The Beast of the Camargue (7 page)

“We're going to search the house, Jean-Luc. Have you got anything to tell me before we begin, and find it ourselves?”

“There's nothing here. Zilch,” he said, gesturing at the corridor from which his wife had just emerged, with the family's latest addition in her arms.

“Here's our youngest—Pierre. He's just turned three.”

Moracchini and Romero looked at each other in silence. Casetti's
wife, her eyes still red with sleep, put her son down. The child immediately went over to his father and grabbed him by the handcuffs, beaming widely. Romero looked away.

“O.K., Jean-Luc. We're going to have you spit on some blotting paper, so as to take your genetic imprint. You know, your D.N.A…. Then you'll come along with us, and if you're clean you'll be back home tomorrow morning. O.K.?”

“Jesus, you turn up mob-handed with all that artillery! It's like the Napoleonic wars in here. That one over there's got a pumpgun loaded with buckshot, and you ask me if I'm O.K.?”

“That's right!” Madame Casetti almost screamed, raising her hand toward Bonniol. “The last time you turned up, there were just two of you. With that big copper, the one who was in the paper. What's his name again?”

“Commandant de Palma.”

“Yes, him. He's a real man. He risks his life. Everyone knows that. He's got respect for people. No need to come with a squad. I've got nothing against you, Madame. I know you're on the level. But him”—she pointed at a guard from the B.R.I.—“aren't you ashamed of pointing a gun at children?”

Bonniol made to open his big mouth, but Moracchini glared at him.

Five years ago, on the orders of a nervy magistrate, she and de Palma had come to fetch Casetti on suspicion of murder, but nothing had come of it. Forty-eight hours later, they had taken back home “Casetti the Gangland Killer” as an inspired sub-editor had dubbed him.

“In fact, we nearly brought the T.V. cameras along,” she said, to lower the pressure.

“That's all we need! The last time, for the lad, we had those local telly shitheads round. I thought it was just the new police procedure to film everything. Then two months later, they showed the boy on T.V., and everyone knew. Fuck the lot of them!”

Moracchini's mobile rang. She went out into the garden.

“Anne? It's Michel.”

“What's up with you? Insomnia?”

“I'm not waking you up, am I?”

“Thanks for the kind thought. It's six thirty, and you'll never guess where I am.”

“Go on.”

“At Casetti's. Don't pretend you didn't know.”

“For the Ferri murders? What a prick that magistrate is. Every time there's a hit he's going to send us to Casetti's!”

“No, this time it was the new boss.”

“Delpiano! Good, now I feel better off on leave.”

“What's more, we've picked him up on a Friday, which means we'll spend all weekend questioning him.”

“That triple bastard.”

“And I wanted to see you a little!”

One of the B.R.I. team came close, so she went out into the alley.

“O.K., so what's up? You're going to pop the question?”

“Um, no, but I'll have to think about it …”

“We're made for each other, Michel, but only after ten in the morning.”

“I can imagine those nights of passion.”

“Hmmmm …”

“Tell me, does the name Steinert mean anything to you?”

“You never change. I talk love to you, and you talk job. Who do you mean?”

“A guy who's disappeared. I found the case interesting and …”

“And you want me to ask around! O.K., Baron. But right now I'm going back to Casetti. Who told you that it was the Ferri murders?”

“I know everything, you should know that.”

She went back into the house. Casetti had spat conscientiously onto the blotting paper that Romero had handed him—so conscientiously that the two from the
Criminelle
realized at once that he must be in the clear. Or at least over the Ferri affair. The rest was quite another story. De Palma had always suspected him of doing jobs for the one-armed-bandit racketeers. Before running his own amusement arcade, Casetti had been a top bank robber. Not the sort who screws up and gets pulled in by the
Brigade de Répression du Banditisme
every time he fails to make ends meet. But between that and becoming a gangland trigger man lay a gulf that a magistrate
fresh in from Lyon was too quick to cross. The credo was to apply constant pressure on the big boys of organized crime. To dig for information constantly, whenever official procedures gave them enough leeway. The police might drag their heels, but the magistrate took himself very seriously.

Moracchini glanced at Casetti's daughter. She was born during his first spell out of prison. A child of the visiting room, which explained the great difference in age between her and her elder brother. The little girl had the look of a weary Madonna, despite the sparks that occasionally lit up her eyes.

“It's half-past seven. Are you going to school soon, Marion?”

“Go to school while you take my daddy to prison?”

“If it isn't him, he'll be home tomorrow.”

“The last time, the magistrate put him in prison anyway! For my daddy, even when it's not him, it's still him!”

“Don't talk to the police like that,” Casetti said. “They're doing their job.”

At ten o'clock that same morning, de Palma was driving slowly along Route Nationale 568, northwestward from Marseille, in heavy rain. Visibility was down to about twenty meters, which did not improve his mood.

The thirty-year-old radio in the Alfa Romeo was crackling. De Palma took out his walkman, put on the headphones and swore when he realized that he had forgotten the box set he had bought the day before: a legendary version of the
Götterdämmerung
with Astrid Varnay and Wolfgang Windgassen, conducted by Clemens Krauss. He wanted to compare it with the ten other versions of
The Ring
he already owned.

So now he would have to be content with reflecting on the day he was going to spend far from Marseille. That night, he had made the decision to investigate the Steinert case. It had been neither the billionaire's wife's money, nor his unhealthy curiosity that had clinched the decision; but rather the simple fact that this woman looked like Isabelle Mercier. De Palma saw it as a sign, something that had risen up from the chaos in order to drive him forward. He
was also intrigued by the fact that she had personally sought him out, after the blunt refusal he had made to Chandeler. Something in her story rang false, and de Palma could sense the turbulence in these big-money cases like a weather radar.

The rain redoubled, and he suddenly had the impression of being inside the belly of a snare drum during a parade on July 14, which made him slow down even more, and thus increased his irritation.

He hated this long road, as straight as an American freeway, punctuated with chip vendors, sellers of melons and other local produce, and whores in caravans who serviced truck drivers by the edge of meadows as flat as the sea.

Each time he took the R.N. 568 it was always for some shady affair: bar owners murdered by slot-machine racketeers, or some settling of scores among the gypsies of Arles and its outskirts. All he needed now was a migraine to ruin his day completely.

When he reached Tarascon, by now on Route Départementale 99, the rain stopped abruptly. He parked on rue du Viaduc in front of the commissariat, in one of the spaces reserved for police officers. Straight away the security guard, wrapped in his royal blue outfit, hurried over.

“De Palma, Marseille P.J.,” he said, flashing his tricolor card. “I'm here to see Jean-Claude Marceau.”

“Oh, right. Talk to my colleague then.”

The second security guard behind the grille was not so bad: brunette, about twenty, with an angular build, an inviting smile and big dark worried-looking eyes. The first hint of charm on this gloomy morning.

“Capitaine Marceau? Yes, stay there; I'll see if he's free,” she said, poring over her list of telephone numbers.

The hall of the commissariat smelled of stale tobacco and the sour breath of its hundreds of visitors. A winding staircase, pockmarked with chewing gum and cigarette burns, led up to the first floor, where the departments of investigation and public safety lay in a curving corridor with a low ceiling and brick walls. Voices broke out from behind the wall of the drug squad.

“On my mother's life, it wasn't me …”

“Fuck your mother, asshole. We've been tailing you for six months. Can't you see yourself in the fucking photos?”

“On my mother's life …”

That morning, in the Cité des Rosoirs, the drugs squad of the
Service d'Investigation et de recherches de la sécurité publique
had nabbed a housing estate baron with 40 kilos of dope in the boot of his car, some of it in his son's cot and the rest in his wife's vanity case.

De Palma arrived at the door to the investigation rooms.

“Hide everything! The P.J.'s here!” a voice wrecked by filterless Gitanes yelled from behind the half-closed door.

De Palma shoved it open.

“Hi, Jean-Claude, sounds like things are heating up next door!”

“Really? It's never them, you know how they are …”

Marceau greeted the Baron with a hug and took a long look at him.

“Jesus, Michel de Palma. The Baron … you can't imagine how pleased I am to see you. It's been ages.”

“You haven't changed.”

“And you've still got just as much imagination! How are things?”

Jean-Claude Marceau was a year younger than de Palma, and had kept the look of an eternally melancholy teenager, into hard rock and dope. Of course he was into neither, just an excellent police officer who was now rotting in a small commissariat after a brilliant start to his career with de Palma and Maistre in Paris. It had all been down to a fit of nostalgia.

In the early 1990s, Marceau had decided to go back to Tarascon, his home town. He wanted to find his roots again, to unlock the Provence that lay deep inside his body and soul. He had started with the
Brigade de Répression du Banditisme
in Marseille, before asking to be transferred to the
Sécurité Publique
.

Through the partition, the din was growing louder.

“I've got out of touch with the drug squad,” said de Palma, pointing at the wall with his thumb.

“We've got that guy by the short and curlies. His wife and two
brothers-in-law are involved in smuggling and they've just coughed. Starting with 40 kilos this morning, we've now reached one ton. He's a wholesaler.”

Marceau swiveled round his computer screen, which showed a black-and-white picture of a stairwell.

“This is a live webcam! You can see the stairs of a building in Les Rosoirs, just beside the other bastard's flat. And it can pivot, and zoom … Look!”

Marceau clicked his mouse and the camera moved.

“We hid it in an air vent. We're expecting another delivery any day. According to our grass, there'll be 150 kilos.”

“You're rolling in it these days in the commissariats.”

“What's more, it records the whole lot on D.V.D.—it picks out the places when there's movement. The highlights of these assholes' lives.”

Marceau occupied the current investigations office. In practice, he dealt with everything.

“You came here specially to see me?”

“No, I wanted your recipe for fake pastis.”

“Come on then, out with it.”

“William Steinert?”

Marceau pointed to the missing person's notice which was pinned to the wall.

“You're with missing persons now?”

“I want to do someone a favor. So they can clarify the situation. It isn't all that clear.”

“Same old de Palma, still the big boss with the know-nothing air … You remind me of a hack I used to give stories to from time to time. He always used to play the ignoramus.”

“Steinert disappeared on the 24th, is that right?”

“That's what his wife says … it's not the official account. But there is no official account.”

“What do you know about it all?”

“He's loaded,” Marceau said, opening his arms. “And he's been missing since at least June 24. I say that because no one really knows. It could easily have been the 22nd or 23rd.”

“Yeah, I suppose he's not the sort who goes home from work every evening at the same time. I can just picture all that money.”

“Then multiply by ten and you're probably closer.”

“Have you seen his wife?”

“Yes. She came here with two heavies and her lawyer.”

“Chandeler?”

“That's right.”

De Palma's expression suddenly changed. He stared at his fellow officer sadly.

“It's a striking resemblance, isn't it?”

“The case isn't closed for you either?”

“Not that one.”

“And yet when you look at it, Michel, it's just a case like any other.”

“Yeah.”

A long silence fell in the room. From the neighboring office, quiet sobs could be heard.

“O.K. I just wanted to know what you made of it. Then I'll call her, tell her the case is closed, and that's an end to it.”

“Michel, the guy has disappeared, that's what I make of it. And nothing is going to be closed before he breaks surface again, dead or alive! The problem is that I can't do anything about it! If you only knew the amount of work that lands on me day after day: drugs, rapes, muggings, a fucker who's swindled his wife … it's all the time the jackpot! And I'm a jack of all trades, my friend!”

Next to Steinert's missing person's notice, there were some press cuttings covering the few good results achieved by the local police in Tarascon: mostly about drugs, smack sold by Tunisians from Beaucaire, who regularly got rumbled; there had also been a network of stolen car dealers, with faked number plates on identical models that were chopped by a gang in Paris before being passed on by gypsies during their pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.