Irene Read online

  As it turned out, Cottet was a house of cards. He was one of those men who can be unnerved by the slightest thing. He was tall but seemed to inhabit a body he had borrowed. His clothes were clearly bought by his wife, who obviously had her own idea of the kind of man he was – and not a particularly flattering one. She imagined him to be an overbearing company director (the pale-grey suit), decisive (the white shirt with thin blue stripes) and always in a hurry (the Italian leather shoes with pointed toes), but she knew he was simply a middle manager who was brash (the garish tie) and actually a little vulgar (gold signet ring and mismatched cufflinks). Seeing Camille step into his office, he flunked his first test: his eyebrows shot up in surprise, then he quickly composed himself and pretended he hadn’t noticed his arrival. It was the worst possible reaction, thought Camille, and he had seen them all.

  Cottet was the sort who took life very seriously. There were business propositions which he might describe as “low-hanging fruit”, those that required “joined-up thinking”, and those clusterfucks that were “learning opportunities”. From the look on Camille’s face it was clear that the present circumstances did not fit into any of these categories.

  In such situations, Louis often took the lead. Louis was patient. Louis could sometimes be a little pedantic.

  “We need to know how and under what circumstances the apartment was leased. As you can appreciate, it’s somewhat urgent.”

  “Of course. Which apartment are we talking about?”

  “17, rue Félix-Faure, in Courbevoie.”

  Cottet paled.

  “Ah …”

  Then, silence. Cottet stared at his desk blotter aghast, mouth moving like a fish.

  “Monsieur Cottet,” Louis began again in his coolest and most careful tone, “I think it would be best for you and for your company if you were to explain things calmly and in their entirety … Take your time.”

  “Yes … yes, of course.”

  Then he stared up at them like a drowning man.

  “That particular contract was not exactly … how can I put this? … it did not quite conform to best practice, if you see what I mean.”

  “Not really, no,” Louis said.

  “We were contacted last April. The person in question …”

  “Name?”

  Cottet looked at Camille, then he seemed to stare out of the window as though looking for help, for solace.

  “Haynal. His name was Haynal – Jean, I think …”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, Jean Haynal. He was enquiring about the apartment in Courbevoie. Cards on table …” Cottet said, regaining a little of his cocksureness, “… we’re in a bit of a holding pattern with that particular development … We’ve invested a lot in that patch of industrial wasteland, and we have four units finished, but so far the results have not exactly been compelling. Oh, we won’t be out of pocket, but …”

  Camille was irritated by his circumlocutions.

  “Cards on table: how many units have you sold?”

  “None.”

  Cottet stared at him as though the word “none” were a death sentence. Camille would have bet that this little gamble had put him and his company in a very parlous position.

  “Please …” Louis said encouragingly, “go on …”

  “Regardless, the gentleman in question wasn’t interested in buying, he wanted to rent for three months. He said that he represented a film company. I refused, of course. That’s one industry sector we won’t touch. Too hard to gain traction, tough margins, tight timescales, you see what I’m saying? Besides, we’re in the business of selling developments, not playing at estate agents.”

  Cottet spat these last words with a contempt that spoke volumes about the seriousness of the problems that had forced him to become an estate agent.

  “I understand,” Louis said.

  “But we’re all subject to the laws of reality,” Cottet added, as though this shaft of wit showed that he was sophisticated. “And the gentleman in question …”

  “Was willing to pay cash?” suggested Louis.

  “Cash, yes, and …”

  “And prepared to pay over the odds?” Camille added.

  “Three times the market.”

  “What was he like, this man?”

  “I didn’t really notice,” said Cottet. “Most of our dealings were by phone.”

  “What about his voice?”

  “Well spoken.”

  “So …?”

  “He asked if he could visit the property. He wanted to take photos. We arranged a viewing. I met him on-site. That was the point at which I should have been suspicious …”

  “Of what?” asked Louis.

  “The photographer … He didn’t seem – how can I put it – very professional. He showed up with some sort of Polaroid. He lined up the photos he took neatly on the floor like he was terrified of getting them mixed up. He checked a piece of paper before every shot, as though he were following instructions he didn’t understand. Even at the time I thought, that guy’s no more a photographer than I am …”

  “An estate agent?” ventured Camille.

  “If you like,” Cottet shot him a black look.

  “Can you describe him for us?” Louis tried to distract him.

  “Vaguely. I didn’t stay on-site long. There was nothing for me to do and I wasn’t about to waste two hours in an empty unit watching some guy take photos … I opened up, watched him work for a bit, then left. He left the key in the mailbox on his way out, it was a spare so we didn’t need it immediately.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Average …”

  “By which you mean?” Louis persisted.

  “Average.” Cottet was becoming heated. “What do you want me to say? Average height, average age – he was average!”

  There followed a silence during which the three men seemed to ponder the nondescript nature of the modern world.

  “But the fact that this photographer was so unprofessional seemed to you to be another guarantee, didn’t it?” said Camille.

  “Yes, I admit that’s true,” said Cottet. “Everything was paid in cash, there was no contract and I assumed that the film … I mean, that with that kind of movie we weren’t likely to have any problems with the tenant.”

  Camille was the first to get to his feet. Cottet walked them back to the lift.

  “You’ll have to make a formal statement, obviously,” Louis explained, as though talking to a child. “And you may be subpoenaed to appear in court, so …”

  “So don’t touch anything,” Camille interrupted. “Don’t fiddle your books, don’t go near anything. As far as the taxman is concerned, you’re on your own. We have two girls hacked to pieces, so right now – even as far as you’re concerned – that’s all that matters.”

  Cottet stared at them, his eyes vacant, as though trying to gauge the consequences – no doubt he suspected they would be catastrophic – and suddenly his gaudy tie looked as out of place as a cravat on a death-row prisoner.

  “Do you have photographs, blueprints?” asked Camille.

  “We put together a top-of-the-range presentation brochure …” Cottet began pulling his most dazzling huckster’s smile before realising how inappropriate his smugness sounded, and immediately filing it away for later use.

  “Have everything sent over to me straight away,” Camille said, proffering a business card.

  Cottet took it gingerly, as though it might burn his fingers.

  As they headed back down, Louis commented on the receptionist’s “attributes”. Camille said that he hadn’t noticed.

  7

  Even with two teams working, identité judiciaire had to spend every waking hour on site. The inexorable ballet of squad cars, motorbikes and vans meant that by late morning a crowd of rubberneckers had gathered. It made you wonder what could have prompted people to come all the way out here. It was like an influx of the living dead from some B-movie. The media showed up half
an hour later. Not to photograph the crime scene, obviously, nor was there to be a press statement, but within hours leaks had sprung and by 2 p.m. it seemed better to make a statement than to leave the media to their own devices. Camille phoned Le Guen from his mobile and explained his concerns.

  “There’s been a lot of talk around here, too,” Le Guen said.

  Camille stepped out of the Courbevoie apartment with only one goal: to say as little as possible.

  There were fewer people than he had expected: twenty or so gawkers, fewer than a dozen reporters and – at first glance – no big names, just freelances and ambulance chasers; it was an unexpected opportunity to defuse the situation and gain a couple of precious days.

  *

  There were two good reasons why Camille was both famous and infamous. His expertise had earned him a solid reputation which his height had transformed into notoriety. Though it was difficult for cameramen to frame him, the journalists rushed forward with questions for this diminutive man with his peremptory manner. They found him to be curt but candid.

  *

  On certain occasions – cold comfort, given the many drawbacks – Camille’s physical appearance had its advantages. Once seen, he was never forgotten. He had already refused to appear on various television programmes knowing he had been invited in the hope that he would deliver the stirring monologue of a man “who has brilliantly triumphed over his physical shortcomings”. Clearly, presenters were drooling at the prospect of lead-in footage showing Camille in his Motability vehicle – a car with all the controls on the steering wheel but a police siren on the roof. Camille would have no truck with such publicity – and not just because he hated driving. His superiors were grateful to him for this. Only once had he weakened. A stormy day. An angry day. A day when he would probably have to take the métro while people either gawped at him or averted their eyes. He had been invited to participate in a current affairs show on France 3. After the inevitable hand-wringing homily explaining that this was a general interest report he had a duty to represent, the programme researcher had obliquely hinted that Camille stood to gain from it on a personal level, presumably imagining the whole world was desperate for fifteen minutes of fame. This was the day when he had slipped in the bathtub and fallen flat on his face. A miserable day for midgets. He agreed, and his superiors did their best to pretend they were happy for him to appear on the show.

  When he arrived at the studios, already depressed at having given in to temptation, he had to take the lift. A woman juggling an armful of files and tapes got in with him and asked which floor he wanted. With a stoical look, Camille gestured to the button for the fifteenth floor which was a little beyond his reach. The woman gave him a shy smile, but, reaching for the button, she dropped everything she was carrying. When the lift arrived at its destination, the two of them were still on all fours gathering up papers and stuffing them into files. She thanked him.

  “I have the same problem hanging wallpaper,” Camille reassured her. “Everything goes pear-shaped.”

  The woman laughed. She had a lovely laugh.

  He had married Irène six months later.

  8

  The reporters were in a hurry.

  “Two victims,” Camille began. “Who are they?”

  “We don’t know yet. Two women. Young …”

  “How old?”

  “About twenty-five. That’s all we can say for now.”

  “When are they taking the bodies?” a photographer asked.

  “In a while. We’re running a bit late. Technical problems …”

  A pause in the questions, the ideal moment to rush in:

  “I can’t say much right now, but to be honest the case is nothing out of the ordinary. We’ve don’t have much to go on, that’s all. We’ll be making a statement tomorrow night. Until then, it’s probably best to let the boys from forensics do their work …”

  “So what do we run with?” said a young blond guy who looked well on his way to liver failure.

  “You say: two women who have not yet been identified. You say: murdered in the past forty-eight hours by person or persons unknown, motive and cause of death yet to be determined.”

  “It’s a bit thin!”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

  It would have been hard to say less. There was a moment of confusion in the ranks.

  And at that precise moment, what Camille had fervently hoped would not happen, happened. The forensics van, having reversed, found it could not get close enough to the entrance of the building because for some mysterious reason there was a concrete planter in the way. The van driver got out and flung open the rear doors and two forensics officers jumped out. The reporters, who up to that point had been distracted, were suddenly riveted as the door to the warehouse apartment opened to reveal the living room wall completely covered with blood spatter like a Jackson Pollock canvas. As if the reporters needed any further confirmation, the officers meticulously began loading the van with clear sealed bags, tagged and ready to be sent to the morgue.

  Reporters are a little like those undertakers who can size up a corpse for a coffin with a single glance. Seeing the bags being piled into the van, the hacks could tell the bodies had been dismembered.

  “Shit!” the hacks said in chorus.

  Before the officers had time to extend the cordon, the photographers were clicking away furiously. The pack divided into two like a cancerous cell, one half photographing the forensics van and shouting “Over here!” so the grisly removal men would stop and turn to look, the other half grabbing their mobile phones and calling for backup.

  “Shit!” echoed Camille.

  A complete cock-up. Then he too took out his mobile and made the calls that would put him in the eye of the hurricane.

  9

  The boys from identité judiciaire had done a good job. Two windows had been cracked open to create a through breeze and the stench of morning had dissipated to the extent that handkerchiefs and surgical masks were no longer necessary.

  At this point, crime scenes can be more disturbing than they were before the bodies were removed. It feels as though death has struck a second time, whisking them away.

  This particular crime scene was even worse. Only the lab assistants were still there, armed with cameras, rangefinders, tweezers, vials, evidence bags and luminol, and it now looked as though there had been no bodies, as though death had denied the victims the final dignity of a corpse that had once been living. The forensics teams had taken away the severed fingers, the heads, the entrails. All that remained were traces of blood and shit and, stripped of its stark horror, the apartment now appeared very different. Even to Camille, it looked utterly bizarre. Louis warily eyed his boss, who had a peculiar expression – brow furrowed, eyebrows knitted – as though trying to solve a crossword puzzle.

  Louis stepped into the room and headed straight for the T.V. unit and telephone. Camille went into the bedroom. They explored the space like visitors in an art gallery, eager to discover some detail they had previously overlooked. A little later, still brooding, they ran into each other in the bathroom. Louis headed off to make his own inspection of the bedroom and Camille stared out of the window while the forensics technicians unplugged the spotlights and rolled up the cables and plastic sheeting, snapped shut cases and toolboxes. As he wandered through the apartment, his mind made keener by Camille’s troubled expression, Louis’ neurones were firing on all cylinders. And, gradually, he too took on a more preoccupied air, as though he were doing mental arithmetic to eight decimal places.

  He found Camille in the living room. On the floor was the suitcase from the wardrobe (top of the range, cream leather with protective metal corners like those on flight cases), which the forensics officers had not yet taken away. It contained a suit, a shoehorn, an electric razor, a wallet, a sports watch and a portable photocopier.

  One of the technicians now reappeared and said: “It’s not your day, Camille … there’s a
T.V. crew pulling up outside.” He glanced around the room at the blood on the walls and ceiling. “And this is going to be all over the ‘Nine O’Clock News’ from now until doomsday.”

  10

  “This was premeditated, it took a lot of careful planning,” said Louis.

  “I think it’s more complicated than that. In fact, there’s something about the whole thing that doesn’t add up.”

  “It doesn’t add up?”

  “No,” said Camille. “Almost everything here is brand new – the bed, the carpets, everything. It’s hard to imagine someone shelling out all that money just to shoot a porn movie. You’d rent a furnished apartment. Actually, usually they don’t rent at all, they find a place they can use for free.”

  “A snuff movie?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” said Camille. “It’s possible …”

  But they both knew that the vogue for such films had long passed. Besides, the expensive, carefully arranged décor did not quite fit with that kind of hypothesis.

  Camille went on pacing the room.

  “The fingerprint on the wall over there was too perfect to have been accidental.”

  “Nobody would have been able to see anything from outside,” Louis followed his train of thought. “The door was closed, the windows covered. No-one stumbled upon the crime. Logically, the killer was sending a message to us. He not only premeditated the murders, he claimed them. But I find it difficult to imagine one man creating all this carnage …”

  “We’ll see,” said Camille. “But what I find most fascinating is the fact that there’s a message on the answering machine.”