It appeared on the front page of La Provence.
Giant Crocodile Shot in the Camargue
After the panther of the creeks, this might have sounded like another hoax, if the farmers of the Camargue had not been finding the carcasses of bull calves and colts in the swamps of the delta … Completely devoured by jaws of an exceptional size…
… According to the first examinations carried out by specialists from the Natural History Museum of Marseille, the creature was a Nile crocodile, a species increasingly rare. It is now extinct in Egypt itself, where the animal once symbolized the god Sobek. Only a few specimens of this formidable predator have been identified recently, but further upstream, in the region of the great African lakes.
This crocodile had already ravaged flocks of sheep and had devoured a wild colt. It was the local farmers who decided to organize hunts which resulted in the finding of the reptile …
How did such a creature come to be living wild in the Camargue? That is the question which the gendarmerie of Tarascon are now looking into …
Moracchini put down the newspaper and rubbed her eyes.
Daniel Romero arrived in the office, three parallel wrinkles marking his forehead. His gestures were nervous. The day before, he had been given a dressing-down by a magistrate and he was worried already about the appointment he had at 11 a.m. with Delpiano, the head of the squad.
“Have you seen the news?”
Romero shrugged his shoulders without even glancing at the paper.
“Have we got the D.N.A. results?”
“Yes, they arrived not an hour ago.”
“And?”
“It’s certainly the monster they killed yesterday. It devoured the bodies of Christian Rey and the others. We’re on the right track.”
Romero muttered something then looked at his watch.
“Have you called Michel?”
“I’ve been trying for an hour, he can’t be found. Neither on his home number nor on his mobile.”
“Yesterday, he told me that he was going to take a trip to the Camargue. He wanted to check a few things out.”
Moracchini picked up La Provence again and crumpled its pages as she turned them.
It was the end of October. Over the delta, clouds had gathered and were weighing on the sky still red from the sun.
The Baron was alone, barefoot, on the long beach of Beauduc.
All day long he had been searching the reed beds around the observation hut once again, with rage in his heart. He had found precisely nothing.
Texeira had joined him late that morning and had told him about the black stork he had spotted, not far from the buildings of La Capelière. They had then called up the memory of William Steinert, and the hunt which the farmers had organized since the previous week to find the crocodile.
The sea breeze was shifting the sand across the surface of the beach. It made his ankles itch. He sat on the ground and leaned back against a breakwater. In front of him, the gray black trunk of a poplar lay like a huge carcass on the golden sand. The next storm would probably roll it out to sea, or deposit it further along the delta.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The air that came from the vastness of the sea made him feel better and unknotted his stomach.
The day before, he had received in his letterbox a light envelope marked “By Air.” The postmark showed that it had been sent from the central post office of Annaba, Algeria, on October 26.
The letter it contained was brief; it was a man’s handwriting, fine and harmonious.
Michel
I shall keep, as a memory of you, a pistol bullet. The odd farewell gift that you gave me on our last meeting at the farmhouse of Clary. A surgeon friend of mine told me that it was an 11.43 shell and that I was lucky to be still alive.
You nearly killed me, Michel. And I’m almost sorry that you did not succeed. But that is the way things go. Do you know that, at William’s funeral, I was standing behind Ingrid and our eyes met?
I know that you have been seeking your truth for some time by investigating the murky world of real estate in Provence. That was a good idea, but it made no sense, even if it might have seemed to …
The story reads differently.
There were twelve who served the Tarasque. Twelve who seemed to form a single person and whom the war was to separate. Some did their duty as men, others were like crows on carrion. I saw my lands change hands, my lands burn. My father destroyed.
Ai jamai descata lou plat davans moun paire* … As we say in Provençal. And my father died of grief and misery descended upon us.
When the smallest parcel of our Provence began to cost millions, I saw yesterday’s swine sell the land of the immortals. After the death of my father, I was compelled to sell the fields that my family had tilled forever so as to pay the death duty. On the death of my mother, our house will be sold for the same reason. Thus does our eternity change hands.
William was my friend, the best I had. Perhaps you remember the poem that Ingrid read over his grave:
Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden,
Einen bessern findst du nit,
Er ging an meiner Seite
In gleichem Schritt und Tritt …
William did not want that vengeance. Not like that. He never knew about what I was planning. What I did, I did for the honor of our two families and that of my master Bérard.
I owed you this fragment of confessions. The rest has no importance and I have trust in your intelligence.
The first white spoonbills arrived yesterday. They are magnificent, aren’t they?
Vincent
Soubeyrand had enclosed with his letter two photographs of spoonbills taken during a mating display. The big birds had their wings spread and their necks were intertwined.
The Baron stood up, crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it to the wind that lurked between the hillocks. He thought of Isabelle Mercier and looked for her image of innocence. Beyond the dunes, there was only the blur of the foam that the sea was stirring.