Authors: Pierre Lemaitre
“I need to know the extent of Madame Forestier’s injuries,” Camille explains, nodding towards Anne’s room. “The examining magistrate will want to question her . . .”
The on-call doctor tells him this is a matter for the consultant, only he can decide when she will be fit to be questioned.
“I see . . .” Camille nods. “But, will she . . . How is she?”
The doctor is carrying a file containing Anne’s X-rays and her notes, but does not need to consult it, he knows it by heart: her nose is broken (“a clean break that will not require surgery,” he stresses), a fractured collarbone, two broken ribs, sprains to her left wrist and ankle, two broken fingers (also clean breaks) and numerous cuts and contusions to her arms, her legs and her stomach, her right hand suffered a deep cut and although there is no nerve damage, she may need physiotherapy; the long gash down her face is a little more problematic and may leave a permanent scar, she has also sustained serious bruising. Even so, the results of the preliminary scan are encouraging.
“It’s amazing, but there’s no sign of any damage to the neurophysiological or autonomic systems. There are no fractures to the skull, though she will require dental surgery. She may need a plaster cast . . . but we can’t be sure. We’ll know more tomorrow when we do the M.R.I. scan.”
“Is she in pain?” Camille says and quickly adds, “The reason I’m asking is because if the magistrate needs to question her . . .”
“She’s suffering as little as is possible. We have a lot of experience with pain relief.”
Camille manages to smile, stammers his thanks. The doctor gives him a curious look, his eyes are piercing. “He seems unusually emotional for a policeman,” he seems to be thinking. He seems about to question Camille’s professionalism, to ask to see his warrant card again. In the end, he draws on his reserve of compassion.
“It will take time for her to heal,” he says, “the bruises will fade, she may have a couple of minor scars, but Madame . . . [he glances down at his file] Madame Forestier is out of danger and she has suffered no permanent damage. I’d say the main problem now is not dealing with her physical injuries, but dealing with the trauma she will have suffered. We’ll keep her under observation for a day or two. After that . . . well, she may need some support.”
Camille thanks the man again. He should go, there is nothing more for him to do here. But it is out of the question. He is physically incapable of leaving.
*
The right wing of the hospital offers no possible entry, but things are much better on the left-hand side. There is an emergency exit. This is familiar territory. It’s a door like the one in the Monier, a fire-door with a horizontal crash bar that is easily jimmied with a length of flexible metal.
I stand and listen for a minute – which is pointless, since the door is too thick. Never mind. A quick glance around me, slide the metal between the door and the jamb, open it and find myself in a corridor. At the far end is another corridor. I take a few steps, walking boldly, deliberately making noise in case I should bump into someone and seconds later I come to the end of the hallway and emerge behind the reception desk. It’s like hospitals are designed with killers in mind.
On the wall to my right is an emergency evacuation plan. The building is complicated, sections have been remodelled, new wings added – it must be a nightmare for security guards. Especially since people never bother to look at official signs. The hospital should organise an impromptu fire drill some day. To visitors, the sight of an evacuation plan, especially in a hospital, is reassuring . . . It gives the feeling that, however overworked the staff might be, you’re in safe hands. But an intimate knowledge of the emergency evacuation plan is even more useful when you’re faced with a single-minded killer carrying a sawn-off shotgun.
Who cares?
I take out my mobile and snap a picture. The floors are all laid out the same way, since they have to take into account the position of the lift shafts, the conduits and the outflow pipes.
Go back out to the car. Think carefully. Failing to assess the risks is precisely the sort of thing that can mean snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
*
6.45 p.m.
Camille does not turn on the light in Anne’s room, he sits in the half-light on one of the high hospital chairs trying to collect his thoughts. Everything seems to be moving so quickly.
Anne is snoring softly. She has always snored a little, depending on her position. Whenever she becomes aware of it, she feels embarrassed. Today, her face is a mass of bruises, but usually when she blushes, she looks even more beautiful. She has the complexion of a redhead, with tiny, pale freckles visible only when she is embarrassed.
“You don’t snore, you just breathe heavily,” Camille invariably reassures her. “It’s not the same at all.”
She flushes pink, fiddling with her hair to hide her self-consciousness.
“The day you finally recognise my faults as faults,” she smiles, “it’ll be time to call it a day.”
She often casually refers to the time when they will break up. She talks of those moments when they are a couple and those that will occur after they separate as though any difference between them is inconsequential. Camille finds this reassuring. It is the reflexive reaction of a widower, a depressive. He does not know whether he is still a depressive, but he is still a widower. Everything seems less straightforward, less clear-cut since Anne came into his life. They move together towards a future in which time is unknowable, uncertain, endlessly renewed.
“Camille, I’m so sorry . . .”
Anne has just opened her eyes. She articulates each word very deliberately. Despite the leaden vowels, the sibilant consonants, the hand shielding her mouth, Camille understands every word.
“What on earth do you have to be sorry for, darling?”
She gestures towards her mutilated body, it is a gesture that encompasses the hospital bed, the room, Camille, their life together, the world entire.
“Everything . . .”
Her vacant eyes recall the thousand-yard stare of victims who survive a tragedy. Camille reaches for her hand, but he can feel only the splints on her fingers. “You need to get some rest. You’re safe now. I’m here.” As though that means anything. Even overwhelmed by private anguish, he finds himself resorting to the platitudes of his profession. Still he cannot shake off the nagging question of why the man at the Galerie Monier was so intent on killing her. So determined that he has made four separate attempts. There would have been the terrible pressure of the hold-up, things spiralled out of control, but even so . . .
“At the jeweller’s, during the raid . . . did you see or hear anything else?” Camille says.
“Anything else . . . what do you mean?”
No. Nothing. He attempts a smile, but it is less than convincing, he lays his hand on her arm. Let her sleep for now. But she needs to talk to him as soon as possible. Needs to tell him everything, every last detail; there may be something she does not realise she knows. The crucial thing is to find out what.
“Camille . . .”
He bends down towards her.
“I’m so sorry . . .”
“Come on now,” he gently chides her, “that’s enough of that.”
In the half-light of the hospital room, swathed in bandages, her swollen face black with bruises, her ruined mouth, Anne looks terribly ugly. Already Camille can see time pass, see the black, swollen bruises fade to blue, to purplish yellow. He will have to leave, whether he wants to or not. What pains him most are Anne’s tears. They course down her cheeks even when she is asleep.
Camille gets to his feet. This time, he is resolved to go. Besides, there is nothing he can do here. As he leaves, he very carefully closes the door, quietly, as he might the door to a child’s bedroom.
*
6.50 p.m.
Most of the time, the receptionist is snowed under with casualties, but whenever the flood of new patients slows to a trickle, she pops out for a cigarette or two. It’s hardly surprising: to hospital workers, cancer is like a colleague. She stands outside, arms folded, smoking miserably.
This is the perfect opportunity. I dash to the side of the building, open the emergency exit, check the switchboard operator hasn’t come back from her break. I can see her standing outside the glass doors. Three more steps, reach out and there it is, the admissions file. Ask and it shall be given to you.
They keep all medications in the cabinet under lock and key, but patient files are right there for the taking. It’s logical: as a nurse, you assume that danger lies in infection and intoxicants; you’re not expecting an armed robber.
Pickup:
Galerie Monier, 8th arrondissement, Paris
Ambulance Crew:
LR-453
Time of arrival:
10.44 a.m.
Full Name:
Forestier, Anne
Room:
244
D.O.B.:
unknown
Address:
26, rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi
Discharge/Transfer:
decision pending
Ongoing Treatment:
X-Rays, C.T. Scan
Consultant:
T.B.A.
Back out to the car park. The receptionist is lighting another cigarette – I could have taken my time and photocopied the whole patient file.
Room 224. Second floor.
Back in the car, I lay the Mossberg across my lap and stroke it like a pet. I had hoped to find out if and when the patient was being discharged or transferred to a different unit, but no. It’s been a waste of time.
There’s a lot at stake here, a hell of a lot. And given all the planning I’ve had to do to get this far, I’m not about to blow this deal by taking my eye off the ball.
I take out my mobile, study the picture of the floor plan and realise no-one really knows the warren of passageways and corridors in the hospital. It’s like one of those “Magic Eye” pictures – turn it one way and it looks a little like a folded star, turn it around again and it’s a polygon, turn it again and it’s a skull. Not exactly subtle for a hospital.
It doesn’t matter. I reckon I should be able to take the emergency stairs to the second floor and from there, room 224 is only about ten metres away. I’ll need to be a bit more creative about my getaway – up one floor, down the hall, take the stairs to the fourth floor, past neurosurgery, through three sets of double doors, take the lift down to the reception desk, twenty paces from the emergency exit, then a long route through the car park to the car. I don’t mind making a big entrance, but when I leave, I like to make a discreet exit.
There’s still the possibility that she’ll be transferred. If so I’d be better off sitting tight. Now I know her name, I can just call for any news.
I look up the number for the hospital and dial.
Press 1, press 2, it’s all so laborious. The Mossberg is altogether more efficient.
*
7.30 p.m.
Having not set foot in the office all day, Camille calls Louis for an update. Right now, the team are dealing with a transvestite who has been strangled, a dead German tourist, probably a suicide, a driver stabbed in a road-rage incident, a homeless man who bled to death in the basement of a gym, a teenage junkie fished out of the sewer in the 13th and a crime of passion to which a suspect has confessed – the suspect is seventy-one. Camille listens, he gives instructions, authorises tactics, but he is not really there. Thankfully, Louis can take care of the day-to-day running of the squad.
By the time he hangs up, Camille can barely remember a word that was said. The only thing that seems clear is the terrible damage inflicted.
Pausing to take stock, he assesses his own situation. He has put himself in a difficult position: he has lied to the
commissaire
about a non-existent informant, lied to his superior officers, even given a false name at the Préfecture de Police, all so that this case would be assigned to him.
To make matters worse, he is involved in a relationship with the primary victim, who also happens to be the key witness in an armed robbery which is directly linked to an earlier heist in which a man was murdered.
Coldly considering the sequence of events, this series of rash decisions unworthy of an officer of his experience, he is appalled. He feels like a prisoner of his choices, his impulses. He has been a complete idiot: he is behaving as though he has no faith in his colleagues, a dangerous thing for a man with precious little faith in himself. He is incapable of outstripping himself and so is forced to do what he can do. In this case he has allowed his intuition, usually his greatest asset, to turn to emotion, to recklessness, to blind anger.
His behaviour seems all the more ludicrous given that the case is not all that complicated. A gang of thugs about to commit an armed robbery bump into Anne, she sees their faces, they beat her senseless and drag her with them to the jeweller’s in case she gets any silly ideas about making a run for it – which, in the end, is precisely what she tries to do. The man acting as lookout fires his shotgun, misses, and when he tries to fire again his accomplice intervenes. They decide to take their haul and get out. Driving along the rue Georges-Flandrin, the man with the shotgun has one last unexpected opportunity, but there is an argument between him and his accomplices and it is this which saves Anne’s life.
The man’s savage determination seems terrifying, but he was caught up in the fury of the moment, he targeted Anne simply because she was there.
Now, the die is cast.
The robbers will be far away by now – they are hardly likely to hang around. With the haul they took, they can go anywhere they like, they are spoiled for choice.