The First Fingerprint (10 page)

She looked at the weary officer greedily.

“Do you fancy something?”

“No, I was just passing and I spotted you. Not a soul out this morning.”

“You're telling me! It's a disaster area. There's only the Holy Ghost left. I haven't had a single customer. I'm always the last one here, you know that. In the morning there's always someone who stops. So I stay here. That's all I know how to do.”

Solange looked up. A dark gray BMW had turned back along the boulevard. The first customer that night. And maybe the only one. De Palma put his car into gear, said goodbye to his old acquaintance and drove off. In the rearview mirror, he saw Solange getting into the BMW.

Never mind, he would have had trouble getting it up.

He thought about Marie, and about his good-time girls. Their faces mingled together, their soft smiles, the subtle scents of their skin and the fragrance of their sexes. He closed his eyes to block up these thoughts, and when he opened them, they were brimming with tears.

At the top of boulevard Michelet, at the square with its obelisk, he turned right into Mazargues, to get a sense of the neighborhood where Christine Autran had grown up.

He drove a good hundred meters between the small houses bordering boulevard de la Concorde and turned left into rue Emile Zola, trying to get slightly lost so as to put off the time when he would have to go home to his flat.

At the end of the road, the modest Mazargues church blocked out the skyline. The neighborhood still looked like a Provençal village, far from the tumult of the city center. On place de l'Eglise, a pensioner was letting his incontinent dog piss along the parked cars. A few strings of multicolored fairy lights were still glimmering above the streets, even though Christmas was now over, even though the day was now dawning. A vertical banner hung down from the clock tower reaching the ochre façade of God's house: “A savior has been born to us.”

De Palma looked at the clock on his dashboard: 7:00 a.m. It occurred to him that Jo Luccioni must be sweating by his ovens this Sunday morning and could be paid a little visit.

Fifteen minutes later, he pushed open the door of Joseph Luccioni's bakery in Pointe-Rouge. He was welcomed by the aroma of warm bread and butter cream. Little Bérengère was presumably still asleep, because it was her mother who emerged from the bakehouse to serve one of the first customers of the day.

She stared at him frostily before forcing herself to speak.

“Can I help you?”

“Good morning, Madame. I'd like to speak to Jo.”

“I knew I recognized you,” Ma Luccioni said, glaring. “I'll go and see if he's free. As you know, a baker's work is never done.”

She disappeared for some time. De Palma looked at the cream buns, lined up neatly in two rows between the chocolate and strawberry tarts. They looked excellent down to the last detail, with a sprinkling of icing sugar and a generous dollop of praline cream between the two layers of choux pastry.

Madame Luccioni reappeared.

“O.K., you can see him. Come behind the counter.”

In his lab, Luccioni was leaning over his kneading machine, monitoring the mechanical production of his brioches. He looked up at de Palma.

“Good morning, Inspecteur. How are you?”

“Fine, and you?”

“About as good as someone whose son's been murdered.”

De Palma did not answer and instead shook the floury hand of the former chemist of the French Connection.

Jo had aged terribly. He was white-haired and hunched, broken by life, prison and baking. But his expression had not changed; behind his fine, round glasses he still looked like a priest who could be taken straight up to God without confession. He stared down into his kneading machine as his dough rolled beneath its blades, sticking long, yellow strands on to the shiny metal sides. Before long, the brioche dough would stop sticking and be ready for the oven.

What could Jo be thinking about? The young policeman who had nicked him? The son he would never bail out again? The daughter he had sent to police headquarters to lure the Baron to the bakery?

De Palma wanted the old boy to start off the conversation but
Luccioni, who had been expecting this visit, was taking his time, deciding what he wanted to say. All of a sudden he stopped the kneading machine and left his lab without a word. De Palma automatically put his hand to his right hip. He had forgotten his gun. But he shouldn't have worried. The old crook wasn't going to blow him away in his lab.

Luccioni came back a minute later with something in his hand. He looked aside as he gave it to the police officer. It was a large diving watch equipped with a depth display, a highly sophisticated article that only experienced divers would have. Luccioni spoke first:

“I gave my son that watch for his eighteenth birthday, more than twenty-five years ago—at the time I was going straight … He never forgot it when he went diving. Never. Understand? A diver never forgets his watch. If you do, you can't dive …”

Luccioni was on the verge of tears, and his lower lip trembled. His son's murder had been disguised as a diving accident and neither the police nor the forensic surgeon had realized it. “That idiot Vidal slipped up,” thought the Baron. His young colleague should have noticed this crucial detail. But as no investigation had been instigated, the case had been closed. As though the murder of Franck Luccioni didn't need to be solved like all the others.

The Baron asked Luccioni gently if he knew who had been behind it. The old man shook his head.

“Jo, you didn't get me here just to show me Franck's watch, did you? If you know something, then tell me. I need to know. Otherwise there'll be no investigation. You understand, don't you?”

Luccioni did not react, but stared at De Palma for a long time.

“There is one thing I do know, Inspecteur. If I find the fucker who did it … follow me?”

Jo wanted his revenge and was ready to do anything to get it. But one thing was sure: his son's murderer was not a mobster; if he had been, gangland justice would have been done by now. He had sent his daughter as a scout, to see if an official investigation could be opened. De Palma knew that he had to tread carefully. Police headquarters was full of leaks, and Jo must have a few close acquaintances among his more dodgy colleagues.

“Don't even think about it, Jo. Don't forget your daughter. And don't try to tail me to get to him.”

“I was too strict with Franck. His poor mother did the best she could. But boys aren't like girls. They want to have honor and be strong, they want to be like their father …”

Luccioni remained silent for some time, as though all his life's failures were passing before his eyes.

“Do you know who he hung around with?”

“No idea. He never told me his business, if you see what I mean. He was too scared of me … and then there was that motorbike, the one my daughter told you about, and a so-called diving accident. A drowning. But my son had been diving ever since he could swim. Your dickhead of a forensic surgeon didn't know that! And as he was old Jo's son, no-one gives a damn if he snuffs it.”

Luccioni leaned over his kneading machine, picked up the heavy dough, put it on the marble worktop and separated it into small, regular spheres.

“Why did you seek me out? Why me, and not someone else?”

“Because I know you're straight and a very good policeman. Those are two things I respect. Plus I reckon you're the only person who'd agree to looking into my son's death.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I know you like this kind of case.”

Jo picked up a ball of dough, shaped it in the palm of his hand and placed it on a tray. Then he took another one.

“Inspecteur, I'd rather you left that way,” he said pointing a floury finger at a door at the far end of the lab.

Luccioni turned his back, and de Palma walked out without a word.

Outside, the town was beginning to shift about like a reptile. He felt fatigue overwhelm him like a shock wave. He got into his car and drove home, his head vacant. He would see about all of this on Monday.

*

The answering machine showed that he had two messages: the first was from his mother, who was expecting him for their usual Sunday lunch; the second was from Maistre, who had called and not said much; for the past few years he had been convinced that his phone was bugged.

It was 9:00 a.m., time to have a shower and call Maistre. He placed his latest acquisition in the CD player: “Aida,” with Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi and Giulietta Simionato. There was nothing new about it, it was simply a classic.

“Ritorna vincitor! … E dal mio labbro

Uscì l'empia parola! Vincitor

Del padre mio … di lui che impugna l'armi

Per me …”

The divine Tebaldi filled his four-room flat while he smothered his cheeks with shaving foam.

He thought about the negative hand. It did not mean much to him, but it brought back some vague memories from primary school: a lesson about prehistory learned by heart, which said that men at that time dressed in animal skins and lived by hunting and fishing. He remembered an image in a history book: a cave feebly lit with Cro-Magnon torches showing paintings of animals on its walls—like in Lascaux—and the prints of hands.

He went over to his coffee machine, put two measures of coffee into it and lined up two cups to collect the black liquid. As he watched the foam form, he realized that he had put two cups, just as he had every Sunday morning. But Marie was gone. It had been two months now. He had asked to see her at her parents' place in the Alps, but she had refused. It was not yet the right time.

“Vincitor

De' miei fratelli … ond'io lo vegga, tinto

Del sangue amato, trionfar nel plauso

Dell'Egizie coorti … E dietro il carro
,

Un re … mio padre … di catene avvinto! …”

As he drank his coffee, he tried to make a connection between Luccioni and Christine Autran, but found nothing that could give him the slightest clue, or the beginnings of a lead.

“L'insana parola

O Numi, sperdete!”

Hunger tickled at his stomach. He opened the fridge and took out a slice of apple tart, which must have been three days old. As he bit into the soft pastry and the wrinkled apples, he racked his brains. Nothing. In fact, the only time he had had anything to do with prehistory was when Le Guen's Cave was discovered. At the time, he had been put in charge of an investigation into the deaths of three divers found in the entry passage, a few meters away from the opening. This accident, which took place just two days before the official declaration of the discovery, had alerted journalists. Some sinister rumors had been doing the rounds.

Le Guen had been suspected of declaring his discovery only as a result of the deaths of the three men. De Palma had questioned him for a long time, and Le Guen had described the terrible dangers in the cave; he had made his discovery public so as to avoid any more such accidents.

Le Guen then told him that he had shared his discovery with a few friends, and had asked them to keep it secret. But the news had spread through the small world of diving like a trail of gunpowder, sparking fits of jealousy among the divers. Le Guen's version checked out, so de Palma had not proceeded any further, but he had kept copies of statements from this unusual case in his personal records.

De Palma mentally traced an initial line: Le Guen's Cave—diving—Luccioni—Autran—prehistory—negative hand. Luccioni's name alone did not fit into the scenario.

The telephone rang. It was Maistre.

“Baron, I have to see you …”

De Palma did not have time to respond before Jean-Louis hung up, which left him only a few minutes to get dressed and make more coffee.

“Al seno d'un padre

La figlia rendete

Struggete le squadre

Dei nostri oppressor!”

Ten minutes later, Maistre was ringing his doorbell like crazy.

“What's up with you, Le Gros? Have you come to tell me more about the M.L.A.?”

“It's no laughing matter … yesterday I got another message from that bunch of loonies.”

“What did they want this time?”

“The same thing.”

“And that's why you've woken me up on a Sunday morning? Listen to what I bought yesterday.”

“Is it ‘Aida'?”

“With Tebaldi and Bergonzi.”

“The older you get, the newer the recordings!”

“Piss off, Le Gros.”

“Marie phoned me up yesterday.”

“And?”

“We spoke for two hours. You should go and see her. She misses you.”

“Not yet. And anyway, I've got one hell of a case on my plate. I tell you, I'm in for some sleepless nights.”

The Baron cut through the air with his right hand, then sat down and poured out some more coffee.

“I sacri nomi di padre … d'amante

Né profferir poss'io, né ricordar …

Per l'un … Per l'altro … confusa … tremante …”

“Tell me, Le Gros, do you remember Le Guen's Cave?”

“What, that prehistoric site they found in the creeks? It's at Sugiton, isn't it? There were three deaths. Weren't you on the case?”

“Yes, I was. I kept copies of the statements.”

“Why are you telling me about all this?”

De Palma told him about the death of Christine Autran, the search of her flat, and his meeting with old Luccioni. He then mentioned the strange death of Hélène Weill and the negative hand found by the gendarmes. A hand drawn using a stencil, as they did in prehistoric times, in Le Guen's Cave for example.

Maistre looked at his old friend. He seemed tired, but the flame was still burning.