Dead Horsemeat

Saturday 28 October 1989

Daquin, clean shaven in a towelling bathrobe, is sprawled on the sofa drinking coffee. Sonny Rollins, for a bit of rhythm while he lets his mind roam. Take stock of the situation. Not easy. Internal investigation: of no importance, for show. But the photos… Michel’s murder… If I don’t solve this, I may as well hand in my notice. I’ve already been semi-retired. A holiday… What do I have left? Romero and Lavorel. My inspectors. Daydreams for a moment. If I go, they’ll go too. Lenglet was always suggesting I join him in the Middle East. The four of us would have made a good team. Too late. Notes that the memory of Lenglet is no longer painful. Gets up, makes a coffee and stretches out on the sofa again.

Let’s go over it all again. Romero, Lavorel, and the Martian too. With them, there’s one possible point of impact, the business with the chauffeur. That’s solid. We simply have to choose the right moment to pounce. My trump card.

And then there’s Annick Renouard. At this point, Sonny Rollins no longer fits the bill. Daquin puts on Thelonious Monk in concert in London and sprawls on the sofa again. Amazing Monk, discordant Annick. Image: Amélie’s head on his shoulder, the smell of hash, our generation is a bit off the wall. Annick’s sure of herself but she’s afraid of me. Why? Use that fear? Daquin pictures Annick leaning forward, seductive smile, husky voice. This woman can stand on her own two feet. If I try to get past her by sheer force, she’ll resist, and the outcome is uncertain. Michel, of course, Michel. I’ve got her. Daquin goes upstairs to get dressed.

Taxi to the clinic at Le Vésinet, a magnificent white nineteenth-century villa surrounded by gardens, trees and lawns interspersed with flowerbeds. A nurse shows Daquin up to the second floor, waxed parquet floors.

‘How is she?’

‘So-so.’ A dismissive shrug. ‘Drugged up to the eyeballs. She’s going home tomorrow, but don’t tire her out.’

‘Don’t worry.’

The nurse knocks on the door, shows Daquin in and leaves them. A small room, simplicity and comfort. Annick is sitting by the window looking out over the garden. She slowly turns her head, looks at Daquin, surprised to see him there. He’s wearing a dark grey heavy corduroy suit with a round neck over a cashmere sweater. Not exactly the same man as in his office.

‘Sit down, Superintendent, and tell me what you’re doing here.’

‘I’ve come to find out how you are…’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

Her face hollow and pale, her pupils like pinholes, her speech and movements sluggish. And fully in control. Daquin smiles at her.

‘… and to talk to you about Michel.’

‘I saw Inspector Bourdier yesterday.’ Very curt. ‘I told him everything I had to say. It’s finished. I don’t want to talk to you about him.’

‘I’ve come to talk to you about Michel. Not the murder.’

‘His life is none of your business.’

‘It is, in a way. I spent a whole night with him, last week.’ She stares at him fixedly, without budging. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in? ‘I had sex with him, if you prefer. He enjoyed it very much, and so did I.’

She closes her eyes, still sitting motionless, opens them again after a moment, and says in the same slow, confident voice, as if stating the obvious:

‘I must have been wrong about you. You’re not a rapist cop.’

Daquin is surprised. Feels like telling her that it is perfectly possible to rape a boy. Flashback: he’s thirteen, it’s the year his mother died. Strangely, he is unable to remember the rapist’s features precisely. Just a moustache. The memory that is still etched in his mind today, just as acutely, is that of his own face, pushed down into the earth and the dead leaves, the taste of mud in his mouth, the smell of the earth, the suffocating sensation, the earth burning his eyes. Turns back to Annick. What experience does she have of rapist cops? Wait. Let it come out when she’s ready.

After a while, she continues:

‘Why do you say that?’

‘So that you know you are not alone.’ Daquin gets to his feet. ‘I’ll be off, you must be tired.’

‘Thank you for coming.’

Week-end with his family in Saint-Denis for Lavorel. His wife is a primary school teacher and town councillor. She raises their two daughters aged five and three competently and efficiently. The three of them form an organised, united trio who greet him warmly when he arrives. But he always feels like a tourist in his own home. His true life is elsewhere, it begins somewhere around Quai des Orfèvres. Long may it last. A few phone calls to his friends in the Fraud Squad to find a contact in Munich.