The next morning Blanc was tempted to believe his hour with Aveline Vialaron-Allègre had been a hallucination of a brain disturbed by the mistral. For a brief, confusing, passionate moment he had held in his arms a beautiful, experienced lover. But after they had both exhausted their lust she had got up without a word and disappeared through a door. He heard the sound of rushing water from the shower and then embarrassingly found himself still lying there naked on the sofa when Madame Aveline Vialaron-Allègre reappeared in a Chanel suit and smart shoes, makeup and hair perfect. “I think you should go now, mon Capitaine,” she said, lighting up another Gauloise.
While he was hastily getting dressed she went downstairs and was using her laptop to control the security camera by the door, turning the lens to left and right to scan the length of the rue du Passe-Temps. “There are advantages to living in an out-of-the-way place,” she murmured. “Nobody will see you leave.”
Thirty seconds later he was back on the edge of the Caillouteaux plateau, her house behind him, as silent and empty looking as all the others. The wind blew the last vestige of her scent from his hair. Aveline still says “vous” rather than “tu” to me, it occurred to him absurdly. He wasn’t sure he would ever again be as intimate with her as he had just been. Or indeed, whether he wanted to.
He drove back to Gadet and told his colleagues that the juge d’instruction was prepared to issue a search warrant for Lafont’s house at midday the following day. Fabienne had given him an odd look as if she didn’t quite trust him. Nkoulou was remarkably relaxed and made the necessary arrangements for a couple of cars and a few gendarmes to be ready, without telling any of them what they were to be ready for. Tonon was in a state of shock. It had simply never occurred to him that one day he might be about to turn over Lafont’s house.
Blanc returned to Sainte-Françoise-la-Vallée early, but it wasn’t just the mistral that kept him awake lying there on his hard bed, turning to and fro, but thoughts of death and love.
He thought about the action they were about to take against Lafont. In twenty-four hours’ time the mayor would be finished. Or else he would be. France might be a country in which the boss of a billion-dollar company couldn’t even fire a doorman without the trade union setting tires alight outside the gates, but Lafont and Vialaron-Allègre would find one way or another to hound him out of the gendarmerie. They would fire him. Or, what did he know, maybe Captain Roger Blanc would also end up lying like a peppered, grilled chicken in some godforsaken corner of the Midi.
And then there was the hour he had spent with Aveline. Happiness and passion, but along with them the worry about even the idea of starting an affair with this woman of all people and at this time of all times. That was if it even was the start of an affair … As the gray dawn approached, he had persuaded himself to forget the hour they had spent together. What he had done had not just been unprofessional, it had been idiotic. D’accord, it had been Aveline who had seduced him. But lust had consumed him, even though it was precisely the woman who had described it as the second oldest motive in the world who had inflamed it. But their hour together was hardly love. It was revenge. Revenge on Geneviève. Revenge on the minister. The action of a beaten man, already on the floor but still trying to get in one last kick. Not exactly something to be proud of. And certainly not love. He would never make the slightest mention or insinuation of it to anyone, least of all Madame Vialaron-Allègre. It would be as if he had never even gone to see her.
It was only when he set off in the Espace that he realized his baseball cap with NOVA SCOTIA on it was nowhere to be found. The only explanation could be that he had left it in a house in Caillouteaux.
* * *
He did manage to locate his phone, however. He wanted to make the most of the few hours before midday and called Miette Fuligni. “I’d like to take a look at some of your husband’s papers,” he told her when she answered. “Do you know where he kept the documentation relating to the planned médiathèque?”
“In his office. I used to keep things in order for him, filed his documents away and things like that. But then that Romanian tart arrived and took charge. Or rather didn’t take charge. It looks like a whorehouse in there. Good luck trying to find it. Marcel also came by looking for something and left in a bad mood.”
Blanc gasped. “Monsieur Lafont? When was this?”
“The same day my husband’s body turned up. He came to pay his condolences. What did you think?”
“Is it okay if I come by?”
“If you want, but come now; I’ve arranged to play tennis with Lucien later.”
Quite the grieving widow, Blanc thought to himself, wondering how anyone could manage to play tennis in the mistral. But at the same time he was more angry with himself for not preventing Lafont from going through the dead man’s papers. He had the feeling he would be wasting his time.
A few minutes later he was standing next to Madame Fuligni, who was wearing a thin red tracksuit, in the dead building contractor’s office. There was still a heady smell of perfume in the air. Miette wrinkled her nose and opened the window wide. “Just like a whorehouse,” she muttered.
Blanc went over the dozen or so boxed files on the shelves on the wall. Someone had used a felt-tip pen to mark each with a date and a note—either a surname or a street name or a place.
“Those are all Pascal’s projects over the last ten years,” she explained. “From the initial estimate to the finishing details. One file per house.”
Up at the top was a box file marked “médiathèque” in different handwriting to all the others. The letter “H” had been inserted as an afterthought. “His girl didn’t even know proper French,” Miette Fuligni added.
The box file was empty. “Was your husband in the habit of opening a file with nothing to put in it?” Blanc asked.
“Don’t talk nonsense. Pascal always had masses of paperwork: estimates, contracts, drawings, plans, anything you can imagine. It was only when the pile on his desk got out of control that he called me for help. Or rather his Romanian more recently—she probably lost them all.”
No, Blanc thought to himself. The girl might have made a few mistakes, but she wasn’t that useless. Lafont hadn’t come to pay his condolences, he’d come to clean up. “Did the mayor stay long, when he turned up on the Thursday?”
“He might have been here for a couple of hours. I don’t look at my watch much and on that day I probably didn’t bother at all.”
Time enough to go through not just that file but all of them. Blanc was disappointed. Maybe there would still be something, some tiny grubby little story from Lafont and Fuligni’s relationship. But it would take a team of cops days to find something like that. Forget it, he told himself. He went over to the desk, looked through what was lying on it, what was in the drawers. It was impossible to tell if everything was how Fuligni had left it or if someone else had already been through it. Routinely he looked through the papers, flicked through the calendars and notebooks: measurements, orders for building sand, telephone numbers, a drawing of a curved staircase, roughly scribbled with a ball pen, but surprisingly elegant in design. When Blanc lifted the two issues of Paris Match that lay spread open on the desk, Miette Fuligni snorted in anger. The magazines smelt particularly strongly of the cheap perfume. He flicked through them—and pulled out a letter that had obviously been used as a bookmark in the most recent issue. It was a letter from the commune of Caillouteaux.
The letter was unsigned, just a routine note to all those involved in the médiathèque building project, informing them that all the water pipes were to be laid on the land belonging to Monsieur Charles Moréas. Somebody had ringed the name in yellow felt tip. I doubt very much that was the Romanian, Blanc said to himself. The date on the letter was the previous Wednesday. Fuligni must have got it on the Thursday. He could imagine the scene as if it were a movie: The building contractor reads the letter. Just a routine matter. Then he sees the name Moréas. Maybe that’s when it all finally becomes clear to him, seeing it in black and white: the name of the victim and his niggling suspicion coming together. Fuligni himself has already had the police question him. Now the victim’s name crops up in a document addressed to him. What if the cops turn up and find all the documents with the name Moréas on them in his office? Panic. He scrawls a ring around the name and sends his pal Lafont a text asking him to do something to get him out of the firing line. Then he dashes out of the office. The young Romanian, who hasn’t a clue about anything, picks up the letter and uses it as a bookmark in her magazine. Lafont does indeed react to the text message, but not in the way Fuligni had been expecting. He kills his old friend, goes to visit his widow to pay his condolences, and searches the office. But how could he know that the last letter from the commune would be in a copy of Paris Match? He misses this one tiny piece of evidence … It made a great story, all too credible, as Aveline Vialaron-Allègre might say if one had the slightest bit of proof. Don’t let yourself get led astray, Blanc told himself. “Did your husband have any contact with Monsieur Lafont that Thursday prior to his death?”
Miette Fuligni shook her head. “Not as far as I know.”
“Really?” Blanc was disappointed.
“As far as I know. Marcel wanted to speak to him, I remember. He called at some stage in the afternoon, got me on my cell phone because he couldn’t get hold of Pascal. His Romanian girl didn’t bother to pick up the office phone, I imagine. And Pascal had left his iPhone on the bedside table, as you know.”
“Did Monsieur Lafont say what he wanted to talk to Pascal about? Did he leave a message?”
“He just wanted to know where he could get hold of him. I told him Pascal had gone down to his yacht and was going to spend the rest of the day there and the night as well. That wasn’t the wrong thing to do, was it?”
“No,” Blanc lied, “not the wrong thing at all.”
* * *
Leaving the Fuligni driveway, the captain was about to turn onto the route départementale heading for Gadet when to his left he spotted a car rushing toward him at high speed. He halted to let it pass, distracted by his thoughts. Then he noticed that it was a little red car. A Mini, with an elderly lady at the wheel whom he vaguely recognized. A matronly figure with gray hair and a large bosom. Where do I know you from, Blanc asked himself. Then he realized.
The online edition of La Provence. The photo taken outside the school: Carole Lafont, the mayor’s wife.
Carole Lafont. A red Mini. The red Mini that had also been in the photo, in the parking lot in the background. A parking lot, like the parking lot down by the garbage dump. The statement by the farmer that he had seen a small red car down by the dump on Sunday morning. No, he hadn’t just seen it, he had had to drive around it. Rheinbach in his Clio had been there too, but he had parked outside the gate, not in anybody’s way. Then he remembered Lafont’s words the first time they had met: “But I grew up in Marseille, politically too. I still have lots of friends there. I was down seeing them just last weekend. They had a good laugh at my expense. My Audi was in for service and I had to take my wife’s car. A red Mini, a woman’s car. You wouldn’t believe the ribbing they gave me.”
He had only ever connected the mayor to his huge monster of a car. But he had taken the Mini. To go to Marseille. To get a Kalashnikov from a friend down there, possibly? But would Lafont, who never got his hands dirty, let someone pass off a hot weapon on him? Or might he deliberately have bought a gun that had previously been used in a murder, to divert attention in the direction of Marseille? Whatever the case, on the day of the murder he hadn’t been driving around in his big, conspicuous Audi Q7, but in his wife’s little red car. He parked in the entrance road to the dump in order to take out Moréas. On a Sunday, so that the next morning he could make his claim to his strip of land. But he had had to wait. The farmer Gaston Julien was getting rid of his roofing felt and got annoyed at the red car he had to drive round. And then a scrawny red-haired man turned up, Moréas laughed in his face, the man threw a stone at him, and Moréas fell over. The ideal opportunity for Lafont. As soon as Rheinbach raced off there was nobody else left at the dump—except for Moréas, who could hardly stand up, and was certainly in no situation to run away. He was an easy target …
It was another good, plausible story, but still one he had no proof of. Don’t make a fool of yourself. Don’t go falling in love. Unless he found the Kalashnikov, Blanc knew he was finished.
* * *
At the gendarmerie station they were waiting impatiently for him. Everybody knew there was something in the air, but not what. Nobody could have rung Lafont secretly to warn him. Aveline Vialaron-Allègre wasn’t there, which was good. He would be able to concentrate better, even though he was a tiny bit disappointed not to see her. Blanc took Fabienne and Marius into his office, closed the door behind them, and told them about the files in Fuligni’s office, Lafont turning up supposedly to offer his condolences, and the mayor’s wife with her red Mini.
“Sounds a convincing tale,” Fabienne said.
“As convincing as an old-fashioned novel,” the old lieutenant interjected. “You don’t really think you could win a case in court with a story like that, do you?” Tonon was freshly showered and wearing a clean uniform with skewed creases, evidence that he had obviously ironed it himself. He didn’t reek of rosé, but his hands were shaking ever so slightly. His gun was in his holster. Blanc wondered if it might not be better to avoid taking him to search the mayor’s house, but he couldn’t think of a suitable excuse to leave his colleague behind.
“Where is Madame le juge?” Fabienne asked.
“She’s going to be there with us,” Blanc assured her, realizing that he didn’t sound one hundred percent certain of that.
“We’re diving headlong into a heap of shit,” Marius said gloomily. “I’ve almost completed my thirty-second year of service. Finish it and I can retire and wander around Saint-César market watching the girls’ asses. Instead Lafont and his pals will have our guts for garters. The juge d’instruction has vanished in a puff of smoke. Nkoulou has shut himself away in his office. We’re left out here in the cold. They’ll hang us out to dry by our balls.”
“They might have a problem with that in my case,” Fabienne said, giving him an encouraging smile. But Blanc saw it wasn’t easy for her either.
“Stay here, both of you,” he suggested. “I’m in the firing line anyway. I’ll go on my own with the lower ranks, you can hold down the fort here.”
Marius looked as if he was about to agree, but his younger colleague spoke up first. “So that you get all the glory and a medal for finding the Kalashnikov? Out of the question.” Tonon murmured something that sounded more like a curse.
On the ground floor a dozen gendarmes were waiting along with four plainclothes members of the forensics team with their kit. Their faces suggested they already knew they would find nothing. Outside a couple of Méganes were parked, as well as a white delivery van. Most of the doors to the downstairs offices were closed. Blanc went to see Nkoulou. “We’re good to go,” he said.
“I’ve given the men their instructions. You’re in charge now.”
“You aren’t coming with us?” Blanc had Tonon’s grim prediction in his ears.
“I can’t drop everything else on my plate for one operation. You’re perfectly competent enough to carry this out without me. I wish you success, mon Capitaine.” Nkoulou turned his eyes down to examine in detail a file that lay open on his polished wooden desk.
As Blanc was leaving, the door to the office of the female chain-smoker whose name he could never remember opened. She waved to him, and then suddenly her waving hand drew a line across her throat.
Corporal Baressi on the reception desk muttered, “Au revoir, mon Capitaine,” though it sounded sad rather than sarcastic, then called after him, “Bonne chance.”
“See you later,” Blanc replied, forcing a smile. Where is Aveline? he wondered worriedly.
He could feel a dozen pairs of eyes on him as he walked out of the building. “We are going to search the house of Monsieur Marcel Lafont, who is a suspect in the murder of Charles Moréas,” he told them. “The main item we are searching for is the weapon used in the murder, a Kalashnikov.” He gave them a few more details, handed around photographs, issued a few specific orders. But he had the impression no one was really paying attention.
Eventually one of the younger men said, “You really do mean Mayor Lafont?”
“Don’t be intimidated by his office.”
“I’m just glad I’ll be wearing a mask,” one of the forensics team said. There was a burst of nervous laughter.
Blanc paid no attention and walked over to the patrol car with Marius and Fabienne. They would lead the little column. The others piled into the remaining cars. Blanc tried to ignore the whispering but couldn’t fail to overhear a few words: “Paris … posted here … Vialaron-Allègre … Putain!”
* * *
Marius directed them to an unmarked route that ran through the woods down the slope from Caillouteaux. The Mégane rattled over a few potholes, then braked before a new, green-painted gate in a yellow wall some six feet high. “Looks a bit like a jail,” Fabienne muttered.
“In that case Monsieur Lafont won’t have anything new to get used to,” Blanc replied, leaning out of the window to press the bell. “Gendarmerie,” he said into the speaker.
They heard the sound of an electric motor, then the gate swung open and they drove through. Beyond the gate the rickety track became a gravel roadway, leading to a pink-plastered villa. Very new and very big. The curved white bow windows looked as if they had been taken from a château, though they turned out to be modern and made of PVC. To the side of the house was a swimming pool as blue as the cooling tank in a nuclear power station.
“It’ll take us a week to search this palace,” Tonon muttered disconsolately.
“We’re not looking for some misplaced strand of hair, we’re looking for a Kalashnikov,” Blanc replied, noting at the same time how sharp and nervous his own voice sounded. He opened the car door.
Lafont came out to meet him, a sly smile on his face. He would have seen us drive up on surveillance cameras, the captain reckoned. He saw the cars and knows what’s coming. He didn’t even bother to pretend to be surprised. Maybe somebody did warn him after all.
Blanc shook hands very formally with the mayor, told him why they were there, and handed him a copy of the search warrant. The other gendarmes got out of their cars, timidly. Not one of them made any attempt to go into the house. The forensics team piled out of their van. They really all were wearing their masks.
“I’m aware that a lot of cops are naturally right-wingers, but I wasn’t expecting you in particular to be in the pay of the Front National,” Lafont said, handing back the search warrant as if it were a dirty photo. He spoke loud enough for all of them to hear him.
“I am in the pay of the French Republic,” Blanc replied.
“For now at least, mon Capitaine,” Lafont said, and nodded toward the house. “I do hope you have adequate insurance. To cover any breakages.”
Marble floor, white walls, wooden ceilings with LED lighting, casting soft light even at midday on old oil paintings of landscapes in gilded frames. Tonon took a look around and inconspicuously nodded toward the living room: Louis XVI chairs, a cabinet from the same period, an ancient table sparkling from multiple coats of oil. It all must have looked good when it was still in the town hall, Blanc thought to himself.
The gendarmes followed him, as shy as schoolchildren visiting a museum. The forensics team opened two cases and took out a few instruments, chosen completely arbitrarily, it seemed to Blanc. Lafont could have a battle tank in his kitchen and this lot wouldn’t find it, he thought, increasingly feeling uncertain. Tonon disappeared through a door, which probably led to a visitors’ bathroom or a broom cupboard. Souillard spotted an iMac on a side table and turned it on. At least one of them is a pro, Blanc thought.
Then he heard the noise of a car on the gravel. It was a dark Citroën C5. Blanc closed his eyes for a second. At least I’m not completely on my own, he thought with a touch of relief.
“Marcel, I’m so sorry for all this inconvenience,” Aveline Vialaron-Allègre said to the man of the house, proffering her cheek for him to kiss. It sounded as professional as a doctor informing a patient that he had been diagnosed with a fatal illness. Then she nodded perfunctorily to the gendarmes. “Go ahead, mon Capitaine.” Blanc hoped he had noticed the smallest of smiles toward him, but realized he was probably imagining it, out of lust as much as nervousness.
“This Paris cop has no idea what he’s doing,” Lafont replied. He sounded relaxed, as if he found the search wearying but something that didn’t concern him. But as the search continued he gave Blanc a look that said, Wait until I’m done with you.
“Thank you for being so cooperative, Marcel,” the juge d’instruction said. It was less than clear if she was being reassuring or sarcastic, but one way or another it seemed to shut him up.
Blanc avoided looking at her. She remained in the living room while he went around the rest of the house giving instructions to his men. It was the most lackluster house search he had ever seen. “You could at least open the cupboards and drawers,” he badgered one of them, who seemed content with just glancing into the bedroom.
His Nokia rang. A Paris number that he didn’t recognize. “Should I post you to Guyana? Or maybe you’d like to become a police training officer in Afghanistan? If you absolutely insist on behaving like an idiot in Provence, then you could at least do me the favor of not involving my wife.”
Vialaron-Allègre. How did he get my private cell phone number? Blanc wondered, hurrying through the rooms and out into the garden. The minister was screaming so loudly down the phone that everyone could hear him. How does he know his wife is here? Did Aveline tell him? Once out in the open, Blanc took a deep breath. Suddenly he was overcome with a remarkable light-spiritedness—that of a condemned man standing on the scaffold with a view of the guillotine. It was all over. There was no point in fighting it anymore. He gave the minister the facts in the most relaxed manner. Two of the gendarmes and one of the forensics team had strolled out into the garden and were lighting up cigarettes. They were never going to find a Kalashnikov. Merde.
Abruptly Vialaron-Allègre halted his tirade of threats and curses. Maybe his new tone of apparent resignation was really just self-confidence. “Has this whole thing even the slightest trace of credibility?” he asked, unexpectedly calmly.
“It had enough credibility to convince the juge d’instruction.”
Blanc thought he could almost hear the wheels of Vialaron-Allègre’s brain whirring. As if the politician was rapidly working through possibilities, strategies, alternatives. “Pass me to my wife,” he said suddenly.
Blanc located Aveline on the terrace near the pool, standing smoking on her own, and handed her the phone, then retreated so as not to eavesdrop. She seemed relaxed and continued smoking as she talked. Her husband must have been able to hear her inhale. Maybe that would calm him down. One way or another he didn’t seem to be saying much, as she was doing nearly all the talking. She seemed hardly to expect him to say anything or reply to any questions. After ten minutes she handed Blanc his phone back. The minister had hung up.
“What did you say to him?” Blanc asked, unable to restrain his curiosity.
“I told him to distance himself from Marcel as quickly as possible. Before this thing makes it into the press.”
“We’re not going to find the damn Kalashnikov.”
“My husband is very grateful to you for advising him in advance.”
Blanc stared at Aveline Vialaron-Allègre, tapping the ash from her Gauloise onto the gravel. So cool and calm. I’ve seen you in a different mood, he thought to himself.
“We are already on a one-way street, mon Capitaine. U-turns are not an option.” Her dark eyes sparkled fire. He thought back to the upstairs room in her house, to her presence by his side, and the words she had said: Do you love taking risks? She’s dancing on a high wire over an abyss, Blanc suddenly realized, and enjoying every moment of it. That’s why she’s here, making an enemy of the most powerful man in town.
Just at that moment an old green Toyota Corolla came through the gate. As soon as the old crate had come to a stop, out sprang Gérard Paulmier with notebook, pen, and a camera round his neck.
“Merde,” Blanc swore, going over to him. “Who told you about this?” he hissed.
“It was an anonymous call, but it sounded so crazy that I had to take a look. In thirty years I’ve never come across anybody prepared to take on Lafont. You’ll be on page one tomorrow. Tell me what it’s all about, or should I just work it out as I go along?”
Blanc’s mind was whirring. Who could have told him? Somebody who wanted to see the back of Lafont? Or somebody who wanted to see the new boy come down from Paris dragged into a police misconduct scandal? “You can have the story all to yourself,” he said reassuringly. “Just give me a few minutes first.”
“Is it okay if I take photos in the meantime?”
“Obviously not.”
Paulmier laughed, walked back over to his car, and leaned against it. Blanc ordered one of his men to go over and stand by the reporter to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. Then one of the others came over to him, shaking his head. The forensics team were creeping out of the house, putting their kit back in the van. Paulmier took a few photos anyway, and the gendarme standing next to him did nothing. Tonon had somehow made it from the guest bathroom to the patrol car without anybody noticing. Blanc had no idea how long the man had been sitting in the Mégane’s passenger seat. It looked as if he was asleep. Fabienne came out onto the terrace and shot a brief glance at the juge d’instruction.
“Tell me you found Lafont made an online Amazon order for a Kalashnikov,” Blanc joked wearily. “Or made an e-mail request for an assassin from Marseille? Otherwise we may as well pack it all in, in more than one sense.”
“Don’t give up yet, mon Capitaine. About two weeks ago Lafont looked at aerial shots of the garbage dump on Google Earth.”
“That’s hardly a crime.”
“Are you laughing at me?” Fabienne hissed. “We turn the guy’s house over and I’m the one giving you proof he was checking out the scene of the murder a few days before it happened.”
“The virtual scene of the murder.”
“So? What normal person looks at satellite pictures of a garbage heap? Lafont could have worked out the access routes, the layout of the parking lot, even the position of the scrap metal container, all without needing to go down there and without any witnesses.”
Blanc glanced at Aveline Vialaron-Allègre. “Is that enough?”
“It’s certainly interesting. But no, it’s not enough. Not to arrest him. And certainly not to convict him.”
“Lafont also used Google Maps to check out the routes to the dump,” Fabienne exclaimed, increasingly frustrated. “I can prove that. The shortest route, the route from the town hall to the dump. And an alternative route. Goddamn it, surely that’s enough to—” She stopped when she saw the look on Blanc’s face.
Doors banged closed. The gendarmes were piling back into the cars, swearing because the hot sun had turned them into ovens. None of them bothered to report to Blanc. The forensics team’s van was already on its way out of the gate. Paulmier looked at them in confusion. Lafont was nowhere to be seen. “Connards,” Blanc muttered. “The operation is just getting started. Come on!” He ran over to the Mégane where Tonon was dozing away. “The three of us will do it on our own.”
“Where are you going?” called Fabienne, running after him.
Blanc threw open the driver’s door, noticing that Aveline Vialaron-Allègre was hurrying over to her Citroën at the same time. She had got the message, he realized. Okay, now there are four of us. “We’re going to produce the Kalashnikov!” he growled triumphantly.
* * *
“Are you taking off?” Tonon spluttered, trying in vain to fasten his seat belt as the Mégane swayed across the road. Fabienne, in the backseat, hadn’t even bothered to try. They raced over a pothole so fast that the shock absorbers groaned. “This is only a Renault!” the front-seat passenger shouted. “It would fall apart if you shouted too loud. One more pothole like that and—”
He fell silent as with a screech of brakes Blanc swerved out onto the route départementale, sending Tonon crashing into the door. Blanc looked in the rearview mirror. Nothing. Then the other Méganes with the gendarmes in them appeared. They all turned right, toward Gadet. Then the dark blue Citroën, which turned left. And Paulmier’s old green Toyota. Also left. He was just turning his eyes back to the road ahead, when he saw something white in the mirror. The forensic team’s van? Then he recognized it as the big Audi Q7. No sooner had it pulled out of the gate than it soared past the Toyota so close and so fast that Paulmier only just managed to regain control of his swerving vehicle before it nearly crashed into a pine tree. The elderly journalist let himself fall behind them.
“You’re heading for Caillouteaux!” shouted Fabienne, who seemed to be enjoying herself.
“I owe you two lunches!” Blanc replied, ramming his foot down on the gas pedal while trying at the same time to turn on the flashing blue lights.
“Just keep at least one hand on the wheel!” screamed Tonon, bending over and turning on the blue lights himself.
“The town hall!” Blanc explained. “Lafont checked out the route from the town hall to the dump. Not from his house. What better hiding place than the town hall. Who’s going to search for a Kalashnikov in the office of Monsieur le maire?”
“The new steel filing cabinet,” Marius said. “That horrible thing he only had installed recently.”
“In the same week as Lafont was down in Marseille in his wife’s red Mini. To visit his old friends.”
Blanc raced up the hill, cutting the corners. It was a good thing that Provence was dead over lunchtimes. From somewhere beneath the hood there came a loud clank. He hoped the old jalopy would make it the last mile or so into the town. They came to a straight stretch, and the Q7 flashed past the Citroën, its monstrous radiator grille now filling the Mégane’s rearview mirror—like a shark’s maw catching up on a diver. He could hear the heavy diesel engine ramped up on maximum revs even over the noise the Mégane was making and the roar of the mistral. Blanc weaved from side to side to stop it from overtaking.
“Putain!” Tonon swore. His forehead was bleeding from where he had hit it against the door frame.
“I’m not going to let him pass us,” Blanc hissed through clenched teeth. “Lafont mustn’t get to the town hall a single second ahead of us.”
“We don’t have a search warrant for the town hall,” Fabienne reminded him, not that it seemed to bother her.
“We do have a juge d’instruction behind us.”
“Providing she hasn’t ended up in a ditch.” Tonon turned round and shook his head. “I can’t see her car any longer. Just this goddamn white monster.”
Aveline. Blanc no longer looked in the mirror. His T-shirt stuck to his ribs, salty sweat ran down his forehead into his eyes, adrenaline pumped through his veins. He felt as if he were flying a jet fighter through the forest. “We’ll show this scumbag!” he growled to let off steam.
The streets of Caillouteaux. The clunking sound under the hood was getting louder by the minute. The police siren reverberated off the walls of the houses. An elderly cyclist on a racing bike appeared out of nowhere. Where did he come from? Blanc swore. The Mégane just managed to swerve past him. A few seconds later, however, the big Q7’s right wing mirror hit his elbow and sent him flying. Blanc kept his foot on the gas.
He only brought the vehicle to a screeching halt when they had reached the little square next to the town hall, nearly knocking the headless naked statue off her pedestal. The shutters on one house opened and an elderly woman peered out in curiosity. Blanc didn’t even bother to turn the engine off. He sprang out, followed by Fabienne and Marius. They had reached the first steps on the way into the town hall when the white Audi appeared, slowly now. He spotted Lafont behind the wheel, red in the face and glistening with sweat, his sunglasses at an angle. They stared for a few seconds at each other. The mayor had realized he had lost the race, that he wouldn’t overtake the cops. The heavy 4×4’s engine suddenly resumed its howling as, with tires smoking, he did a U-turn in the one-way street they had just come down.
Blanc suddenly stopped. He’s doing a runner, he realized. The Kalashnikov is more important, he told himself. Someone like Lafont can’t just disappear. We’ll get him.
Then a horrid screeching of metal set his teeth on edge. The Q7 had forced its way down the alley at the same time as the dark Citroën came up it. The massive Audi had scratched a long curve all along the driver’s side of the Citroën from the front bumper to the trunk, shattering the side windows. Aveline turned away to avoid the hail of glass. Then the Audi was gone. Blanc heaved a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t a head-on crash. He ran down the steps to help Aveline out of the car. But then the Citroën’s motor started up again. The juge d’instruction had done a handbrake turn in the alleyway and set out back down the alleyway Lafont had just disappeared from.
“Merde,” swore Blanc. She’s going after him. Do you do it for the thrill of the risk? For a moment that seemed to last forever he stood there on the square, uncertain what he should do. Then he turned back to Fabienne and Marius, who were still standing on the steps, numb from shock.
“Into the town hall,” he ordered. “Get your hands on this damn Kalashnikov, even if you have to blow open his steel cabinet. Call the forensics team and the other gendarmes back. And tell Nkoulou. Go on, get on with it.”
Then he ran back to the Mégane, jumped in, and put his foot down, just as Paulmier came into the other end of the alley. Blanc braked abruptly and let the journalist past onto the square. “You’ll have the story of your life!” he called out to him. Beyond the alley he came across the cyclist Lafont had knocked down. A small crowd had gathered around him and someone waved him to stop. Blanc made a gesture of excuse and turned on the blue lights. Then he put his foot down again, roared down the narrow street ahead, which Aveline and Lafont had to have taken. Neither car was to be seen. The only certain proof that they had come this way was the fresh black tire tracks on the first dangerous corner.