The First Fingerprint (41 page)

“No. I think she was picked up between the bakery and the lab.”

Moracchini put away her revolver.

“If you say so,” she said. “But … when she was just walking in the street?”

“Let's see if we can find her car.”

They went down to the ground floor and wandered around for a while looking for the concierge.

“I was delivering the mail and, as there was a parcel, I went up the eighth floor. What can I do for you?”

“We're from the police, Monsieur,” Moracchini said. “We'd like to know if you saw Sylvie Maurel leave in her car this morning.”

The concierge was a short man aged about fifty, with slicked-down hair and a small mustache which made him look like a tango dancer attempting a comeback. He eyed the two officers warily.

“The police? So what's going on?”

“We asked you a question,” de Palma said angrily.

“In her car …? I've no idea.”

“Do you know which is her car?”

“Yes.”

“Can we take a look?”

“O.K., we'll go down to the car park.”

Space 138 was empty.

“She doesn't often use her car on weekdays,” said the concierge.

“Did you see her come back this morning at about 9:00?” Moracchini asked.

“No.”

“Can you get into the car park without going past your lodge?”

“Yes, you just have to come through the door from the street … At the back there, you see? It takes you straight out on to esplanade de la Tourette. Assuming you have the key …”

“Can you tell me the make of her car?”

“I don't know,” the concierge said, apologetically. “I think it's an Audi. A big car, but I don't know which model it is. There are more than 150 cars in this building.”

For the past fifteen minutes, Vidal had been pacing up and down in front of the coffee machine. He was relieved to see his two teammates arrive.

“I've spoken to the mission in Queensland!”

“And?” asked de Palma, throwing his jacket on to a chair.

“Two things. First, they had a sort of handyman who came from France and who answers our description. But according to them, he
never showed the slightest sign of madness … He behaved more like a holy man.”

“What else?”

“The man in question didn't have the same name.”

“Not the same name?”

“That's right. When I mentioned Thomas Autran, they told me they'd never heard of anyone by that name. Their man was called Luc Chauvy.”

“So?”

Vidal started paced up and down.

“So I described Autran to them in detail—I even emailed the photo of his sister—and they positively identified him as Luc Chauvy. Which means that our man has changed identities.”

“That's not possible,” Moracchini said. “You can't change your identity just like that. It takes time … The Church isn't the Foreign Legion!”

De Palma leaped up, and as he did so, he knocked over a cup of cold coffee.

“Maxime, think fast. You too, Anne. Let's drop our wonderful logical scenarios and get our brains in order. When you think about these three murders, is there anything that strikes you?”

“I don't think so,” Vidal said.

“What about you, Anne?”

“Nothing.”

“There must be a detail we've overlooked. A detail which could take on real significance, given what we now know. There must be something that opens up the whole case.”

Moracchini and Vidal were silent.

“He's holding Sylvie. In my opinion, we've only got a few hours. I just have to nail this fucker.”

De Palma sat down again in exasperation.

“He's got her, but you're right, Anne. He won't do anything until there's a full moon. All the murders took place on nights when the moon was full. He has to be performing a ritual, and let's suppose he consults the spirits. That's why his sister wanted to find the other entrance to the cave.”

“Hang on, Michel,” said Moracchini. “Try to be coherent.”

“I'm being perfectly coherent. She wanted to find the entrance so she could contact the spirit world. She thought she was a shaman too.”

“What about her brother?”

“He's taken her place. Maybe he's even found the entrance.”

“That's quite possible, isn't it?” Vidal said, with a hint of irony. “But to commune with the spirits, she could have gone to Lascaux, or any old cave.”

“The Slain Man …” the Baron murmured.

“What's that?”

“It's a picture which occurs in only three caves … I can't remember the other two, but the only one the specialists are certain shows the victim of a ritual killing is in Le Guen's Cave.”

Vidal and Moracchini stared doubtfully at the Baron and said nothing.

“I can't see any connection to the Church.” Moracchini asked. “Let's go back over it. Maxime, what about the first murder?”

“Hélène Weill. She lived alone. He followed her and managed to frame Caillol. I can't see any connection to the Church.”

“What about in his
modus operandi
?”

“No, nothing.”

“O.K.! On to the second murder.”

“Julia Chevallier. Let's skip her age and so on. The
modus operandi
doesn't teach us anything new. And here, too, he framed Caillol.”

“Hang on,” said de Palma. “He got into her house, just like that. He knew her. He killed her and then left. We followed his tracks and they ended up in the cemetery.”

“That's something which has always puzzled me,” Moracchini suddenly said. “I can't imagine how he knew there was a door at the bottom of the garden.”

“That's my point,” said de Palma. “He got into her house via the garden, then left the same way.”

“Before Barbieri took us off the case, I checked out everything,” said Vidal. “No-one I questioned in Saint-Julien knew about that pathway. No-one. Not even the old guys. You'd have to live next to
the canal to know about it. So I think he must live, or have lived, in Saint-Julien”

“Yes, that's always bugged me,” said Moracchini.

“And the path ends up in the cemetery,” said Vidal.

“And at the far end of the cemetery, there's the church. And Father Paul was the last person to see her alive. But we can't accuse the poor man, not at his age.”

De Palma leaned his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes. He was beginning to have doubts about himself. The worst of it was he was beginning to question his intuition. When he opened his eyes, Vidal was staring at him with a strange expression.

“If only we had the model of her car,” said de Palma, “we could put out a call to every unit in this fucking city.”

“Let's try anyway,” said Moracchini. “I'll deal with it.”

She was on her way out of the office when Maxime started hammering madly on the edge of the desk. Then all at once he spat out the tension which he had been building up over the past few months:

“LUC CHAUVY!” he yelled.

“What's the matter, Maxime?”

Vidal frantically searched for his notepad in his jacket pockets.

“Luc Chauvy, for fuck's sake. He was the man there with Father Paul when I went to the presbytery. Shit.”

There was a long silence as Vidal flicked through the pages of his notepad.

“Now that I think about it, he fitted the description pretty well: tall, blond … but he wasn't wearing glasses.”

He slapped his notepad with the back of his hand.

“Luc Chauvy … IT'S HIM!”

The Baron stared straight at Vidal. For a few seconds, they confronted each other.

“I couldn't have known, Michel, I …”

“It's nothing, kid. It happens to the best of us.”

If the man he had seen at Saint-Julien was their killer, then they would have to go together. Arresting him was not going to be easy, and the young officer might have to use his weapon. A baptism of fire. However ambitious he was, he still needed the old guard.

“Let's go, Maxime. Anne, stake out the cemetery. If he tries to jump you …”

“Don't worry, teammate. I was the best shot in the academy.”

When the two officers parked their unmarked Megane in front of the church, the only people on the square were two old timers talking in whispers, like sextons.

Moracchini arrived two minutes later in a Golf and parked twenty meters away from the cemetery entrance. She felt nervous; if things went wrong, the killer might well come her way. Then she would shoot, as she had already done once. She opened her jacket, placed her hand on her revolver and tried to calm down.

She went into the cemetery, without taking her eyes off the church, and spotted a door in the presbytery which led directly out to the graves. She proceeded slowly and took up position beside a burial vault at the end of the graveyard, where a low wall ran alongside the canal. She pretended to be in silent prayer.

De Palma walked toward the church and leaned on the heavy, cast-iron door handle. It was locked. He went round the right-hand side of the building, followed by the censorious eyes of the two old boys, and rang the presbytery bell with his other hand on his Bodyguard. As he waited for an answer, he read the cellophane-wrapped sign which had been pinned up beneath the bell:

Lower down were the times of masses written in a neat, regular hand.

“Locked?” Vidal asked.

“Yes.”

“So what do we do now?”

“What do you think? We're going inside.”

“Just like that!”

“Too right!”

“Hang on, Michel. That's not legal …”

“Get out of my face. This isn't the moment.”

Vidal drew back as the Baron took a piece of twisted thick metal wire from his pocket. He shoved his improvised tool into the lock, which gave way after a few clumsy twists.

The officers entered the vast, gravel courtyard with its two large pine trees.

“Michel, I'm going to head for that half-open window over there, the second one along … can you see it? Cover me.”

“No, Maxime, I'll go. He hasn't been armed before now. So you cover me.”

Vidal quietly drew his gun and held it against his thigh. De Palma headed straight toward the window, and managed to clamber inside without having to break it.

The room smelled of stale cooking. He looked for the switch, which was to the left of the sink, half hanging off the door frame. Vidal joined him.

They were in fact in the presbytery's dining room. In its center stood a table covered with an oilcloth which was so worn that its bright-red cherry pattern could only be seen on the edges that hung over the sides. On the wall were several yellowed photos showing catechism classes. De Palma glanced at the faces and captions:
J4 Skiing Group, Orcières Merlette, 1988; Confirmation class, Cotignac 1990
… In each of the photos stood the parish priest, a slight man with a piercing stare, despite his ruddy, peasant-like features. He was clearly not the person they were after. In the penultimate photo, labeled
J2 Class in Paris, 2000 Jubilee
, there was another man standing beside the priest. De Palma took it down from the wall and laid it on the table.

“There's no-one upstairs. Have you found anything?” Vidal asked.

“I don't know. Come and see. Your eyes are better than mine.”

Vidal bent over the picture and almost yelled:

“I think it's him, Michel!”

“So he looks like Christine Autran, and like the man you saw?”

“Absolutely. It's him.”

“Let's give the place a thorough search. Go and see if there's a cellar.”

“I've already been all round. There's the cellar door, under the stairs.”

De Palma drew his Bodyguard and headed toward the door. It was ajar.

“Stay here for the moment,” he told Vidal. “You never know.”

He slowly went down the staircase to the basement and paused at the bottom. A vision of the Dustman came into his mind like a cannonball. Icy sweat poured down his back. He found a switch and turned on the light.

A corridor about eight meters long led to four little rooms, two on each side. The first was empty. He pushed open the door of the second but all he could see were ancient prayer books lined up on rusty metal shelves. The third contained stacks of boxes. Their contents were marked with a red felt-tip pen: “candles,” “old missals,” and so on.

He went into the last room. It was far smaller than the others and had not been tidied. The remains of an old crib balanced on top of some rickety chairs. On the left-hand wall were two large notices for the parish fair. One read ‘Aunt Sally,' the other said ‘Raffle.' There was a wobbly pile of cardboard boxes in the middle of the room.

De Palma noticed that the room had a clay floor. He crouched down and made out a print of a bare foot. When he examined the ground and the boxes, he noticed that someone had been rummaging around in the center of the pile: the clay had been scuffed up, cobwebs had been pushed aside, and a fine black dust covered all of the boxes except the two in the middle. He moved over to them, careful not to disturb the footprint, and opened one. It was empty. He opened the second. It contained a half-liter bottle of strange-colored liquid with a thick layer of deposit on the bottom. He put the bottle in his pocket and went back upstairs.

Vidal had searched the ground floor thoroughly and had found nothing, apart from a number of fingerprints.

“Found anything, Michel?”

“I'm not sure.”

De Palma removed the bottle from his pocket and raised it to eye level.

“What's that?”

“I don't think it's altar wine. I'd guess it's a mixture of water and powdered earth … making a … what's it called?”