The First Fingerprint (14 page)

The two divers took a few photographs, then enlarged the circumference of their investigations. But half an hour later they had found nothing else.

They began to come up, one decompression stop at a time.

Vidal sat on the bridge of
La Bonne Mère
in a sorry state. De Palma allowed himself to be rocked by the motion of the sea as he gazed at the little beach in Sugiton creek. From time to time, he looked up at the huge cliff that overhung it. He thought of the wall paintings that slept in that fortress of stone, of the truths it concealed and refused to divulge.

At the place where Franck Luccioni had been found, there was not much in the way of a seabed. The rock formed a shelf of about twelve meters by six, then fell away into the dark depths. The coastguards
rapidly covered the surface of the shelf. Amid the dartfish and rainbow wrasse, they found nothing of any interest.

After about a quarter of an hour, they began to go down the rock-face side by side, separated by a distance of two meters. Five minutes later, the diver to the left spotted a metallic glint between two anemones. He swam over to it and saw the tip of a small torch poking out of a red actiniaria. Having taken several photographs from different angles, he delicately picked up the torch and stowed it in a net on his belt before joining his companion.

The dive lasted another half an hour. The deeper they went, the colder the water became and now it looked almost blue. When they reached the bottom, at a depth of forty meters, they searched the base of the cliff with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing. They swam a little further away from the undersea cliff and stayed two meters from the bottom aiming their lamps at the gray floor. Just then one of the divers spotted an underwater hunter's knife lying on a rocky mound. He took a photograph before placing it in his net. He then made a note of the exact position and looked at his watch: they had been down for almost three quarters of an hour. He signaled their return to the surface.

Aboard
La Bonne Mère
, the first two had already dressed in fleeces and given their report. Vidal noted down their conclusions before going back to the steer-house, his face reddened by the chill air.

Fifteen minutes later, two moving patches of color could be made out in the gray water, before their shapes became distinct and the second group resurfaced.

Once on board, the divers put down their cylinders, took off their flippers and handed their nets to de Palma.

“We found them just below the location of the body. The torch was twenty meters down, and the knife right on the bottom, in other words just under forty meters. They hadn't been there for very long … there wasn't much deposit on them.”

Vidal noted down these details at once. De Palma examined the torch and the knife for a few seconds, then handed them to his colleague, who placed them in two plastic bags.

“Not a bad find, Michel!”

“I hope so, son, I hope so.”

“He might have lost them while fighting with Luccioni.”

“Maybe … But it might be the other way round …”

The east wind softened abruptly. A few gulls let themselves be carried as far as the rock which overhung
La Bonne Mère
. They squinted at the crew, on the lookout for something to eat.

De Palma and Vidal debated whether to continue looking or go back. They would not have another chance like this for a long time. The investigating magistrate had already made a great deal of fuss about this diving trip, and it had taken a lot of persuasion to convince him. They decided to take the photos, torch and knife to forensics to see if they could be made “to talk.”

As
La Bonne Mère
left Sugiton creek, the Baron leaned on the rail and gazed once more at the sea. All it sent back to him was a reflection of his own uncertainties. He looked up at the rocks and told himself that this creek would not teach him a thing. The truth lay elsewhere.

“The torch is a small model. A ‘mini G 50,' made by Triton, serial number 13269 6235 KL 349. Its beam is extremely concentrated and it is switched on by a simple twist of the top. It's powered by four AA, 1.5 volt alkaline batteries.”

Lieutenant Richard from forensics rested his elbow on a large microscope, wrinkled his nose, and looked at de Palma and Vidal over the top of his half-moon glasses.

“It's the kind of lamp that you can hang off the strap of a diving mask,” he said. “I've got one, and I use it for hunting. It means you can get a good view while keeping your hands free. Some divers wear two, one on each side … They work for about an hour, no more … as long as they have new batteries.”

“Is that all?” de Palma asked.

“Hang on, Michel. This all takes time!”

Richard picked up the knife and examined it.

“This is a Lagoon Legend, by Seafirst. Serial number: K6-2216. A fine weapon and an expensive one … very expensive! They cost about 800 euros. The blade is fourteen centimeters long, the longest on the market … It has a double blade, with a notch for cutting lines … And
a flexible handle, which is very comfortable to use … Stainless steel type 431 AISI, which never rusts.”

“What about …”

Richard placed the knife on his work table next to some jars containing scalp samples.

“Not a single fingerprint or pubic hair, if that's what you mean. Nothing, my poor Michel … nothing at all. It's spent too long at the bottom of the sea.”

“Can you give me a rough idea of how long it was down there?”

“According to what the coastguards have said, and the micro-organisms found on the knife's handle, it would seem logical to deduce that these objects were both lost in the depths four or five months ago, no more.”

“No traces of blood? Zero?”

“Zero, boss … stop dreaming!”

The technician picked up the knife again and turned it in front of his eyes. Its top edge was slightly serrated.

“It's brand new. Not a scratch on it, nothing at all. The blade is perfect. This knife has never been used. Never. What's more, it's a recent model. It came out in May last year. The real innovation is the stainless-steel reinforcement at the end of the handle.”

Vidal jotted down Richard's conclusions, then drew de Palma to one side.

“Do you want me to check out suppliers of diving equipment?”

“You're going to have to, son. You never know. We'll see about that tomorrow.”

Richard held out the envelope containing the photographs taken during the dive.

“The quality isn't great, but you can still see the scratches on the large cube. It's obvious …”

De Palma looked at them for some time. With the tip of his pen, he showed Vidal the marks in the concrete.

“He must have tried to lever it with a crowbar,” Richard said.

“Is that possible thirty-eight meters down?”

“Perfectly, Michel. Underwater, objects are in fact lighter.”

Vidal fanned the air with the photos.

“But you'd have to be a really good diver to do things like that, wouldn't you?”

“Yes indeed, Maxime,” the technician replied, sitting at his desk. “You'd have to be extremely good! I've been diving for ten years, but I wouldn't play at being a miner at that depth.”

“Why not?”

“Too dangerous, Maxime … that kind of underwater work is for the experts. If you make the slightest mistake with the length of the dive, the decompression stops and what have you, you end up as fish food.”

“All of which might explain Luccioni's death,” mused de Palma.

Christine Autran's flat on Boulevard Chave smelled musty. At 10:00 a.m., de Palma, Vidal and three technicians from forensics arrived for a thorough search.

The Baron headed straight for the prehistorian's study; he had decided to look at that first. He recognized the multicolored folders. There were no messages on the answering machine, which raised his worst fears.

These were confirmed when he opened the first drawer. Empty. Nervously he opened two others. They were empty as well. The documents he had seen during his initial visit were no longer there. He tried to remember them: sketches, photos, topographical surveys, the sorts of things that would be important. Important enough for someone to break in despite the risk of being spotted by Yvonne Barbier. And yet the old dear had just told him that she had seen no-one and heard nothing. He assumed that the thief must have been familiar with both the flat and the old lady's nosiness. He had not even bothered to make his visit look like a classic burglary. He must have had the keys.

De Palma cursed himself in fury, but it was too late. The documents he had come to get, which were certainly vital evidence, had gone. Before leaving, he glanced around the study, then went into the small bedroom which served as a library. Hundreds of books were lined up before him.
Le Geste et la Parole
by Leroi-Gourhan, the same author's dictionary of prehistory, a collective work entitled
Art et Civilisations des Chasseurs de la Préhistoire
, Taïeb's
Sur la Terre des Premiers Hommes
… The books contained pink, green or red markers: A4 pages folded in half or in three on which Christine Autran had noted down
observations and criticisms in her agitated handwriting. He came across
La Grotte Le Guen
by Palestro and Autran, a handsome, coffee-table book with a beautiful jacket and sumptuous color prints. He sat down on a sky-blue Formica stool and began to leaf through it.

An overview of the creeks took up a double page. Cape Sugiton was a huge arc of cliffs jutting into the sea, then there were the white and rusty-red faces of La Triperie, the summits overlooking Morgiou and, in the distance, lines of limestone that stretched to the horizon.

On the next page, a drawing showed the same landscape thousands of years before. Men were hunting a monk seal on the seashore, a large deer was cocking a cautious ear, and there were horses and bison. The caption read: “The landscape of the Le Guen Cave in the era of Upper Paleolithic man. The red circle marks the entrance to the cave. At the time, it lay seven kilometers away from the coast.”

Two pages later, Palestro and Autran could be seen deep in conversation on the bridge of
L'Archéonaute
, the D.R.A.S.M. boat. Palestro appeared to be asking Christine about something which lay out of frame. A little further on, there was Palestro in a wetsuit, his hair dripping, posing beside Le Guen inside the cave. Intrigued and enthusiastic, de Palma skimmed through the text, cursing his lack of time. He also cursed his profession, which excluded him from all this.

He came across a chapter entitled “Nature, Man and Animals in the Era of the Le Guen Cave.” On the left-hand page, there was a large image of horses with their hoofs in the water, as though crossing a motionless stream. The caption read: “The great horse mural. Samples of carbon pigment taken directly from the paintings indicate a date of approximately 18,000 years ago.”

As he flicked through the pages, he saw bison, aurochs and a large black horse painted on the ceiling. Palestro and Autran had included drawings to explain how prehistoric men went about painting the walls and ceilings of their decorated caves.

Vidal interrupted his reading.

“Do you want us to take anything with us, Michel?”

“I've no idea. Let's see if there's anything, maybe a piece of paper slipped into one of these books.”

“That'll take hours! There are papers everywhere.”

“What do you expect me to say? What about you, have you found anything?”

“Nothing of real interest. Various fingerprints. Some are comparable. Others not. But we think they may belong to just two people. It's merely a theory at this stage. It's as though only two people ever came here.”

“That's far from nothing!”

“You think so?”

“It tells us a lot about our lady's character, and the fact that she invariably entertained the same person. Where did you find the second prints?”

“More or less everywhere. In the kitchen, the salon, the loo … Everywhere.”

“An intimate friend, then. We'll have to take this further. Anything else?”

“No, apart from the answering machine … No messages, which is odd.”

“What do you conclude from that?”

“It bugs me. I have the impression that someone came here before us.”

“Exactly, my boy. On my first visit, I thought exactly the same thing.”

“Really?”

“The worst of it is that since then I've phoned five times leaving messages saying that I was a friend or a student … at various times, which I noted down.”

“When was the last time?”

“The day before yesterday, at midnight …”

“So we can conclude that our man, or woman, has been here in the past twenty-four hours.”

“Brilliant, Vidal! You're starting to turn into an ace!”

“O.K., Michel, leave it out. I haven't got your experience.”

“It will come, kid. Just try and surprise me.”

“We'll have to check out all the people who have called this number. And then see if anyone has phoned from here.”

“Now you're talking … What else? In your opinion, why did our visitor erase the messages?”

“Because they pointed to him. Because the person who broke in here obviously killed Christine Autran. Otherwise he wouldn't have bothered.”

“You're right. Feelings of guilt pushed him into making a mistake. Because a mistake it certainly is. There was no reason for him to erase the messages again, after I'd dropped by, because he couldn't have called his victim. It was a stupid, reflex action—the sort of error that people make when they are so methodical that they lose their common sense. They forget that a crafty old sod like me can lay this kind of trap. So now he's condemned himself. Except that …”

“What? Aren't you sure?”

“Yes I am, but, you know, I always distrust things that seem too simple. Apparently we're up against someone who's incredibly intelligent. I wouldn't be surprised if all this wasn't meant to frame someone else. We'll check out the phone numbers.”