This is quite a change from the meeting room at headquarters, isn’t it?”
Molina was proud of his idea. Sebag congratulated him by raising his espresso to him. Castello was in Montpellier for a regional seminar for superintendents, and Molina had proposed to his colleagues that they hold their morning meeting at the Carlit.
“After all, our bosses are having their big wingding in a luxurious hotel, so we can certainly have our meeting in a little bistro,” he’d argued.
Llach, Lambert, and Sebag had approved the idea with enthusiasm, Julie Sadet with reservations, and Ménard, who was still in Marseille, had not been able to contest it. As for Raynaud and Moreno, they would surely not have been opposed to it, but faithful to their habits, they were taking advantage of the boss’s absence to play hooky.
Sebag swigged with undisguised pleasure the excellent mocha Rafel had made. Then he took the floor. Everyone thought it was natural that he lead the discussion in Castello’s absence.
“The officers sent yesterday to the site of the attack on Albouker found nothing. No material evidence, and no testimony about the two perpetrators, either. Examination of the message left by the attackers yielded nothing; only Jacques’s prints and those of the victim were found on it.”
“Clearly, we’re floundering here,” Joan Llach lamented.
“Hard to disagree with you there,” Sebag admitted.
He chose to take up immediately a question that seemed to him indispensable for what was to follow.
“In what way does this attack change our ongoing investigations?”
“In no way,” Llach replied frankly. “Apart from the fact that the victim is a Pied-Noir, this attack with a knife has nothing in common with the double murder we’re working on.”
“In the message the attackers left, there is, however, a direct allusion to . . . to the OAS,” Lambert said.
“An indirect allusion, rather,” Joan corrected. “If the message mentioned the OAS, it would be a direct allusion. But it refers only to ‘murderers,’ and that’s an indirect allusion.”
“You can always quibble, but that doesn’t change anything in what I mean,” Lambert insisted.
“And what exactly do you mean?” Molina asked bluntly. “That everything is connected?”
“No, I don’t know. I just mean that we have to be careful before rejecting everything. I mean before excluding the possibility that all these cases are connected.”
“But we have to try to see things more clearly,” said Llach, irritated. “And we won’t be able to do that by mixing everything up.”
Julie Sadet spoke up in her calm voice.
“Everything is connected, in fact.”
Skillfully, she waited until all eyes were on her before continuing.
“I believe we have before us, on the one hand, a double murder, and, on the other, people who are trying to take advantage of this case to sow discord in Perpignan. The two cases are distinct, but they are also connected: without the murders, there would probably have been no attack on Albouker and no destruction of the OAS monument.”
The silence that followed showed that the inspectors found their new colleague’s argument pertinent.
“The other day we had trouble understanding the coincidence, which seemed strange to us,” Molina reflected out loud. “But on your hypothesis, it wouldn’t really be a coincidence.”
“I find that interesting,” Llach confirmed, seeking approval in Sebag’s eyes.
Sebag nodded pensively. Yes, he found the idea attractive. But one thing bothered him. A question of chronology. Martinez’s murder had been discovered on Monday and revealed by the press on Tuesday. The monument had been destroyed on Wednesday night, before the news about the painted letters OAS that had been found in Martinez’s apartment had circulated in the city. If people wanted to sow panic in the city’s Pied-Noir community, they had been well-informed and had acted very quickly. Sebag preferred to keep his reservations to himself, and took up the other subjects. He conveyed to his colleagues the reports that Castello had left for him. André Roman’s autopsy confirmed that he had been killed by a bullet to the heart—the second bullet fired, and the ballistics analysis certified that the weapon used was in fact a 9 mm Beretta 34, the same weapon that was used to kill Martinez.
“In addition, I reviewed the situation with François this morning, on the telephone. There’s a new development in Marseille: François was supposed to meet with his barbouze, but the guy disappeared several days ago.”
The policemen opened their eyes wide in surprise.
“Let’s not get excited too fast: Maurice Garcin is eighty-one years old, suffers from Alzheimer’s, and it was from the retirement home where he lives that he disappeared. Or rather wandered away. It seems that he does that often. According to his two sons, whom François contacted, Garcin is coping very badly with his decline. Whence his repeated escapes.”
“So if the guy is senile, he’s no longer a suspect?” Llach asked.
“He was never really a suspect, he’s a witness like many others. Well . . . I mean, among many others. We don’t have as many as it seems. Isn’t that right, Julie?”
“That’s right,” the young woman acknowledged. “Among the former barbouzes who are still alive that François and I have identified, Garcin seems to us the only one who has retained a robust hatred of the OAS for the past half-century.”
“Since he can’t talk to the father, François is going to meet with the two sons today. He’ll find out from them what Garcin’s exact state of health is. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disorder, one doesn’t become senile from one day to the next. Above all, I believe there are now treatments that attenuate its effects.”
“What if he isn’t sick at all,” Llach suggested. “Can’t one simulate that illness?”
“I’m not very well-informed on that subject,” Sebag admitted. “I don’t know whether there are irrefutable tests or clinical examinations.”
“That may also depend on the degree of the illness,” Julie pointed out. “You said that he was still fairly lucid.”
“That’s the impression I got from François, but if the guy is in a retirement home, it’s because he’s actually sick.’
“He could be the one,” Lambert ventured. “At eighty-one, he’ll necessarily have white hair.”
“He could also be completely bald,” Molina countered. “We’ll have to ask Ménard to check.”
“Send him an SMS right away,” Sebag proposed. “Then it’ll be done.”
Molina took out his cell phone and tapped on the keyboard. Gilles thought this was the moment to bring up the question of the killer’s car. He hadn’t stopped thinking about it since the day before. He wanted to see if some of his colleagues, with new eyes, would arrive spontaneously at the same conclusions as he had.
“Concordant testimonies gathered yesterday allow us to think that Roman’s murderer was driving a white SEAT with Spanish plates. The problem is that on the day of Martinez’s murder residents of Moulin-a-Vent saw not a SEAT but a white Clio with Spanish plates.”
“Are the witnesses reliable?” Llach asked. “The two models are pretty similar, if I’m not mistaken.”
“We can assume that they are reliable, yes. We checked.”
“That’s strange,” Lambert commented.
“I don’t see what’s strange about it,” Julie Sadet said. “The murderer could have simply changed cars. It’s unlikely that he used his own vehicle.”
Sebag smiled. Castello’s recruit was proving to be a good one. She’d avoided the trap that he and Molina had stupidly fallen into the preceding day.
“So according to you, where did he get his cars?”
“From a rental agency on the other side of the border, of course.”
“But why would he choose two models that are so similar?”
“He didn’t necessarily choose. Maybe in each case he opted for a widely-sold model and color in order to avoid making himself conspicuous.”
The idea struck the inspectors as judicious. Sebag was jubilant.
“That’s exactly the conclusion that I arrived at last night. The similarity of the models and the Spanish license plates in the two cases prevented us from immediately seeing what now seems obvious to us. At first, we thought that the witnesses were mistaken, and that it must be the same car. Then when we understood that the witnesses were right and that there were in fact two distinct vehicles, we were incapable of imagining this solution which is ultimately very simple.”
“So the killer rents his cars in Spain?” Llach summed up.
“Affirmative,” Sebag confirmed. We can even imagine that that’s where he lives between crimes.”
“Hop, hop, hop,” Molina interrupted vigorously. “Aren’t we moving a little too fast there? You’re now assuming that the old man with the Clio, who was probably responsible for the accident that killed your daughter’s friend, is also the murderer?”
“Yes, I think that’s possible.”
“What old man, what accident?” Llach interrupted.
Sebag rapidly told them about Mathieu’s death.
“Charles Mercader, a resident of Moulin-à-Vent, told us that he’d seen a man at least seventy years old get into the Clio. We can imagine that the murderer was a little nervous after committing his crime, and that in hastening to escape, he ran a stop sign.”
“An old man? That would be Maurice Garcin, then!” Lambert exclaimed. “The barbouze!”
“Hold on, hold on, let’s calm down,” Sebag said. “The fact that the murderer is old doesn’t prove anything. Even if he might want to take revenge for something that happened more than fifty years ago, Garcin isn’t the only survivor of the Algerian War.
“So we’re back to the infamous white hair, then,” Llach remarked. “Did Castello look into that?”
“I don’t know, I’ll have to talk to Pagès.”
“An old gunslinger and hot-rodder who leaves his hair lying around everywhere like Tom Thumb’s pebbles . . . Isn’t all that a little implausible?”
Molina didn’t conceal his ill humor. Sebag hadn’t taken him into his confidence and he was mad about it.
“We have to beware of drawing hasty conclusions,” Sebag conceded. “But it’s by following leads that we make progress.”
“Or go off on the wrong track!”
“Last night, I still had serious doubts about this business of the car, and that’s why I didn’t talk to you about it. But this morning, I’m practically convinced. And even if I’m moving a little fast by attributing to the murderer the responsibility for the accident, that doesn’t mean that it’s stupid to think that our man rented two similar cars from Spanish agencies. And I remind you that I wasn’t the only one who arrived at that hypothesis. Julie did, too. And without my having said a word about it to her.”
“We’re going to be wasting our time,” Molina grumbled again. “There are thousands of car rental agencies in Spain.”
“If, as Gilles says, the murderer is living in Spain, he’s probably based not far from the border,” Julie said.
“So what? Between Le Perthus and Girona, there are at least several dozen agencies . . . And over the past two weeks, each one of them must have rented dozens of Clios and SEATs.”
“But they must not have many customers who rented a Clio and then a SEAT.”
“If our guy is being careful, he wouldn’t have gone to the same agency twice.”
“That’s true,” Julie conceded.
“And in any case, it’s not going to be easy for us to get the information in Spain. We’ll have to go through official channels, and that will take days and days.”
Llach, who had kept silent as they talked, sat up on his chair.
“One of my wife’s cousins works for the Mossos. He could give us a hand. Unofficially, of course. We’ve already done each other some favors when we needed to move fast.”
Sebag turned to Julie, who didn’t seem to understand.
“The Mossos is the police force in South Catalonia. Its full name is Mossos d’Esquadra.”14
“Isn’t the Spanish police the Guardia Civil?”
Sebag, Molina, and Lambert smiled. Julie Sadet had just committed her first big blunder. Llach sighed but agreed to give her a quick explanation.
“The Guardia Civil is in fact the Spanish police, yes, but in South Catalonia it has gradually been replaced by the Mossos. The process has been going on for over twenty years. Today, the Guardia is involved only in matters of terrorism and immigration. All the rest, including criminal cases, is in the jurisdiction of the Catalan police.”
Llach added, not without pride:
“It’s one of the oldest police forces in Europe. It was created at the beginning of the eighteenth century.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll go to bed less ignorant this evening. Thanks, Joan.”
“Should I call my cousin in the Mossos, then?” Llach asked.
“That would be good . . . ”
“And I suppose that I should bring in Charles Mercader to do an Identikit picture?” Molina asked reluctantly.
“If my hypothesis is valid, Mercader is the only person who saw the murderer. I’m going to try to get a photo of Maurice Garcin. We have to show it to Mercader. We’ll ask François to dig us up one.”
Sebag gave the signal for dismissal, while Jacques sent another text message to Ménard. Llach, Lambert, and Julie Sadet stood up, but the young woman cop didn’t follow her colleagues out the door.
“Did you have something else you wanted to say, Julie?” Sebag asked her.
“I had an idea. A hypothesis, to use your vocabulary.”
“Let’s hear it, please.”
“It occurred to me that the killer could have taken his car back to an agency different from the one where he rented it. That’s a pretty common practice.”
“Yes, it happens quite often. But why would he have done that?”
“I don’t know. Because it was convenient, or to try to hide his tracks.”
“That’s possible. And where does this line of argument take us?”
“We might imagine that he returned his vehicle to a French agency.”
Sebag’s eyes narrowed. His brain was calculating all the consequences of that supposition.
“That means that we could follow that lead right away, without waiting for the help of our colleagues in South Catalonia. It also means that we won’t be flooded with suspects: there can’t be too many customers who rent a car in Spain and return it in France. Bravo! You should be the one to look into this, of course. Ask Llach or Lambert to help you.”
Julie turned on her heel and joined her colleagues in the street. Molina put his cell phone back in his jacket.
“She’s pretty good, our new recruit,” Sebag remarked.
“Yeah.”
Sebag looked hard at Molina. He was expecting further comments, but none came.
“You’re either pouting or you’re getting old!”
“I’m not pouting.”
“So you must be getting old!”
“What do you mean, getting old? What are you talking about?”
“You have nothing more to say about our young, pretty Julie? No comments on her lovely eyes, her nice little ass, and God knows what else?”
“It’s just that . . . well, no!”
“That’s exactly what I said, you’re getting old: you’re not even trying to put moves on her.”
“I’m not that heavy-handed. I don’t shoot at anything that moves, after all.”
“In any case, you try . . . ”
Molina laughed.
“Yes, it’s true, I’m a little heavy-handed sometimes.”
“But here, nothing! What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, I’m not feeling anything.”
“Why? Don’t you like her?”
“Are you kidding? She’s super hot.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know. The old hunter’s instinct, probably. She’s not in my league.”
“She’s too good for you?”
“Oh please, don’t give me that. I’ve had some who were just as good, or even better. But I’m not getting any vibes off her: she’s not on the market, that’s all!”
“That’s a very classy way of putting it . . . ”
“That’s how I see things. And I’m saying it as best I can. She’s very . . . not distant, no, it’s not that, she’s just . . . withdrawn. You can’t understand, you haven’t tried to pick up a woman since you met Claire at the university, but those of us who do can sense these things. In my opinion, Julie’s got a boyfriend and she’s very much in love. And she’s probably very faithful. If you see what I mean . . . ”
“I have some vague sense of what you’re driving at, yes,” Sebag replied.
He suddenly wondered when Claire had . . . put herself back on the market, what signals she might have sent out and what “predator” had picked them up. A pang of jealousy bored into his stomach followed by another even more treacherous—a pang of fear. And what was the situation now? Now that her summer fling seemed to be over—if it ever existed—was Claire on that infamous market again?
He suddenly raised his hand to order another coffee. One more little treat and he’d immerse himself in the investigation again. That would be more useful than his eternal, painful, sterile ruminations.
*
Around the middle of the morning, he telephoned Gérard Mercier.
“I was just about to call you,” the brother of the Pied-Noir Circle’s treasurer said. “The photo you sent of our two boys with Lieutenant Degueldre helped me. I talked to some of my contacts—they’re old friends—and I’ve got new information for you. Do you have something to write with?”
Sebag was sitting at his desk, with his notebook lying open in front of him.
“Go ahead, I’m all ears.”
“There were in fact four of them who made up what was called the Babelo commando, after the name of their leader, or rather his nickname. Around Babelo we see Sigma, Bizerte, and Omega . . . ”
“You have only pseudonyms?” Sebag said with concern.
“Omega was Bernard Martinez. Sigma was a young guy named Jean Servant, and Bizerte . . . I suppose you’ve guessed who Bizerte was?”
Sebag remembered that André Roman spent part of his childhood in the city of Bizerte, in northern Tunisia.
“They didn’t go to a lot of trouble to find their pseudonyms,” he said.
“It was more a game than a necessity. Especially since among the Pieds-Noirs, everything always came out anyway. But the pseudonyms gave certain groups the feeling of being in the Resistance.”
The comparison startled Sebag but he refrained from making any commentary that might annoy the former member of the OAS.
“What about Babelo?”
“That comes from Bab-El-Oued, which means ‘Door of the River.’ It was a working-class European neighborhood in northern Algiers. It was also one of the bastions of the OAS. The leader came from there.”
“And do you have his real name?”
No response, only silence.
“Hello, are you still there?”
“Yes, yes, I’m here.”
“Do you have his name, or didn’t your ‘contacts’ give it to you?”
“Yes, they gave it to me. According to them, Babelo wouldn’t like being bothered by the police for such old matters.”
“Nonsense! Did you tell them that it was chiefly a matter of saving his life?”
Mercier chuckled.
“They weren’t impressed; they told me he could take care of himself.”
“That’s ridiculous. I have to contact him. You have to give me his name.”
Gérard Mercier resisted.
“I don’t have to do anything! I told you at the outset that if I helped you it would be mainly to protect our guys. And anyway, Babelo is not in your jurisdiction: he didn’t return to metropolitan France.”
“Where does he live?”
“Elsewhere . . . Don’t worry, I’ll try to contact him myself and he’ll be on his guard.”
Sebag conceded defeat for the moment. He had to avoid antagonizing his interlocutor because he had other questions to ask him. He reread his notes.
“And the last guy—his name is Jean Servant, right?’
“Yes, that’s right. But he isn’t in your jurisdiction, either.”
“Come on!” he replied, overcome by annoyance.
“He didn’t return to France either, after the war,” Mercier explained. “He didn’t have the chance to. He died in Algiers. He was killed in the bombing of a bar in June, 1962.”
Sebag noted down this information. The investigation was coming to an abrupt end: there was now only one potential victim and he couldn’t do anything to help him. He felt both disappointment and relief.
“O.K., then! Let’s see if we can find out a little more about the murderer’s motives. Do you have any idea of what the Babelo commando did back then?”
“The Babelo group was one of the famous Delta commandos that were under the direct control of Lieutenant Degueldre, the OAS’s chief operations organizer.”
Mercier’s voice trembled slightly as he uttered Degueldre’s name.
“It was a very active group that carried out spectacular, daring actions . . . ”
“I got that impression, yes,” Sebag said ironically.
Horrible things, Mathilde Roman had said before talking about the murder of the French police officer and innocent Arabs. Mercier pretended to not to have heard what Sebag said.
“They began by taking over Radio Algiers. We liked that kind of operation. We cut the programming of the official radio station and replaced it with our own. That way our compatriots got real news that was very different from what the government told them.”
“But the Babelo group didn’t limit itself to that, right?” Sebag interrupted.
He immediately sensed discomfort at the other end of the line. He had to encourage Mercier to go on again.
“Hello, are you still there?”
“I’m still here. I’m thinking about how I can explain to you something that you can’t understand.”
“I can try.”
“I don’t doubt your goodwill,” Mercier sighed, “but it’s always a matter of putting everything in its historical context. Even if it wasn’t acknowledged as such, the Algerian War was a real war, a kind of civil war, and especially a terrible war.”
He paused to take a breath.
“Let us recall first that it was the FLN that started the fighting in November 1954. And the fellaghas never limited themselves to military targets. They killed civilians, women, and children, too. Slit their throats, disemboweled them. You must have seen lots of corpses in your work, but how many have you found with their testicles in their mouths? By damn, that makes one hell of an impression, believe you me.”
He spoke faster and faster.
“Personally, I was twenty-two when I got in contact with the OAS. At the time, I was full of hatred, we all had someone close to us who’d been killed by the FLN. That doesn’t encourage clemency, I can tell you that.”
His Pied-Noir accent took over as he grew more heated.
“It was war. And in wartime points of reference and values are not the same as they are in peacetime. When everything’s calm it’s easy to have generous ideas and great moral principles. But during a war, it’s entirely different.”
“All this in order to say what?” Sebag pressed him.
“To say that the Babelo group didn’t commit just nice actions like taking over the radio.”
“Did it kill a French police officer, for example?”
“For example. I see that you are already well-informed.”
“I don’t know his name, or the date.”
“It was Inspector Michel. Executed in Algiers in December 1961.”
Sebag noted the choice of terms: “executed.” That was something quite different from “killed” or “murdered.”
“They also ‘executed’ defenseless Arab workers.”
Gérard Mercier was breathing heavily.
“I told you that you couldn’t understand.”
“I’m having difficulty, in fact.”
“I think I know what operation you’re referring to. In November 1961, Babelo’s men waited for workers at the exit from a bottling factory and shot them down without warning. There were six dead. The workers were unarmed, they weren’t necessarily members of the FLN. But they were Arabs, and at the time that was enough for us.”
He took a deep breath.
“There were lots of operations like that one, and some that were even worse. Women and children were killed in the same way. It’s true that all that mattered to us was that they were Arabs. Just as to fire on us, it was enough for the fellaghas that we were Europeans. I told you: it was war. For my part, I booby-trapped cars and put bombs in Arab cafés. I was caught, tried, and went to prison. I paid.”
Mercier cleared his throat before going on.
“Because we did pay, we all paid. We lost our battle, and as a result, History has decided that we were in the wrong. History is always a bitch for the losers. It has made our actions crimes and those of our adversaries great military feats. The former fellaghas have become cabinet ministers and our fighters have become pariahs who don’t even have the right to have public monuments to their memory in France. But we did nothing that was worse than what the FLN did.”
“Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It’s pretty classic, after all,” Sebag summed up. “You began by talking about spectacular, daring actions. Up to now, I haven’t seen anything like that.”
“The Babelo group was in the forefront of our battle against the barbouzes. You’ve heard about the barbouzes?”
“Only recently, but now I know who they were.”
“Battle-hardened veterans with powerful weapons. They bombed our bars, killed our fighters, tortured some of us. They gave us no quarter . . . ”
“You didn’t give them any, either.”
“That’s true,” said Mercier, with intact pride in his voice. “They didn’t stay in Algiers long. Three months after they got there—and despite reinforcements—they all went back to metropolitan France.”
“Those who were still alive.”
“The others, too,” Mercier said mockingly. “I can guarantee you that their bodies weren’t buried over there.”
Sebag noted down a few more words, and then rapidly reread what he’d written since the beginning of the conversation. Next he asked Mercier what the Babelo commando could have done that could have elicited such a belated vengeance.
“In my opinion, nothing. Or else everything! What I mean by that is that I don’t see anything in particular in their acts that could explain it.”
“Can you envisage it as revenge taken by former barbouzes?”
“Had you asked me that question forty years ago, I would probably have answered yes, but today! Why today?”
“Some barbouzes are still angry at the OAS.”
“Just as we are still angry at de Gaulle and the FLN. It’s always in the camp of the losers that you find the people who want revenge. But I ask again: why today?”
“Because before, the murderer didn’t know that Martinez, Roman, and other . . . ‘Babelos’ were responsible!”
“That wasn’t known to everyone, but it wasn’t a secret, either. And even if it was! That was half a century ago! Who can still harbor such a tenacious hatred after so long a time? No, if you want my opinion, the only really tenacious hatreds are found . . . ”
Gérard Mercier suddenly stopped.
“Yes?” Sebag asked.
“No, nothing. I’m letting myself get carried away by passion and I was going to say something stupid.”
“Go ahead, say it. I’ll tell you what I think.”
“These are only speculations that are of no interest.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Yes, necessarily. If I’m wrong, it’s stupid. And if I’m right, it’s even stupider.”
Mercier tried to snigger, but his laugh sounded false.
“Don’t leave me hanging,” Sebag tried again.
“Don’t insist. I believe I’ve already helped your investigation quite a bit. You’ve gotten more out of me than I intended. You’re redoubtable, Lieutenant Sebag. Goodbye.”
With that cheap flattery, he hung up. Sebag, perplexed, wrote a series of question marks at the end of his notes. Then he took the photo of the commando’s four men and looked again at the infamous Babelo. Older than his three accomplices, he wore with pride—and perhaps a certain self-importance—an elegant, fashionable suit. A light-colored kerchief poked out of one pocket. His oiled hair, slicked back in waves, revealed a broad, triangular forehead. Straight eyebrows, a long nose squeezed between protruding cheekbones, and a thin mustache protecting a winning smile. The guy had an obvious charm and charisma. Sebag made himself a promise:
“My dear Babelo, whoever you are, wherever you are, and whatever you think, I’m going to find you. I just hope I find you before you die.”
Later that morning, Sebag received a call from Ménard.
“I’ve just spoken with Garcin’s sons. They confirm that their father has never completely gotten over the Algerian War and is still angry at Pieds-Noirs in general and the OAS in particular. They have always heard him say that the criminals of French Algeria got off too easily, that the Republic had been too lenient with them, and that it should have shot a lot more of them. But they also say that’s just talk, and that he’d never have actually done anything. And in any case, he’s now physically incapable of it.”
“Who says that? His sons?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You should go talk with the doctors at the retirement home and get their opinion. Find out, for instance, whether it’s possible to pretend to have Alzheimer’s.”
“O.K., I’ll try to see them this afternoon.”
“Does the old man wander off frequently?”
“Apparently.”
“How long has he been gone this time?”
“Three days.”
“So, since Sunday, the day Roman was assassinated. About what time?”
“He didn’t come to breakfast, which is served at 7 A.M.”
“And at the time of Martinez’s death, were you able to find out where he was?”
“He was gone then, too.”
“For a long time?”
“No, just one day.”
“He takes off that frequently?”
“Three or four times a month, on average. Sometimes a few hours, sometimes a few days.”
“Those are long walks, in fact.”
“You could say that.”
“We’re laughing but we still can’t exclude the possibility that these walks lead to murders. Were you able to get a photo of him?”
“Yes, his sons gave me a picture. The most recent one. I’ll photograph it with my iPhone and e-mail it to you. The quality isn’t great but it will be useful all the same.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be waiting for it.”
A miracle of modern technology, the photo appeared on his computer screen only three minutes after he hung up. Despite his age and his illness, Maurice Garcin had retained a slender figure and a certain presence. The flames of strong passions still burned in his pale blue eyes. His square, wrinkled face was framed by white hair thinned by age.
Sebag immediately called Ménard back. He’d forgotten one detail.
“Try to get one of Garcin’s hairs while you’re at the retirement home. Maybe you’ll find one on the pillow of his bed or on a comb in his bathroom. Then we can compare his DNA with that of the hairs we’ve already found.”
The hair or the hairs; were the other two from the same man? Sebag tried to call the head of the forensic team. Since there was no answer, he left a message. But he knew that he’d have to try again; Pagès never called back.
Sebag printed the photo. Molina could show it to his witness Charles Mercader that afternoon. He hadn’t been able to meet him this morning, the retiree having a longstanding appointment with his cardiologist. Sebag stretched and then got up. He went to the office next door where Llach and Julie were calling car rental agencies.
“We’ve already done all the agencies in Perpignan,” Julie explained. “Now we’re starting in on the agencies in Narbonne. We decided to follow the rail line: we figure that after he’d turned in his car, the killer would have no choice but to take the train to get back to Spain.”
“That seems me an excellent supposition.”
With that compliment, Sebag left them. He took the police vehicle to go to find out how Guy Albouker was doing. He found the president of the Pied-Noir Circle comfortably settled in a large armchair, his feet resting on an ottoman. He’d put on a dressing gown over his shirt and pants, and was reading a magazine for the Pied-Noir community. He seemed to be recovering quickly from his attack.
“The night was a little difficult. The wound hurt every time I turned over in bed. But this morning it’s better. I was able to take a little walk around the neighborhood.”
“And psychologically, you’re O.K.?”
Albouker’s wife answered for him.
“He’s less affected than I’d feared.”
Albouker grimaced as he sat up in his chair. His face hardened.
“My body is all right and my mind, too. It’s my heart that hurts. I thought all that was over—the hostility, the resentment, the hate. You’d think that time hadn’t changed anything. History still casts us as the bad guys.”
Marie tried to calm him: “Stop, there’s no point in stewing about all that,”
“Stop, stop . . . Precisely, I’d like all that to stop some day. But we’re still the victims of the same ostracism. So I get stabbed, I can handle that, it’s only a flesh wound, it’ll heal up; what I can’t stand is being called a murderer. No one in my family killed anybody.”
He put his hand on his stomach.
“We’re often accused of brooding on our bitterness, but do you know why we can’t heal, Mr. Sebag?”
“Yes, you told me last Sunday. To heal would be to die. To die as a community.”
“Did I say that? Damn . . . Sometimes I say stupid things.”
He refrained from smiling, he hadn’t yet vented his anger.
“Do you know what makes our tragedy unlike any other? Yes, I know I’m exaggerating . . . Let’s say what makes it so different from many other tragedies suffered by many other peoples? Well, it’s that today, History hasn’t changed. It remains fixed. We’re the bad guys, and the bad guys we’ll remain. The truth has not been restored. People don’t want to see that we are victims first of all. Granted, some Pieds-Noirs did terrible things, but collectively we’re victims. France has to do us that justice. We weren’t racist colonists, and still less murderers. It’s not de Gaulle who betrayed us, it’s France! And today it’s still going on.”
Marie Albouker sat down alongside her husband and took his hand without saying a word. She knew that if she spoke she would only make things worse.
“We have to express our anger again and again. Otherwise we’ll all die from holding it in. My father died of that. An ulcer and cancer. A marvelous combination. Thanks, France! I still often mourn my father, because I don’t even have a grave where I can go and think about him. And do you know why?”
Sebag shook his head. He also preferred to remain silent.
“My father, like many Pieds-Noirs of his generation, did not want to be buried in the earth of the country that had betrayed him. We cremated my father’s body and I scattered his ashes in the Mediterranean. That was his last wish. He hoped that the current would carry him to the shores of Algeria. And I want to think that that’s what happened. Because if there is no justice in this world, we have to believe that at least there will be justice in the next world.”
He leaned back in his chair, exhausted. His diatribe was finally over. His wife gently patted his hand.
“You know that Mr. Sebag is not to blame.”
“Yes, I know the inspector’s not to blame. But he’s the one who’s here, so too bad for him.”
Marie Albouker gave Sebag a little smile of excuse.
`“You probably haven’t heard yet?” she asked shyly.
“Heard what?”
“About this afternoon.”
“What about it?”
“The demonstration . . . ”
“The Pied-Noir associations have organized a rally at 5 P.M. in front of the Castillet,” the president of the Circle explained. “I’m not the instigator but I didn’t disapprove of it. Jean-Pierre Mercier, my treasurer, met yesterday with the officials of other Pied-Noir associations and they agreed to demonstrate our dissatisfaction. You understand . . . with two murders of Pieds-Noirs, the destruction of the monument, and now the attack on me, the community owes it to itself to react.”
Sebag was not happy about the rally. It was not the kind of thing that was likely to calm people down.
“Has the prefecture been informed?”
“This action is largely spontaneous, largely improvised. Everything was decided at the last minute. But I think that by now, yes, the prefect has been informed.”
“Do you think that this kind of demonstration will calm things?”
“That’s not necessarily the goal.”
“Thank you for recognizing that. And you think that reacting collectively to attacks directed essentially against the OAS is going to help people make the distinction between your community and, as you put it, that criminal organization?”
Albouker scowled.
“For the past fifty years, no one has wanted to make that distinction! So a little more or a little less, it’s all the same.”
“I hope at least that in your condition, you’re not going to take the risk of going there.”
“Don’t worry,” Marie Albouker told him. “He’s going to stay right here.”
Sebag said a rapid goodbye and left. Out on the sidewalk, he called the prefect’s cabinet director on her cell phone. Having been informed by the RG, Sabine Henri already knew about the rally.
“We’re going to take steps to prevent this demonstration from degenerating. The organizers have asked to be heard. The prefect himself will receive them. In the absence of Superintendent Castello, I’d like you to be present at this meeting to tell us about the progress of the investigation. There has been progress, hasn’t there?”
“Let’s say that we’re moving forward step by step and that we’re following promising leads.”
The cabinet director laughed.
“I hope you will be able to present the case in a more attractive way. And especially present your work in a more positive manner. You’re not unaware that these days policemen also have to master the art of communication.”
“I’ve heard that said, yes, but making things known too often substitutes for knowing how to do things.”
“Bravo for the formula. I hope you’ll find more of those before this afternoon. And especially more appropriate ones. I doubt that one would be suitable for our interlocutors.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’m counting on it, Lieutenant Sebag, I’m counting on it. And the prefect is, too. See you in a little while.”
Sebag hung up and couldn’t help swearing.
“Fuck it to hell!”
Nearby, an old lady who was letting her dog defecate under the parasol pines jumped. She shot him a furious glance and rapidly walked away. Her dog followed her reluctantly, dropping behind him a smelly series of Tootsie Rolls.