Mister Memory Page 16

  He has not spoken to anyone about what he told Cavard, and he has not spoken to Cavard himself again either, on any matter. They have passed in the corridors of the Sûreté from time to time, and it may have been Petit’s imagining, or it may have been true, that Cavard gave him a glance intended to make him keep his silence. Maybe it’s just his weak, squinting eyesight.

  Cavard’s words of warning finally wrought a change in Petit’s mind, and he has dropped the non-case of Marcel and Ondine Després. Not only that, but he is glad of it; he’s found that since he managed to put it from his mind, his torment over Marie has lessened slightly. He has applied himself with great diligence to his duties, and made two arrests in the past week alone. Any more of that success, he knows, and he will start to upset people; other detectives for one. So he has been playing it quiet, doing his work, and not thinking about anything other than his current assignments.

  He works on various cases, all of which would give Boissenot apoplectic joy if he knew about them, for all of them do indeed contain elements of unnecessary violence that seems to him to herald the end of days. Petit doesn’t see it quite that way; he just thinks that people seem to be particularly desperate as the year (and the century!) winds towards its conclusion. Desperation can make all sorts of people do all sorts of notably unusual things, of that he is sure.

  Somehow he has got dragged into the investigation of a spate of murders around Montmartre. The deaths are connected to the Apaches – the various gangs of wild villains who live continually on the edge of the law. Most often, the gangs operate a live and let live policy, and prey on ‘civilians’, particularly tourists come to see the sights of Pigalle. But now there appears to be a vendetta of sorts between two of the gangs, sparked by an argument over a prostitute’s turf. One of the Apaches’ most lucrative sidelines is pimping their girls on the streets; one of them wandered on to some other girl’s turf. This second girl had a knife, and slashed the interloper across her face. She was in turn shot, and that murder generated a series of reciprocal killings, culminating the week before in a shootout between the police and the gangs in Rue d’Orsel.

  Cornered in a dilapidated apartment, the Apaches put aside their differences for an hour or so and combined forces to plug away at a group of twenty armed officers and five inspectors, Petit among them. Law and order eventually won the day, but not without the loss of men on both sides. Petit distinguished himself again with some fine shooting, which only caused Drouot later to wonder if it’s the fact that they have to buy their own ammunition that makes Petit such a good shot.

  After these excitements, Petit is looking forward to a week where he barely leaves his office, and writes up innumerable reports. He has a vision of these reports: as he looks around him at his fellows, all scribbling away, into his mind’s eye comes an image of the paperwork making its way down to the basement archives, where he very much doubts that anyone will ever look at it again, unless in the future some poor dummy like him gets into trouble and is sent to do ‘hard labour’.

  What’s the point? he asks himself, though he knows what the point is: to catch criminals and to record the process of doing so in the hope that these recordings will aid that very process.

  So life has started anew for Petit, although Marie is never far from his mind. He still finds he cannot look at a woman with anything other than disinterest. In the past, he might have felt desire, now he feels emptiness. And if he sees an especially pretty girl, Marie floats into his mind and everything closes down again. Despite this, life is as good for Petit as it has been for some time, and that is why it’s deeply annoying when, one day and out of the blue, his mind is opened up once more, and turmoil injected into it.

  Following up on some interviews over the Apache shootout, he finds his colleague Drouot sighing over another case in Pigalle.

  ‘I just don’t have the time for this!’ he complains, and when Petit asks what is so vexing, Drouot whines about having to visit the burglary of some tin-pot photographer off the Rue Lepic.

  Petit’s heart pauses momentarily, just to be sure that Petit understands what a big event has occurred.

  As calmly as he can, he makes an offer to Drouot. ‘I could take that on for you, if you like. I’m nearly done with my reports on the Apaches.’

  ‘You are?’ says Drouot. ‘I thought you—’

  ‘No. No, I’m done. Here. Give me that file, won’t you?’

  So Petit finds his way back to Baraduc’s lair once more, and his heart is full of things to say, as well as skipping every third beat with some good reason.

  When Petit arrives at Baraduc’s studio, he finds the place in chaos. There are two workmen in the doorway; the door is hanging loose. Beyond it, Petit can already see that the whole place has been turned upside down: burgled, perhaps, ransacked, certainly.

  There is a gardien standing a little further down the hallway, whom Petit questions after showing him his Sûreté card, keeping his thumb half over his name in an attempt to avoid further questions at the station.

  Yesterday, the gardien explains, Baraduc’s landlord came to call and found the place almost as Petit sees it now. Chairs overturned, drawers rifled through. A burglary, the landlord assumed, but then, the expensive photographic equipment was left behind. There is, however, a massive safe, far too large to move without heavy winching gear. From fresh-looking scrapes around the lock, a failed attempt to open it has been made.

  Petit raises his eyebrows at that news. Whoever it was, they were looking for something, and he suspects that they were looking for the very same thing he is: information, in the form of photographs.

  And Baraduc? The photographer is missing, says the gardien, hasn’t been seen since before the discovery.

  ‘Who’s been here since? Apart from you?’ asks Petit.

  ‘No one,’ says the gardien. ‘Just taken shifts with the other boys.’

  ‘Good,’ says Petit.

  Petit sends the gardien to call for the locksmith. While he waits, he drifts around the studio, looking for places in which a photograph or two might be concealed. He tries a few things, but none of them produces any results, and eventually he feels a little silly.

  As he waits for the locksmith, he wonders why Baraduc has gone missing. If he was found in the studio by the thieves, they would presumably have forced him to open the safe. So it is reasonable to assume that Baraduc found the mess later, and then decided to clear out. Maybe get out of Paris for good. That would seem like a smart plan. If that is the case, Petit reasons, whatever the burglars were after will presumably have been removed by Baraduc before he fled.

  Eventually, grumbling about his interrupted lunch, the locksmith appears. It’s frightening how little time it takes him to open the safe, and when he does, he clears off immediately, leaving Petit alone with the contents, which are nothing.

  Nothing of importance. Nothing worth having such a beast of a safe for. He concludes that Baraduc did indeed clear out, though in a hurry, or he would have taken his camera equipment with him too.

  It is as he is hanging his head in frustration that Petit sees what he missed before: the corner of a thick piece of paper lying in the shadows under the safe.

  He picks it up.

  A single photograph.

  For the very first, and almost certainly the last time in his career as a detective, Petit marvels that he has actually found a clue. A clue, something to help him solve this case. Not something he has paid for, or bribed someone for, or coerced someone for, but an actual, genuine clue.

  It is a scene of debauchery: a darkened space, with illumination from candles placed at the tips of large eight-pointed stars hanging from the ceiling. By this light, Petit sees an altar of sorts, though the cross hanging above it is upside down. On the altar, lying backward with her face hanging upside down towards the camera, is a totally naked girl, her legs spread to allow access to a naked man, who it must be presumed has his penis inside her, though that cannot actually be seen.
>
  Around them stand numbers of men and young women. Some of the men are clothed in odd robes bearing weird symbols, others are naked. One or two are aroused. All the women are naked, some with symbols painted on their skin, others wearing horned headdresses. All these figures are watching the activity of the man and girl at the altar.

  The girl, well, it’s hard to be sure, but she might just possibly be Ondine Badiou. The man, it’s easy to be certain, is Prefect Paul Delorme.

  Petit leaves the studio, wishing to leave as little impression of himself on the gardien as he can, and slips away down the Rue Lepic. He is lost in thought, but even if he were not, it’s doubtful he would have noticed the two men who come out of the Impasse Marie Blanche and who begin to follow him. At the corner of Place Blanche, they are joined by a third man. No words are exchanged between them, but as the first two men turn and make their way back to the studio, the third man starts to follow Inspector Petit along the boulevard.

  EROS IN SECRET

  This damn photograph. There is a meeting that very afternoon, immediately after its discovery. He risks arriving late in order to stop in a café at the bottom of the Rue Montmartre, where he installs himself in the quietest corner. He has slipped the photograph into an envelope he found on Baraduc’s desk, and now he resists the burning urge to open it once more until the waiter has been and gone, and returned again with his coffee.

  In the meantime he stares across the café trying to pretend that the photograph is not screaming at him, demanding him to witness its depravity and vice. As the waiter returns, he nods with a smile that is calculated to invite no lingering or friendly banter. It succeeds, and so with due care Petit slides out the photograph again, leaving its edge still nestling in the thick card envelope, ready to be slid back in at a moment’s need. Indeed, as an unknown customer suddenly bowls out of the toilets, banging a swing door as he does so, Petit manages to slip the photograph back inside with impressive haste, but also then somehow sends the whole thing skidding across the wooden floor, where it lands almost under the feet of the customer.

  The customer stops and picks it up and with a polite nod hands it back to Petit, who cannot even force a smile of thanks in return. His heart heaves. The man leaves and Petit breathes out a long sigh, after which he steels himself and stares at the picture. Now he can clearly see that it’s Ondine and the Prefect. Petit does not know whether to laugh or be sick. That fake! What a façade of deception he has created, Petit thinks. How he likes to promote himself: the straight, upstanding pillar of law and order. The family man! Banging away at this courtesan, which is merely to say a well-paid prostitute, and worse, what is all this symbolism around them? The altar, the inverted cross, the animal horns? It clearly signifies blasphemous acts, worship of unholy beasts, evil deities, but this is an area Petit knows nothing about. Still, it is enough to know that Delorme’s career would be over in a moment should the right people hear of it. But there, thinks Petit, is an issue. Who are the right people? This question occurs to him because as he looks more closely, he sees that there are onlookers in the photograph. Lurking in the background, shadowy faces. With a crawling sensation, he has the feeling that he knows some of the other men present, that he has seen their faces, either around the Palais de Justice, or as engravings in the newspapers. He has a feeling that one man, with a neat white beard and somewhat overweight, is a politician, and he curses himself that he isn’t better at remembering faces and hasn’t been more interested in politics in his life to date. But then, the photograph is so unclear, really these other people might be anyone.

  He slides the photograph away from him, quickly. Why does he feel guilty? Why the shame? He is merely doing his duty as a policeman, and if that means looking—

  He stops. He will think no more about that. For now, he drains the coffee in a gulp, leaves a coin on the counter as he makes his way out, and rushes down to the river, to meetings, pointless interviews and, always, paperwork. Though it is a dull and thankless day, he is glad of a mountain of work to climb, because he does not want to think about the photograph, about what it has shown him, about what it means.

  Despite his best efforts, he cannot help thinking about it, and once he even takes the envelope out of his bottom drawer to a toilet stall, trying to identify the men’s faces. Still, he doesn’t recognise anyone other than Ondine and Delorme, but he has the strongest feeling that these are important men, powerful men.

  By the end of the day, he is so tired that he finds he doesn’t want to do anything but go and drink some wine somewhere where nobody knows him, and then crawl home.

  He feels the photograph burning its way through the envelope. He has felt its presence continually, even when he dared to leave it unattended in his desk drawer. Now, it feels like an urgent demand or a nagging tooth; saying, For God’s sake do something.

  He tries to ignore this voice, but he does not succeed.

  AT THE QUAI DES ORFÈVRES

  Petit now has a theory. It’s simple and he likes it. His problem is that he has no one to tell it to.

  He considers, for a long time, telling Drouot, the closest thing he has to a friend in the force. One day, as another weekend approaches, he invites Drouot to join him for lunch in a brasserie on the Place du Châtelet. He spends the whole meal trying to work around to telling his friend what he knows, or what he suspects, and only succeeds in sending a salt cellar spilling across the table. Drouot can tell something is even more amiss with his clumsy colleague than usual, but since he’s getting a free lunch out of it, he decides not to care too much. By the time he gets up to leave, announcing he has a busy afternoon ahead of him, Petit is no closer to a confession.

  He doesn’t go straight back to the office.

  Crossing the Pont au Change, and then the Île de la Cité, he slips down the stone ramp from the Quai des Orfèvres to the quayside itself, and wanders along, watching the drab olive water pushing by. In the little park at the tip of the island he finds an unoccupied bench beyond the trees, and stares down the length of the Seine, waiting for the water to bring him answers. The water, however, is flowing away from him, taking all possible answers with it.

  He cannot tell Drouot, he decides. Tell anyone what he thinks, anyone in his department, and it will be the talk of the building before the day is done. It will be the subject of gossip and rumour and, whatever happens, he will come off worse for it. If he is going to tell anyone at all, he decides, he has to be bold. There is only one man he can share his thoughts with. The only problem is that not only is Petit scared of him, he has a very strong suspicion that he, Petit, deeply irritates his intended target. Cavard.

  René Cavard, Chef de la Sûreté. Chief Inspector of the Judicial Police.

  At the end of the day, Petit ambushes Cavard as he leaves his office.

  ‘May I walk you out of the building, sir?’ he asks.

  Cavard breaks stride for a moment.

  ‘Very well,’ he says, then, after a pause. ‘Very well, Petit. What is it this time?’

  Cavard sets off again at a brisk pace and Petit hurries after him.

  ‘I have something,’ he begins. He stops.

  ‘You do?’

  Petit nods. They pass through a doorway and Petit keeps his mouth shut as they pass other people making their way home.

  ‘Listen, Petit. You and I got off on the wrong foot. Or, rather, you did. Twice. I am not as bad as you think. Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind?’

  Petit looks at Cavard and wonders if it’s true that he’s not so bad. He knows that he is well liked by the majority of his men, that he has the familiar touch of the common man, despite his elevated position. It’s just that his eyes never waver, never give anything away. He seems permanently to scowl at Petit, but maybe that’s just his face, maybe it’s because he has weak eyes.

  ‘Could I talk to you outside the building, sir?’ asks Petit, and Cavard grunts.

  ‘It’s Friday evening and my wife is most unhappy i
f I’m not home on time on Friday evening. Such of course is the lot of the policeman, but Friday is the worst day on which to offend. According to my wife.’

  Petit nods energetically. He wonders again whether he has made the right decision. One thing above all else tells him he has: the enmity that he witnessed between Cavard and Prefect Delorme. No love lost. Nothing for Petit to lose, either, except his job. But he doubts it will come to that.

  So he tells him.

  He tells Cavard his theory: that something lay behind the decision from the Prefect’s office, from the Prefect himself, in fact, to move Després from police care into the asylum at Salpêtrière. A decision that was taken very, very quickly, by the one man able to make it, and by a man, moreover, who had something to hide. Possibly.

  He tells Cavard these suspicions, and places his final card on top of those he has played already: his one concrete piece of evidence: that Delorme and Ondine Badiou shared the same photographer, a noted pornographer, who incidentally, he adds, has gone missing. Whose studio was ransacked, just as the Després apartment was also ransacked. Too much for coincidence.

  ‘Someone is looking for something, sir. Something they want hidden. Such as this.’

  He puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out the envelope with the photograph. It would be a rational fear for Delorme: that there may have been copies of photographs such as this one in the apartment. That would be enough reason to have the place searched.

  There is nothing else to be done. He hands the envelope to Cavard.

  Cavard has listened in deepening silence throughout this exposition, and now stares at Petit in silence. Then, without even a glance at the envelope or its contents, he lifts his head to the world around them. They have left the Palais de Justice and all its unreality behind them and the thronging everyday Paris busies itself around them.

  ‘That’s my bus,’ Cavard says, nodding down the street.