Camille (26 page)

Quickly, she looks to her right; the staircase is ten metres away. She looks up and to the left; through the skylight in the roof she can see the branches of a tree – could he climb up there, get in through the skylight? She desperately needs to telephone for help: phone Camille, the police, anyone. She will not get a second chance. She tucks her legs beneath her and throws the rolled-up jumper left, not too hard, she wants it to glide, high and slow, across the room. Hardly has she let it go than she is on her feet and running for the stairs. As she expected, the next bullet explodes behind her.

*

Alternating fire is a little trick I learned long ago: you have two targets, one on the left, one on the right, and you have to hit them in quick succession. I have the rifle primed and ready. As soon as I see the jumper, I fire – if she plans on wearing it again, she’ll need to do some darning because I blew the fucking thing apart. I quickly turn and see her running for the stairs, I aim and my bullet hits the first step just as she reaches the second and disappears into the mezzanine.

Time to up the ante a little. Turns out, it wasn’t hard to get her exactly where I wanted her. I thought it would take for ever, but in the end she just needed a little guidance. Now all I need to do is go around. I should probably get a move on though, nothing is ever straightforward, sooner or later she’s going to figure things out.

But if everything goes to plan, I’ll get there before her.

*

The first step implodes under her feet.

Anne feels the whole staircase shudder and scrabbles up so fast that she trips and goes flying, hitting her head against the dresser of the cramped bedroom.

Already she is back on her feet. She looks down over the banister to make sure he cannot see her, cannot hit her; she will stay up here. But first she needs to call Camille. He has to come back now, he has to help her. Feverishly, she fumbles for her mobile on the chest of drawers, but it is not there. She tries the nightstand; still nothing. Where the fuck is it? Then she remembers that she plugged it in to recharge before going to bed. She rummages through her discarded clothes, finds the device and turns it on. She is breathless, her heart is hammering so hard in her chest that she feels nauseous, she pounds a fist on her knee, the mobile takes so long to start up. Camille . . . She hits the speed dial.

Come on, Camille, pick up, pick up please . . .

It rings once, twice . . .

Please, Camille, I’m begging you, just tell me what to do . . .

Her hands tremble as they cradle the phone.

“Hello, you’ve reached Camille Verhœ—”

She hangs up, dials again and gets straight through to voicemail. This time she leaves a message:

“Camille, he’s here! Call me back, please . . .”

*

Pereira is checking his watch. It seems that getting a moment to speak to the magistrate will not be easy. He is a very busy man. To Verhœven, the message is crystal-clear, he is off the case. The
juge
nods his head, exasperated, all these meetings and schedules. Camille finishes his thought: too many irregularities, too much uncertainty, too many doubts, his whole team may have been thrown off the case. To distance herself and cover her arse, Commissaire Michard will file a report with the public prosecutor’s office. The looming prospect of an I.G.S. investigation into the actions of Commandant Verhœven is taking shape with an appalling clarity.

Juge Pereira would love to make time, he hesitates, pulls a face,
Let me see
, he checks his watch again,
It’s not really a good time, let me think
, he pauses two steps above Camille and stares down, he is faced with a genuine dilemma, avoiding someone is not in his nature. In the end, he capitulates not to Commandant Verhœven, but to a moral imperative.

“Let me get back to you,
commandant
. I’ll call you later this morning . . .”

Camille spreads his hands: thank you. Pereira nods gravely: don’t mention it.

Camille is very much aware that this is his last chance. Between Le Guen’s friendship and support and the benevolent attitude of the magistrate, there is still a slim chance that he can come through this. He is desperately clinging to this hope, Pereira can see it in his face. And he cannot deny that he is intrigued by what has been going on with Verhœven, the rumours of what has happened over the past two days are so strange that he is curious to know more, to come to his own conclusion.

“Thank you,” Camille says.

The words echo like a confession, like an plea, Pereira makes a vague gesture then, embarrassed, he turns and is gone.

*

Anne suddenly looks up. The man has stopped firing. Where is he?

The back of the house. The window of the ground-floor bathroom is half open. It is far too small for a body to squeeze through, but it is an opening and who knows what this man is capable of. Without considering the risks, and oblivious to the fact he may still be lying in wait outside the picture window, Anne dashes back downstairs, jumps over the shattered bottom step, turns right and almost falls.

By the time she reaches the laundry room he is there, staring at her through the window, his face neatly framed as in a formal portrait. He slips his arm through the opening. A pistol fitted with a silencer is aimed at her. The barrel seems impossibly long.

The moment he sees her, he fires.

*

After Pereira disappears, Camille rushes upstairs. On the landing he runs into Louis, looking particularly handsome in a Christian Lacroix suit, a pinstripe Savile Row shirt, Forzieri brogues.

“Sorry, Louis, I’ll have to catch up with you later . . .”

Louis gives a little wave –
take your time, it can wait –
and steps aside, he will come by later, the guy is diplomacy incarnate.

Camille goes into his office, throws his coat onto a chair, looks up the number for Wertig & Schwindel and as he dials, he checks his watch: 9.15. A voice answers.

“Could I speak to Anne Forestier, please?”

“Hold the line,” the voice says. “Let me look . . .”

Deep breath. The vice-like grip constricting his chest loosens. He almost finds himself heaving a sigh of relief.

“I’m sorry . . . what name was that again?” the young woman asks and laughs conspiratorially to get him on side. “I’m really sorry, I’m a temp, so I’m new here.”

Camille swallows hard. He feels the noose tighten again, pain shoots through his body and he feels panic rising . . .

“Anne Forestier.”

“Do you know which department she’s in?”

“Um . . . account management or something like that.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t see her name in the directory . . . Hold the line, I’ll put you through to someone.”

Camille can feel his shoulders hunch. A woman’s voice comes on the line, probably the one Anne called “a complete bitch”, but it can’t be her because
No, I’m afraid the name doesn’t ring a bell, I’ve asked around and no-one seems to have heard of her, if you like I can check – are you sure you’ve got the right name? I can put you through to someone else? Can I ask what you’re calling about?

Camille hangs up.

His throat is dry, he desperately needs a glass of water, but he does not have the time, and besides, his hands are shaking.

He keys in his password, logs on to the system, brings up a search engine: “Anne Forestier.” Too many results. Refine the search: “Anne Forestier, date of birth . . .”

He should be able to track down the date, they met early in March and three weeks later, when he found out it was her birthday, he took her to dinner at Chez Nénesse. The invitation had been a spur of the moment thing since he had no time to buy a present; Anne had laughed and said dinner was the perfect gift because she loved desserts. He drew a sketch on the napkin and presented it to her; though he said nothing, he was very pleased with the portrait, it was natural, it was truthful. There are days like that.

He digs out his mobile and brings up the calendar: March 23. Anne is forty-two. 1965. Born in Lyons? Maybe, maybe not. He thinks back to the evening of her birthday, did she say anything about where she was born? He deletes “Lyons” and clicks “submit”. The search brings up two Anne Forestiers, which is hardly surprising: type in your date of birth and if you have a common name, you are bound to find you have a twin or even a triplet.

The first Anne Forestier is not his Anne. She died in 1973 at eight years old. Nor is the second. She died two years ago, on 16 October, 2005.

Camille rubs his hands together. He feels the familiar prickle of unease, one of the fundamental tools of a detective, but this is more than merely professional zeal, he has found an anomaly. And as everyone knows, Camille is a past master when it comes to anomalies. Except that in this case, the inconsistency is mirrored by his own inconsistent behaviour, which has been puzzling everyone.

It is beginning to puzzle even him.

Why is he fighting?

Against whom?

Some women lie about their date of birth. It is not Anne’s style, but you never know.

Camille gets up and opens the filing cabinet. No-one ever tidies it. He uses his height as a pretext for not doing so – he’s happy to exploit his stature when it suits him . . . It takes several minutes for him to find the instruction manual he needs. There is no-one he can ask for help.

“The thing that really takes time after a divorce is the clear-out,” Anne said.

Camille lays his hands flat on the table and tries to concentrate. No, it is impossible, he needs a pencil and paper. He sketches. He struggles to remember. They are in Anne’s apartment. She is sitting on the sofa bed. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, “but the place is a little . . . um . . . well, a little dreary.” He had tried to come up with a word that was not upsetting, but any sentence that begins “Don’t take this the wrong way” and trails off into awkward silence is bound to crash and burn, it is simply a matter of time.

“I don’t give a damn,” Anne says curtly. “After the divorce, I just wanted to be rid of everything.”

The memory becomes clearer. He needs to remember what was said about the divorce. They did not really talk about it, Camille was reluctant to ask questions.

“It was two years ago,” Anne says finally.

Camille drops his pencil. He runs a finger down the list of commands in the instruction manual, launches the relevant database and runs a search for information about the marriage and/or divorce of one Anne Forestier in 2005. He goes through the results, filtering out those that do not correspond until he is left with one: “Forestier, Anne, born 20 July, 1970. Age: thirty-seven . . .” Camille clicks on the link: “Arrested for fraud on 27 April, 1998.”

Anne has a police record.

This information is so astounding that he cannot quite take it in. Anne has a record. He reads on. Charged with passing fraudulent cheques, with forgery and use of false documents. He is so stunned that it takes several long seconds before he notices that Anne Forestier is incarcerated in the Centre Pénitentiaire de Rennes.

This is not
his
Anne, it is someone else, a different Anne Forestier.

Although . . . The record indicates she was released on parole. When? Is the file up to date? He has to log into a different database to find the official mugshot for the prisoner in question. I’m nervous, he thinks, too nervous. The message onscreen reads: “CTRL+F4 to Submit.” A woman appears on the screen, her face front on and also in profile. She is unquestionably of Asian origin.

Place of birth: Da Nang.

He closes the window. Relief. Anne, his Anne, does not have a police record. But she is proving almost impossible to track down.

At last Camille can breathe a little, but his chest still feels constricted, this room is stuffy, he has said it a thousand times.

*

The moment she saw him staring at her, Anne dropped to the floor. The bullet hits the doorframe a few inches above her head, an almost muffled thud compared to the shriek of the bullet that ricocheted off the cast-iron stove, but the room shudders at the impact.

Crawling on all fours, Anne frantically tries to get out of the room. Terror-stricken. It is madness, but this is precisely the same scene they played out two days ago in the Galerie. Once again, she is scrabbling to escape before he shoots her in the back . . .

She rolls over, the splints on her fingers slipping on the polished floor, the pain no longer matters, there is no pain now, only instinct.

A bullet grazes her right shoulder and buries itself in the doorframe. Anne scampers wildly like a puppy, manages to roll over the threshold. Suddenly, miraculously, she is safe, sitting with her back against the wall. Can he get into the house? How?

Curiously, she still has her mobile. She rushed down the stairs into the laundry room and crawled out again still clutching it, as a child clutches a teddy bear while bombs and shells rain all around.

What is he doing? She has a desperate urge to take a look, but if he’s lying in wait, she would get the next bullet between the eyes.

Think. Fast. She has already redialled Camille. She hangs up; she is alone.

Call the local police? Where’s the nearest police station in this godforsaken place? It will take ages to explain, and if they do come how long would it take them to get here? Ten times longer than it will take Anne to die. Because he is there, just on the other side of the wall.

The only person who can help her now is Caravaggio.

*

Memory is a strange thing. Now that all his senses are sharp as blades, it all comes flooding back. Anne’s daughter, Agathe, is studying for an M.B.A. in Boston. Camille is sure of it, he remembers Anne telling him that she visited Boston (she was coming back from Montreal – in fact, it was there that she saw one of his mother’s paintings), that the city is very beautiful, very European, “olde worlde” she called it, though Camille did not really know what she meant by the phrase. It vaguely conjured images of Louisiana. Camille does not like travelling.

He needs to consult a different database which requires a different manual. He goes back to the filing cabinet, finds a list of instructions – in principle, nothing he has done so far requires him to request authorisation from a superior. The network connection is fast: Boston University, four thousand professors, thirty thousand students. The list of results is too large. Camille goes through the list of sororities, copies and pastes them into a document where he can do a simple name search.