Camille (31 page)

“The robber,” Camille says unthinkingly, his mind still struggling with what he has just realised.

Le Guen is no longer bewildered, he is panicked.

“You were
in business
with one or more of these thugs? With an armed robber who at the very least was an accomplice to murder? [His tone is concerned, in fact he is utterly hysterical.] You know this Hafner guy
personally
?”

Camille shakes his head. No. It is too complicated to explain.

“I’m not sure,” Camille says evasively, “I can’t explain it right now . . .”

Le Guen brings his index fingers to his lips, a sign that he is in deep thought.

“You don’t really seem to understand what I’m doing here.”

“Of course I understand, Jean.”

“Michard is going to want to call in the public prosecutor. She’s well within her rights, she has to protect herself, she can’t turn a blind eye to what you’ve done, and I don’t see how I can possibly object. The very fact that I’m telling you this means that I’m also implicated. Just being here implicates me.”

“I know, Jean, and I’m grateful . . .”

“That’s not why I came here, Camille! I don’t give a fuck about your gratitude! You may not have the I.G.S. breathing down your neck yet, but believe me, they’re coming for you. Your phone will be tapped, if it isn’t already, you’re probably being followed, your every move will be scrutinised . . . And from what you’ve just told me, Camille, it’s not just your job on the line, you could be banged up!”

Le Guen falls silent for a moment, a few brief seconds in which he is hoping against hope that Camille will get a grip. Or explain himself. But he has no ace up his sleeve to force his friend to talk.

“Listen,” he says, “I don’t think Michard will call in the
procureur
without talking to me. She’s just been promoted, she needs my support, but your fuck-up has given her some serious leverage . . . This is why I’m getting in first. I was the one who organised for you to meet with her at 7.30.”

When sorrows come, they come not single spies . . . Camille stares at Le Guen questioningly.

“That will be your last chance, Camille. It will be a small, informal meeting. You tell us the whole story and we’ll see about damage limitation. I can’t promise it will end there. It all depends on what you tell us. So what are you planning to tell us, Camille?”

“I don’t know yet, Jean.”

He has an idea, but no words to explain it; first he has to set his doubts at rest. Le Guen is annoyed. In fact, he says as much.

“I’m pissed off, Camille. My friendship obviously doesn’t mean much to you.”

Camille lays a hand on his friend’s enormous knee, he pats it as though trying to console Le Guen, to show his support.

It is the world turned upside down.

*

5.15. p.m.

“What do you want me to say? She was beaten up, that’s all there is to it.”

Over the telephone, Nguyên’s voice has a nasal twang. He sounds as though he is calling from a large, high-ceilinged room, his voice reverberates, he sounds like an oracle. Which, to Camille, he is. Hence his next question:

“Was there any attempt to kill her?”

“No . . . No, I don’t think so. The intention was to hurt, to punish, even to scar, but not to kill . . .”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Have you ever known a doctor to be sure about anything? All I can say is that, unless someone physically stopped him, if the guy had really wanted to, he could have burst this woman’s skull like a ripe melon.”

And since that did not happen, Camille thinks, he had to exercise great self-control. He had to calculate. He pictures the thug raising his shotgun and bringing the butt down on her cheekbone and her jaw, rather than her skull, easing up at the last second. This man is cool-headed.

“Same goes for the kicks,” the pathologist says. “The hospital report documented eight separate blows, I found nine, but that’s not the most important discrepancy. The guy is aiming to break her ribs or fracture them, he’s aiming to cause damage, but given the location of the bruises and the shoes he was wearing, it would have been easy for him to kill the woman had he wanted to. With three swift kicks he could have ruptured her spleen and she would have died of internal bleeding. She could have died, but it would have been an accident: everything points to him intending to leave her alive.”

As Nguyên describes it, it sounds like a warning. A sort of punishment beating intended as a show of force. Brutal enough to make the point, but not so brutal that it jeopardises the future.

If her attacker (there’s no way that it was Hafner now, he’s ancient history) did not intend to kill Anne (there’s no way, now, that it was Anne either), this raises the question of her involvement in the robbery, which now seems not just probable, but almost certain.

But in that case, the real target is not Anne, it is Camille.

*

5.45 p.m.

There is nothing to do now but wait. The deadline of Camille’s ultimatum to Buisson expires at 8.00 p.m., but these are just words, a mere fiction. Buisson gave his orders, he made a few telephone calls. He shook down his networks, his contacts, the fences, the middle-men, the traffickers in forged papers, all Hafner’s known accomplices. He has to squander all the favours they owe him to get what he wants. He might come through in the next two hours, but it might as easily take him two days and, however long it takes, Camille will just have to wait: he has no other choice.

It is a terrible irony to know that his salvation, when it comes, if it comes, is in the hands of Buisson.

Camille’s whole life depends on the success of the man who murdered his wife.

*

Anne, meanwhile, is sitting on the sofa in Montfort, she has not bothered to turn on the light, the forest shadows have gradually invaded the house. The only light comes from the flickering L.E.D.s on the alarm and on her mobile, as they count off the seconds. Anne sits motionless, silently rehearsing the words that she will say. She worries that she might not have the strength, but she cannot fail, it is a matter of life and death.

If it were simply a question of her own life, she would give up now.

She does not want to die, but she would accept it.

But this is the last step, and she has to succeed.

*

Fernand plays cards much the way he lives his life in general – scared of his own shadow. He’s so terrified, he’s deliberately losing to me. The dumb fuck he thinks he’s humouring me. He doesn’t say anything, but he’s scared shitless. In less than an hour, the staff will start turning up and he’ll have to sort things before the restaurant opens for dinner. The chef has already arrived –
Bonjour, patron! –
Fernand is so proud to be called
patron
, he’s sold his soul for it and he still believes it was bargain.

I’m thinking about other things.

I watch as the hours roll by, I can keep it up all day and all night. I hope Verhœven lives up to his reputation, I’ve taken a gamble on his ability, so he’d better not disappoint me.

According to my calculations, the cut-off time is noon tomorrow.

If I haven’t got what I want by then, I think the deal is dead.

In every sense of the word.

*

6.00 p.m.

Rue Durestier. The headquarters of Wertig & Schwindel. The ground floor is divided in two. On the right is the lobby and lifts up to the offices, on the left is a travel agency. In old buildings like this, the lobby is vast. To make the reception area seem less forbidding, the ceilings have been lowered and everywhere there are potted plants, comfy chairs, coffee tables and display stands full of colourful travel brochures.

Camille stands in the doorway. He can easily picture Anne sitting in one of those chairs, checking her watch, waiting for the moment when she can leave and be with him.

When she emerged, she was always a little flustered, always a little late and she always give an apologetic shrug – sorry, I did my best to get away – and the smile that accompanied that shrug would have made any man say: don’t worry, it’s fine.

Seeing a courier suddenly appear by the lifts, a motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm, Camille realises that the plan was even more cunning than he thought. Stepping forward, he sees that there is a separate entrance on the rue Lessard so that, if Anne arrived after he did, she could sneak into the lobby and come out onto the rue Durestier.

Camille would be standing there, thrilled to see her; a win-win situation.

*

He wanders off the boulevard and finds a table on the covered terrace of La Roseraie at the corner of the rue de Faubourg-Laffite. If he has time to kill, he might as well keep busy; when you feel your life spiralling out of control, doing nothing is a killer.

Camille checks his mobile. Nothing.

The office workers are beginning to head home. Camille sips his coffee, peering at the bustle of people over the rim of his cup, watching as they say their goodbyes, as they smile and wave or hurry towards the
métro
. People of all races, colours, creeds. He spots a boy whose face connects him to another hundred faces imprinted on Camille’s memory, the self-satisfied paunch of a middle-aged man, the graceful silhouette of a young girl awkwardly holding a handbag, not because she likes it, nor because she needs it, but because a girl must have a handbag. If he observes it for too long, life pierces Camille to the core.

Then, suddenly, she appears at the corner of the rue Bleue and stops, sensibly standing back from the pedestrian crossing. She is wearing a navy-blue coat. Her face is eerily similar to the woman in Holbein’s “The Artist’s Family”, but without the squint; it is because of this mental association that he remembers her so perfectly. He pushes open the glass door to the street as she crosses and waits by the traffic lights. She hesitates for a moment, looking at him with an expression of mingled concern and curiosity. Camille’s height often has this effect on people. He is staring at her, but she goes on her way, walks past as though she has already forgotten him.

“Excuse me . . .”

She turns and looks down at him. Camille calculates she is about five foot seven.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You don’t know me . . .”

She seems about to contradict him, but says nothing. Her smile is not as sad as her eyes, but it has that same pained, compassionate air.

“Madame . . . Charroi?”

“No,” she says with a smile of relief, “I’m afraid you must be mistaken . . .”

But she does not move, she realises that the conversation is not yet over.

“We bumped into each other here once or twice before . . .” Camille continues, nodding towards the pedestrian crossing. If he carries on like this, he will get bogged down in protracted explanations; he decides it is easier to take out his mobile, he clicks, the woman leans down, curious to see what he is doing, to understand what it is he wants.

He had not noticed that there is a message from Louis. Concise: “Fingerprints: N.O.F.”

N.O.F: not on file. Anne does not have a police record. A false lead.

One by one, the doors are closing. An hour and a half from now, the last door will slam, the one he least imagined would ever close, and with it his career.

He will be thrown off the force after a long and humiliating process. It will be up to him to decide how long it takes. He tells himself he has no choice though he knows that whether or not one chooses is in itself a choice. Caught up in a maelstrom, he no longer knows what he wants, this swirling vortex is terrifying.

He looks up, the woman is still standing there, curious, attentive.

“Excuse me . . .”

Camille looks down at his mobile, closes one app and opens another – the wrong one – then manages to open his contacts, scrolls down and holds out a picture of Anne towards the woman.

“You don’t work with her, do you?”

It is not really a question. But the woman’s face brightens.

“No, but I know her.”

Happy to be of help. But the misunderstanding does not last long. She has been working in the area for the past fifteen years, so the number of people with whom she is on nodding acquaintance is vast.

“We waved to each other on the street one day. After that, whenever we ran into each other, we’d say hello, but we never actually spoke.”

“A complete bitch,” Anne had said.

*

6.55 p.m.

Anne has decided that she cannot wait much longer. Regardless of the consequences. It’s been too long. And the house is beginning to frighten her, as though as the night draws in, the forest has begun to close in around her.

When they were together, she noticed Camille had a number of irrational rituals; they were alike in that they were both prone to superstition. Tonight, for example, in order to ward off misfortune (though it seems scarcely possible that anything worse might befall her), she does not turn on the lights. She moves around by the faint glow of the nightlight at the foot of the stairs above the shattered step where Camille lingered for so long.

How long before he comes back and spits in my face? she wonders.

She cannot bring herself to wait any longer. It seems irrational now that she is so close to the end, but it seems impossible that she will ever achieve her goal. She has to leave. Leave now.

She picks up her mobile and calls for a taxi.

*

Doudouche is sulking, but she will get over it. The moment she senses that Camille is in no mood to indulge her, she slinks off. Camille once dreamed of getting a housekeeper, a crabby old biddy who would come in every day, clean the flat from top to bottom and cook him boiled potatoes as flabby as her buttocks. Instead he got himself a cat, which amounted to the same thing. He adores Doudouche. He scratches her back, opens a tin of cat food and sets a bowl on the window ledge so she can sit and watch the comings and going along the canal outside.

Then he goes into the bathroom where he carefully extracts the file from the dusty plastic bag, careful not to get dirt everywhere, comes back into the living room and sets the file down on the coffee table.