I Kill (41 page)

Nicolas leaned closer to him.

‘I don’t need to tell you how important this is, Jean-Paul. Human lives depend on it.’

Hulot wondered how many more times he would have to use those words before the business was over and done with.

‘Maybe . . .’

‘Maybe what?’

‘Come with me. Let’s see if you’re in luck.’

He followed Jean-Paul out of the kitchen. The man had a straight back and a head of thick, white hair, despite his age. Nicolas caught the faint scent of his cologne. In the foyer they turned
left and the man led the way downstairs.

They came to an unfinished basement. There was a washing machine next to the sink on one side, a woman’s bicycle hanging on the wall and a workbench with a vice and tools for working wood
and metal.

On the other side of the room was a row of metal shelves with jars of preserves and bottles of wine. At the far end, there were boxfiles and cardboard crates of different sizes and colours.

‘I’m a man of memories. I’m a collector. And almost all collectors are soppy and nostalgic. Except the ones who collect money.’

Jean-Paul stopped in front of one of the shelves and stood looking at it, puzzled. ‘Hmm. Let’s see . . .’

He made his choice and pulled down a fairly large blue cardboard box from one of the higher shelves. On one side was the gold label of the shop, Disque à Risque. He placed the box on the
workbench next to the vice and turned on the overhead light.

‘This is all that’s left of my business. Not much to show for a large part of my life, eh?’

Sometimes even a little can be too much,
Nicolas thought.
There are people who don’t need any boxes at the end of the journey, big or small. Sometimes even pockets are too
much.

Jean-Paul opened the box and started rummaging inside, taking out papers that looked like old commercial licences, concert brochures and fliers for record fairs. Then he pulled out a note on
blue paper folded in half. He looked at what was written on it and handed it to Nicolas.

‘Here. It’s your lucky day. The man who bought
Stolen Music
wrote this himself. He left me his number when he found out I had a copy of the record. Now that I think of it, he
came in a couple more times after I sold it to him, and then I never saw him again . . .’

Nicolas read what was written on the piece of paper. There was a name and phone number, in a determined, precise script:
Legrand 04/422 1545.

It was a strange moment for Hulot. After so much running, so many distorted voices, camouflaged bodies, inscrutable fingerprints and echoless footsteps; after so many shadows and faceless
bodies. Finally, he had something human in his hands, and it was the most ordinary thing in the world: a name and phone number.

Hulot felt drained. He looked at Jean-Paul Francis, unable to find the right words. His host, who had possibly just rescued a number of innocent victims, smiled.

‘From your expression, I’d say you’re pleased. If this were a movie, as I said before, the music would start to swell.’

‘More than that, Jean-Paul. Much more than that . . .’

He pulled out his mobile phone but his new friend stopped him. ‘There’s no reception down here. We have to go upstairs. Come on.’

They went back up. As Nicolas’s mind started racing, Jean-Paul added more information from the scraps that remained in his memory.

‘He was from somewhere around here – Cassis, if I remember correctly. A big guy, tall but not too tall. He had a military look, if you know what I mean. It was his eyes, I think.
They seemed to be looking without the possibility of being looked at in return. That’s the best way I can describe it. I remember that I thought it was strange that someone like him would be
interested in jazz.’

‘Well, for someone who’s not a computer, you’ve remembered quite a bit.’

Jean-Paul turned to him on the stairs and smiled. ‘Have I? I’m beginning to feel proud of myself.’

‘You have a lot to be proud of. This is just one thing more.’

They got back to the ground floor and the sunlight. The pasta on the table was cold and the wine was warm. A triangle of light was hitting the terrace floor and climbing up the leg of the table
like ivy.

Hulot looked at his phone and saw from the display that there was now a signal. He wondered whether he should risk it and shrugged his shoulders. His anxiety about wire tapping was probably just
paranoia. He pressed the button for a memorized number and waited to hear the voice on the other end.

‘Morelli. It’s Hulot. I need two things from you. Information and silence. Can you handle it?’

‘Sure.’ One of Morelli’s best qualities was his ability to avoid pointless questions.

‘I’m going to give you a name and phone number. The number might be out of service. It’s probably in Provence. Let me know the address, pronto.’

‘Okay.’

He gave the sergeant the data in his possession and ended the call.

‘Cassis, you said?’ He asked Jean-Paul for confirmation, but he was really just repeating it to himself.

‘I think so. Cassis, Auriol, Roquefort. I really don’t remember, but I think that’s the district.’

‘I’ll have to take a trip out that way.’

Hulot glanced around the house again, as if he wanted to remember every detail. Then he looked Jean-Paul straight in the eye. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me if I shoot off now. I’m
in a hurry. I think you understand.’

‘I know how you feel. No, that’s not true. I don’t know – I can only imagine. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I’ll show you out.’

‘Sorry I spoiled your lunch.’

‘You didn’t spoil anything, Nicolas. Not at all. I haven’t had much company lately. At a certain age, there’s a new logic. You ask yourself why, if time seems to go by so
quickly on some days, on others it never passes.’

They walked out to the garden and the wrought-iron gate. Nicolas looked at his car parked in the sun. It would be as hot as Jean-Paul’s oven. He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and
pulled out a card.

‘Keep this, Jean-Paul. If you ever come to Monte Carlo, there’s always a place to stay and a meal waiting for you.’

Jean-Paul took the card and looked at it without answering. They might never see each other again, but he would not throw it away. Hulot held out his hand and felt the man’s vigorous
handshake.

‘By the way, there’s something else I wanted to ask you. It’s just out of curiosity. It has nothing to do with all this.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Why “Disque à Risque”?’

This time it was Jean-Paul who laughed.

‘Oh, that. . . When I opened the shop, I had absolutely no idea if it would work out. It wasn’t the customer’s risk. It was mine.’

Hulot left, smiling and shaking his head as Jean-Paul watched him through the open gate. When he reached the car, he put his hand in his jacket pocket, looking for his keys. His fingers touched
the blue paper that Jean-Paul had given him, the one with the name and phone number. He pulled it out and looked at it for a moment, lost in thought.

Disque à Risque, the rare record shop, had had its biggest success seven years after going bankrupt.

Morelli rang as Hulot was driving through Carnoux-en-Provence on his way to Cassis. Hulot reached out to turn off the car radio and picked up his phone from the passenger
seat.

‘Hello?’

‘Inspector, it’s Morelli. I found the address you asked for. Sorry it took a little while – you were right, the number’s out of service. I had to trace it back to France
Télécom.’

‘And?’ Hulot tried to hide his disappointment.

‘It was the number of a farm, Domaine La Patience, Chemin de l’hiver, Cassis. But there’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘The phone company had to disconnect the number. It was never cancelled. The subscriber just stopped making payments at a certain point and the company turned it off after sending a number
of reminders. The person I spoke to didn’t know anything else. We’d have to do more research and I doubt we’d find anything.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Claude. That’s great. Thanks.’ There was some hesitation on the other end. Hulot realized that Morelli was waiting for him to speak. ‘What is
it?’

‘Everything okay?’

‘Yes, Morelli. Just fine. I’ll be able to tell you more tomorrow. Talk to you then.’

‘Okay, inspector. Take care.’

Hulot put the phone back on the seat. He didn’t need to jot down the address Morelli had given him. It was imprinted in his brain and would stay there for a very long time. As he left
Carnoux, a small Provençal town, clean and modern, he let other memories drift through his mind.

He had driven down that road many years before with Céline and Stéphane. They were on holiday and they had laughed and joked like there was no tomorrow. He had never felt better.
Compared to his life now, those had been days of real happiness. Days that had been blotted out by what came after, when all his energy was devoted to grief.

His son was around seven years old then. When they had arrived at Cassis, Stéphane had been very excited, as all children are at the seaside. They had parked their car at the edge of town
and walked down to the beach along a narrow path, their clothes tugged by a strong breeze.

At the harbour they had been greeted by dozens of yachts. There was a lighthouse in the distance and the open sea stretched out beyond the cement jetty designed to protect the marina.

They had had an ice cream and taken a choppy boat-trip to see the
calanques,
the rocky inlets in the sea, tiny fjords that seemed so French in that corner of Provence. Hulot had been
seasick over the side of the boat, and Céline and Stéphane had laughed hysterically at the faces he made, his rolling eyes and exaggerated attempts to vomit. He had forgotten for a
moment that he was a police officer and had let himself be just a husband, a father and a clown.

Stop it, Papa. My stomach hurts from laughing.

Now, life seemed like cinema to Hulot. Whoever wrote the scripts had a macabre sense of humour. While he had been wandering through the town’s streets many years before with his wife and
son, happy and light-hearted – at that very moment perhaps, someone was receiving a phone call from the owner of a music shop agreeing to sell him a rare record. Maybe they’d even
crossed paths with him as they were walking. Or maybe, as they were leaving Cassis, they’d even followed his car for a while as he drove to Aix to pick up the precious disc.

When Hulot reached the outskirts of the town, he parked his Peugeot and his memories of the happy past along with it. He looked at the view from the top floor of a parking garage called La
Viguerie. Cassis hadn’t changed much. The cement sea wall at the harbour had been reinforced and a few houses rebuilt. Others were dilapidated, but there was enough limewash and paint on them
to help tourists forget the passing of time. That’s what holidays were for, after all: forgetting.

He thought about what to do. The simplest thing would be to ask the local police for information, but he was investigating privately and wanted to avoid attracting attention. On the other hand,
anyone wandering around asking questions, even in a seaside resort full of holidaymakers, would not remain inconspicuous for long. This was a small town where everybody knew everybody else, and he
was about to dig up their flower bed.

The street leading to the harbour was the same one he had walked down with his family years earlier. An old man carrying a wicker basket full of sea urchins was heading uphill in the opposite
direction. Hulot stopped him. Despite his age, the old man was not the least bit out of breath.

‘Monsieur?’

‘Whaddya want?’ the old man barked.

‘Could you give me some information please?’

The man put the basket of sea urchins on the ground and looked at them as if he were afraid they might go bad. He reluctantly raised his eyes, buried beneath thick, black eyebrows.

‘What?’

‘Do you know of a farm called La Patience?’

‘Yes.’

Hulot wondered briefly whether his respect for the elderly would outweigh the anger he always felt towards rude people, young or old. With a sigh, he decided to let it go.

‘Could you please tell me where it is?’

‘Outside the town.’ The old man waved to a vague point somewhere in the distance.

‘Yes, I thought it would be.’

Hulot had to restrain himself from grabbing the man by the neck. He waited patiently, but the expression on his face must have warned the man not to push his luck.

‘You driving?’

‘Yes, I’ve got a car.’

‘Then take the road that leads out of town. Turn right at the lights towards Roquefort. When you get to the roundabout, you’ll see a sign for Les Janots. After that, your first left
will be a dirt road that crosses a stone bridge over the railway line. Take it and bear right at the fork. The road ends at La Patience.’

‘Thank you.’

Wordlessly, the old man picked up his basket of sea urchins and continued on his way.

Hulot finally felt the excitement that came from a good lead. He hurried back up the road and was breathing hard by the time he got to the car. He followed the directions, which, though given
grudgingly, were perfect, and turned on to the dirt road that went up to the rocky hills overlooking Cassis. The Mediterranean vegetation and the larches and olive trees almost completely hid the
canyon where the railway line was. As he crossed the stone bridge mentioned by the old man, a dog, some kind of labrador, started chasing the Peugeot, barking. When Hulot reached the fork in the
road, the dog obviously considered his job done. He stopped running and howling and went away, trotting towards a farmhouse on the left.

The road continued to climb. It was lined with trees whose large trunks obstructed the view of the sea. The patches of bright flowers had disappeared as he left the town, replaced by evergreen
trees and bushes and the sharp scent of pine and thorn mixed with the smell of the sea. He drove on for a couple of miles, beginning to suspect that the old man had given him the wrong directions,
simply for the satisfaction of letting him drive around in circles. He was probably at home now with some guys named Jean or René, eating his sea urchins and laughing at the stupid tourist
whom he had sent round and round the mountain.