Camille (33 page)

Reading on, Camille sees how closely they have stuck to the truth: Anne’s brother Nathan is indeed a promising scientist, a child prodigy with a whole alphabet of letters after his name, though he seems to have a nervous disposition.

Nathan’s first arrest is for possession with intent to supply. Thirty-three grams of cocaine can hardly be dismissed as personal use. Nathan first denies everything, then he panics, then he claims that Jean-Claude Maleval supplied the drugs or introduced him to the dealer, in a vague and inconsistent statement which he quickly retracts. Pending trial, he is released on bail. And almost immediately turns up in hospital having been beaten to a bloody pulp. Unsurprisingly, he declines to press charges . . . It is obvious that Maleval’s solution to his problems is brute force. His penchant for violence foreshadows his taste for armed robbery.

Camille does not have all the details, but he can guess. Maleval and Nathan Monestier are in business together. How does Nathan come to be indebted to Maleval? Does he owe him money? And how does Maleval go about blackmailing the young man?

Other names begin to turn up in Maleval’s wake. Among them, a number of vicious thugs. Guido Guarnieri, for example. Camille, like everyone on the force, knows the man by reputation. Guarnieri is a loan shark who buys up debt cheaply and uses strong-arm tactics to recover the money. A year ago, he was questioned about a body discovered on a building site. The pathologist confirmed that the victim had been buried alive, had taken days to die and endured unimaginable suffering. Guarnieri knows how to make himself feared. Did Maleval threaten to sell on Nathan’s debt to Guarnieri? It’s possible.

It hardly matters since Camille does not care about Nathan, he has never even met the man.

What matters is that all this leads to Anne.

Whatever the nature of her brother’s debt to Maleval, it is Anne who pays.

She bails him out. Like a mother. “Actually, that’s what I’ve always been to him,” she told Camille.

She has always bailed him out.

*

Sometimes, just when you most need something, it appears.

“Monsieur Bourgeois?”

Number withheld. Camille had allowed the mobile to ring several times until finally Doudouche looked up at him. On the other end, a woman’s voice. Fortyish. Working-class.

“I think you’ve got the wrong number,” Camille says calmly. But he does not even think of hanging up.

“Really?”

She sounds surprised. He almost expects her to ask if he is sure. She reads something from a piece of paper.

“It says here, ‘Monsieur Éric Bourgeois, 15, rue Escudier, Gagny’.”

“As I said, you have a wrong number.”

“Oh . . .” the woman says. “So sorry.”

He hears her mutter something he cannot make out. She hangs up angrily.

It has finally happened. Buisson has done the favour Camille requested. Camille can now have him killed at his leisure.

But right now, this new information has opened a single door. Hafner has changed his name. He is now Monsieur Bourgeois. Not a bad name for a retired crook.

Behind every decision lurks another decision waiting to be made. Camille stares at his mobile.

He could rush to the meeting with Michard and Le Guen, tell them: this is Hafner’s address, if he’s there we can have him banged up by morning, let me explain the whole thing. Le Guen heaves a sigh of relief, though not too loudly, careful not to make Camille’s confession to Commissaire Michard sound like a triumph, he glances at Camille, gives an almost imperceptible nod –
you did well, you had me scared for a minute
– then says testily: “That hardly constitutes a full explanation, Camille, I’m sorry.”

But he is not sorry, and no-one present is fooled. Commissaire Michard feels cheated, she was so happy at the prospect of hauling Verhœven over the coals, she paid for her ticket and now the show has been cancelled. Now it is her turn to speak; her tone is poised, disciplined. Sententious. She has a fondness for categorical truths, she did not choose this profession for the good of her health, at heart she is a deeply moral woman. “Whatever your explanations might be, Commandant Verhœven, I should warn you that I am not going to turn a blind eye . . . To anything.”

Camille holds up his hands. No problem. He explains the whole story.

The whole scam.

Yes, he is personally connected to the person who was attacked in the raid on the Galerie Monier, that is where it all started. There is a barrage of questions: how exactly do you know this woman? Is she implicated in the robbery? Why did you not immediately . . .?

The rest is predictable. The most important thing now is to go and pick up Hafner a.k.a. Monsieur Bourgeois from his hideout, and charge him with grievous bodily harm, armed robbery and murder. They cannot spend all night quibbling about the details of Verhœven’s story, there will be time for that later. Right now, Michard agrees, they need to be pragmatic – it is one of her favourite words, “pragmatic”. In the meantime, Commandant Verhœven, you will remain here.

He will not be involved, he will be merely a spectator. He has already provided the evidence and it is damning. When Le Guen and Michard get back, they will decide whether he is to be sanctioned, suspended or transferred . . . It is all so predictable that it is hardly worth the effort.

This is what he could do. But Camille has long since known that this is not how things are going to play out.

He has already made his decision, though he is not quite sure when.

It relates to Anne, to this case, to his life, to everything. There is nothing anyone else can do.

He thought he was being tossed about by circumstance, but that is not true.

We are masters of our own fate.

*

7.45 p.m.

France has almost as many rues Escudier as it has inhabitants, all leafy suburban streets lined with stone-clad houses featuring identical gardens, identical railings, and identical patio furniture bought from the same branch of IKEA. Number 15 is no exception: stone cladding, patio furniture, wrought-iron railings, garden, all present and correct.

Camille has driven past two or three times in each direction and at different speeds. The last time he drove past, one of the lights on the first floor is turned off. No point waiting any longer.

He parks at the far end of the street. On the corner is a minimarket, the only shop for miles around in this deserted wasteland. Standing on the doorstep, an Arab man of about thirty who looks as though he has just stepped out of a Hopper painting is chewing a toothpick.

Camille turns off the engine at precisely 7.35 p.m. He slams the car door. The grocer raises a hand in greeting. Camille waves back and heads down the rue Escudier, past identikit houses differentiated only by an occasional dog growling half-heartedly or a cat curled up on the wall. The streetlights cast a yellow glow on the potholed pavement, the dustbins have been put out for collection and other cats – the waifs and strays – are fighting over the spoils.

The steps leading up to number 15 are about fifteen metres from the wrought-iron gate. A garage door on the right is padlocked.

Since he passed, another light on the first floor has been turned out. Only two windows are lit up, both on the ground floor. Camille presses the buzzer to the right of the gate. But for the time of day, he could be a sales rep hoping to find a warm welcome. The door opens a fraction and the figure of a woman appears. With the light behind, it is impossible to tell what she looks like, but her voice sounds young.

“Can I help you?”

As though she does not know, as though the ballet of lights flickering on and off is not clear evidence that he has been spotted, that he is being watched. If this woman were in an interrogation room, he would tell her: you’re not very good at lying, you’re not going to get very far. She turns back to someone inside, vanishes for a moment, then reappears.

“I’ll be right there.”

She comes down the steps. She is young, but she has the sagging belly of an old woman and her face is slightly swollen. She opens the gate. “A vulgar whore who had copulated with half the city by the time she was nineteen,” was how Buisson described her. To Camille she seems ageless and yet the one thing that is beautiful about her is her fear, he can see it in the way she walks, in the way she keeps her eyes lowered, there is nothing submissive about her, it is pure calculation because her fear is courageous, defiant, almost aggressive, capable of withstanding anything. This woman could stab you in the back without a moment’s hesitation.

She walks away without a word, her every movement radiating hostility and determination. Camille crosses the patio, climbs the steps and pushes the door which has begun to close. The hallway is bare, with only an empty coat rack on the wall. In the living room to the right, sitting in an armchair, his back to the window, is a terrifyingly gaunt man, his eyes are sunken, feverish. Even indoors, he wears a woollen cap that accentuates the perfect roundness of his head. His face is pale and drawn. Camille immediately notices how much he looks like Armand.

Between two men of long experience, there are many things that go unsaid, to voice them would almost be an insult. Hafner knows who Verhœven is; there are not many policemen of his height. He also knows that if Camille were coming to arrest him, he would have done it differently. So it must be something else. Something difficult. Best to wait and see.

Behind Camille, the young woman stands wringing her hands, she is accustomed to waiting. “
She must get off on being beaten, I can’t see why else she would stay . . .
”

Camille hovers in the hall, caught in a vice between Hafner, sitting, staring at him, and the woman behind. The heavy, pointed silence makes it clear that they will not easily be taken in. But he also knows that to them, the unprepossessing little officer has brought chaos into their midst. And given the lives they lead, chaos means death.

“We need to talk . . .” Hafner says finally in a low voice.

Is he talking to Camille, to the woman, perhaps only to himself?

Camille takes a few steps, never taking his eyes off Hafner. He can see none of the savagery described in the police reports. This is not unusual, Camille has often noticed that, excepting those few minutes when they are intent on their violent activities, robbers, thugs and gangsters are much like everyone else. Murderers are just like you and me. But there is something else too: disease and the looming spectre of death. And this silence, this mute menace.

Camille takes another step into the room, which is lit only by the dim bluish glow of a standard lamp. He is not particularly surprised to find the room tastelessly furnished with a large flat-screen T.V., a sofa covered with a throw, a few knick-knacks and a round table covered with a patterned oilcloth. Organised crime often goes hand in hand with very middle-class tastes.

The woman has disappeared; Camille did not notice her leave the room. For an instant he pictures her sitting on the stairs holding a pump-action shotgun. Hafner does not move from his chair, he is waiting to see how things will go. For the first time, Camille wonders if the man is armed – the thought had not occurred to him before. It doesn’t matter, he thinks, but even so, he moves slowly and deliberately. You never know.

He takes his mobile from the pocket of his coat, turns it on, brings up the picture of Maleval and, stepping forward, hands the device to Hafner who simply grimaces, clears his throat and nods –
I get it now
– then gestures to the sofa. Camille chooses a chair instead, pulls it towards him, lays his hat on the table. The two men sit facing each other as though waiting to be served.

“Someone told you I would be coming . . .”

“In a way . . .”

Logical. Whoever Buisson forced to give up Hafner’s address and his new identity will have wanted to cover his own back. But this does not change anything.

“Shall I recap?” Camille says.

From another part of the house, he hears a distant, high-pitched wail and then hurried footsteps upstairs and the crooning voice of the woman. Camille wonders whether this new factor will complicate matters or simplify them. He jerks his chin at the ceiling.

“How old?”

“Six months.”

“Boy?”

“Girl.”

Someone else might have asked the girl’s name, but the situation hardly lends itself to such familiarity.

“So, last January, your wife was six months pregnant.”

“Seven.”

Camille indicates the woollen cap.

“It must make being on the run more difficult. And on that subject, do you mind if I ask where you’ve been having your chemo?”

Hafner pauses for a moment.

“In Belgium, but I’ve stopped treatment.”

“Too expensive?”

“No. Too late.”

“And therefore too expensive.”

Hafner gives the ghost of a smile, it is almost imperceptible, just a shadow that plays on his lips.

“So back in January,” Camille continues, “you knew you didn’t have much time to make sure your family were provided for. And so you organised the Big Stick-Up. Four armed robberies in a single day. The jackpot. Most of your usual partners were out of circulation – and maybe you even had qualms about fucking your old friends over – so you hired Ravic, the Serb, and Maleval, the ex-cop. I have to say, I didn’t know armed robbery was Maleval’s thing.”

Hafner takes his time.

“He spent a long time trying to find his way after your lot tossed him out,” he says at length, “He was doing a lot of cocaine.”

“So I heard . . .”

“But, actually, he’s really taken to armed robbery. It suits his personality.”

Ever since the penny finally dropped, Camille has been trying to picture Maleval holding up a shop, but he cannot seem to manage. His powers of imagination are limited. And besides, Maleval and Louis will always be part of his team, he cannot picture them in any other context. Like many men who will never have children, Camille has a paternal instinct. His height has a lot to do with it. And he created two sons for himself: Louis, the perfect son, diligent, faultless, who makes everything worthwhile, and Maleval, violent, generous, sinister, the son who betrayed him, the one who cost him his wife. The son who carried evil in his very name.