Irene (37 page)

“What does that tell us?”

“That he was planning ahead. Aside from the family home, Buisson sold off everything. These days his entire fortune is in a Swiss bank account.”

Camille clenches his jaws.

“What else?”

“To know about his friends, acquaintances, his daily routine, we’ll need to ask around, but that doesn’t seem relevant at this stage. The media are going to be all over us and we’ll be spending too much time fielding reporters.”

Camille knows Louis is right.

*

The list of warehouses Buisson is likely to be using is almost exhausted.

At 11.25 p.m. Lesage phones.

“I haven’t managed to get in touch with as many colleagues as I’d hoped,” he tells Camille. “I only have business numbers for some of them, in which case I’ve left messages. But right now, I can’t manage to track down a copy of the book. I’m sorry.”

Camille thanks him.

One by one the doors are closing.

*

Le Guen is still in the interview room with Maleval. Everyone is exhausted.

Viguier has spent more time than anyone studying the “novel”. Camille has seen him stifling a yawn. The plump little man who is only a few months from retirement has spent almost five hours poring over Buisson’s manuscript and he looks ready to collapse,
but despite the dark circles his eyes are still keen and he still speaks eloquently and lucidly.

“There are a lot of discrepancies between the text and the facts. I assume Buisson would call that the ‘creative instinct’. In the ‘novel’, he calls me Crest and shaves about twenty years off my age. We have three officers called Fernand, Mehdi and Élisabeth, none of whom have a surname, one is alcoholic, one is second-generation Arab, the third is a woman in her forties. A broad cast of characters, something for everyone. Then there’s a student called Sylvain Guignard; in the book, he’s the one who tells you about Chub’s book rather than Professeur Didier – whom he calls Ballanger.”

Clearly Viguier, like Camille himself, could not help but check to see how he was described. Here they sit before the distorting mirror of literature. What truth does it tell to each of them?

“His portrait of you is striking,” Viguier goes on as though Camille had spoken aloud. “It’s flattering. You come across as an intelligent and decent man – isn’t that how most people would like to be seen? There is a great deal of admiration, which is in keeping with the letters and with the writers he admires. We’ve known since the start that Buisson’s murderous rage is rooted in a strong
antipathy
towards authority, towards the figures of the Father. He sneers at authority and yet admires it. The man is a walking contradiction. He has chosen you to symbolise his struggle and that is undoubtedly why, through Irène, he wants to hurt you. It’s classic cognitive dissonance. He admires you, but he wants to destroy you. In doing so he hopes to rebuild his sense of himself.”

“Why Irène?”

“Because she’s there. Because Irène is you.”

Still ashen, Camille stares down at the manuscript in silence.

“The letters he transcribes in the novel are the same letters he
sent you, right down to the punctuation. The only thing he has made up is the supposed profile he published in
Le Matin
. As for the rest of the text – though it would be useful to study it more closely – a number of major themes are immediately evident.”

Camille leans back in his chair and glances up at the clock he is pretending to ignore. “He’s going to carry out the very crime he wrote about in his novel, isn’t he?”

Viguier does not seem disconcerted by this sudden change of subject. He calmly sets down the papers he is holding and looks at Camille. He weighs his words with care. He wants to be certain that Camille understands what he is saying. To the letter.

“We’ve been looking for a logic to his crimes. We have now found it. He wants to recreate the crime he wrote about long ago in his novel
Shadow Slayer
and in doing so, he will complete this ‘novel’ he left for us to find. Unless we can stop him, this is what he intends to do.”

Tell the truth. The whole truth. Hide nothing. Confirm what he already knows. Camille can see what the doctor is doing, knows it is the only way.

“However, there are a several things we do not know, which might be more … reassuring,” Viguier adds. “Until we find his earlier novel, we cannot know where or when he has planned for the murder to take place; we have no reason to suppose that it will take place now or in the next few hours. The scenario he is playing out might involve holding his victim captive for a day, two days or longer, we don’t know. The facts we have are difficult enough to deal with, there’s no point adding to these concerns with speculation.”

Viguier leaves a long silence. He does not look at Camille. He waits for his words to sink in. Then, abruptly deciding that he has
paused for long enough, he continues his explanation.

“There are two types of fact, Camille. Those he foresaw, and those he invented.”

“How can he have foreseen so many things?”

“That is something you will only find out after you arrest him.” Viguier jerks his chin towards the interview room. “From what I gather, he had an inside source. But it’s also clear that he will have rewritten sections as events played out – a sort of reportage. He needed his ‘fiction’ to be as close as possible to reality. There must have been several points at which your actions surprised him, but he foresaw those surprises, if I can put it like that. He knew he would have to adapt his story based on your reactions, your plans, and that is what he did.”

“Which passages are you thinking of in particular?”

“Well, we can assume, for example, that he didn’t expect you to contact him through the classified ads. That was a clever touch on your part. He probably found it exciting. In a sense, he probably thinks of you as a co-author. ‘You will be proud of us’, he said in his letter, remember? But what is most striking is the accuracy of what he did anticipate. He knew that you would be able to make the link between one of his crimes and the book on which he based it, he knew you would doggedly follow that lead even if you had to go it alone. You are not a stubborn man,
commandant
, but he clearly knows you well enough to understand that on certain points you are … inflexible. You act on your hunches. And he realised he could use that. He also knew that, sooner or later, someone would make the connection between the name Chub and his actual surname. His whole strategy depended upon it. He knows you rather better than we might have expected,
commandant
.”

*

Le Guen stepped out of the interview room, leaving Maleval alone for a few minutes. The stroll, a tried and trusted interrogation technique. Leave the suspect to stew, come back, let another officer take over, come back again, make it impossible for him to predict what will happen next. Even suspects or indeed police officers who are familiar with the technique cannot help but be unsettled by it.

“We’re going to shift into high gear, but—”

“What?” Camille interrupts.

“He knows less that we might have hoped. Buisson got more out of Maleval than Maleval managed to get on Buisson. At first, he fed him little bits of information on minor cases. Buisson slowly groomed him. Small sums of money for trivial scraps of information. Almost a stipend. By the time the Courbevoie murders came up, Maleval was primed and in position, he didn’t suspect a thing. He’s not the brightest crayon in the box, your Maleval.”

“He’s not
my
Maleval,” Camille snapped, picking up his notes.

“Whatever you say.”

*

“The publishing house Bilban was set up in 1981 and went bust in 1985,” Cob explains. “Back then, obviously, the internet didn’t exist as such, so there’s no trace of them online. Even so, I’ve found references to their catalogues on antiquarian booksellers’ sites and compiled a list of titles. You want to take a look?”

Without waiting for a reply, Cob printed off the list.

A hundred or so books published between 1982 and 1985. Airport novels. Camille scans the titles. Spy novels:
Agent TX is Missing; Agent TX and the Abwehr; King, Queen, Spy; Requiem for a Spy; Codename: Ocean
. Crime novels:
Trouble in Malibu
,
Brass Bullets and Blonde Bombshells, In a Dead Man’s Shoes
; and romantic fiction:
Beloved Christelle, A Heart so Pure, To the End of Love
…

“Bilban specialised in buying up out-of-print novels and republishing them under new titles.” As always, Cob did not look up at Camille while he spoke, but just carried on typing.

“Do you have the names of the owners?”

“Only the Managing Director, Paul-Henry Vaysse. He had shares in a bunch of publishers, but he ran Bilban himself. He was the one who filed for liquidation. There’s no sign of him working in publishing again between 1985 and 2001, when he died. I’m trying to track down the others.”

*

“I’ve got it!”

Camille rushes over.

“At least I think I have. Hang on …”

Cob’s fingers flit nimbly from one keyboard to another; on the bank of computer screens, pages scroll.

“What the hell is it?” Camille says impatiently.

Le Guen and Louis have come to join them, and the rest of the team are already on their feet. Camille manages to suppress a gesture of irritation.

“Get back to your work, we can deal with this.”

“It’s a list of people who worked for Bilban. I don’t have them all, obviously, but I’ve managed to track down six of them.”

On the screen is a spreadsheet with six columns: name, address, date of birth, social security number, date of employment, date of redundancy. Six lines.

“O.K.” Cob pushes his chair back and massages the small of his back. “I don’t know what you want to do next.”

“Print this off for me.”

Cob nods to the machine where four copies have been printed out already.

“How did you track them down?”

“It would take too long to explain. And it wasn’t strictly above board. There was a little black hat work involved, if you know what I mean.” Cob looks warily at Le Guen who simply picks up a copy of the list and pretends he has not heard. The three officers read in silence.

“I’ll print out the rest,” Cob says, staring at the screen.

“What rest?” Camille says.

“Their full history.”

The printer whirrs into action. Six pages showing every known detail on the six employees. One died earlier in the year, one seems to have vanished into thin air.

“What about him?” Louis says.

“I can’t find any trace of him,” Cob says. “He’s completely vanished. There’s no way of knowing what happened to him.”

Isabelle Russell, born 1958, joins Bilban in 1982, but she works there for only five months. Camille crosses out her name. Jacinthe Lefebvre, born 1939, worked with the company from 1982 until it went into liquidation. Nicholas Brieuc, born 1953, joins the company at the outset and leaves in 1984. Théodore Sabin, born 1924, also joins in 1982 and stays with the company until it goes bust. Retired. Camille quickly calculates: he would be seventy-nine. Last known address: a retirement home in Jouy-en-Josas. Camille crosses him out.

“What about these two?” Camille says, indicating two names he has circled, Lefebvre and Brieuc.

“I’m already on it,” Cob says.

“Do we know their job titles at Bilban?” Louis says.

“No, I haven’t been able to find that out. Here we go, Jacinthe Lefebvre, retired, lives in Vincennes at 124, avenue du Bel-Air.”

Pause.

“And Nicholas Brieuc, currently unemployed, 36 rue Louis Blanc, Paris X.”

“You call the first one, I’ll take the second,” he says to Louis as he dashes for the phone.

*

“I’m so sorry to disturb you at such a late hour … Yes, I understand, but even so, you’d be well advised not to hang up. This is Louis Mariani calling, from the
brigade criminelle
.”

Meanwhile, Brieuc’s phone rings and rings.

“And your name is …? So your mother is not there?”

Without thinking, Camille counts the rings, seven, eight, nine …

“Which hospital is she in, if you don’t mind my asking? Yes, of course, I understand …”

Eleven, twelve. Camille is about to hang up when he hears a click. Someone has picked up at the other end, but he cannot hear a voice.

“Hello? Monsieur Brieuc? Hello?” Camille shouts into the receiver. “Can you hear me?”

Louis, meanwhile, has hung up and slides a piece of paper across to Camille: Saint-Louis Hospital. Palliative Care Unit.

“Jesus Christ! Is there anyone there? Can you hear me?”

There is another click followed by the dial tone.

“Right, I’ll need two officers to come with me,” Camille says, getting to his feet.

Le Guen signals to two of the officers who reach for their jackets
and follow Camille as he dashes for the door, only to run back, jerk open his desk drawer, grab his service revolver and leave.

It is 12.30 a.m.

*

The two motorcycle officers drive much faster than Camille who does his best to keep up. In the passenger seat, Louis nervously pushes back his fringe. The two officers in the back seat are silent, focused. The wail of the sirens is interrupted by piercing whistles from the motorcycles. At this hour, there is little traffic. They take the rue de Flandres at 120 k.p.h., the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin at 115 k.p.h. Less than seven minutes later they judder to a halt on the rue Louis Blanc. The outriders have already cordoned off both ends of the street. The four officers leap from the car and sprint towards number 36. Back at the Brigade, Camille did not even register which officers Le Guen dispatched. He quickly realises they are two young men, younger than him. The first stops for a second to glance at the names on the mailboxes and mutters, “Third floor, left.” By the time Camille reaches the landing, the two officers are already hammering on the door and bellowing: “Police! Open up!” And immediately a door flies open – but not the one they want, the one opposite. An old woman pops her head out and peers at them, then swiftly retreats. They hear another door bang upstairs, but otherwise the building is silent. One of the officers draws his pistol, looks from Camille to the lock, then back to Camille. The other officer is still pounding. Camille stares at the door, he motions for everyone to step aside, studies the lock, trying to calculate the trajectory of a bullet fired through a door at point-blank range in an apartment whose layout is unknown.