Camille (28 page)

For the past two days, he has been inching forward on a rickety plank with an abyss on either side. Now Anne has dug another chasm right beneath his feet.

Despite the fact that his career is at stake, that three times in the past two days someone has attempted to kill the woman in his life, that this woman he is involved with has been living under a false name, that he no longer knows exactly what her role is in this case, Camille needs to think strategically, to think logically, but his mind is consumed by a single thought that trumps all others: what is Anne doing in his life?

In fact, he has not one question, but two: if it turns out that Anne is not Anne, what does that change?

He goes back over the time they have spent together, the evenings spent finding each other, hardly daring to touch, and the nights they spent between the sheets . . . In August, she dumps him and an hour later he finds her still outside in the stairwell – was this simply a ploy on her part? A clever ruse? The whispered words, the tender embraces, the hours, the days, was it all just deliberate manipulation?

In a few minutes, he will find himself face to face with a woman who calls herself Anne Forestier, a woman he has been sleeping with for months, a woman who has been lying to him since the day they met. He does not know what to think, he is completely drained, put through a wringer.

What is the connection between Anne’s false identity and the robbery at the Galerie?

And what exactly is his role in this story?

But the most important thing is that someone is trying to kill this woman.

He no longer knows who she is, but he knows one thing It is his responsibility to protect her.

*

When he walks into the studio, Anne is still sitting on the floor, her back against the sink, her arms wrapped around her knees.

In all the confusion, Camille had forgotten what she looks like now. On the long drive here, it was the other Anne he was picturing, the pretty, smiling Anne he fell for, with her green eyes and her dimples. Seeing her mutilated face, the yellow bruises, the bandages, the grubby splints, he is shocked – almost as shocked as he was two days ago when he saw her in the casualty department.

Overcome by a wave of compassion, he feels himself founder. Anne does not move, does not look at him, she is staring into the middle distance as though hypnotised.

“Are you alright, darling?” Camille creeps towards her as if attempting to tame an animal. He kneels and clumsily takes her in his arms – not easy given his size. He touches her chin and turns her face towards his. She stares at him as though only now registering his presence.

“Oh, Camille . . .”

She lays her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

The world could end right now.

But the world is not destined to end just yet.

“Tell me.”

Anne looks left, then right, it is difficult to tell if she is distraught or if she simply does not know where to begin.

“Was he alone? Was the whole gang here?”

“No, just him . . .”

Her voice is low and resonant.

“Hafner? The man you identified from the photo array?”

Anne simply nods. Yes, it was him.

“Tell me what happened.”

As Anne struggles to describe the events (her words come in halting, ragged fragments, never complete sentences), Camille pieces together the scene. The first shot. He turns towards the shards of glass strewn across the floor where the coffee table was, the splintered cherrywood that looks as though it came through a tornado. As he listens, he gets to his feet and walks over to the window, the bullet hole is too high for him to reach, he visualises the trajectory.

“Go on . . .” he says.

He moves to the wall, then back to the cast-iron stove, lays a finger on the spot where the bullet ricocheted then scans the back wall and sees the gaping hole. He walks to the staircase and crouches there for some time, one hand resting on the splintered fragments of the first step, glances thoughtfully towards the top of the stairs, then turns back to the spot from which the shot was fired. He stands on the second stair.

“What happened next?” he says, stepping down.

He walks into the bathroom; from here, Anne’s voice is faint, barely audible. Camille continues his reconstruction; this may be his house, but just now it is a crime scene. Conjecture, observation, conclusion.

The window is half open. Anne comes into the room, Hafner is waiting, he pushes his arm through the gap and aims the pistol fitted with a silencer. Camille finds the bullet lodged in the doorframe above his head. He goes back into the living room.

Anne has fallen silent.

Camille fetches a broom from under the stairs and quickly sweeps the remains of the coffee table against the wall, dusts off the sofa, then goes to boil some water.

“Come on . . .” he says at length. “It’s over now . . .”

Anne huddles next to him on the sofa and they sip something Camille insists is tea – it tastes horrid, but Anne does not complain.

“I’ll take you somewhere else.”

Anne shakes her head.

“Why not?”

It little matters why, Anne flatly refuses to leave though the folly of her decision is evidenced by the ruined coffee table, the bullet holes in the window, the door, the staircase, by every object in this room.

“I think th—”

“No,” Anne cuts him off.

This settles the matter. Camille decides that if Hafner did not manage to gain access to the house, he is unlikely to try again today. There will be time to think again tomorrow. Over the past three days, whole years have elapsed so tomorrow seems very far away.

Besides, Camille has finally decided on his next move.

It has taken him a little time, just as long as a boxer might need to scrape himself up off the canvas and get back into the fight.

Camille is almost there.

He needs an hour or two. Maybe a little longer. In the meantime, he will lock up the house, check all the exits and leave Anne here.

They sit together in silence, their thoughts interrupted only by the vibrations from Camille’s mobile which rings constantly. He does not need to check, he knows who is calling.

It feels strange to sit here holding this unknown woman he knows so well. He knows he should ask questions, but that can wait until after. First he needs to unravel the thread.

*

Camille feels suddenly exhausted. Lulled by the leaden sky, the shadowy forest, this squat, slow house transformed into a blockhouse, cradling this mystery to his chest, he could sleep all day if he allowed himself. Instead, he listens to Anne, her ragged breathing, to the soft gulp as she drains her tea, to the heavy silence that has come between them.

“Are you going to find him?” Anne whispers after a moment.

“Oh yes.”

The answer comes immediately, instinctively; Camille sounds so certain, so convinced, that even Anne is surprised.

“You will let me know as soon as you find him, won’t you?”

To Camille, the subtext to Anne’s every question could be a whole novel. He frowns quizzically: why?

“I just need to feel safe, you can understand that, can’t you?”

Her voice is no longer a whisper, her hand falls away from her mouth and he can see her gums, her broken teeth.

“Of course . . .”

He almost apologises.

*

Finally, their separate silences merge. Anne has dozed off. Camille can find no words. If he had a pencil, in a few strokes he could sketch their twin solitudes; they are each coming to the end of a story, they are together yet alone. Curiously, Camille has never felt closer to her, a mysterious solidarity binds him to this woman. Gently, he withdraws his arm, lays Anne’s head against the back of the sofa and gets to his feet.

Time to go. Time to find out the real story.

He creeps up the stairs like a hunter tracking prey, he moves soundlessly, being intimately familiar with every stair, every creaking board, and besides, he does not weigh much.

The roof upstairs slopes steeply, at its lowest point the room is only a metre or so high. Camille lays down on the floor and crawls to the far side of the bed to a trapdoor that swings open to provide access to the narrow crawlspace. The cubbyhole is filthy with dust and cobwebs. Camille reaches inside and gropes around, finds the plastic bag and pulls it towards him. A black bin-liner containing a thick folder. A file he has not opened since . . .

He cannot help but see that everything about this case has forced him to confront his greatest fears.

He looks around, finds a pillowcase and carefully slips the file inside. With every little movement, the film of dust creates clouds of ash. Camille gets up and steals back downstairs.

Some minutes later, he is writing a note to Anne.

“Get some rest. Call anytime. I’ll be back as soon as I can be.”

I’ll keep you safe
– no, this is something he cannot bring himself to write.

When he is finished, he makes a tour of the house, checking all the door handles, ensuring everything is locked. Before he leaves, he stands and stares at the sleeping form of Anne on the sofa. It pains him to think of leaving her alone. It is difficult to leave, but impossible to stay.

Time to go. Carrying the thick folder in the striped pillowcase under one arm, Camille crosses the yard and heads through the forest to where he parked the car.

He stops and looks back. From here, surrounded by the forest, the silent house looks as though it is built on a plinth like a casket or a still-life painting, a
vanitas
. He thinks of Anne asleep inside.

But by the time his car slowly moves away into the forest, Anne’s eyes are wide open.

*

11.30 a.m.

As the car speeds towards Paris, Camille’s mental landscape becomes simplified. He may not know what happened, but he knows the questions to ask.

The key thing now is to ask the right questions.

In the course of an armed robbery, a killer assaults a woman who calls herself Anne Forestier. He hunts her down, he is determined to kill her, he tracks her all the way to Camille’s isolated studio.

What is the link between the robbery and the fact of Anne’s false identity?

Everything would suggest that the woman was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, having come to collect a watch being engraved for Camille, but though they seem utterly unrelated, the two events are connected. Intimately connected.

Are there any two things that are not connected?

Camille has not been able to find out the truth from Anne, he does not even know who she really is. So now he must look elsewhere. At the other end of the thread.

Three missed calls from Louis who, typically, has not left a voicemail. Instead he sent a text message: “Need help?” Some day, when this is all over, Camille plans to adopt Louis.

Three voicemails from Le Guen. In fact, the message is the same, only the tone changes. With every call, Jean’s voice is calmer, his message shorter and more circumspect. “Listen, I really need you to call me b—”
Message deleted.
“Um . . . why haven’t you ca—”
Message deleted.
In the third message, Le Guen sounds grim. In fact, he is simply sad. “If you don’t help me, I can’t help you.”
Message deleted.

Camille empties his mind of every obstacle and pursues his train of thought. He needs to stay focused.

Everything has become more complicated.

He has had to radically rethink the situation after the mayhem at the studio. The damage caused is undeniably dramatic, but though he is not a ballistics expert, Camille cannot help but wonder.

Anne is behind a picture window twenty metres wide. Outside, there is a skilled, determined, heavily armed killer. It is not impossible that missing Anne was sheer misfortune. But failing to put a bullet in her head when he had his arm thrust through an open window and was less than six metres away is suspicious. It is as though, since the Galerie Monier, he has been cursed. Unless this has all been carefully planned from the start. Such a spectacular run of bad luck is scarcely credible . . .

In fact, one might think that to avoid killing Anne, given the number of opportunities there have been, would take an exceptional marksman. Camille has not known many people equal to such a task.

This question inevitably prompts others.

How did he track Anne down to the studio in Montfort?

Last night, Camille drove this same route from Paris. Anne, exhausted, fell asleep almost immediately and did not wake until they arrived.

There is a lot of traffic on the motorway and on the Périphérique even at night, but Camille stopped the car twice and waited for several minutes, watching the traffic, and took a roundabout route on the last leg of the journey, along byroads where the headlights of another would have been visible from a considerable distance.

He has a chilling sense of
déjà vu
: by launching a raid on the Serbian community, he led the killers straight to Ravic; now he has led them to Anne in Montfort.

This is the most plausible hypothesis. It is obviously the one he is supposed to accept. But now that he knows that Anne is not Anne, that everything he assumed about the case until now is in doubt, the most plausible theories become the least likely.

Camille is certain that he was not followed. Which means that someone came looking for Anne in Montfort because they knew she would be there.

He needs to come up with a different theory. And this time, the possibilities are limited.

Each solution is a name, the name of someone close to Camille, someone close enough to know about his mother’s studio. To know that he is in a relationship with the woman who was brutally beaten during the raid on the jeweller’s.

To know that he was planning to take her there for safety.

Camille racks his brain, but try as he might he can barely come up with a handful of names. If he excludes Armand, who he watched go up in smoke two days ago, the short list is very short indeed.

And it does not include Vincent Hafner, a man he has never met in his life.