Dead Horsemeat

Night of Thursday 19 October 1989

At 10 p.m., the bugged horse lorry leaves Thirard’s stable. Romero, Daquin and Le Dem, who has come to join them after work, follow it at a distance as it heads for Paris. Lavorel stays in the vicinity of Thirard’s place, and the new boys return to HQ.

The lorry turns onto the Paris ring road at Porte de la Chapelle. Takes the exit for the motorway to the south. Two Drugs Squad cars join the one being driven by Romero. They drive in convoy, keeping a good distance. Speed between ninety and a hundred kilometres an hour, two men in the lorry, nothing to report.

At thirty-five minutes past midnight, the lorry turns into a service station, heading for the petrol pumps. Now’s the moment. Bullet-proof vests, guns at the ready. This is it, thinks Le Dem, it’s war. I can’t do this. I’m scared, but it’s exciting, for sure. One of the Drugs Squad cars drives past the service station and positions itself so as to block off the exit onto the motorway. The other two cars drive slowly onto the forecourt. The lorry pulls up by a diesel pump, a man gets down and starts filling up. Romero draws up alongside the lorry on the other side of the pump. The third car screeches to a halt under the nose of the lorry, blocking its path. It’s the signal. All the inspectors leap out brandishing their guns. Romero points his gun at the man standing by the pump, Daquin just has time to open the passenger door and fling the man to the ground, when a third man whom nobody had spotted – he’d probably been sleeping in the back – begins spraying the cops’ cars with a submachine gun in one hand, while with the other he wrenches the gears into reverse and the lorry roars off with a screech of tyres. The cops shoot at the lorry, causing it to sway. The horses are whinnying and kicking against the sides, the lorry accelerates, leaving behind it rivulets of blood on the road. Diesel gushes from the blasted pump, spreads on the asphalt, stinking, slippery. And flammable. Total bedlam. Vehicles damaged, two cops wounded, one of the crooks lying on the ground, the other takes to his heels. The lorry gathers speed and – instinct or quick thinking – reverses back up the slip road instead of heading for the exit. Daquin lets out a yell and rushes after the fugitive. A shadow running, too far away. He pulls out his gun from deep in his jacket pocket. Just the time to think one day this thing’s going to go off in my face, and he shoots. The shadow vaults the fence and disappears. Daquin spots a dark stain on the asphalt, feels it with his fingertips, it’s wet and sticky, sniffs. Fresh blood. A piece of luck, he’s wounded, definitely not by me. Walks up to the fence, which is sagging a little. On the other side, a ploughed field. He goes back to the service station. Le Dem drags the wounded men out of range of the diesel jet. The third team pursues the lorry on the motorway, shooting at the tyres and bursting two. The lorry swerves and crashes into the central reservation. Barely slowing down, the cars and HGVs weave around them to avoid the shooting and the accident. In the service station, the drivers who’ve stopped to refuel see the bullet-riddled cars, two injured men and another in handcuffs lying on the ground, stare round-eyed and drive off without pausing. The service station manager has switched off all the lights.

‘Romero, take someone with you and bring me back the third man, dead or alive. I’d rather have him alive, but dead will do. That way, the field over there.’

A lengthy and thorough search of the ploughed field. Hard work advancing over the furrows, and it is a very dark night, far from the lights of the capital. Cautious approach towards a dark mass slumped in a hollow. The man has lost consciousness.

When the two cops return carrying the injured man like a sack, they find the service station looking like the aftermath of an urban war. Police cars and fire engines everywhere, blue lights revolving ominously. The damaged lorry has been towed back to the service station forecourt by a breakdown truck. The fire-fighters have stemmed the diesel leak and are pouring mountains of sand around the pumps. The fumes are suffocating. The two injured cops and Romero’s prisoner are driven off in an ambulance and the two other prisoners locked in an armoured van with barred windows. Four horses have been herded together on a square patch of grass a little way away, and two dead horses are lying in a pool of blood a little to one side.

‘They were very badly injured, one had the jugular severed and the other, two broken legs. I put them out of their misery,’ says Le Dem.

‘Don’t apologise,’ says Daquin. ‘As long as you haven’t finished off our colleagues…’ Romero gives a nervous laugh. And now, we have to find the cocaine. By 5 a.m. at the latest. We’ve got three hours left.’

The remaining Drugs Squad cops start pulling the lorry apart. Engine, wheels, petrol tank, seats, chassis, the lining of the bodywork. Nothing. They become increasingly edgy. The receiving device has been destroyed by bullets, but when the lorry turned into the service station, the cocaine was still on board. Or at least the bugs were. A shudder of anxiety.

Le Dem, standing aloof, gazes at the bodies of the horses.

‘Get up off your ass Le Dem and come and help us.’

He appears not to hear but leans over the croup of one of the dead horses and lifts its tail.

‘This is where the coke is.’ Daquin and Romero come over. ‘Look, it’s a mare. Her vulva’s been sewn up.’

Le Dem crouches down, takes his Opinel knife out of his pocket, cuts the thread, thrusts his arm into the mare’s vagina up to his shoulder and brings out a blood-streaked plastic sachet full of compressed powder. There is a huge sense of relief. Daquin sits down on a kerb. Romero gives the bloodstained Le Dem a hug.

‘What do you feel like, a butcher or a midwife?’

Then he goes over to a car phone, forcing himself to speak calmly. It is twenty past four. Lavorel’s on the other end.

‘It’s over. We’ve got the goods and the delivery men.’

‘Can we launch phase three?’

‘We can.’

At 6 a.m., a team from the Drugs Squad picks the lock of the empty Transitex office and swarms in. Another arrests the Dragovich cousins and carries out a search of the racecourse, and a third quietly picks up the vet from his home.

At the same time, a young investigating magistrate accompanied by Lavorel and ten men as backup rings the bell of Thirard’s house, a traditional-style stone farmhouse, away from the stables. After a while, Thirard comes down.

‘Open up. Police.’

Thirard opens the door. He must have been in the middle of getting dressed. He’s wearing jodhpurs, T-shirt and a smoking jacket. Lavorel stares at him intrigued. Calm, unperturbed, a totally expressionless face. The man Le Dem admires. Thirard checks their search warrant, then politely stands aside to allow the magistrate and police officers inside.

The search progresses without incident and without yielding anything of interest. Thirard lives alone in a comfortable house whose rustic style has been fairly well preserved, but without much personality. Nothing to report. Lavorel’s bored.

Up to the office, which is in the converted attic. A huge bay dormer window has been put in the roof, and in front of it, stretching the entire length of the room, is a table. When he works there, Thirard has an unrestricted view of his stables. On the table is a computer, diskette boxes, and underneath, columns of drawers. Obsessive tidiness, not a scrap of paper or a pen lying around, not a speck of dust. While Lavorel opens drawers, Thirard sits down in a fauve leather armchair in a corner, and doesn’t say a word. He waits, without impatience, and seems barely interested. Lavorel soon finds the records of his horse dealings. Kept with extraordinary meticulousness. Names of the horses, identification numbers, amounts, names of buyers consortia and vendors. Bank statements showing commissions paid and transfers, most of them to banks in Luxembourg. Same for the administration of his stables. Salaries, social security contributions, the horses’ upkeep, VAT calculations. Everything seems to be accounted for down to the last cent. There are also the insurance policies for the horses, with Pama, and the payments of the premiums. They all died one or two months before their insurance policy expired, what organisation… and the compensation paid out by Pama. Watertight in the event of a tax inspection, and Thirard above suspicion. As long as one is unaware that part of his horse dealing is quite purely and simply fictitious. A glance at Thirard. Touching, in a way, this obsessive neatness and his determination to be above board. What would Le Dem say? Trying to convince himself that Thirard is truly, and solely, a major horse dealer? The magistrate orders some of the files to be taken away in boxes.

Lavorel carries on searching. Standing against the back wall is a big, heavy iron cupboard with a sophisticated lock system.

‘It’s open,’ says Thirard.

So it is. At the back are five empty post sacks. And a sixth, tied up with a simple piece of string, which Lavorel undoes: stuffed with banknotes, small denominations of lire and dollars. On the outward journey, cocaine, on the return, money to launder. Put it through the bureaux de change leaving no evidence, then the half-laundered cash is paid into the various bank accounts without any difficulty. In this business, aren’t the majority of payments in cash? It will be harder to establish whether some of the cash has stayed in France, and what it has been used for, or whether everything has gone back to the Italian partners. Need to dig further. Thirard hasn’t moved a muscle. The sack of notes and the empty bags join the accounts files in the boxes to be taken away.