Irene (39 page)

He had to go back further.

“The town is called Parency,” Camille calls out. “Actually, it seems to be a village.”

“There’s no undertaker called Dubois in Lens,” Cob says. “I’ve got four companies called Dubois: plumbers, accountants, a garden centre and a company that makes tarpaulin. I’ll print off the list.”

Le Guen got up and went to the printer to collect the pages.

“The girl works for a lawyer named Pernaud,” Armand says, “with an office on the rue Saint-Christophe in Lille.”

Camille stops reading. Nadine Lefranc, Corey, Matthéo, Christian, undertakers, Dubois, he mentally repeats the names but nothing comes to him.

Camille feels cold sweat trickle down his back, his hands begin to shake.

*

“It was you?” she said.

Suddenly panicked, she tried to get to her feet only to find her arms and legs bound firmly. The ropes were so tight, they cut off her circulation, her hands and feet felt like ice. She wondered how long she had been here.

“Sleep well?” asked Corey, lighting a cigarette.

Nadine began to scream, thrashing her head from side to side. She howled until she had no air left in her lungs and when finally she stopped, breathless and hoarse, Corey had not batted an eyelid.

“You’re very beautiful, Nadine. You’re so beautiful … when you cry.”

Still pulling on his cigarette, he laid a hand on the young woman’s swollen belly. She shuddered at his touch.

“And I am sure that you will be still more beautiful as you die,” he whispered with a smile.

*

“There’s no rue Saint-Christophe in Lille,” Cob says, “And there’s no lawyer called Pernaud.”

*

“Fuck it,” grunts Le Guen.

Camille looks over at him and at the folder he is holding. Le Guen is also reading the last section of the book. Camille returns to his own copy of the novel.

She struggled to breathe, her chest rising and falling fitfully.

Corey rolled up his sleeves and stepped towards her.

“Well, Nadine, don’t you think it’s pretty?” He nodded to something at the foot of the bed.

Through the blur of tears Nadine could just make out a wooden cross set on an easel. It was half a metre wide and looked like a smaller version of a church crucifix.

“It’s for the baby, Nadine,” he said in a tender whisper.

He pressed his thumbnail so hard into the base of Nadine’s breast that she howled in pain. He traced a line down to her pubis, the sharp nail digging a furrow in the taut skin of her belly as the woman screamed hoarsely.

“We’ll take him out through here,” Corey said softly as his nail dug into her, “A bit like a Caesarean, though you’re not likely to be alive to see him afterwards, but I promise you he’ll be beautiful, your baby, when he’s crucified. Christian will be happy. His own little Jesus …”

*

Camille springs to his feet, grabs the pages and frantically leafs back through them. “The cross …” he mutters. “The easel.” Page 205, nothing, 206, nothing, 207. He scans the page and stops. There it is:

Camille whips around and finds himself face to face with Louis. Feverishly, he flicks back through the pages.

“What are you looking for?” Le Guen says.

“If he mentions …” Camille does not look up, the pages flash past. Suddenly his mind feels utterly clear.

“The warehouse,” he says, brandishing the sheaf of pages. “He says it’s an old studio. An artist’s studio. He’s taken her to Monfort, to my mother’s old studio.”

Le Guen grabs his phone to call the rapid response unit, but Camille has already pulled on his jacket and grabbed his keys and is dashing for the stairs. Louis marshals everyone and begins to give orders. Only Armand remains seated, staring hopelessly at the folder in front of him. The officers divide up into teams. Le Guen barks into his phone, explaining the situation to the senior officer at R.A.I.D.

Just as they are heading for the stairs, Louis’ eye is caught by the one still, fixed point in all this chaos. Armand is sitting silently in front of his folder. Louis frowns and looks at him questioningly.

Running his finger under a sentence, Armand says dully, “He kills her at 2 a.m. precisely.”

All eyes turn to the clock on the wall. It is 1.45 a.m.

*

Camille reverses the car as Louis jumps into the passenger seat, and they set off. As the boulevard Saint-Germain flashes past, both men are imagining the same thing: the woman bound to the bed, beaten, screaming, as a thumbnail traces a line across her belly.

As Camille floors the accelerator, Louis glances at him out of the corner of his eye. What is going through the
commandant
’s mind right now? Maybe, behind this mask of cool determination, he can hear Irène screaming his name, maybe as he swerves to avoid the car stopped at traffic lights on the avenue Denfert-Rochereau he can hear her voice, as, white-knuckled, he grips the
steering wheel so hard he might snap it in two.

Louis has a mental image of Irène screaming as she realises she might die here, bound and defenceless, a grim sacrifice.

Surely Camille’s whole life has telescoped to that single image of Irène with blood trickling down her neck as he heads down avenue Général-Leclerc at a frightening speed. Don’t get us killed now, Louis thinks, though it is for Irène’s life rather than his own that he fears.

The deserted streets streak past, racing back into the darkness of this night that might seem beautiful but for the horror that is unfolding. The keening sirens break the silence as the car exits the city by the Porte de Paris and pierces the sleepy suburbs like a stiletto, weaving between the cars and taking a turn so fast it almost pitches onto two wheels and hits the kerb. It’s just a bump, Louis thinks, although it feels as though the car has left the road and is flying. “Are we going to die here? Has the devil come to take us too?” Camille pumps the brake, the tyres screech. To their right, cars speed past. Camille swerves, accidentally grazing one, then another, there is a shriek of metal, a shower of sparks joins the flashing lights that strobe the darkness, the car rears, swerving wildly down the dark road. It veers dangerously close to the parked cars, clips one, rebounds and clips another, gouging paintwork, splintering wing mirrors while Camille applies the brakes, wrestling with the steering wheel and trying desperately to stop the car careering out of control. Finally, it comes to a juddering halt, mounting the pavement at the junction near Plessis-Robinson and hitting a bollard.

The sudden silence is deafening. The siren has died, the rotating light has become detached and is dangling by a side window. Camille, who was thrown against the door, has hit his
head and is bleeding profusely. A car glides slowly past, eyes gawp, then it drives off. Camille passes a hand over his face and it comes away daubed with dark blood. His back aches, his legs ache, he is stunned from the collision. He struggles painfully to sit up straight, then gives up and slumps back in his seat. He tries to catch his breath, then makes a second attempt. Next to him, a half-conscious Louis rolls his head from side to side.

Camille shakes himself, lays a hand on Louis’ shoulder and shakes him gently.

“I’m fine,” Louis says, coming round. “I’ll be fine.”

Camille scrabbles for his mobile which must have fallen from his pocket. He gropes under the seats, but it is too dark to see. Nothing. Finally his fingers encounter something – his service revolver – which he manages to retrieve by contorting himself. He knows that in a quiet suburb, the noise of the collision will bring men stumbling into the street and women to their windows. He leans against the door, shoves hard and it opens with a piercing shriek of metal. He swings his legs out and stands up. He is bleeding badly, but cannot work out where he has been hurt.

He stumbles around the car, jerks open the passenger door and puts a hand on Louis’ shoulder. Louis shrugs that he is O.K. so Camille leaves him to collect himself and goes to rummage in the boot where he finds a rag to wipe his forehead. He stares at the bloody scrap of cloth, his fingers feeling for the gash just below his hairline. Studying the car, he sees that all four doors are damaged, as are the rear wings. Only now does he realise that the engine is still running. He puts the flashing light bar back on the roof and notices that one of the headlamps is broken. Camille slides behind the wheel again, glances at Louis who nods as the car reverses off the pavement. The relief at realising the car is still functioning is so
great it is almost as though there never was a crash. Camille puts the car into first gear, accelerates, shifts into second and a moment later is once again hurtling through the dark suburbs.

*

The clock on the dashboard reads 2.15 a.m. when Camille finally slows. They are approaching a junction where roads fork left and right, running along the edge of the forest. Camille drives straight on, brutally accelerating, as though determined to drive through the dark bank of trees in the distance. He drops the bloody rag he has managed to keep pressed against his forehead, takes his gun from the holster and sets it between his thighs. Louis does likewise, then sits forward and grips the dashboard with both hands. The needle of the speedometer is touching 120 when Camille finally brakes about a hundred metres from the lane that leads to the studio. The dirt track is rutted and potholed, and Camille would usually drive very slowly. The car weaves to avoid the deepest holes, but jolts and judders over others. Louis hangs on. Camille turns off the light bar and brakes as soon as he sees the shadowy building plunged in darkness.

There is no car outside. Maybe Buisson decided to park out of sight, behind the studio. Camille switches off the headlights and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. The front of the one-storey building is dominated by the large picture window on the right. The place looks deserted. Camille feels a pang of doubt. Could he be wrong? Could Buisson have taken Irène somewhere else? Perhaps it is the darkness and the eerie silence of the forest stretching away behind, but the studio looks suddenly ominous. Though they do not speak, both men are wondering why there is no light on. They are thirty metres from the door. Camille cuts the engine and allows the car to coast the rest of the way. He brakes
gently, as though afraid to make a sound. Still staring straight ahead, he gropes for his revolver, opens the door slowly and climbs out of the car. Louis finds that his door is stuck and when he manages to shoulder it open, it makes a dull grating sound. The two men stare at each other, about to say something when they hear a muffled, erratic thwocking. In fact there seem to be two different sounds. Camille creeps towards the building, his gun cocked; Louis stays several paces behind. The door is closed; there is no sign of anyone having been here. Camille looks up, then tilts his head to listen to the pulsing hum which seems louder now. He turns with a puzzled look, but Louis is staring at the ground, trying to focus on the sound which he cannot identify.

In the instant that both men finally recognise the droning whirr, the helicopter rises above the treetops, banks quickly and hovers above the studio as powerful spotlights illuminate the roof and the surrounding trees in a blinding glare. The noise now is deafening, a wind whips and dust whirls in eddies. The tall trees surrounding the clearing rustle and sway. The helicopter wheels for a moment, and the two men instinctively crouch and find themselves pinned to the ground not far from the door.

The helicopter dips, its skids almost touching the roof, and the ear-splitting roar of the blades makes it impossible even to think.

The rush of air is such that they cannot look up and have to huddle to protect themselves. Only now do they see the source of the second noise they heard – three huge black vehicles with tinted windows roaring up the lane towards them. The S.U.V.s move in perfect formation, oblivious to the confusion, tyres bounding over the rutted track.

They are briefly blinded by the searchlight mounted on the first vehicle. The helicopter suddenly wheels again, training
its spotlights on the rear of the building and the surrounding woodland. Spurred on by the sudden irruption of the rapid response unit and still dazed by the thunderous roar, the wind, the whirl of dust and searchlights, Camille turns towards the building and breaks into a run. The long shadow cast by the spotlight on the van behind him shrinks with every step as Camille summons his last ounce of strength. Louis, who has been right behind him, suddenly veers off to the right. Camille reaches the porch in seconds, scrambles up the woodworm-riddled steps and swiftly fires two bullets into the lock, causing the door and the frame to splinter. He shoves the door open and steps inside.

Barely has he taken two paces when he slips on something viscous and falls heavily on his back, flailing for something to grab on to. Behind him the door bounces off the wall and slams shut. For a second, the studio is plunged into darkness, but since the lock is shattered, the door swings slowly open again. The spotlight on the S.U.V. suddenly picks out a wide board set on trestles and the supine figure of Irène, her hands bound. Her face is turned towards him, her eyes open, her expression frozen, her lips parted. Her belly is no longer swollen, but furrowed with rolls of flesh.