Sebag was walking quickly down the main street in the North African quarter in central Perpignan. It was now completely dark and cold as well. He pulled up the collar of his jacket. In the evenings, the only activity on Rue Lucia consisted of a few young North Africans standing around talking.
He’d dozed off for a few minutes in his office, and that little nap had revitalized him. After Ménard and Llach left, he’d felt the need to go outside. Not getting any exercise was beginning to weigh on him more and more. In every sense of the term. When he’d stood on the scale that morning, he’d been annoyed to see that he’d gained almost five pounds since summer. He certainly didn’t want to develop a paunch. For him, that would be the sign that he was giving in to age.
On the way out of headquarters, he’d let Claire know that he wouldn’t be home before 8 P.M. And then he set out to walk through Perpignan.
As he strode along, he’d passed a dozen hotels and hadn’t been able to resist going in to ask whether a room had been reserved in the name of Guzman, Esteban, Servant, or even Sigma. He was well aware, however, that there was no chance of that. Especially since in France, it had been a long time since hotels were required to ask their guests to show an ID card. People could easily give their names as Michel Dupont, Jean Moulin, Charles de Gaulle, or Jean-Luc Godard.
He noticed the sign for another hotel, but this time he didn’t go in.
He left Rue Lucia and started up a side street that led toward the gypsy quarter. He had to edge along the wall of a building to get past a car that was parked right in the middle of the narrow street. Here, parking places were rare and residents paid little attention to the regulations. They left their cars wherever they could. Wherever they wanted.
Sebag liked to stroll through these old neighborhoods. Sedentary Gypsies had taken up residence in Perpignan’s historic center, making it one of the last downtown areas in France where the poor still lived. Everywhere else, they’d been forced to move to the outlying areas. Sebag liked the atmosphere in this quarter.
He came into the Place du Puig, the neighborhood’s nerve center. Men dressed in black from head to foot went on talking without paying any attention to him. He passed in front of a group that was huddled around a guitar player. A young man let out a long, guttural wail and the others started clapping their hands. For these Gypsies, the day was just starting.
After the Place du Puig, Sebag turned off to the left and walked back down toward the city’s more respectable commercial center. In a quarter of an hour he’d be back to his car, and in less than half an hour he’d be home with his family. With his children and his wife. His . . . faithful? unfaithful? . . . wife.
He was tired of these unresolved questions that were accumulating in his mind and weighing on his stride. And on his life, too . . . Where had Jean Servant gone? Who had wrecked that damned monument? Who had attacked Guy Albouker and threatened Jean-Pierre Mercier?
And who was that bastard who might have slept with his wife?
A stupid idea crossed his mind, an idea worthy of the teenager he hadn’t been for at least twenty-five years. He swore under his breath: “If I don’t solve this case, Claire and I are going to have it out, face to face.”
Then he spat on the ground to seal that ridiculous promise. He preferred to laugh stupidly than to weep sadly.