The Beast of the Camargue (30 page)

“Before … Jesus, the third person was already here!”

“Are you sure?”

“It seems the most likely scenario.”

The Baron retreated to the door, took several paces outside, then came in again.

“They come in singing, then, at that moment, they strike down the person who's in here.”

“Strike down?”

“And maybe killed him. Look, they've cleaned everything up.”

He gazed around the floor. Then he bent down to peer beneath the table. The ground was marked with what looked like wide sweeps of a broom. He retreated again to the room as a whole, then moved closer again to peer at the traces from different angles. He took the measuring rod and scratched the floor in several places.

“It's really odd,” he said. “Really it is.”

Texeira observed him tensely. He didn't miss one of the policeman's gestures.

“Weird…”

All at once, the Baron drew some long lines in the dirt. He did it several times in all directions, and lifted some earth. He kept going until the tip of the rod hit an obstacle. Then he kneeled down and rubbed at the place the rod had hit. In less than thirty seconds, he had uncovered a trapdoor.

He stood up abruptly and pushed the table aside.

“Help me lift this thing up. Or rather, lift it up in front of me, while I keep my gun trained on what's inside. You never know.”

Texeira raised the panel of wood. A fetid smell invaded the room. De Palma recognized the stench of decomposing human excrement.

Texeira produced a torch from his pocket and handed it to the Baron.

The trapdoor led to a long tunnel about a meter wide. In the torch beam, de Palma could see the entrance to an underground room at the end of the tunnel; a sort of cellar dug out of the raw earth.

“Can you see anything?”

“Nothing that exciting. We'll have to go down and see. But we won't be doing that for the moment.”

He retreated, and took two snapshots. Then he photographed the interior of the passage, while Texeira held open the trap.

“We're going to leave everything as we found it, so that no one will guess that we've been here.”

Ten minutes later, they crossed back over the stretch of sleeping water. De Palma stared at the reed hut, which danced before his eyes each time Texeira pushed with his pole.

In the humid light, a buzzard emerged from a clump of stunted ash trees and poplars; it beat its wings heavily then glided above the surface of the reed bed before vanishing behind the curtain of rushes.

The bells of Saint Martha's church were ringing the angelus when Anne Moracchini and Daniel Romero parked their unmarked Xsara in front of the building.

They presented their tricolor cards to the guard on the door, who was looking increasingly confused.

“Commissaire Larousse?”

“He's just left.”

“Commandant Marceau?”

“They left together in fact.”

“Perfect,” Moracchini said. “The P.J. always gets a warm welcome. How nice.”

She went inside the church and headed straight for the entrance to the crypt.

The forensic team had put away their equipment, and the cleanup teams were ready to start.

“Where's the body?”

“It's been taken away, just five minutes ago.”

“I see,” Moracchini said. “They haven't heard the last of this.”

She went down the crypt steps, followed by Romero. It was Romero's first real investigation with the brigade, and the squabbles had already begun.

When Moracchini saw the bloodstains on the statue of Saint Martha, she paused for breath, went over slowly and tried to picture the placing of Morini's body.

As the technicians had removed their powerful lamps, the saint's burial place had returned to its sepulchral gloom. The smell of the corpse had practically vanished.

A brigadier from the Tarascon commissariat arrived in the crypt.

“Who took the body away?”

“The emergency services. They took it to Marseille for the autopsy.”

“I mean, who gave the order to move it?”

“It was Marceau, he …”

“O.K., O.K…. What time was that?”

The brigadier walked over to the light to look at his watch.

“Just half an hour ago.”

The two officers looked at each other in silence.

“Pick up all the details you can, Daniel. I'm going to try and get hold of Michel. I'd like him to have a look.”

“O.K., Anne. Do you want me to take some photos?”

“In this light?”

“I've got flash.”

“Try it, and if not you ask them to put the juice back on.”

The team of cleaners appeared in the doorway, two black figures in the blue gleam.

“Don't touch anything,” Moracchini said, pointing at them. “Go back upstairs at once.”

“Commandant Marceau …”

“I don't give a shit about your Commandant Whatsisname. We're from the P.J. and I've been mandated by the prosecutor of Tarascon, clear? And I'm ordering you to go back upstairs.”

The two officers did not wait to be told twice.

“Do you want me to call Marceau, Madame?” the brigadier asked.

“I'll have him sent for … if he wants to play games like this, then I'll get him summonsed by the magistrate as soon as possible. He's going to see who's in command here!”

Moracchini found a quiet spot in the car park in front of Saint Martha's church, just a few meters away from King René's Castle, and dialed de Palma's mobile. In vain. She tried his home and got the answering machine but did not leave a message.

Furiously, she stuffed her mobile into the back pocket of her jeans and went back inside Saint Martha's.

Father Favier was pacing around the sacristy, utterly bewildered. From time to time, he stopped, opened drawers that contained various sacred objects, then closed them again with a nervous twitch.

“Try and calm down, Father,” Romero said. “We need you to tell us everything you know.”

“Sorry, but I don't know anything at all. Nothing! During my ten years on emergency wards, I never saw such viciousness. It's unspeakable.”

“I know,” Moracchini said, glancing over at Romero. “We're just trying to put your movements together. After that we'll leave you be, alright?”

The priest came to a halt.

“Alright.”

“What time did you discover the body?”

“I didn't. It was a visitor.”

“Never mind! We'll get his statement later.”

“It must have been about nine o'clock. But I'm not sure.”

“What time did you call the police?”

“Straight away.”

Romero noted down all these answers carefully, as well as any details that seemed important to him, such as Favier's attitude on being asked each question.

“Did you hear a noise or anything earlier?”

“No, not that morning.”

“But yes, you did before?”

“Two days ago. I had the impression that someone had slipped into the church. But there was nobody there.”

“You mean that you heard sounds suggesting an alien presence, or something unusual, is that it?”

Father Favier nodded then started pacing up and down once more.

“We'll leave you in peace, then talk to you again later, O.K.?”

Favier muttered something that neither of the officers could hear.

The judge immediately sent a warrant to the offices of the
Brigade Criminelle
in Marseille, giving permission to search Morini's residence. Moracchini and Romero arrived just after the gendarmes, who had surrounded the gangster's house.

“I'm Commandant Bonin, of the Tarascon company,” said the gendarme, shaking the capitaine's hand. “We were expecting you.”

Morini's wife had just been informed of her husband's death. She was hysterical. Moracchini made her sit down in the living room. Without waiting for reinforcements from Marseille or the local boys from Tarascon, she started the search.

“It's 1400 hours, Daniel. Note down: Began search in the presence of Mme. Morini.”

The two floors of Morini's home must have measured a good three hundred square meters.

On the ground floor, there was a huge entrance hall, decorated soberly, with white walls, a few paintings by minor Provençal artists, two classical sculptures and green plants everywhere. To the right, it led into a vast living room with pale green walls, several leather sofas of different styles, padded armchairs and heavy curtains with huge pastel flowers.

On the walls, the crime boss had hung a series of photographs of old Tarascon featuring the center and the castle before the reconstruction work had been done on the river and the town. Above one of the sofas hung a poster for the Tarascon carnival, dated 1932. Beside that, a sepia photograph depicted the Tarasque surrounded by its Knights. A Regency glass case contained a set of miniature bronze or ceramic Tarasques, as well as a collection of various monsters made of terracotta or copper.

At the back of the room, there was a bar of real zinc, which the gangster must have picked up somewhere shady. An antique one-armed bandit stood beside it.

The bay window looked out on a twenty-meter pool and a neoclassic-style pool-house. Further on, there was a forest of pines and oaks: the part of the Downlands that belonged to Morini.

On the first floor, seven bedrooms were laid out as suites complete with jacuzzi and desk each in a different style.

“We'll start with the bedrooms, Daniel. Let's get going.”

Only two of them were used regularly: one contained Morini's personal belongings, the other his wife's.

“So the two of them didn't sleep together!” Romero said.

“You know, mobsters aren't people like the rest of us!”

The two officers went through everything in the wife's room. They found nothing except a collection of lingerie that made Romero blush.

Then they searched Morini's study, where they came across a few telephone numbers jotted down on Post-its. Moracchini placed them in a plastic envelope. The four mobile phones that lay on the bedside tables were also seized, as well as Mme. Morini's address book.

Moracchini went back downstairs to the entrance hall. She gave instructions to the reinforcements that had just arrived, then went to see Morini's widow. The young woman was sitting on a thick leather sofa, her eyeliner running down her cheeks. She smelled distinctly of gin.

“Can we speak to you Mme. Morini? Are you feeling any better?”

She must have been a good twenty years younger than her husband. Her black hair was tied up over her fragile neck by a knotted velvet ribbon. She wore a white dressing gown, over her suntanned skin, and beneath it a bikini with bright red and yellow flowers.

“You can ask me whatever you like. I know nothing. He never told me anything …”

She spoke with a slight Marseille accent.

“What's your name?”

“Stéphanie. And that's practically all I can remember about myself!”

She looked up at Moracchini and stared into her eyes. She was quivering with rage.

“Anyway, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.”

Moracchini sat down next to her.

“Had he received any threats?”

“He seemed more nervy than usual, but you never really knew with him. It depended on what business he was doing.”

“When did you see him last?”

“About a week ago. I can hardly remember, in fact! It's a bit like living in a parallel world. He said he was going to Aix and would be home in the evening. He never came back.”

Moracchini guessed that Stéphanie must have been taking large quantities of some sort of dope to put up with a pig like Morini.

“Did he phone you to tell you he wouldn't be home?”

The young woman pouted cynically.

“Are you joking or what? When he didn't come home, he never said anything. But, this time, he said he'd be home.”

“I mean, since his disappearance, have you received any calls from him, or anyone else?”

“No, Madame, nothing. But I do remember, on the day before he disappeared, he wasn't in his normal state of mind. He stayed for ages in his bedroom whispering into his telephone.”

“And that wasn't usual, if I understand you correctly?”

“Exactly. But, you know, when you live with someone like that, you soon learn to be like the three little monkeys: you hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil …”

Moracchini could not stop herself from looking scornful.

“O.K. You stay here. I'll be back to question you again later. In the meantime, get dressed.”

She then went out into the garden and made a long telephone call to de Palma.

It was just after midday when the Baron turned into the driveway of La Balme farmhouse. The heat was stifling and he had problems keeping his grip on the steering wheel of the 205.

For the first time in a while, he noticed one of the young woman's
bodyguards, who vanished behind one of the buildings when he approached. Mme. Steinert must have seen him coming, because she was waiting for him on the patio, with a stern expression on her face.

“We missed you this morning for breakfast.”

“I'm sorry I had to leave you like that. But I had to make a trip to the Camargue.”

“Oh really?” she said, crossing her legs.

“Yes, one or two routine checks, as they say.”

“And ideas like that suddenly grab you! I know, I'll go and check some details in the Camargue …”

As she spoke, she snapped her fingers in the air. Her voice had grown metallic.

“You've arrived at the right time, Michel. I've sent my chauffeur Georg to go and fetch M. Bérard for a lunchtime drink. And here he comes.”

The Mercedes 4×4 steered a wide circle in the courtyard. The Baron recognized Georg. He was the bodyguard he'd spotted the first time he had seen her in Marseille. He was wearing sunglasses.