Irene (23 page)

“The letter Commandant Verhœven received from the suspect has done much to round out the clinical profile I have been working up, but in no way refutes my preliminary findings. The suspect is educated, cultured and arrogant. Aside from his interest in crime fiction, he is extremely well read. He will most likely have a degree in the humanities – philosophy, history, something of that nature. Sociology, possibly. His pretentiousness is obvious from the fact that he feels the need to flaunt his knowledge. What is immediately apparent in the letter is the cordiality of his tone. He needs you to admire him,
commandant
. He clearly likes you, and he knows you.”

“Personally?”

“Not necessarily, though anything is possible. I’m more inclined to think that he knows you in the sense that he’s seen
you on television, or read about you in the papers.”

“That’s a relief,” Camille said, and for the first time, the two men exchanged a smile. And the first smile between two men is either a sign of respect or a sign of trouble brewing.

“That little advertisement of yours was cleverly worded,” continued Dr Crest.

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. Brief and to the point, careful not to address him personally. You invited him to talk about ‘his work’ and I believe that this is why he responded. He feels a need to explain himself, so was bound to seize on any opportunity. You gave him that opportunity. The worst thing you could have done would have been to ask what makes him tick, as though you didn’t understand him. From the way you phrased your question, you implied that you already knew, that you understood him, making him feel – how shall I put this? – as though you shared a particular worldview.”

“Actually, I didn’t really think about what I was saying.”

Crest allow Camille’s words to hang in the air for a moment

“You must have been thinking about it subconsciously,” he went on. “That said, I don’t really believe that we have learned much about what motivates him. The letter indicates that he considers himself to be working on ‘his masterpiece’, which, for all his false modesty, he feels he should rank alongside the great writers that he has chosen to emulate.”

“But why?” Élisabeth asked.

“That’s a very different question.”

“A frustrated writer?” she suggested, voicing a possibility each of them were contemplating.

“It’s one possibility, certainly. In fact, it may be the most plausible hypothesis.”

“If he’s a frustrated writer, he’s probably written a couple of novels,” Mehdi said. “We could talk to agents and publishers?”

No-one was surprised by the young officer’s naivety. Camille gave a little sigh and rubbed his eyes.

“Mehdi, half the population of France are frustrated writers. The others are frustrated artists. There are hundreds of editors in Paris, and every one of them is sent thousands of manuscripts each year. Even if we were only to cover the past five years …”

“O.K., O.K. I get it.” Mehdi held up his hands in surrender.

“Do we have any idea how old he might be?” Élisabeth said, coming to the young man’s rescue.

“Between forty and fifty.”

“Social class?”

“I’d say upper middle class. In his desperation to prove just how clever he is, he overplays his hand.”

“Like posting the letter from Courbevoie?” Louis said.

“Precisely!” Crest answered, surprised at this observation. “That’s exactly what I mean. It’s melodramatic. He tries too hard. And that could be useful to us. This killer is careful, but he’s so self-important that he runs the risk of making a mistake. He has a desperate need for approbation. And yet he is deeply solipsistic. This goes to the heart of, is the crux of his conflicted personality. Though it is not the only one.”

“Meaning?” Camille said.

“Obviously, there are still a lot of things we do not know, but one in particular troubles me. I don’t understand why he went to Glasgow to carry out the murder from McIlvanney’s novel.”

“Surely because that’s where the murder is supposed to take place!” said Camille.

“I’ve thought about that. But in that case, why re-stage the
crime from
American Psycho
in Courbevoie rather than New York? After all, that’s where the novel takes place, is it not?”

Camille was forced to acknowledge that he had not considered this discrepancy.

“Similarly,” Crest went on. “the Tremblay murder should have taken place in …”

“Los Angeles,” Louis said.

“You’re right. It doesn’t makes sense,” said Camille, shrugging. “But what we need to do now is think about the next ad I place.”

“I agree. I’ve been giving it some thought. It’s crucial that we gain his trust. If you question his motives, you’ll only destroy your good work so far. You need to treat him as an equal, he needs to believe you understand him, admire him even. You’ll have to flatter him.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Don’t address him personally. You might ask for details about one of the other murders. After that, we’ll see.”

“The magazine comes out on Mondays, which means leaving a week between ads. That’s too long.”

“There is a way we could speed things up.” Cob spoke for the first time. “The magazine has a website. I checked it out. You can submit a classified ad online and it would appear by tomorrow.”

Camille brought the meeting to a close and he and Dr Crest together discussed the wording of the second ad, which Verhœven then ran by Deschamps. It consisted of just three words: “Your
Black Dahlia
?” Like the first, it was signed simply “C.V.”. Cob was tasked with submitting it to the website.

The list supplied by Fabien Ballanger ran to a hundred and twenty titles. At the bottom Ballanger had scrawled “Synopses to follow. In five or six days …” One hundred and twenty titles set over two columns – enough reading matter for two years, maybe three. An authoritative introduction to crime fiction, perfect for someone curious to investigate the genre, but utterly useless in the context of a criminal investigation. Camille could not help but check to see how many he had read (there were eight) and how many he had heard of (which took his total to sixteen). He felt a brief pang of regret that the killer was not a connoisseur of art instead.

“How many of these have you heard of?” he asked Louis.

“I’m not sure,” Louis said, scanning the list. “Thirty, maybe …”

Ballanger had brought all his expertise to bear, which was precisely what had been asked of him, but such an extensive list made investigation impossible. Camille realised that it had been a good idea only in theory.

On the telephone, Ballanger sounded pleased with himself.

“We’re busy putting together the synopses. I’ve got three of my students working on it. They’re completely obsessed.”

“It’s too much work, Professeur Ballanger.”

“Don’t worry about them, they don’t have much on this term.”

“No, I meant the list: a hundred and twenty titles is unworkable.”

“How many can you handle?”

From the
professeur
’s tone it was apparent that they lived in different worlds, Camille in the murky, mundane lowlands where murder was commonplace, and Ballanger in the lofty towers of art and literature.

“To be honest, Professeur Ballanger, I have no idea.”

“Then how the devil am I supposed to know?”

“Assuming that the murderer is picking titles based on his personal tastes,” Camille said, ignoring Ballanger’s tetchy remark, “the list I asked you to draw up will be useless. Given what we already know, this man is not a rookie, he clearly knows everything there is to know about crime fiction. But it would be surprising if his personal list didn’t include at least one or two classics. These are the books we need to identify. And that’s how you can help.”

“I’ll draw up a new list myself.”

Camille’s thanks fell on deaf ears; Ballanger had already hung up.

Armand and Fernand were an ideal pairing. Within two hours of meeting, they were behaving like an old married couple: Armand had already “borrowed” his new colleague’s newspaper, his pen and notepad and shamelessly helped himself to cigarettes (even slipping a few into his pocket for later); in exchange, he pretended not to notice Fernand’s frequent absences or the way he always came back from the toilets sucking a mint. At Louis’ instruction, they had given up researching the long list of wallpaper manufacturers and were now focused on housing developments the killer might have visited while looking for an apartment in Courbevoie. Mehdi had headed off to the post office in Courbevoie on the outside chance of finding someone who remembered the killer. Maleval was making inquiries about recently bought chainsaws and Minox cameras. Meanwhile, Louis, armed with a warrant, went to the offices of
Nuits Blanches
magazine to request their list of subscribers.

Sometime around mid-morning, Camille was surprised to see Professeur Ballanger show up. The frustration he had apparently felt the night before was gone and he sidled into the
squad room with a strange reticence.

“You didn’t need to put yourself to such trouble …” Camille said.

No sooner had he said the words than he realised that it was prurient curiosity that had led Ballanger to personally deliver the fruits of his labour rather than simply sending an e-mail. Ballanger studied the squad room with the same incredulous amazement as a tourist visiting the catacombs. Camille showed him around and introduced him to Élisabeth, Louis and Armand – the only officers present – pointedly emphasising Professeur Ballanger’s “invaluable assistance” in their investigation.

“I’ve reworked the list.”

“That’s very kind,” Camille said, taking the stapled sheets that Ballanger held out to him. There were now fifty-one titles, each followed by a synopsis running from a couple of lines to a quarter of a page. He quickly scanned the pages, stopping at a title here and there:
The Purloined Letter
,
L’affaire Lerouge, The Hound of the Baskervilles
,
Le Mystère de la chambre jaune
. Without thinking, Camille glanced over at the bank of computers. Having been a dutiful host, he was now anxious to be rid of Ballanger.

“Thank you so much,” Camille said, making to shake his hand.

“Perhaps I could expand a little on my notes?”

“Your synopses seem clear to me.”

“If I may …”

“You’ve already done more than we could have hoped for. We’re very grateful.”

Mercifully, the
professeur
did not take offence.

“Alright, I’ll leave you to it,” he said, regretfully.

“Thanks again.”

The moment Ballanger had left, Camille raced over to Cob.

“This is a list of classic crime novels.”

“I can guess …”

“We need to identify the salient elements of the crimes described in them and look for any cold cases that seem to correspond.”

“When you say ‘we’ …”

“I mean ‘you’,” Camille grinned.

He took a few hesitant steps then came back, looking thoughtful.

“There’s something else I need you to do.”

“Camille, I’m going to be tied up for hours on this.”

“I know that. But there’s something else I need. Something I suspect might prove pretty complicated.”

It was always best to appeal to Cob’s finer feelings. These feelings – like everything else about him – were essentially computer-related. The only thing more likely to pique his interest than a difficult task was an impossible one.

“It’s to do with the cold cases. I need all the information we have on the killer’s
modus operandi
in each investigation.”

“So what exactly are we looking for?”

“Logical inconsistencies, baffling details, pieces of evidence that seem unrelated to the case. One-off crimes in which something about the evidence seems improbable. We need to go through the list of classic crime novels, but it’s probable that our killer is choosing books on the basis of his personal taste and there’s no guarantee that those novels will be on our list. The only way to identify them is to look for logical inconsistencies, details that don’t fit with the M.O. because they’ve been lifted directly from a novel.”

“I don’t have the heuristic algorithms designed for that kind of search.”

“I know that. If you did, I wouldn’t be asking, I’d do it myself.”

“Parameters?”

“Let’s say metropolitan France over the last five years.”

“Nothing too taxing, then!”

“How long will it take?”

“No idea,” Cob said pensively. “First I’ll have to write an algorithm.”

“You’ve had your doubts about him from the beginning.” Camille smiled.

“Not particularly, no,” Louis protested. “But he wouldn’t be the first murderer to deliberately contact the police.”

“I know, you explained.”

“Yes, but since then I’ve discovered a number of other disturbing facts.”

“I’m listening.”

Louis flipped opened his notebook.

“Jérôme Lesage, 42, single. He inherited the bookshop from his father, who died in 1984. Studied literature at the Sorbonne. His dissertation was on ‘The Oral Tradition in Detective Fiction’. He graduated with distinction. Family: one sister, Christine, she’s forty, they live together.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Absolutely not, they live in the apartment above the bookshop. It’s all part of their inheritance. On April 11, 1985, Christine Lesage marries one Alain Froissart.”

“All this detail!”

“I mention it because it’s relevant: her husband died in a car crash ten days later, on April 21, leaving her a sizeable fortune he had inherited from his family: for generations they owned woollen mills in northern France before successfully moving into off-the-peg clothing. Froissart was the sole heir. In the years that followed Christine spend a period in a psychiatric clinic and there were several stays in sanatoriums. In 1988, she came back to Paris and moved into her brother’s apartment. She still lives there.

“Now, our killer is obviously well off, and Lesage has access to a lot of money, that’s the first point. Point two, the timeline. On July 10, 2001, Grace Hobson was murdered in Glasgow. Lesage’s bookshop was closed for the month of July because brother and sister were on holiday in England – Lesage has a friend in London and they stayed with him for two weeks. But London to Glasgow can only be – what? – an hour by plane.”