center of Tarascon.
The lawyer had absolutely insisted on his telephone being tapped and an investigation opened. The first call he had received was on Thursday, August 28, and the second on the 30th. The message which had just been recorded by the police computer was dated September 3.
The three calls had been made from boxes located within the triangle formed by Maussane, Tarascon and Arles. Moracchini had turned everything there upside down and examined everyone who was on police records for even the slightest misdemeanor: nothing.
The receivers of the telephones used had been sent to the forensics lab in Marseille for D.N.A. sampling. In theory, she should get the results the next day.
She had then sent a tape of the man’s voice on September 3 to be analyzed by the scientific team in Ecully. The sound lab had taken its time before sending the following report:
The voice belongs to a person of male gender, aged from forty to fifty.
The individual in question does not present any vocal particularities or difficulties of pronunciation which would indicate an alien or someone of foreign origin. French is thus his mother tongue.
The man tries to conceal his accent, but characteristics remain which would indicate that he speaks with a natural southern and more particularly Marseille accent; the manner of stressing the nasal consonants being typical of that region.
We add that this person proves to be particularly clever at concealing his voice …
She put down the report, chose a lock of her hair and started plaiting it without taking her eyes off her computer screen.
That morning, she had called up de Palma. He was still in Paris and had not said when he would be back. He had sounded cold on the telephone, which had made her both sad and furious with herself. So she had decided to distance herself from him as much as possible. It had become obvious that she missed de Palma, and this growing dependency scared her.
She went down to the surveillance center and came back with another C.D. of tapped calls which she slipped into her computer. The three telephone boxes were not among the numbers used. There were a whole lot of mobiles, far too many for her mood that day. She decided to give Chandeler a call.
“Maître Chandeler?”
“Maître Chandeler didn’t come to work this morning.”
“Really?”
“And I must say I’m extremely worried. Usually he phones if he hasn’t come in in the afternoon.”
She looked at her watch. It was 3 p.m.
“If he doesn’t phone in the next hour, call me back. Ask for Capitaine Anne Moracchini of the Marseille P.J.”
She stared at the long list of mobile numbers and set to work. Romero was taking a day off.
The first thing she did was eliminate all the numbers that appeared more than three times, reasoning that the man would certainly not have used the same telephone that often. This removed over half of them, or thirty calls over a period of twenty-nine hours. Then she excluded all the female voices. This left a total of twenty-one calls.
Four of the remaining people had hung up at once. Eight of them were clients, but one of these drew her attention: the man on the telephone sounded panicked and was talking in a disjointed way about property investments. She decided to listen in more detail later.
The thirteenth call filled her with fright. The number used belonged to Bouygues Telecom.
First there was a long silence, during which just a few meaningless sounds could be heard. Apparently, the person on the telephone was in a very quiet place: there was no noise of traffic or passers-by. Then, ten seconds later, came the song:
Lagadigadeu, la tarasco, lagadigadeu …
The voice stopped.
A few seconds later, a second voice, as deep as a bass note from an organ, struck up the same melody. At the end of what Moracchini called the couplet, the first voice joined in:
Laïssa passa la vieio masco … Laïssa passa que vaï dansa …
She put down the headphones. Her hands were trembling. She called de Palma at once and got his voice mail. She hung up with a curse. Romero was unavailable too.
She had to know at once where this call had come from. There was a chance that one of the singers had used his personal telephone. The chance was a slim one, but it was worth chasing up. She tried Romero again, and he finally answered.
“O.K., Anne, I’ll be there straight away.”
Commissaire Delpiano was on holiday. His deputy advised her to apply to the investigating magistrate. She called him and summed up the situation.
“I think this recording should be analyzed at once,” he replied.
“We’d have to go to Lyon!”
“I think you’d better go yourself.”
“I’ll leave right now.”
“Fine. I’ll sort out the red tape and send a fax to Ecully. Speak to you later.”
*
The northbound motorway was gridlocked. She put the siren on the roof of her car and set off down the hard shoulder, passing by the line of cars that shimmered on the hot tarmac.
De Palma called.
“I’m on my way to Ecully. I should be there by seven this evening.”
“Anything new?”
“You’re a pain in the ass, Michel. That makes three times I’ve called you!”
She explained the situation.
“O.K., I’ll try and join you there. I should be able to make it by about eight. We’ll have dinner and talk this over.”
“Hang on, I don’t come from Lyon, you know!”
“Neither do I. We’ll sort something out.”
His words brought a smile to her lips. She looked at the passenger seat. There was only her shoulder bag and the file of tapped calls. She had not brought anything with her for the night …
At six p.m., most of the officers and staff who worked in the various departments of the scientific center at Ecully were finishing their shift. Moracchini crossed the gardens and walked up the side of the large building that contained the national genetic fingerprint records and biological analysis laboratories.
She had driven like a creature possessed, at an average speed of over 160 kph, which meant peaks that topped 200. Her official Xsara was boiling by the time she stopped it in the visitors’ car park.
It was the first time that she had been to this strange place, secluded from outside disturbances. Amid a park planted with cedars and pines, the police had set up some cutting-edge laboratories in Bauhaus-style buildings of two or three floors, all right angles, made of glass, metal and wood.
At the end of the main drive, she turned toward the computer, sound and video laboratories.
“The sound department, please?”
The doorkeeper, a blond lad immaculately dressed, looked up over the reception counter.
“You want to see Leila Hamdi?”
“Second floor. The lift’s over there, to your left.”
Hamdi was deep in the middle of a conversation between two mobsters. On my mother’s life, one of them said. You’re dead, I swear, yelled the other. Behind the voice that kept on repeating On my mother’s life, she had identified the sound of a bus stopping and then pulling off again. One of the two men had called from somewhere close to a bus stop.
The scientist spun round on her chair when she saw Moracchini appear at the door and knock on the frame.
“Hello, Leila, I’m Anne Moracchini.”
Hamdi stood up.
“Yes, I’ve heard a lot about you. We get news from all over France around here.”
Moracchini shook her hand.
“So this is an emergency, you say? It’s the same guy from the other day, I suppose.”
“That’s right. And it’s red-hot!” she replied, handing her the C.D. “Did you get the fax from magistrate Laurence Modiano?”
“No, that’s not my department,” she replied, shrugging. “Anyway, I couldn’t care less about all that red tape.”
Along the wall behind her there was a row of recording equipment: a Revox with enormous tapes, a Nagra and a large number of machines with VU meters, ranging from the simplest mini-cassette player to the very latest digital model. To the left of the door, two large computer screens were displaying the curves and graphics of sound sequences.
“Impressive kit!”
“It’s the best there is,” the scientist replied, stroking her computer keyboard. “Most of the software comes from Russia … it was invented in K.G.B. times and perfected later. I’ve also got some programs from the F.B.I., but they don’t work so well. It always surprises visitors when I tell them.”
Most police officers had problems understanding what she did. There was a world of difference between fieldwork and a doctor of physics capable of identifying the origin of a sound that was inaudible to their cloth ears. Yet Hamdi had worked on several famous cases and made vital contributions.
“Is it long?” she asked.
“No, just a couple of minutes.”
“We’ll proceed as usual. I’ll listen to it first in my headphones, then we’ll talk. You can go and get some coffee if you want, the machine’s down the corridor, turn left then left again. Come back in five minutes.”
On one side of the lab, big picture windows looked out over the adjacent corridor. Moracchini saw a commissaire pass by whom she had known for ages. She went outside while Hamdi slid the C.D. into her digital player.
Five minutes later, Moracchini was back. The scientist still had her headphones on and was thinking, her elbows on the desk, one index finger tapping on her mouth.
“This is weird,” she said, taking off the headset. “Really weird.”
“Why’s that?”
“Was it picked up from a mobile?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“At 20:34.”
Hamdi looked at the computer screen and pointed at a window displaying some green clouds, denser in some places than in others.
“This is the sound spectrum of what we’re about to listen to. It gives us the profile.”
She clicked her mouse and the profile started to scroll. Moracchini heard a whole lot of new noises, sounds she hadn’t heard in her office.
“That,” the technician said, pointing with her finger, “is your caller’s breathing. He thinks before he speaks. I’d say he was an anxious sort. Those little traces are the noises around him. They’re barely audible because he’s inside what I think is a car or a small room. The sounds are all muffled and there’s no echo. But we can still clearly hear bird calls, and what you see there is a frog. If I isolate it, look what we get.”
A couple of adjustments, and the sound of croaking became clear.
“But there are loads of them!”
“Your customer is next to a pond or a lake, anyway a place where there are plenty of frogs.”
“How about a marsh?”
“Why not indeed!”
She let the sounds run on then paused on a spike in the profile.
“That’s the call, or even the grunting, of a bird I don’t recognize. There are several of them. Your guy could have been in a zoo. In any case, close to a bird I don’t know. And I know quite a few!” she added with a grin.
Moracchini said nothing. She was completely fascinated by her colleague’s equipment and know-how.
“Now, as for the voice, it’s the same guy as last time. I told you he was clever, but now he really impresses me. I’ve only seen this once in my life. In Vietnam.”
She peered at Moracchini, over her thick glasses.
“It’s someone who can produce two voices at the same time.”
“You mean that both voices on the tape belong to the same person?”
Hamdi nodded a big yes.
“Look, those are the A and the R of the high voice when it says tarasco, and here are the same letters pronounced by the deeper voice. They’re identical. But it’s practically impossible to find two people who have exactly the same A and R. The same goes for the other vowels. They’re pronounced identically, but on different registers.”
“That’s amazing. How is it done?”
“The Vietnamese guy I met told me that he used his stomach, a kind of ventriloquism! I could hardly believe it, but he managed to produce two different sounds in that way. I can’t tell you any more, except that your customer is a rare case. Extremely rare.”
Moracchini’s mobile rang.
“It’s Michel. I’m at the train station in Lyon.”
“Already?”
“It’s nine o’clock!”
“Can you make it to Ecully?”
“No, there’s no point. Tell me about it later. I’ll try and find a couple of hotel rooms and I’ll call you back.”
“If you find just one, I wouldn’t mind …”
Hamdi stared at her intensely.
“Was that a colleague?”
“De Palma. Do you know him?”
“Everyone knows de Palma. He was one of the first people to ask me for a voice analysis, and one of the first to trust me. Is he coming here?”
“No, he doesn’t think he can make it. But if we go out for a bite to eat, do you want to come along?”
“Sorry, this evening I can’t. I have a date. We’ll work on for a while then stop before my head explodes.”
She sat down in front of her computer and listened again to the same extract. Then she picked out a particular sound and clicked on several windows.
“I’ve got to identify this damn bird. It’s the key to the whole thing. Can you hear it?”
It was like a slight grunt, at first in a middle register then deeper, like an “r” ending with a sort of “wou” then an “a.” The call came back at frequent intervals: rrwouaa, rrwouaa …
“It’s the sort of thing you don’t pick up with your own ears. It was the software that identified and amplified it.”
Rrwouaa, rrwouaa …
“I think you’ve already been a great help, Leila.”
“No problem. That’s my job!”
She turned toward a second computer and went online. Then she made two telephone calls.
“Shit, all I’m getting are answering machines,” she said with a sigh.
She tried yet another number. In vain. Then she stood up, removed the C.D. from the player and replaced it in its box.
“Can you come back tomorrow, around ten?”
“Do you think that …?”
“It’s essential. I’ll try to identify the bird and all the rest. Right now, I can’t do anything more. Everyone’s shut up shop. But tomorrow I’ll contact some colleagues or scientists in France who may recognize this sound. This evening, it’s not possible.”
“But I’ll give it a go again later, in my place. If I find out anything, I’ll give you a ring.”
It was now 10 p.m.
De Palma had taken a room in the Hotel Ibis by the station. When they got back, it was past midnight and they tossed a coin to see who would sleep on the street side of the bed. The Baron won.
“Let’s have a night cap. I’ve got a couple of things to tell you.”
She took two individual bottles of vodka from the minibar and mixed them with orange juice. As she did so, she told him about the events of that day.
“A groaning bird?” he said, puzzled. “I’d never have thought that a bird could groan.”
“But that’s what comes out of the machine.”
“Leila is almost never wrong. So this is big news. And if our friend Chandeler hadn’t started shitting himself, we’d never have thought of birds.”
“Chandeler hasn’t been heard of since this morning.”
“I’m afraid he’ll end up like the others. It’s the same rationale. And we can’t do a damn thing about it!”
“This isn’t the first time we’ve been in this kind of situation, and it won’t be the last. In cases like this, it always takes several corpses before you find a pattern. This time, I think we’ve made good progress and I don’t have a sense of feeling helpless.”
The Baron was tense. He ran his fingers through his hair several times, blinking nervously as he did so.
“It’s because I’m completely self-centered and reckon I should solve everything in record time! De Palma the protector of his fellow human beings … So when I fail, I blame myself and feel I should take on the universe. I’ve been thinking things through, Anne—life in general and myself in particular. And I realize that I’m arrogant and selfish. On this case, you’ve done as much as I have, you keep me up to date with what you do. I tell you hardly anything. I’m really sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t bad!”
He sipped at his screwdriver, running the sweet, cool liquid down his throat.
“Texeira also made a recording of the voice. I forget to tell you about that and I didn’t even send it to the lab. Sometimes I think I’m the king of jerks. Wrapped up in myself.”
She sat down next to him and massaged his neck.
“And I haven’t told you about the Liberation either, and Steinert’s connections with La Balme.”
“You’ll have time enough tomorrow, in the car.”
“More and more often, I wonder what I’ll do after leaving the force. Have you ever thought about that?”
“Don’t take this badly, but I’ve got a good few years on you.”
She caressed his cheek and drew him toward her, sliding a hand beneath his shirt. She kissed his chest, and drew his leg between her own. He felt her firm body, tense with desire, her breasts crushed against his torso. She undid his belt and laid him back.
Much later, in the middle of the night, he woke up. Moracchini was asleep. The red light from the street was coming through the cracks in the shutters. His mind was empty.
It was the first time in a long while.
Leila Hamdi was waiting for the two of them beside the coffee machine. She had tried to conceal the signs of a sleepless night under a thick layer of make-up, and had varnished her nails a bright red that stood out against the white plastic of the cup in her hand.
During the night, she had consulted two colleagues in the U.S.A. and one in Germany about the strange bird calls. The Americans had come up with answers that sounded implausible: the species they credited with the sound was a type of moorhen found only in the swamps of the Mississippi delta. The German had owned up his ignorance at once, but suggested an obvious lead: websites run by birdwatchers.
For hours, she had surfed the net looking for sites with sound recordings, and at around two in the morning, with eyes red from staring, she hit the jackpot: ornithopedia.com had one of the most extensive archives of bird-call recordings imaginable. All she had to do was to find the right one. It took her another couple of hours to download all the grunts that sounded more or less like the one on the tapped telephone call. In the early hours, she went to bed with a single name clear in her mind: the white spoonbill.
On arriving at the lab, she immediately compared the two profiles: they were identical. So when she saw Moracchini and de Palma arrive on the second floor, she threw herself at them.
“I’ve got good news for you,” she said as she kissed them both. “It’s a white spoonbill. And apparently, they’re extremely rare.”
De Palma said nothing until the lab door closed behind them.
“A white spoonbill, you say?”
“Stone-cold certain.”
He telephoned Texeira at once.
“Have you got white spoonbills in your sector?”
“Of course, but they’re rare. They’re a sort of mythical bird for lovers of the Camargue.”
“Mythical?”
“What I mean is that they’re quite hard to observe. They’re extremely picky migrators.”
“Are there any here at the moment?”
“Theoretically speaking, yes. But I haven’t seen any since the end of spring.”
“Any chance you can clue yourself up?”
“Perhaps, but I don’t see how.”
“Neither do I, but you have to try, Christophe. And as fast as you can … right now, I mean! I can’t explain why, but you have to.”
“O.K., I’ll get on it. I’ll call up all my birdwatching friends.”
Moracchini and de Palma left Ecully at about 10 a.m. Moracchini took the wheel. For a long while, until they had left the traffic jams around Lyon, the Baron kept his eyes pinned on the rear of the cars in front of them. It looked as if he was sailing in murky waters.
She did not even try to lift him out of this strange torpor. On the other side of the Lyon tollbooth, it was her mobile that broke the silence.
“… the phone used to call Chandeler was reported stolen at the commissariat of Tarascon on July 19th at 10:15. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Thanks, Daniel …”
Chandeler gathered his strength. It had now been over a day since he had drunk or eaten anything. It felt as though his lips were coming off in shreds, and his tongue and throat were growing as rough as sandpaper.
He groped around in the darkness until his hands climbed a groove in the wall. At the top he found a right angle, a horizontal line, and another right angle. This must be a door. He was sure of it. He gauged its size and changed his mind. It was more like a trapdoor.
It was the only way out of the place where he now was.
Trying not to make a sound and holding his breath, he stuck his ear against the panel of the trapdoor and made out a noise on the other side of someone rummaging in what might be a drawer or a piece of furniture. Whatever it was, the movements sounded agitated and were accompanied by a deep voice that kept repeating, in a loop, as if chanting a mantra:
Lagadigadeu la tarasco, lagadigadeu dou casteu …
Lagadigadeu la tarasco, lagadigadeu dou casteu …
Suddenly, the voice moved away and he heard a door slam shut. His jailer had left. Feverishly, he felt around the panel and discovered, on the right-hand side, a hole. There was a lock but no handle. He put an eye to the hole. It was blocked, but a tiny ray of light came through it. This beam, as fine as a needle, brought him a joy such as he hadn’t felt for ages. Small as it was, this hint of day gave him hope.
He sat down on the floor of his prison without taking his eyes off the source of light. After a moment the point was as large as the sun.