Camille (6 page)

Cancer of the oesophagus gives Armand the perfect excuse for absence.

That leaves Maleval, whom Camille has not seen for several years. Maleval was a brilliant young officer before he was dismissed from the force. Despite their differences, he and Louis were good friends, they were roughly the same age and they complemented each other. Until it was discovered that Maleval had been feeding information to the man who murdered Irène. He had not done so deliberately, but he had done it all the same. At the time, Camille could happily have killed him with his bare hands, the
brigade criminelle
came very close to suffering a tragedy worthy of the House of Atreus. But after Irène’s death, Camille was a broken man; he spent years ravaged by depression and afterwards his life seemed meaningless.

He misses Armand more than anyone. With his death, Verhœven’s team has been wiped off the face of the earth. This funeral is the beginning of a new chapter in which Camille will try to rebuild his life. Nothing could be more fragile.

Armand’s family are just going into the crematorium when Louis arrives. Pale cream Hugo Boss suit, very elegant. “Hi, Louis.” Louis does not say “Hello, guv.” Camille has forbidden the expression, they’re not in some T.V. police series.

The question that sometimes nags Camille about himself is even more relevant to his assistant: what the hell is this guy doing on the force? He was born into a wealthy family and, as if that were not enough, is gifted with an intellect that saw him accepted into the finest schools a dilettante can attend. Then, inexplicably, he joined the police to work for a schoolteacher’s salary. At heart, Louis is a romantic.

“You O.K.?”

Camille nods, he is fine, in fact he’s not really here at all. Most of him is still back at the hospital where Anne, doped up on painkillers, is waiting to be taken for X-rays and a C.A.T. scan.

Louis stares at his boss for just a second too long, nods, then gives a low
hmm
. Louis is man of great tact for whom
hmm
, like the tic of pushing his hair back with the left or right hand, is a private language. This particular
hmm
clearly translates: that long face isn’t just about the funeral, is there something else going on? And for that something else to intrude on Armand’s funeral, it must be pretty serious . . .

“The team is going to be assigned to deal with an armed robbery up in the 8th this morning . . .”

Louis cannot help but wonder whether this is the answer to his question.

“Many casualties?”

Camille nods, shrugs, yes, no.

“A woman . . .”

“Dead?”

Yes, no, not really, Camille frowns, staring straight ahead as though through dense fog.

“No . . . Well, not yet . . .”

Louis is rather surprised. This is not the kind of case the team usually work on, Commandant Verhœven has no experience in armed robbery. Then again, why not? Louis thinks, but he has known Camille long enough to realise that something is wrong. He manifests his surprise by looking down at his shoes, a pair of impeccably polished Crockett & Joneses, and coughs briefly, almost inaudibly. For Louis, this is the height of expressible emotion.

Camille jerks his chin towards the cemetery, the crematorium.

“As soon as this is over, I’d like to fill you in. Unofficially . . . The team hasn’t been called in yet . . . [Camille finally dares to look at his assistant.] I just want us to be ahead of the game.”

He glances around for Le Guen and quickly spots him. It would be difficult to miss him, the man is a colossus.

“O.K., we should go . . .”

Back when Le Guen was
commissaire
and his direct superior, Camille had only to lift a finger to get whatever he wanted; these days, things are more complicated.

Next to Contrôleur Général Le Guen, Commissaire Michard waddles along like a goose.

*

2.20 p.m.

This is one of the greatest moments in the Café Le Brasseur’s history. The regulars unanimously concur that an armed robbery on this scale happens just once a century. Even those who saw nothing are agreed. The witness statements are piling up. People variously saw a girl, or two girls, or a woman, with a gun, with no gun, empty-handed, screaming. This was the owner of the jeweller’s? No, it was her daughter. Really? Do you remember her mentioning a daughter? There was a getaway car. Make and model? The answers cover pretty much the entire range of imported cars currently available in France.

I slowly sip my coffee, this is the first moment I’ve had to relax in what has already been rather a long day.

The
patron
– who has a face just begging to be slapped – has decided that the haul from the robbery was five million euros. Not a cent less. I’ve no idea where he came by the figure, but he sounds convincing. I feel like handing him a loaded Mossberg and steering him towards the nearest jeweller’s. Let him rob the place, scuttle back to his little café and fence the loot – if the dumb fuck gets a third of the sort of figure he’s expecting, he can retire, because he won’t do any better.

And that car they fired into! What car? The one over there – it looks like it stopped a charging rhino. Did they launch a mortar at it? And so begin the ballistic speculations and, as with the make and model of the car, there are advocates for every possible calibre. Makes a man want to fire a warning shot to shut them up, or shoot into the crowd to get a bit of peace.

Strutting and swaggering, the
patron
peremptorily announces, “.22 long rifle.”

He closes his eyes as he says the words as though to confirm his expertise.

I cheer myself up by imagining him headless, like the Turk, from a blast with the 12-bore. Whether it was a .22 Long Rifle rimfire or a blunderbuss, the crowd are impressed; these idiots don’t know shit. With witnesses like this, the cops are in for a treat.

*

2.45 p.m.

“Wha . . . why would you want to do that?” asks the
commissaire divisionnaire
, wheeling around, making a sweeping revolution on her major axis: a titanic, positively Babylonian arse that is preposterously disproportionate. Commissaire Michard is a woman of between forty and fifty. Hers is a face that promised much and failed to deliver; she has a shock of jet-black hair, probably dyed, buck teeth and a pair of heavy, square-rimmed glasses that proclaim her as a woman of authority, a safe pair of hands. She is gifted with a personality usually described as “forceful” (she is a pain in the neck), a keen intelligence (this exponentially increases her ability to infuriate) but, most of all, she is blessed with an arse with a capital A. It is incredible. It seems a wonder she can keep her balance. Curiously, Commissaire Michard has a rather placid face at odds with everything one knows about her: her undeniable competence, her exceptional strategic sense, her mastery of firearms; the sort of boss who works ten times harder than everyone else and is proud of her leadership skills. When she was promoted to
commissaire
, Camille resigned himself to the fact that in addition to dealing with an overbearing female at home (Doudouche, his beloved cat, is emotionally unstable and borderline hysterical), he would now have to deal with one at work.

Hence her question: “Why would you want to do that?”

There are some people with whom it is difficult to remain calm. Commissaire Michard comes over and stands very close to Camille. She always does this when she speaks to him. Between her well-upholstered physique and Camille’s slight, scrawny frame, they look like characters from an American sit-com, but this woman has no sense of the ridiculous.

They stand facing each other, blocking the entrance to the crematorium; they are among the last to go in. Camille has carefully orchestrated things so that at the moment he makes his request, they are overtaken by Contrôleur Général Le Guen – Camille’s old friend and Michard’s predecessor as
commissaire divisionnaire.
Now, everyone knows that Camille and Le Guen are more than simply friends; Camille has been best man at Le Guen’s weddings – a time-consuming responsibility given that Le Guen has just got hitched for the sixth time, remarrying his second wife.

Since she was only recently appointed, Commissaire Michard still needs to “run with the hare and hunt with the hounds” (she loves such clichés, which she strives to inject with a certain freshness), she needs to “hit the ground running” before she can afford to “rock the boat”. So when the best friend of her direct superior makes a request, she falters. Especially as they are the last members of the cortège. Though she would like time to mull it over, she has a reputation for thinking on her feet and prides herself on making quick decisions. The service is about to begin. The funeral director glances anxiously towards them. Wearing a double-breasted suit, with a shock of bleached blond hair, he looks like a footballer – clearly undertakers are not what they used to be.

This question – why would Verhœven want his team to take on the case? – is the only one to which Camille has prepared an answer, because it is the only pertinent question.

The robbery took place at 10.00 this morning, it is not yet 3.00 p.m. Back at the Galerie, the forensics officers are completing their examination of the crime scene, various officers are taking witness statements, but the case has not yet been assigned to a squad.

“I’ve got an informant,” says Camille. “Someone on the inside . . .”

“You had information about the robbery before it happened?”

Michard’s eyes widen dramatically, reminding Camille of the furious glares of samurai warriors in Japanese lithographs. This is the sort of stock expression Michard loves; the look means: you’re either telling me too much or not enough.

“Of course I didn’t,” Camille snaps. (He plays this scene very convincingly; he sounds genuinely affronted.) “I knew nothing about it, though I’m not sure about my source . . . I’m telling you this guy’s prepared to spill his guts, he’s desperate to cut a deal. [Verhœven is convinced this is the sort of cliché that appeals to Michard.] Right now, he’s prepared to cooperate . . . it would be a pity to not use him.”

A single glance is all it takes to shift the conversation from matters of protocol to simple tactics. Camille’s brief glance towards the man at the far end of the cemetery is enough for the tutelary figure of the
contrôleur général
to loom over the conversation. Silence. The
commissaire
smiles to indicate that she understands: O.K.

“Besides, it’s not just an armed robbery,” Camille adds for the sake of form. “There’s the attempted murder . . .”

The
commissaire
nods slowly and shoots Camille a quizzical look as though she has seen beyond the
commandant
’s somewhat heavy-handed ploy some faint glimmer, as though she is trying to understand. Or has just understood. Or is about to understand. Camille knows how perceptive the woman is: the slightest false step triggers her highly sensitive seismograph.

So he takes the initiative, speaking quickly, using his most persuasive tone: “Let me explain. This informant of mine is connected to another guy, a member of a gang involved in a different job – that was last year, and it’s not directly connected to this case, but the thing is . . .”

Commissaire Michard cuts him short with a weary wave that says she has problems enough of her own. That she understands. That she realises she is too new to her post to intervene between her superior and her subordinate.

“It’s fine,
commandant
. I’ll talk to the examining magistrate, Juge Pereira.”

This is exactly what Camille was hoping would happen, though he is careful not to show it.

Because had Michard not given up so quickly, he has not the first idea how he would have finished his sentence.

*

3.15 p.m.

Louis left quickly. Camille, given his rank, was forced to wait around until the bitter end. The service was long, very long, and everyone wanted a chance to speak. Camille slipped away as soon as was decently possible.

As he walks back to his car, he listens to the voicemail he has just received from Louis, who has already managed to put in several calls and has come up with a lead.

“I’ve been through the files and the only incidence of a Mossberg 500 being used in an armed robbery was on January 17 last. The similarity between the jobs is unquestionable. And the last case was pretty grim . . . Can you call me back?”

Camille calls him back.

“The incident last January was a lot more vicious,” Louis explains. “The gang held up four separate outlets. One person was killed. The leader of the gang was identified. Vincent Hafner. There’s been no sign of him since the January robberies, but today’s comeback stunt was clearly designed to attract attention . . .”

*

3.20 p.m.

There’s a sudden flurry of excitement at Le Brasseur.

The babble of conversation is interrupted by a wail of sirens and the customers hurry out onto the terrace to gawk as the sirens seem to rise in pitch. The
patron
peremptorily announces it is the
ministre de l’Intérieur
. People vainly rack their brains trying to remember the minister’s name. They’d remember if it was a game-show host. The chattering starts up again. A few pundits decide there has been some new development, maybe they’ve found a body or something; the
patron
closes his eyes and adopts a self-important air. The customers’ conflicting theories are a testament to his erudition.

“It’s the
ministre de l’Intérieur
, I’m telling you.”

With a little smile he calmly goes on polishing glasses, he does not even trouble to glance towards the terrace, thereby demonstrating his faith in his own prognostication.

The customers wait feverishly, holding their breath, as though expecting the arrival of the Tour de France.

*

3.30 p.m.

It feels as though her brain is filled with cotton wool surrounded by veins thick as arms that hammer and throb.