Camille (36 page)

I’m on my knees, he’s standing, our faces aren’t quite at the same level, but there’s not much in it. This could be my last chance. He’s almost within reach. If I can just gain a few centimetres, stall for a few minutes . . .

“I see you’ve still got the same quick reflexes, son.”

“Son” . . . Verhœven has always been protective, paternalistic. Given his height, it’s ridiculous. But he’s a clever runt, I’ll give him that. And I know him well enough to recognise that this hasn’t been one of his good days.

“Well, I say ‘quick’ . . .” he says, “but tonight you’re missing something. And you were so close to pulling it off, it must be galling.” His eyes never leave mine. “If you came looking for a suitcase full of cash, you’ll be thrilled to know that it was right here. Hafner’s wife left with it an hour ago. In fact, I even called her a taxi. You know me, I never could resist a damsel in distress, whether she’s carrying a heavy suitcase or causing a scene in a restaurant. I’m always willing to step in.”

He can’t miss, the gun is cocked, and it’s not his service revolver . . .

“Well spotted,” he says, as though he can read my mind. “The gun is Hafner’s. You wouldn’t believe the arsenal he’s got upstairs. But he recommended this one. Personally, I don’t much care, in a situation like this, one gun is as good as the next . . .”

His eyes are still fixed on mine, it’s almost hypnotic. It’s something I remember from when I worked with him, that icy, razor-sharp stare.

“You’re wondering how I got here before you, but mostly you’re trying to think of a way out. Because you must know that I’m feeling fucking furious.”

From his strange stillness I can tell that any second now . . .

“And insulted,” Verhœven says. “Above all, insulted. And for a man like me, that’s much worse. Fury is something you live with, sooner or later you calm down, you get things in perspective, but when a man’s pride is injured he’s capable of terrible things. Especially a man who has nothing left to lose, a man who has nothing left at all. A guy like me, for example. Right now, I’m capable of anything.”

I swallow hard and say nothing.

“Any minute now, you’re going to try and rush me. I can tell.” He smiles. “It’s what I would do in your position. Double or quits, that’s the way we work. When it comes down to it, we’re very alike, don’t you think? That’s what made this whole thing possible.”

He blethers on, but he’s still perfectly focused.

I tense.

He takes his left hand from his pocket.

Without moving my eyes, I calculate the angle of attack.

He’s gripping the gun with both hands now, pointing it directly between my eyes. I’ll take him by surprise, he’s expecting me to rush him or to dodge sideways, but I’ll dive backwards.

“Tsk tsk tsk . . .”

He takes one hand from the gun and brings it to his ear.

“Listen . . .”

I listen. Sirens. They’re approaching fast, Verhœven doesn’t smile, he doesn’t savour his triumph, he just looks sad.

If I weren’t in this fucked-up situation, I’d almost pity him.

I always knew I loved this man.

“Three counts of murder,” he whispers, his voice so low I have to strain to hear. “Armed robbery, accessory to murder in the January raid . . . In Ravic’s case, malicious wounding and murder, for his girlfriend, you might get off with second-degree. You’re going to be banged up for a very long time, and that upsets me, it really does.”

He’s completely sincere.

The sirens converge on the house, there are at least five cars, maybe more. Through the windows, the flashing lights illuminate the rooms like a blaze of neon at a fairground. Slumped in the armchair at the far end of the living room, Hafner’s face flickers blue and red.

I hear running footsteps. The front door seems to explode into splinters. I turn to look.

Louis, my old friend Louis, is the first on the scene. His suit is pressed, not a hair out of place, he looks like an altar boy.

“Hey, Louis . . .”

I’d like to sound indifferent, cynical, to go on playing the role, but seeing Louis again after all this time brings everything flooding back, the terrible waste is heartbreaking.

“Hi, Jean-Claude . . .” Louis steps closer.

I turn back to Verhœven, but he has disappeared.

*

10.30 p.m.

Every house in the street is lit up, every garden, too. The residents are standing in their doorways, shouting to each other, some have crept out to their railings and a few brave souls are standing in the middle of the road, reluctant to come any closer. Uniformed officers are posted on either side of the house to deter rubberneckers.

Commandant Verhœven, hat pulled down, hands buried in the pockets of his overcoat, stares down the street which is lit up like a Christmas scene.

“I want to apologise, Louis.” He speaks slowly, like a man overcome by fatigue. “I’m sorry for not confiding in you, for giving the impression I didn’t trust you. That’s not why I did it, you know that, don’t you?”

The question requires no answer.

“Of course,” Louis says.

He is about to protest, but Verhœven has already turned away. This is how it has always been between them, they start a conversation but rarely finish. But this time is different. Each feels he is seeing the other for the last time.

This thought prompts Louis to be particularly reckless.

“That woman . . .” he says.

For Louis to utter these two words is momentous. Camille quickly turns back.

“No, Louis, please don’t think that!” He seems not angry, but indignant. As though he is being unjustly accused. “When you say ‘that woman’, you make it sound as though I am the injured party in a tragic love story.”

For a long moment, he stares down the street again.

“It wasn’t love that made me do it, it was the situation.”

There is a steady clamour from outside the house, idling engines, sporadic voices, shouted orders. The atmosphere is not frenzied but calm, almost peaceful.

“After all this time,” Camille goes on, “I thought I’d got over Irène’s death. But actually, though I didn’t realise it, the embers were still smouldering. Maleval fuelled the fire at the crucial moment, that’s all. In fact ‘that woman’, as you call her, had very little to do with it.”

“But still,” Louis says. “The lies, the betrayal . . .”

“Oh, Louis, they’re just words . . . When I realised what was happening, I could have stopped it, there would have been no more lies, there would have been no betrayal.”

Louis’ silence is a deafening:
So?

“The truth is . . .”

Camille turns back to Louis, he seems to be searching for his words in the young man’s face.

“. . . I didn’t want to stop, I wanted to see it through, I wanted it over with once and for all. I think . . . I think I did it out of loyalty. [Camille himself seems surprised by the word. He smiles.] And this woman . . . I never thought her intentions were evil. If I’d thought that, I would have arrested her on the spot. By the time I realised what was happening, it was a bit late, but I could live with the damage done, I could still do my job. Actually, it’s more than that. I knew that she wouldn’t have suffered everything she suffered . . . for some selfish reason. [He shakes his head, as though waking from a trance. He smiles again.] And I was right. She was sacrificing herself for her brother. Yes, I realise the word ‘sacrifice’ is a bit much. People don’t use the word so often these days, it’s old-fashioned. Look at Hafner, he was no angel, but he sacrificed himself for the woman and her child. Anne did it for her brother . . . People like that still exist.”

“And you?”

“And me.”

Camille hesitates.

“When I hit rock bottom, I realised that maybe it wasn’t so bad to have someone for whom I was prepared to sacrifice something important. [He smiles.] A little luxury in these selfish times, don’t you think?”

He turns up the collar of his coat.

“Well, that’s that, I’m done for the day. And I’ve got a resignation letter to write. I haven’t slept since . . .”

Still he does not move.

“Hey, Louis!”

Louis turns. One of the forensics officers on the pavement outside Hafner’s house is calling him.

Camille waves: go on Louis, don’t keep the man waiting.

“I’ll just be a minute.”

But when he comes back, Camille has already gone.

*

1.30 a.m.

Camille felt his heart pound when he saw there was a light on in the studio. He stopped the car, switched off the engine and sat in the darkness, considering what to do.

Anne is here.

This is an additional disappointment he could have done without. He needs to be alone.

He sighs, grabs his coat and hat, the package with the thick file held together by elastic bands, then trudges up the path wondering how she will react, wondering what he is going to tell her,
how
he is going to tell her. He pictures her as he last saw her, sitting on the floor next to the sink.

The terrace door is ajar.

The faint glow in the studio comes from the night-light under the stairs, it is too dark to see where Anne might be. Camille sets his package on the terrace, reaches for the handle and slides the door open.

He is alone. He hardly needs to ask, but he does.

“Anne . . . are you there?”

He already knows the answer.

He walks over to the stove, this is what he always does. He throws in a log. Opens the flue.

He takes off his coat, switches on the kettle as he passes, then immediately turns it off, wanders to the cupboard where he keeps the liquor and hesitates: whisky, cognac?

Let’s go for cognac.

Just a snifter.

Then he goes outside and fetches the package from the terrace and closes the patio door.

He will take his time, sip the brandy. He loves this house. Up above, the skylight is darkened by the shifting shadows of the leaves. Inside he cannot hear the wind, but he can see it.

It is strange, but in this moment – though he is a big boy now – he misses his mother. Misses her terribly. He could cry if he let go.

But he resists. There is no point to crying alone.

Then he sets down his glass, kneels next to the coffee table and opens the thick file of papers, photographs, official reports and newspaper clippings; somewhere amongst them are the last pictures ever taken of Irène.

He does not search, he does not look, methodically he takes fistfuls of documents and feeds them into the gaping maw of the stove, which is now humming peacefully, at cruising speed.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to my wife, Pascaline, to Gérald Aubert for his advice and to my friend Sam, a constant presence and a constant help. Thanks also to Pierre Scipion for his care and his kindness, and to all the staff at Albin Michel.

And of course I would like to express my gratitude to those authors from whom I have borrowed (in alphabetical order): Marcel Aymé, Thomas Bernhard, Nicholas Boileau, Heinrich Böll, William Faulkner, Shelby Foote, William Gaddis, John le Carré, Jules Michelet, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Marcel Proust, Olivier Remaud, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Wolfe.

PIERRE LEMAITRE
was born in Paris in 1951. He worked for many years as a teacher of literature and now writes novels and screenplays. In 2013 he was awarded the C.W.A. International Dagger for
Alex
, the second in a crime series known as the Commandant Camille Verhoeven trilogy that began with
Irène
, and concludes with
Camille
. That year he was also winner of the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award, for his novel
Au revoir là-haut
.

FRANK WYNNE
is a translator from French and Spanish of works by Michel Houellebecq, Boualem Sansal, Antonin Varenne, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Carlos Accosta and Hervé le Corre. He was the winner of the
Independent
Foreign Fiction Prize for his translation of Frédéric Beigbeder’s
Windows on the World
.

PREVIOUS CAMILLE VERHŒVEN INVESTIGATIONS

IRÈNE

For Commandant Camille Verhœven life is beautiful:
he is happily married and soon to become a father.

But his blissful existence is punctured by a murder of
unprecedented savagery. When he discovers the killer
has form – and each murder is a homage to a classic
crime novel – the Parisian press are quick to coin
a nickname . . . the Novelist.

With the public eye fixed on both hunter and hunted,
the case develops into a personal duel, each hell-bent on
outsmarting the other. There can be only one winner – whoever has the least to lose . . .

ALEX

Alex Prévost – kidnapped, savagely beaten,
suspended from the ceiling of an abandoned warehouse
in a wooden cage – is running out of time. Her abductor
appears to want only to watch her die.

Apart from a shaky eyewitness report,
Police Commandant Camille Verhœven has nothing to
go on: no suspect, no leads. To find the young woman,
the detective – a man with a tragic past and extraordinary
abilities as an investigator – must first understand
more about her.