The Beast of the Camargue (15 page)

Then he had walked down a long corridor leading to a round room. In the center was an armchair with its back to him. He knew this room well. A hand as dry as dead wood emerged from the chair and beckoned him to come over. He approached slowly, with fear in his guts, his mouth twisted in disgust, before walking around it. Father Morand was sitting there, his weak neck propped up on a mauve cushion and twisted like a loin of veal. The man of God stared at him with his wicked eyes: “Come and kiss me, my son. Only you can kiss like that … Nearer, yes, like that …”

He had woken up and chased away this image of his boarding school with a blast of insults bellowed into the night. He had howled like an animal for some time, then his howling had dwindled into a groan, from which two syllables occasionally emerged: “Pa … Pa.”

Then sleep had overtaken him by surprise, suddenly, as if an invisible hand in the shadows had injected him with morphine.

The final image that he had retained of the outside world was of a hut with a thatched roof, in the middle of a marsh. He was incapable of saying where it was.

The man had taken off the blindfold near some rushes, then made him walk on, with a .45 dug in his back. They had crossed the reed bed along an unseen path before emerging onto a dry marsh, with
stars of salt spangling its mud. On the far side, he had made out a hut, half concealed by some poplars and ash trees.

And then, there had been a heavy blow on his head. Everything had wavered and turned white, just like when he used to shoot up.

After that, he had found himself in darkness and had felt round the cellar where he was being kept prisoner, like a mole sniffing out the nooks and crannies of its little underground world. He had also yelled out.

How long now? He was no longer sure. But he could remember yelling during the first two days. No one had come. He had heard nothing, and it was this utter silence that was now driving him crazy. He could cope with the darkness, but this almost total absence of sound was unsettling him and affecting him physically.

The temperature was rising. Soon his body was going to be covered with a layer of salt water, that seeped out inexorably from every pore of his exhausted skin, and his thirst would grow even more unbearable. He wondered how many days he had left to live: two, or maybe three.

Maybe less.

From what he had read about survival, Rey knew that you couldn't last long without water. He knew that madness would take hold of him and not let go until his body had dried up like a corpse in the sun.

He had counted the days. Tomorrow it would be Tuesday, July 29. The festival of Saint Martha.

He almost smiled. It brought back old memories. The snapshots of his childhood and the pleasures of his life as a man before it had all fallen apart and he had ended up underground.

He scratched his face several times as if to punish himself for all his errors.

The mayor of Eygalières was still on duty when de Palma requested an appointment with him from his secretary, a chubby brunette with false nails that turned the tips of her fingers into claws.

“And you are Monsieur …?”

“De Palma, I'm a journalist.”

“O.K., I think he'll see you when he's through. He shouldn't be long.”

The Baron walked over to a revolving display decked with brochures about the town and browsed through some of them.

“Has M. Simian been mayor for long?”

The secretary looked up from her register and gave him a challenging look.

“This is his fifth term of office, and I think he'll be standing again.”

“So he's popular here!”

“Very,” she said nodding her head and whistling. “He gets re-elected every time, with a landslide.”

“Is he right or left wing?”

The secretary swayed her hand.

“In the center, more like. But officially the right, the U.M.P.”

The office door opened. The mayor was a small man, balding, with bifocal glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He held out his hand to de Palma and looked him straight in the eye.

“My secretary tells me that you're a journalist?”

“Yes, I'm freelance. At the moment I'm working with
Villages
magazine, we're doing a report about the mayors of small towns in Provence which have become the country retreats of the rich.”

“Then you've come to the right place! But I must point out that the rich people you're talking about are extremely discreet, and rely on me to maintain that discretion.”

“Don't worry, that's not what it's about.”

Simian walked round his desk, sat down in his chair and opened his arms to invite de Palma to take a seat too.

“So? I'm listening.”

“We're trying to see how it works out for the local people, those who want to stay here and can't afford a single patch of land any more. How do they cope?”

“For me that's a constant problem. I am a farmer's son myself, and my father used to be mayor of Eygalières … what I mean is that we've seen how things have changed. I must admit that there's
not much the town hall can do. Land is bought and sold at the prices agreed on by the various parties. It's the law of the market.”

“But you could issue some decrees about how the land is to be used, or something like that?”

“Yes, but that wouldn't change the property prices.”

The mayor discoursed on various aspects of the problem. De Palma simply took notes while waiting to get to the heart of the matter. The man in front of him was clearly a wild old bird, an expert at sounding sincere.

“Have you heard anything about plans for a leisure park in the region?”

“Not a thing. Who told you about that?”

“Someone who said they worked for S.O.D.E.G.I.M., I can't remember their name.”

“Never heard of it. You must be misinformed.”

The Baron searched through his notebook.

“Here it is: Philippe Borland … he's the chairman of S.O.D.E.G.I.M.”

The mayor twisted his mouth to express his ignorance. Then he stood up and walked over to the map of the district on the wall.

“We have zones that can or cannot be built on, for various reasons, as you know. I try to keep a harmony between the residential areas and the more traditional rural environment. And I must tell you that it's a peculiarly difficult balancing act.”

He pointed at various plots of land and circled his finger around them.

“The people who live here have considerable means …”

“By the way, one of your residents has just passed on! Did you see the papers?”

“William Steinert? Yes, I read about him. It's sad.”

“Did you know him?”

The mayor's attitude changed. Clearly the question upset him.

“We had very little to do with him. He was very discreet. Like all the big landowners we have here.”

Anne Moracchini had discovered in police records that William Steinert had been questioned about the illegal funding of the local
right-wing party, though the case had subsequently been dropped. But it did mean that Steinert must have known the mayor of Eygalières, as well as the other politicians in the area.

“A colleague told me that he owned half the district.”

“Half would be an exaggeration. Let's just say that he owned a lot of land.”

“Indeed,” de Palma said, looking at the map. He placed his index finger on the Downlands. “And what's this zone here?”

The mayor took off his glasses and nibbled one of the side-pieces.

“It's called the Downlands. It's woodland. We need a bit of greenery.”

“An old boy in the village told me that there are Greek or Roman remains there. Is that true?”

“No, it's not! That's just an old story, nothing more.”

“And can this land be built on?”

“I … I'd have to check the zoning regulations. There might be some available plots there. I can't remember. You know, our district is quite large!”

Simian put his glasses back on and looked at his watch.

“There is a small problem, Monsieur Simian … you tell me that you've never heard of S.O.D.E.G.I.M., but I know that you were contacted by this development company, just over a year ago …”

The mayor went back to his desk and tapped his nose several times.

“Indeed. I did hear about that project. But, as you surely must realize, the town hall of Eygalières cannot take part in a … an amusement park. You should go and see the people in Maussane. The land is there, in fact.”

“But it would be a good thing for the district, wouldn't it?”

The mayor looked once more at his watch and stood up, his hands pressed on his desk.

“I'm sorry, M. de Palma, but I have a meeting with the intermunicipal steering committee. I shall have to leave you.”

The dark waters of the Rhône merged with the night. From Beaucaire bridge, beyond King René's Castle, the restless tips of the trees sketched out a shadowy silhouette.

De Palma left his Giulietta in the castle car park. Before going out into the darkness, he waited for a municipal police patrol to disappear behind the church of Saint Martha. He walked for some time through the streets of Tarascon, drinking in the atmosphere of the old town center with its inevitable pots of flowers at each corner and its paving stones polished by the tourists' heels.

When he was just a few meters away from the theater, he stopped and listened to the sounds of the evening. Most of the inhabitants were at home in front of the evening's film or talk show.

A few tourists were still wandering around. Two of them, apparently Dutch, were standing in front of the baroque façade of the theater. A salvo of flashes lit the darkness.

He waited for a while, pretending to read the theater's program: they were performing
Mireille
with some star unknown to him.

As soon as the tourists had vanished into the humid night, he walked toward the door of Steinert's building. He gave a last glance around, then climbed up the drainpipe that ran down from a neighboring house.

Trying to make as little noise as possible, he arrived on a terrace roof made of old tiles and crouched down for a moment to get his breath back. His temples were pounding and he wiped his forehead with a nervous gesture. He was thirsty;
like a carpet slipper in your mouth
, as Maistre put it.

Slowly, he stood up. No one could have seen him.

He crept forward like a cat, being careful not to disturb the terracotta tiles. After a few meters, he arrived below the window of Steinert's office. The hardest part was still to come. He had to hand himself upward, open the window, get a foothold and find his way inside.

For the first time in his life, he paid homage to the skills of the
Groupe d'Intervention
of the national police force. He decided to proceed a stage at a time.

He leaped up, gripped on with one hand and opened the shutters with the other. Then he slumped back onto the roof, exhausted by his efforts.

Now for the window. During his visit with Mme. Steinert, he had
wedged it open with a piece of paper folded in four, so there should be no problems.

He waited to get his breath back, braced himself again, slid one elbow over the sill, then the second, and pushed the doors open with a sudden jerk of his head, making them bang against the inner walls of the office. The noise alerted a neighborhood dog, which started howling into the night.

With a single leap, de Palma vanished into Steinert's office and then closed the shutters and window behind him.

Once inside, he flopped into the armchair and gathered his wits. His shirt was soaked with sweat and stuck to his back. He had scratched his forearm against the roughcast on the wall and cut one of his fingers while climbing up the drainpipe. It was nothing to be proud of.

Gently, he slipped on his surgeon's gloves, took out his Maglite and, without moving from the chair, played the beam methodically around the room, meter by meter.

Nothing had been touched, or at least nothing that he had mentally photographed during his first visit. There was still that dominant fragrance of fine tobacco, tinged with honey; presumably a special pipe blend.

De Palma got out his notebook and jotted down this detail, then went into the library to examine each shelf thoroughly.

Among the dozens of books about the occult sciences, his attention was drawn to some files that were yellow with age, bound in thick cardboard and tied up with blue ribbons. He took down three of them and laid them on the central table.

He opened the first folder. One by one, he turned over the pages, which were covered by a very fine, very regular handwriting with occasional sketches of vases appended with captions.

Some of the captions were in French: Massaliots, Mouriès, canopic jar, aquamanila … and after each one there was a date: 525, 480 …

The second file also dealt with vases from Mouriès, while the third was about bronzes and contained a large number of drawings.

He went back into the office and checked all of the surfaces that might hold fingerprints. Nothing. Which meant that someone had wiped everything off after their visit.

“Not very smart,” he thought to himself. It was better to wear gloves rather than clean everything up. This was an amateur job … They should have realized that a place like this should at least contain its owner's dabs.

He returned to the library and checked the other surfaces. Nothing. The only conclusion he could draw from all this was that someone skilled enough to open a reinforced door had then wiped the whole place behind him. Why?

“Unless the person in question had the keys,” he thought. “That would be quite a different story …”

Going back into the office, he sat down in Steinert's chair and leaned back. A migraine was on its way, no doubt triggered by the exertions he had just made. He massaged his temples for some time and at last took in the scale of what he had done.