Irene (25 page)

Commandant Verhœven, who is leading the case with Juge Deschamps as investigating magistrate, has made contact with the serial killer via … a classified advertisement: “Talk to me about B.E.E.” This is without doubt a reference to Bret Easton Ellis, author of
American Psycho
, the book
on which the “Novelist” based the Courbevoie double murders. The advertisement appeared in last Monday’s edition of the crime magazine
Nuits Blanches
. Although it is not known whether the killer read it, or responded to it, it is certainly a highly unusual investigational tool. Commandant Verhœven, clearly unembarrassed by the novelty of his approach, placed a second ad on the magazine’s website. As concise as the first, the ad reads simply “Your Black Dahlia?”, an explicit reference to another of the “Novelist’s” crimes: the murder of a young prostitute in November 2001 whose body, hacked in two at the waist, was found on a rubbish tip in Tremblay-en-France. A murder directly inspired by James Ellroy’s masterpiece
The Black Dahlia
.

We contacted the Ministry of Justice as well as the Ministry of the Interior to ask whether this somewhat unorthodox approach was sanctioned by the authorities. Perhaps understandably, they declined to comment.

For now, at least …

Camille flung the newspaper across the room while his team pretended not to notice.

“Louis!” he shouted. “Go and get him and bring him to me!”

“Who?”

“That little shit Buisson! I want you to find him right now and drag him in here by the scruff of the neck!”

Louis simply bowed his head and pushed back his fringe. Armand was the first to speak.

“Camille, I’m sorry, but that would be bloody stupid.”

“Stupid?” Camille roared, whipping around and stomping across the room, picking things up and slamming them down
again as though determined to smash something, anything.

“Listen to me, Camille, you need to calm down.”

“Armand, I’m sick to the back teeth of his guy. It’s bad enough that we’re up shit creek without him scuttling the boat. What about journalistic ethics? The guy is scum. He publishes, and we’re the ones who are damned! Louis, go and find him!”

“First I just need to—”

“First you need to do nothing! Fetch him, and bring him here. If he refuses, I’ll send in every officer in the
brigade criminelle
to drag him out in handcuffs and throw him in a cell!”

Louis decided it was pointless to refuse. Camille had obviously lost all touch with reality. Just as Louis was about to leave, Mehdi held out his mobile to Camille: “
Patron
, it’s some journalist from
Le Monde
…”

“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Camille said, wheeling around, “and if you call me ‘
patron
’ one more time, you can go fuck yourself as well.”

Being a judicious young man, Louis decided to adopt the role of his boss’ superego – it was a role he was called upon to perform quite often. He suggested that Buisson come to the
brigade
’s offices voluntarily “at the request of Commandant Verhœven”, and the journalist accepted with good grace. There was time for
Camille to calm down, but the moment Buisson stepped into the squad room, he lost it.

“You’re a complete shit, Buisson,” he said.

“I’m sure the word you were looking for is ‘journalist’?”

*

The mutual hostility of their first encounter was swiftly rekindled. Camille had decided to talk to Buisson in his office, for fear the journalist might pick up some new piece of information he did not already possess. It was a vain precaution, however, since the journalist seemed very well informed. Louis, for his part, kept close to Camille, ready to intervene in case things came to a head.

“I need to know where you’re getting your information from.”

“Oh,
commandant
, we’re both old enough and ugly enough not to play that particular game … You’re asking me to compromise a source, and as you know perfectly well—”

“Some of the details you’ve published violate judicial confidentiality. I have the means—”

“You have no means,” Buisson cut him short, “and, more importantly, you don’t have the right.”

“I have the right to remand you into police custody. That wouldn’t cost me a thing.”

“It would cost you another scandal. And on what grounds, if I might ask? Are you contesting my right to free speech?”

“Don’t try to play the ethics card with me, Buisson, you’d be a laughing stock. Even my father—”

“So, what precisely do you intend to do,
commandant
? Arrest every journalist in Paris? You appear to have delusions of grandeur.”

Camille studied the man for a moment, as though seeing him for the first time. His infuriating grin never fading, Buisson stared
back at him as though they had known each other for decades.

“Why are you doing this, Buisson? You know this is a difficult case, you know that we need to arrest this guy and that every article you publish only makes our task much harder.”

Buisson suddenly seemed to relax, as though he had led Camille to exactly where he wanted him.

“I offered you a deal,
commandant
. You turned me down, that’s hardly my fault. And now, if you—”

“Not a chance. The police doesn’t make deals with the press.”

A smile creased Buisson’s face and he drew himself up to his full height, the better to look down on Camille from his lofty vantage point.

“You may be a resourceful officer,
commandant
, but you are not a pragmatic one.”

Camille stared at the man in silence for a few seconds.

“Thank you for coming in, Monsieur Buisson.”

“It’s been a pleasure,
commandant
. Any time.”

*

The real pleasure came with the evening papers. By 4 p.m.,
Le Monde
was rehashing Buisson’s article. By the time Camille called Irène an hour later to ask how she was, she informed him the story had been on the radio news. Deschamps did not even bother to telephone him, and this was most definitely not a good sign.

*

Camille keyed in “Philippe Buisson journalist”.

Louis leaned over his shoulder to look at the screen.

“What’s all this in aid of?” Louis asked as Camille clicked on a link that styled itself the “Who’s Who of French Journalism”.

“I like to know who I’m dealing with,” Camille said, waiting for the site to load. Camille whistled.

“Well, well, well, the little shit is an aristocrat, did you know that?”

“No.”

“Philippe Buisson de Chevesne, no less. Ring a bell?”

Louis thought for a moment.

“Probably related to the Buissons de la Mortière, don’t you think?”

“Oh, no question,” Camille said. “You took the words out of my mouth!”

“An aristocratic family from the Périgord, they were ruined during the Revolution.”

“
Vive l’égalité!
So, what else do we have here? Studied journalism in Paris. Worked for
Ouest-France
, did some stringing for provincial dailies, did a stint with France 3 Bretagne before moving to
Le Matin
. Never married, no surprise there. Then there’s a list of his articles and features. It seems pretty up to date! Look, there’s my name right at the top.”

Camille closed the window, then shut down the computer. He checked his watch.

“Maybe you should think about heading home,” Louis said.

“Camille!” Cob said, sticking his head round the door. “Can I borrow you for a minute?”

“These are the initial search results for Ballanger’s list.”

Cob had entered key data from the synopses written by Ballanger and his students into the police database of cold cases and run a search going back ten years. The first results threw up only five cases with similarities to the plots of crime novels. The list was made up of columns detailing the case number, date, the investigating officer, and the date on which the case had been archived for lack of evidence. In the last column, Cob had put the title of the relevant novel.

Camille put on his glasses and scanned the essential details:

“O.K., here’s what I came up with in the second search,” Cob said, tapping at his keyboard, “when I was looking for those ‘logical inconsistencies’ of yours. Jesus, that was a challenge!”

After a moment, a spreadsheet appeared listing thirty-seven cases.

“Now, if we discount murders committed in the heat of the moment,” Cob said, clicking his mouse, “and those where there’s no obvious premeditation, we have twenty-five. Of these, seven cases seem to be the work of multiple assailants. That’s the second list. Of the remaining eighteen, we can rule out nine of the victims on the basis that either there is clear financial motive, or the victim was elderly, or the woman involved had known sadomasochistic inclinations. That leaves us with nine.”

“Good.”

“That’s this list here.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Not sure.”

Camille glared at him.

“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

“There aren’t really any logical inconsistencies in these cases. At least, not in the sense you mean. Obviously there are unknown factors, but there are no bizarre crime scenes, no weird weapons, nothing that tallies with what we’re looking for.”

“That remains to be seen. Élisabeth,” Camille said, turning to
look up at her. “What do you think?”

“We pull the case files from the archives, spend the night going through them with a fine-toothed comb and review the situation again first thing tomorrow.”

“O.K., go for it,” said Camille, picking up the list as it spooled from the printer and handing it to her.

Élisabeth hesitated, then glanced at her watch and looked at him questioningly. Camille rubbed his eyelids for a moment.

“O.K., go home, Élisabeth, I expect to see you first thing. You and rosy-fingered dawn.”

Before he too headed home, Camille sent an e-mail to Dr Crest suggesting copy for the next classified advertisement: “What about your earlier works? C.V.”

The team had already gathered in the squad room when Élisabeth strolled in at 8 a.m., pulling a trolley on which were stacked the cold case files: fourteen thick folders which, comparing them against Cob’s list, she sorted into two piles of nine and five.

“Where are we at with Lesage?”

“The
juge
has given the green light,” Louis said.

“For now, she says, there’s ‘insufficient evidence’ to bring him in for questioning, but the
brigade financière
has given Cob everything he needs to go through the Lesages’ personal bank accounts, assets and mortgages with a fine-toothed comb. We’ll have to see what he comes up with.”

Cob was already at his computer crunching numbers. Having arrived at some ungodly hour, he had commandeered the computer allocated to Fernand – who could barely make out the screen by noon – and connected it to his existing network. By now he was completely hidden behind a bank of monitors, his fingers flitting across the array of overlapping keyboards that made him resemble a church organist.

Camille looked thoughtfully at the piles of dossiers, then
surveyed the team. Sifting through so much evidence would require a trained eye, someone who could work quickly: Mehdi didn’t have the experience. As usual, Maleval had shown up looking like a poster boy for the morning after the night before; he wouldn’t have the necessary concentration. Camille didn’t even consider asking Fernand, whose breath already exuded the delicate scent of ethanol.

“O.K., Élisabeth, Armand, Louis … you’re with me.”

The four pulled up chairs and sat around the desk on which the case files were stacked.

“These are files of unsolved cases which have bizarre or unusual elements that seemed to be at odds with what is known about the victim, and might indicate that the killer was recreating a scene from a crime novel. I admit that the theory is far-fetched, so we shouldn’t waste too much time on it. What we need to do is write an outline summary of each case – two pages, tops. We’ll pass on these outlines to Professeur Ballanger and his students and they ought be able to tell us whether or not the cases correspond to any books they’re familiar with. They’re expecting us to deliver by the end of this morning.”

Camille thought for a moment.

“Louis, could you fax this document to Jérôme Lesage? Let’s see how he reacts. If we can summarise these cases by noon, they should be able to get to work straight after lunch.”

He rubbed his hands together, like a starving man about to sit down to a slap-up meal.

“Let’s get to work. We want this done and dusted by twelve.”