4:57 P.M.
The car park of the Saint-Gilles police station usually looks like a patch of wasteland baking in the sun, and occasionally like a rather irregular pétanque court on which Christos, in partnership with Jean-Jacques, has remained unbeaten for over a decade.
Now, it has been transformed into the headquarters of the hunt for Martial Bellion. Twenty or so police officers are moving around five Jumper vans, all with their doors open.
Aja walks from one group to the next like a stressed theatrical director before a dress rehearsal. For a while now, she has been insulting her telephone.
“He hasn’t had time to get through!” the captain yells. “Yes, I’m sure! All the exits are blocked. Trust us, we’ll have him in a matter of minutes. For Christ’s sake, I know this place like the back of my hand. We will corner him!”
Aja is furious. The police have been searching every street in Saint-Gilles and the surrounding area for more than an hour now, and they still haven’t found any trace of the grey Clio, much less of Martial Bellion and his daughter. It’s as if the car has simply flown away. Aja has had to call the ComGend30 in Saint-Denis. A terrified underling took less than a minute to put her through to Colonel Laroche. A courteous, patient type who never shows the least sign of panic. On the contrary, he has adopted a condescending tone, as if he’s trying to reassure her.
“Stay calm, Captain. We are certain that you and your men have done everything you possibly could. The GIPN31 and our force will take over now . . . We’ll be in touch . . .”
Everything you possibly could?
This jerk with his Zoreille accent has only been on the island for a few months and he’s talking to her as if she were a child. Aja struggles to calm herself. And yet she has to win her team a few more hours. The ComGend consists of dozens of overtrained men eager to stretch their legs at the slightest excuse; motorized units, nautical units, aerial units, mountaineering units . . . The men of her force are not in the same league, but she hopes that Laroche is not particularly keen to unleash his troops on the island’s biggest tourist resort. Launching a full-scale manhunt is more likely to scare away holidaymakers than a swarm of tiger mosquitoes.
Aja negotiates for several minutes.
“All right, Captain Purvi,” Laroche finally says. “I’ll give you two hours to catch your runaway tourist. After all, a murderer on the run with his daughter—we can’t really consider that a kidnapping.”
The colonel pauses, before concluding:
“Especially when the mother is no longer around to file charges.”
Silence.
“I’m joking, Captain Purvi.”
What an asshole!
Aja resists the desire to hang up on him. On the contrary, she reassures him that she will keep him in the loop and call every fifteen minutes. She thanks him again, then finally ends the call.
She is well aware that if she doesn’t find Martial Bellion soon, the concession she has wrung from him will prove a hollow victory. The investigation will be handed over to Laroche’s ComGend and she will only be involved again when the case goes to court.
Christos, a little further away, watches the scene from the shade of two casuarina trees between which is strung a moth-eaten hammock. Surreal. A few meters from the car park that has metamorphosed into the nerve center of this manhunt stretches out the Saint-Gilles beach. Tourists walk by, observing the action, discomfited by the radios that buzz like insects. The more clued-up ones perhaps imagine that the volcano has reawoken, or that a huge operation against drunk-driving is being planned for the Easter weekend. And that is, in fact, the explanation Aja has asked the officers to give to anyone who asks why there are roadblocks on the way out of town.
This place is about to explode, thinks Christos. A storm is going to descend on our little resort . . . You’d better make the most of it, all you lazy bums, make the most of the clownfish, and the sunset cocktails with parasols and slices of orange in them, before the state of siege is declared. You’ll hear about it soon enough . . . There’s a killer on the loose. He murdered his wife, maybe even his own daughter by now. Perhaps he’s even buried them in the sand where your children are digging . . .
Aja, indifferent to her surroundings, turns her back on the beach and enters the principle room of the station. All the doors and windows are open. A projector linked to a laptop is displaying a 1/10,000 map of Saint-Gilles across the main wall. Four meters by two. An officer enters the real-time location of the roadblocks and areas searched on the computer; different colors represent how many times the patrols have been through each one.
Aja watches the map for a while as it changes color. Yellow. Orange. Red. It will take several hours to paint the whole thing. Suddenly, she grabs a bunch of felt-tip pens and approaches the opposite wall, which is also an immaculate white. She stands on tiptoes and writes, as high up as possible, in huge capital letters:
In black: WHERE IS THE CAR?
In red: WHERE IS LIANE BELLION’S BODY?
In blue: WHERE IS HER DAUGHTER?
In green: WHERE IS BELLION?
She is putting the lid back on the last pen when Christos quietly walks up behind her.
“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to bring in the cavalry to pick Bellion up from the hotel?”
The captain turns around, visibly annoyed.
“What do you suggest? That we should have gone in there wearing our trunks and bikinis and surrounded the pool?”
Christos does not take offence. He understands. Little Aja is ambitious and has a certain sense of self-worth, and yet she has screwed up the first criminal operation worthy of the name that she has ever conducted.
“Don’t feel bad, Aja. You used all the forces you had at your disposal.”
He puts a hand on the captain’s shoulder, looks over at the policemen in the car park, bustling around like panic-stricken ants, then continues:
“Don’t forget, the last time the Saint-Paul, Saint-Gilles and Saint-Leu forces worked together, it was to hunt down nudists from Souris-Chaude. Enforcing the law passed in September 2005. And yet, half of them managed to walk naked all the way to Trois-Bassins!”
Aja barely scrapes up a smile.
“Bellion didn’t get through, Christos. We blocked all the roads that lead out of town. I even sent Gavrama and Laronse to check on all the boats leaving the port.”
The captain looks over at the immense map stained with orange circles.
“He’s still in there, somewhere close by. I can feel it.” Christos examines the map too, then grimaces.
“Well, Bellion must be a magician then. If he can hide a rental car and a six-year-old girl in a village with three and a half thousand inhabitants, when there are dozens of police patrolling the streets . . .”
Aja isn’t listening. She turns on her heel, leaves the room, goes out into the car park again, then raises her voice.
All the officers turn to face her.
“The ComGend is going to send reinforcements from Saint-Denis, lads. Because they think we’re not capable of finding Bellion ourselves. So let’s get moving! We all know that Martial Bellion cannot have left town. I don’t just want you to check the boot of every car leaving Saint-Gilles, but every garage of every house, all the private estates, the villas, the closed buildings. Rich or poor, Creole or Zoreille, I couldn’t care less. Every house! We’re going to do this all night if we have to. He’s driving a rental car, for fuck’s sake, with an enormous ‘ITC Tropicar’ sign on it! We’re going to catch him, lads. And we’re going to do it on our own.”
A sceptical silence greets the captain’s tirade.
“Impressive,” Christos whispers into her ear. “Like John Wayne, in fact. Now we just have to see if your cavalry is ready to charge.”
Aja turns towards her second lieutenant, and continues in the same tone of voice.
“As for you, Messiah, give the prophecies a rest, would you? You’re going to continue the investigation at the Hotel Athena. Grill the Jourdains, the hotel staff, the kids in the car park, everyone. I want a second-by-second reconstruction of what the Bellion family was doing prior to the crime.”
30 The police command center for the island.
31 The National Police Intervention Group.