Blood-Red Rivers aka The Crimson Rivers

CHAPTER 7

At dawn that same day, at a distance of two hundred and thirty miles due west, Police Lieutenant Karim Abdouf had just finished reading a criminology thesis about the use of genetic sampling in cases of rape and murder. The six-hundred-page door-stopper had kept him up practically all night. He now looked at the figures on his quartz alarm clock as it rang: 07.00.

Karim sighed, flung the thesis across the floor, then went into the kitchen to make some black tea. He returned to his living-room – which was also his dining-room and bedroom – and stared out at the shadows through the bay window. Forehead pressed against the pane, he evaluated his chances of being able to conduct a genetic enquiry in the one-horse town to which he had been transferred. They were zero.

The young second-generation Arab looked at the street-lights, which were still nailing down the dark wings of the night. Bitterness knotted his throat. Even when up to his ears in crime, he had always managed to avoid prison. And now, here he was, twenty-nine years old, a cop, and banged up in the lousiest prison of them all: a small provincial town, as boring as shit, in the midst of a rocky plain. A prison with neither walls nor bars. A psychological prison which was gnawing away at his soul.

Karim started daydreaming. He saw himself nicking serial killers, thanks to analyses of DNA and specialised software, just like in American movies. He imagined himself leading a team of scientists who were studying the genetic map of the criminal type. After much research and statistical analysis, the specialists isolated a sort of rupture, a flaw somewhere in the spiral of chromosomes, and identified this split as the key to the criminal mentality. Some time ago, there had already been mention of a double Y chromosome which was supposed to be characteristic of murderers. But this had turned out to be a false lead. Nevertheless, in Karim's daydream, another "spelling mistake" was located in the set of letters which made up the genetic code. And this discovery had been made thanks to Karim and his relentless arrests. A shudder suddenly ran through him. He knew that if such a "flaw" existed, then it was also coursing round his veins.

The word "orphan" had never meant much to Karim. You could miss only what you had experienced and he had never had anything which could even remotely be described as a family. His earliest memories were of a patch of lino and a black-and-white TV in the Rue Maurice-Thorez children's home in Nanterre. Karim had grown up in the midst of a colorless, graceless neighborhood. Detached houses rubbed shoulders with the tower blocks, patches of wasteland gradually turned into housing estates. And he could still remember those games of hide-and-seek with the building sites that were little by little gobbling up the wild nature of his childhood.

Karim was a lost child. Or a foundling. It all depended on which way round you looked at it. Whichever, he had never known his parents and nothing in the education that he subsequently received had served to remind him of his origins. He could not speak Arabic very well and had only the vaguest knowledge of Islam. The adolescent had rapidly rejected his guardians – the careers in the home, whose simplicity and general niceness made him want to puke – and had given himself over to the streets.

He had then discovered Nanterre, a limitless territory crisscrossed by broad avenues, dotted with massive housing estates, factories and local government offices, and populated by a sheepish crowd dressed in rumpled old clothes and who expected no tomorrows. But degradation shocks only the rich. Karim did not even notice the poverty that characterised the town from the tiniest brick to people's deeply wrinkled faces.

His adolescent memories were happy ones. The time of punk rock, of "No Future". Thirteen years old. His first pals. And first dates. Oddly enough, in the loneliness and torments of adolescence, Karim stumbled across a reason to love and to share. After his orphaned childhood, his difficult teenage years gave him a second chance to find himself, open up to others and to the outside world. Even today, Karim could still remember those times with a total clarity. The long hours spent in bars, pushing and shoving over a pinball machine, laughing with his buddies. The endless daydreams, throat in a knot, thinking about a girl he had spotted on the steps at school.

But the suburbs were hiding their true nature. Abdouf had always known that Nanterre was a sad dead-end place. He now discovered that the streets were violent, even lethal.

One Friday evening, a gang burst into the café of the swimming pool, which was open late. Without a word, they kicked the manager's face in, then bottled him. An old story of refused entry, or a beer not paid for, no one knew any more. And no one had lifted a finger. But the stifled cries of the man beneath the counter became resonant echoes in Karim's nerves. That night, things were explained to him. Names, places, rumors. He got a glimpse of another world, the existence of which he had not even suspected. A world peopled by ultra-violent beings, inaccessible estates, bloodstained cellars. On another occasion, just before a concert on Rue de l'Ancienne Mairie, a fight had turned into a slaughter. The tribes were out once again. Karim had seen kids rolling on the asphalt, their faces split open, and girls hiding under cars, their hair sticky with blood.

As he got older, he no longer recognised his town. A tidal wave was swamping it. Everyone spoke in admiration of Victor, a boy from the Cameroons who jacked up on the roofs of the estate. Of Marcel, a nasty piece of work, with a pock-marked face and a blue beauty spot tattooed on his forehead, like an Indian, who had been put away several times for beating up cops. Of Jamel and Said who had held up the Caisse d'Epargne. On his way out of school, Karim would sometimes notice these youths. He was struck by their haughty nobility. They were not vulgar, uneducated or coarse. No, they were aristocratic, elegant, with ardent eyes and studied gestures.

He chose his camp. He started out by stealing car radios, then cars and so became truly financially independent. He hung out with the drugged-out Black, his "brothers" the bank robbers, and especially Marcel, a footloose, scary and brutal person, who ran wild from dawn to dusk, but who could also distance himself from the suburbs in a way which fascinated Karim. Marcel, a peroxide skinhead, wore fur-lined jackets and listened to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies. He lived in squats and read Blaise Cendrars. He called Nanterre "the octopus" and, as Karim knew, invented for himself a whole set of excuses and explanations for his future, inevitable fall. Strangely enough, this suburban being revealed to Karim the existence of another life, one beyond the suburbs.

The orphan swore that, one day, he would make it his.

While continuing his thieving, he studied hard at school, which surprised everybody. He took Thai boxing lessons – to protect himself from others and from himself, for he was occasionally gripped by uncontrollable fits of violent rage. His destiny had now become a tightrope, along which he walked without losing his balance. Around him, the dark swamps of delinquency and debauchery were swallowing everything up. Karim was seventeen. He was alone again. Silence surrounded him when he walked across the hall of the adolescents' home, or when he had a coffee in the school café, sitting next to the pinball machines. No one dared wind him up. By that stage, he had already been selected for the regional Thai boxing championships. Everyone knew that Karim Abdouf could break your nose with a flick of his foot and with his hands still flat on the zinc counter. Other stories also went round, about hold-ups, drug deals, epic fights…

Most of these rumors were unfounded, but they meant that Karim was pretty much left alone. He passed his exams with flying colors. He was even congratulated by the headmaster and suddenly realised that this authoritarian man was also frightened of him. The kid enrolled in Nanterre University to study law. At that time, he was stealing two cars a month. Since he knew several fences, he constantly swapped them around. He was certainly the only second-generation Arab on the estate who had never been arrested, or even bothered by the police. And he still had not used drugs, of any sort.

At twenty-one, Karim passed his law degree. What now? Lawyers would not take on a six-feet-six tall Arab, as slim as a rake, with a goatee, dreadlocks and his ears full of rings, even as a messenger boy. One way or the other, Karim was going to end up on Welfare and find himself right back at square one. Never. So carry on stealing cars? More than anything else, Karim loved those secret hours of the night, the silence of parking lots, the waves of adrenaline that ran through him as he foiled the security systems in BMWs. He realised that he was never going to be able to give up that inscrutable, heightened existence, a tissue of risk and mystery. He also realised that, sooner or later, his luck was going to run out.

It was then that he had a revelation: he would become a cop. He would then live in that same arcane universe, but sheltered from the laws he despised, and hidden from the country he wanted to spit on. One thing he had never forgotten from his childhood was this: he had no origins, no homeland, no family. He was a law unto himself, and his country was limited to his own breathing space.

After national service, he enrolled as a boarder in the Cannes-Ecluse police academy, near Montereau. It was the first time he had left Nanterre, his manor. His grades were excellent from the start. Karim's intellectual capacities were well above average and, above all, he knew more about delinquent behavior, gangland law and the suburban life than anybody else. He also turned into a brilliant marksman and his knowledge of unarmed combat deepened. He became a master of to – a quintessential form of close combat, bringing together the most dangerous elements of the various martial arts and sports. The other apprentice cops took an instinctive dislike to him. He was an Arab. He was proud. He knew how to fight, and he spoke better French than most of his classmates, who were generally waifs and strays who had joined the police to stay off Welfare.

One year later, Karim completed his course by holding down a series of posts as a trainee in various Parisian police stations. Still the same no-man's-land, still the same poverty. But this time in Paris. The young trainee moved into a little bed-sitter in the Abbesses quarter. A little perplexed, he realised that he had made it.

But he had not cut all ties with his origins. He regularly went back to Nanterre to hear the news. One disaster after another. Victor had been found on the roof of an eighteen-storey building, as crumpled as a witchdoctor's doll, a syringe sticking into his scrotum. OD. Hassan, a massive blond Berber drummer had blown his brains out with a shotgun. The "brother" bank robbers were doing time in Fleury-Mérogis. And Marcel had become a hopeless junkie.

Karim watched his friends drowning and, with horror, saw the final tidal wave break. AIDS was now hastening the process of destruction. The hospitals, once full of worn-out workmen and bedridden oldsters, were now filling up with dying kids with black gums, mottled skin and withered bodies. He saw most of his friends go that way. He saw the disease gain in power and size, then ally itself with Hepatitis C and mow down the ranks of his generation. Karim retreated, with fear in his guts.

His town was dying.

In June 1992, he got his badge. And was congratulated by the panel – a load of fat bastards with signet rings who filled him full of pity and loathing. But it did call for a celebration. He bought some champagne and headed for Les Fontanelles, Marcel's estate. Still today, he could remember every detail of that late afternoon. He rang the door-bell. Nobody. He asked the kids downstairs, then wandered through the halls of the building, the football fields, the waste tips heaped with old papers…Nobody. He kept on looking until evening. In vain. At ten o'clock, Karim went to Nanterre Hospital's AIDS unit – Marcel had been HIV positive for the last two years. He walked through the fumes of ether, past the faces of the sick, and questioned the doctors. He saw death at work. He contemplated the terrible progress of the epidemic.

But he did not find Marcel.

Five days later, he heard that the body of his friend had been found in a cellar, his hands fried, his face sliced into ribbons, his nails bored by an electric drill. Marcel had been tortured almost to death, then finished off with a shotgun blast to his throat. The news did not surprise Karim. His friend had been doing too much and watering down the doses he sold. It had only been a question of time. By coincidence, that very day, he received his bright new tricolor inspector's card. That coincidence was, for him, a sign. He retreated into the shadows, thought of Marcel's killers, and grinned. The little fuckers would never have imagined that one of Marcel's pals was a cop. Nor would they have imagined that this cop would make no bones about killing them, both for old times' sake, and from a personal conviction that life just should not be that fucking awful.

Karim started investigating.

Within a few days, he had got the killers' names. They had been seen with Marcel just before the presumed time of the murder. Thierry Kalder, Eric Masuro and Antonio Donato. He felt disappointed. They were three small-time junkies who probably wanted to get Marcel to reveal where he stashed his gear. Karim collected more detailed information: neither Kalder nor Masuro could have tortured Marcel. Not warped enough. Donato was the guilty party. Extorting money with menaces from little kids. Pimping for under-age girls on building sites. Junked out of his mind.

Karim decided that his death alone would assuage his vengeance.

But he had to work quickly. The Nanterre cops who had given him this information were also after the fuckers. Karim plunged into the streets. He was from Nanterre, he knew the estates, he spoke the kids' language. It took him just one day to find the three junkies. They were holed up in a ruined building, close to one of the auto route bridges by Nanterre University. A place waiting to be demolished while vibrating from the din of cars shooting past, a few yards from the windows.

He arrived at the wrecked building at noon, ignoring the noise of the traffic and the hot June sun. Children were playing in the dust. They stared at the big guy, with his rasta looks, as he entered the ruins. Karim crossed the hall, full of ripped-open letter boxes, leapt up the stairs four at a time and, through the growling of the cars, distinctly made out the give-away sound of rap. He smilingly recognised A Tribe Called Quest, an album he had been listening to for the last few months. He kicked open the door and said simply: "Police." A wave of adrenaline burst into his veins. It was the first time he had played at being the fearless cop.

The three men were frozen with astonishment. The flat was full of rubble, the walls had been torn down, pipes stuck out everywhere, a TV sat on a gutted mattress. A brand-new Sony, obviously stolen the previous night. On the screen, the pale flesh of a porno film. The hi-fi rumbled away in a corner, shaking down dust from the plaster.

Karim felt as if his body had doubled in size and was floating in space. Out of the corner of his eye he saw car radios carelessly heaped up at the far end of the room. He saw torn-open packets of powder on an upturned cardboard box. He saw a pump-action shotgun amid some boxes of cartridges. He immediately picked out Donato, thanks to the photofit portrait he had in his pocket. A pale face with light-blue eyes, protruding bones and scars. Then the other two, hunched up in their efforts to extract themselves from their chemical dreams. Karim still had not drawn his gun.

"Kalder, Masuro, scram!"

The two of them jumped at hearing their names. They dithered, glanced at each other with dilated pupils, then headed for the door. Which left Donato, who was shaking like an insect's wing. He made a rush for the gun. Just as he was about to grab it, Karim crushed his hand and kicked him in the face – he was wearing steel-tipped shoes – without taking his other foot off the trapped hand. The joints in the arm cracked. Donato screamed hoarsely. The cop seized the man and dragged him over to the ancient mattress. The heavy rhythm of A Tribe Called Quest pounded on.

Karim took out his automatic, which he wore in a velcro holster on his left side, and wrapped up his carrying hand in a transparent plastic bag – made of a special uninflammable polymer – which he had brought with him. He tightened his hold on the diamond patterned grip. The man looked up at him. "What…what the fucking hell are you doing?"

Karim loaded a bullet into the cylinder and smiled.

"Cartridge cases, buddy. Ain't you ever seen that on the TV?

Never leave cartridge cases lying round…"

"What you after? You a cop? You sure you're a cop?"

Karim nodded to each question, then said: "I'm here for Marcel."

"_Who?"

The cop saw the incomprehension in the man's eyes. And he realised that this wop couldn't even remember the person he had tortured to death. He realised that, in this junkie's memory, Marcel did not exist, had never existed.

"Tell him you're sorry."

"Wh…What?"

The sunlight spilled in over Donato's gleaming face. Karim lifted his gun in its plastic envelope.

"Ask Marcel to forgive you!" he panted.

The man understood that he was going to die and roared: "Sorry! Sorry, Marcel! Fucking Jesus! I'm really really sorry, Marcel! I…"

Karim shot him twice in the face.

He got the bullets back out of the burnt fibers of the mattress, stuffed the burning-hot cases into his pocket then left without looking back. He figured that the other two would soon be back with reinforcements. In the entrance hall, he waited for a few minutes then saw Kalder and Masuro sprinting his way, accompanied by three other zombies. They rushed into the building through the wobbling doors. Before they had had time to react, Karim was in front of them and flattening Kalder against the letter boxes.

He brandished his gun and yelled:

"One word and you're dead. Come looking for me, and you're dead. Top me, you go down for life. I'm a fucking cop, you dick-heads. A cop, get it?"

He threw the man down onto the ground and went out into the sunlight, crushing shards of glass under his feet.

So did Karim bid farewell to Nanterre, the town that had taught him everything.

A few weeks later, he phoned the police station on Place de la Boule to ask about their enquiries. He was told what he already knew. Donato had been killed, apparently by two 9mm caliber bullets from an automatic, but they had found neither the bullets nor their cases. As for his two accomplices, they had vanished. As far as the cops were concerned, the case was closed. As far as Karim was concerned, too.

The Arab asked to join the BRI, Quai des Orfèvres, a unit specialising in tailing, on-the-spot arrests and "jumping" known criminals. But his results played against him. They suggested the Sixth Division – the anti-terrorist brigade – so that he could infiltrate the Islamic fundamentalists in suburban hot spots. Immigrant cops were too rare a commodity to miss out on this chance. He refused. No way was he going to act as a grass, even if it did come to fanatical assassins. Karim wanted to roam through the kingdom of the night, go after killers and face them on their own turf, wander off into that parallel world which was also his own. His refusal was not well received. A few months later, Karim Abdouf, top of his class in the Cannes-Ecluse police academy, and unsuspected killer of a psychopathic junkie, was transferred to Sarzac, in the département of the Lot.

The Lot. A region where the trains did not stop any more. A region where ghost villages sprang up around roads, like stone flowers. A land of caves, where even tourism attracted only troglodytes: gorges, pits, cave paintings…This region was an insult to Karim's personality. He was a second-generation Arab, off the streets, nothing could be stranger to him than this two-bit provincial town.

A dreary daily routine began. Karim had to go through days of tedium, punctuated by menial tasks: writing reports of car accidents, arresting an illicit vendor in a shopping center, nicking gatecrashers in tourist venues…

So the young Arab started living in his daydreams. He got hold of biographies of great policemen. Whenever he could, he went to the libraries at Figeac or Cahors to pick out newspaper articles dealing with police enquiries, crimes and misdemeanors, anything and everything which reminded him of his true vocation. He also bought old bestsellers, the memoirs of gangsters…He subscribed to the police force's professional press, to magazines specialising in guns, ballistics, new technologies. A sea of paper, into which Karim was slowly sinking.

He lived alone, slept alone, worked alone. At the police station, which must have been one of the smallest in France, he was simultaneously feared and hated. His fellow cops called him "Cleopatra" because of his locks. Since he did not drink, they thought he was a fundamentalist. And, because he always declined the obligatory stopover chez Sylvie during their nightly rounds, they imagined he was gay.

Immured in his solitude, Karim ticked off the days, the hours, the seconds. He sometimes spent an entire weekend without saying a word.

That Monday morning, he re-emerged from one of his spates of silence, spent almost entirely in his bed-sitter, apart from a training session in the forest, where he relentlessly practised the murderous gestures of té, before emptying a few magazines into some century-old trees.

His door-bell rang. Instinctively, Karim looked at his watch. 07.45. He opened the latch.

It was Sélier, one of the late-duty officers. He looked wretched. A mixture of worry and fatigue. Karim did not offer him any tea. Nor even a seat. He just said:

"Well?"

The man opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Under his cap, his hair was gluey with greasy sweat. At last, he stammered: "It's…it's the school. The primary school."

"What is?"

"Jean-Jaurès School. It was broken into…during the night."

Karim smiled. The week was getting off to a fine flying start. Some loafers from a nearby estate must have decided to smash up a school, just for the fun of it.

"Much damage?" Karim asked, while getting dressed.

The uniformed officer grimaced as he saw the clothes Karim was putting on. A sweatshirt, jeans, hooded tracksuit top, then a light-brown leather jacket – a garbage collector's model from the 1950s. He stammered:

"No. That's just it. It was a professional job…"

Karim was doing up his boots.

"A professional job? What's that supposed to mean?"

"It wasn't kids mucking about…They got into the place with skeleton keys. Took loads of precautions. It was just the headmistress who noticed something weird. Otherwise…"

The Arab got to his feet.

"What did they steal?"

Sélier panted and slipped his index finger under his collar. "That's what's even weirder. They didn't steal anything."

"Really?"

"Really. They just got into a room, then…pfft!…Seem to have left just like that."

Karim took a brief look at his reflection in the window panes. His locks tumbled down obliquely on either side of his temples, his narrow face was sharpened by his goatee. He adjusted his woolly hat of Jamaican colors and smiled at his image. A devil. A devil sprung out of the Caribbean. He turned toward Sélier:

"So why did you come running after me?"

"Crozier isn't back from his weekend yet. So Dussard and me…We reckoned that you…That you ought to come and see…Karim, I…"

"All right, all right. Let's go."

CHAPTER 8

The sun was rising over Sarzac. An October sun, lukewarm and pallid, like a bad convalescence. In his old five-door Peugeot, Karim followed the police van. They crossed the dead town which, at that hour, still had a ghostly gleam about it, like will-o'-the-wisps.

Sarzac was neither an ancient village nor a modern town. It was spread out over a long plain, with its middle-aged houses and blocks of flats lacking any distinguishing signs. Only the town center had a slight difference: a little tramline ran from one end to the other, alongside the streets of cobblestones. Each time he went by, Karim thought of Switzerland or of Italy, without knowing why. He had not been to either of these countries.

Jean-Jaurès School lay due east, in the poor part of town, near the industrial area. Karim reached a set of incredibly ugly blue and brown buildings, which reminded him of the estates of his childhood. The school stood at the end of a concrete ramp, above a cracked asphalt road.

A woman, wrapped up in a cardigan, was waiting for them on the steps. The headmistress. Karim greeted her and introduced himself. She welcomed him with a frank smile, which took him aback. Generally speaking, he provoked a wave of mistrust. Karim mentally thanked this woman for her spontaneousness and observed her for a few seconds. Her face was as flat as a lake, with big green eyes set in it, like a pair of water lilies.

Without another word, the headmistress asked him to follow her. The pseudo-modern building looked as if it had never been finished. Or else, as if it was constantly being revamped. The corridors and the extremely low ceiling were made of polystyrene tiles, many of which were out of place. Most of them were covered with children's drawings, pinned there, or else painted directly onto the walls. Little coat pegs were ranged at kids' height. Everything was off kilter. Karim felt as though he was walking in a shoebox that had been crushed under someone's feet.

The headmistress stopped in front of a half-open door. She whispered, in a voice full of mystery:

"This is the only room they visited."

Gingerly, she pushed open the door. They entered an office which had the feel of a waiting-room. Glass-panelled shelving contained numerous registers and school books. A coffee-maker stood on a small fridge. A desk of imitation oak was swamped with green plants standing in saucers full of water. The whole room smelt of moist earth.

"You see," the woman said, pointing at one of the glass panels. "They opened this cupboard. It contains our archives. But it doesn't look as if they stole anything. Or even touched anything."

Karim knelt down and examined the lock on the panel. Ten years of break-ins and car thefts had given him a solid education in burglary. No doubt about it, the intruder who had dealt with this lock knew a trick or two. Karim was astonished: why should a cracksman bother to burgle a primary school in Sarzac? He picked out one of the registers and flicked through it. Lists of names, teachers' comments, administrative notes…One volume for each year. The lieutenant stood up again.

"And nobody heard anything?"

The woman answered:

"You know, the school isn't heavily guarded. There is a caretaker, but…"

Karim stared hard at that glass-panelled cupboard, which had been ever so gently forced open.

"Do you think the break-in occurred on the night of Saturday, or of Sunday?"

"Either. Or even during the day. As I just said, during the weekend our little school is hardly Fort Knox. There's nothing worth stealing."

"OK," he concluded. "You'll now have to go down to the police station and make a statement."

"You're undercover, aren't you?"

"Sorry?"

The headmistress was eyeing up Karim attentively. She had another go:

"I mean, the way you're dressed, your appearance. You infiltrate gangs on the estate, and…"

Karim burst out laughing.

"We don't have much in the way of gangs round here."

The headmistress ignored this remark and proceeded, in a knowing voice:

"I know all about it. I saw a documentary on TV. Characters like you wear double-sided jackets marked with police badges and…"

"Really, Madame," Karim butted in. "You're overestimating your little town."

He turned on his heels and headed off toward the door. "You're not going to look for clues? Take fingerprints?" Karim replied:

"Given the seriousness of the crime, I think we'll just make do with your statement and ask one or two questions round the neighborhood."

The woman looked disappointed. She stared attentively at Karim once again:

"You're not from these parts, are you?"

"No."

"So why did they send you here?"

"It's a long story. One of these days, I might drop by and tell you it."

Outside, Karim rejoined the uniformed officers, who were smoking, holding their cigarettes in their closed fists and wearing the hunted expressions of schoolboys. Sélier leapt out of the van. "Lieutenant, Jesus! There's more!"

"What?"

"Another break-in. I've never seen anything like it…"

"Where?"

Sélier hesitated, looking at his colleagues. He was panting under his moustache.

"In…In the cemetery. They broke into a tomb." The tombs and crosses lay on a slight slope, a mixture of grays and greens, like engraved lichen glistening in the sunlight. Behind the gate, the young Arab breathed in a scent of dew and withered flowers.

"Wait for me here," he mumbled to the others.

While slipping on his latex gloves, Karim said to himself that Sarzac would long remember a Monday such as this one.

This time, he had dropped back into his bed-sitter to pick up his "scientific" equipment: a kit containing powdered aluminum and granite, adhesives and nynhidrine for revealing hidden fingerprints, as well as elastomers to make moulds of possible footprints…He had decided to collect the slightest possible clue.

He followed the gravel footpaths leading to the desecrated tomb, the position of which had been indicated to him. His first fear was that there had been a genuine profanation. Of the sort that seemed to have become a macabre fashion in France over the last few years. Skulls and mutilated corpses. Not this time. Everything was apparently in perfect order. The desecrators had obviously not touched anything, except for the vault. Karim reached the foot of the granite block: a monument shaped like a chapel.

The door was slightly ajar. He knelt down and examined the lock. As at the primary school, the burglars had been extremely careful about opening the vault. The lieutenant stroked the edge of the wall and observed to himself that this had, once again, been done by professionals. The same ones?

He opened the door a little wider and tried to imagine the scene. Why had the intruders taken such pains to open a tomb and then left without closing up the wall again? The lieutenant pushed in the stone block several times, then understood: some scraps of gravel had slipped under the edge and warped the jamb. It was now impossible to lock the vault. These little chips of stone had given the desecrators away.

The cop now examined the stone aspergillums which made up the lock. A strange structure, presumably typical of this sort of construction, and which only a specialist would know. A specialist? The policeman held back a shiver. Once more, he wondered if this had really been done by the same team that had broken into the primary school. What could be the connection between the two crimes?

The inscription provided him with part of the answer. It read: "Jude Ithero. 23 May 1972 – 14 August 1982". Karim thought it over. Perhaps this little boy had gone to Jean-Jaurès School. He looked at the plaque again: no epitaph, no prayer. Just a small oval frame, made of old silver, had been nailed onto the marble. But there was no picture inside.

"That's a girl's name, isn't it?"

Karim turned around. Sélier was standing there with his beetle-crushers and panic-struck eyes.

"No, a boy's name."

"But it's English, no?"

"No, Jewish."

Sélier wiped his forehead.

"Jesus Christ, is this a desecration like the one at Carpentras? Some extreme right-wing nutters?"

Karim stood up and wiped his gloved hands together.

"No, I don't think so. Do me a favor and go and wait for me at the gate with the rest."

Grumbling, Sélier went off with his cap pointing skywards. Karim watched him as he walked away, then looked back at the slightly opened door.

He decided to do a little caving. He went in, crouching under the roof, and lit his torch. Down the steps he crept, the gravel creaking under his boots. He felt as though he was breaking an ancestral taboo. He reflected on how he had no religious beliefs and, just then, congratulated himself on that fact. The beam of light was already piercing the gloom. Karim went on, then stopped in his tracks. The little wooden coffin, positioned on two trestles, stood out clearly in the beam from his torch.

His throat like sandpaper, Karim went over and examined the coffin. It measured about six feet. Its corners were topped with mouldings and silver arabesques. Despite possible leakages, the whole thing looked in good condition. He felt its joints and said to himself that, without his gloves, he would never have dared touch that coffin. This sensation of fear irritated him. At first sight, the lid had apparently not been taken off.

He gripped his torch between his teeth and set about a close examination of the screws. But a voice boomed out above him: "Whatcha think you're doing here?"

Karim jumped. He opened his mouth, the torch fell out and rolled onto the coffin lid. As he turned round, the shadows fluttered over him. A man – with low shoulders and a woolly hat – was leaning down through the entrance. The Arab felt for his torch on the ground. He panted:

"Police. I'm a police lieutenant."

The man said nothing, then growled:

"You've no right to be here."

The policeman found his torch and made his way back to the staircase. He stared up at this big sullen character, standing in a frame of light. He must be the cemetery keeper. Karim knew that he was trespassing. Even in such a context, he still needed a written authorisation, signed by the family, or else a special search warrant for tombs. He climbed the steps and said:

"Watch out. I'm coming back up."

The man stood to one side. Karim drank in the sunlight as though it were nectar. He presented his tricolor card and announced:

"Karim Abdouf. From the Sarzac station. Was it you who discovered the profanation?"

The man remained silent. With his colorless eyes, like bubbles in gray water, he observed the Arab.

"You've no right to be here."

Karim nodded absent-mindedly. The morning air was sweeping away his fears.

All right, old pal. Don't make a scene. Policemen are always right."

The old man licked his lips, which were surrounded by stubble. He stank of booze and damp mud. Karim tried again:

"OK, tell me everything you know. What time did you make your discovery?"

The old man sighed:

"I came here at six this morning. There's to be a burial."

"When was the last time you were here?"

"Friday."

"So the vault could have been opened any time during the weekend?"

"Yup. 'Cept, I reckon it was last night"

"Why?”

"Cos it rained Sunday afternoon and there's no trace of dampness inside the vault. So the door must still have been closed." Karim asked:

"Do you live near here?"

"Nobody lives near here."

The Arab glanced round the little cemetery, a paradise of peace and quiet.

"Do you ever get kids hanging out round here?" he pressed on. "No."

"Never any suspicious visitors? Vandalism? Occult ceremonies?"

"No."

"Tell me about this grave."

The keeper spat on the gravel.

"There's nothing to tell."

"It's a bit odd having a vault just for one child, isn't it?"

"Yup, pretty odd."

"Do you know the parents?"

"No. Never seen them."

"You weren't here in 1982?"

"No. And the guy before me's dead." He sniggered. "Even we have to go sooner or later."

"The vault looks well looked after."

"I didn't say no one ever came here. I said I hadn't seen them. I'm experienced. I know how fast stones get worn away. I know how long flowers survive, even plastic ones. I know how the weeds and brambles and all that mess starts growing. So I can tell you that this vault is looked after regularly. Only I've never seen a soul."

Karim had another think. He knelt down and looked at the little frame, shaped like a cameo. Without lifting his eyes, he said to the keeper:

"I've got the impression that the grave robbers stole the photo of the kid."

"Eh? Yeah, maybe they did."

"Do you remember what the kid looked like?"

"No."

Karim stood up, took his gloves off and concluded:

"A team of specialists will be along later today to take fingerprints, and pick up any clues. So, cancel this morning's funeral. Tell them there's work going on, flooding, whatever you like. I don't want anybody in here today, got it? And definitely no journalists."

The old man nodded his head, but Karim was already on his way to the gate. In the distance, a piercing bell was chiming nine o'clock.

CHAPTER 9

Before going back to the station and writing up his report, Karim decided to drop back in at the school. The sun was now dousing the crests of the houses with its yellow rays. Once again, he said to himself that it looked as if it was going to be a lovely day, and the banality of the thought made him retch.

Upon reaching the school, he asked the headmistress:

"Did a little boy called Jude Ithero come to school here during the 1980s?"

Playing with the ample sleeves of her cardigan, the woman simpered:

"Do you already have a lead, inspector?"

"Just answer my question, please."

"Well…We'll have to go and look through the archives."

"Come on then, let's go."

The headmistress led Karim once again to the little office full of plants.

"During the 1980s, you say?" she asked, while running her index finger along the line of registers behind the glass doors.

"1982, 1981, and so on," Karim replied.

He suddenly noticed that she was hesitating.

"What's wrong?"

"How odd. I didn't notice that this morning…"

"What?"

"The registers…The ones for 1981 and 1982…They're missing."

Karim pushed her aside and examined the spines of the brown volumes, piled up vertically. Each one bore a date. 1979, 1980…the next two were indeed missing.

"What do these books contain exactly?" Karim asked, while flicking through the pages of one of them.

"The pupils in each class. Teachers' comments. They're the school's logbooks…"

"If a child was eight in 1980, what class would he have been in?"

"fours élémentaire 2. Or even Moyen 1."

Karim read through the corresponding lists. No Jude Ithero. He asked: "Does the school keep any other documents concerning the years 1981 and 1982?"

The headmistress thought for a second.

"Well…We'd have to look upstairs…The school canteen records, for example. Or the medical reports. They're all kept up in the attic. Follow me. Nobody ever goes up there."

They leapt up the linoleum-covered steps four at a time. The woman seemed highly excited by all this business. They went down a narrow corridor and reached an iron door. The headmistress stopped in front of it in amazement.

"I…I just don't believe it," she said. "This door's been forced open, too…

Karim examined the lock. Broken, but with the same extreme caution. The policeman went inside. It was a large gabled room without any windows, except for a barred-off skylight. Bundles of documents and files were stacked up on metal cases. Karim was struck by the smell of dry, dusty paper.

"Where are the files for 1981 and 1982?" he asked.

Without a word, the headmistress strode off toward some shelving and started rummaging through the heavy bundles and bulging files. Her search took only a few minutes, but her conclusion was categorical:

"They're missing, too."

Karim's skin tingled. The school. The cemetery. The years 1981 and 1982. The name of a little boy: Jude Ithero. All parts of the same puzzle. He asked:

"Were you already here in 1981?"

She giggled flirtatiously:

"Well really, inspector. I was still a student then…"

"Did anything strange happen in the school at that time? Anything serious you might have heard about?"

"No. What sort of thing do you mean?"

"The death of a pupil."

"No. I've never heard of anything like that. But I could find out."

"Where?"

"From the local education authority. I'll…"

"Could you find out if a little boy called Jude Ithero was at this school during those particular two years?"

The headmistress was now breathing heavily.

"Yes…No problem, inspector. I'll…"

"And quick about it. I'll be back later."

Karim ran down the stairs, then stopped halfway and turned round:

"Just one other thing, for your information. Nowadays, in France, you don't say ‘inspector’ any more, you say ‘lieutenant’. Just like in America."

The headmistress gaped after the rapidly receding figure.

Of all the cops in the station, Police Chief Crozier was the one Karim detested the least. Not because he was his boss, but because he had plenty of genuine experience and often showed signs of having a true cop's flair.

Henri Crozier came from the Lot, was an ex-soldier and had been on the force for the last twenty-odd years. With his potato nose and his greased-down hair, looking as if it had been combed with a rake, he oozed rigor and severity, but in the right mood he could also be disconcertingly jovial. Crozier was a lone wolf. He had neither a wife, nor any children, and imagining him at the center of a cosy family life was like picturing a slice of the craziest science fiction. This solitude attracted Karim, but it was their only point in common. Apart from that, the Chief was every inch a narrow-minded, chauvinistic policeman. The sort of bloodhound who would like to be reincarnated as a pit-bull.

Karim knocked and entered his office. An iron filing cabinet. The smell of scented tobacco. Posters to the glory of the French police force containing stiff, badly photographed figures. The Arab felt vaguely sick once more.

"What the hell's going on then?" Crozier asked from behind his desk.

"A break-in and a profanation. Two professional, discreet and very strange crimes."

Crozier grimaced.

"What was stolen?"

"From the school, a few files from the archives. From the cemetery, I don't know. We'll have to conduct a detailed search of the vault where…

"You reckon that the two crimes are connected?"

"It's an obvious conclusion. Two break-ins, the same weekend, in Sarzac. We're going to end up in the record books."

"But have you discovered what the connection is?"

Crozier cleaned out the tip of his blackened pipe. Karim grinned to himself: a caricature of the police commissioner in 1950s cop shows.

"I might have a connection, yes," he mumbled. "The link's tenuous, but…"

"I'm listening"

"The vault that was desecrated contains a little kid with a weird name: Jude Ithero. He died when he was ten, in 1982. Perhaps you remember something about that?"

"No. Go on."

"Well, the records the burglars lifted were for the years 1981 and 1982. So, I couldn't help wondering if young Jude didn't go to this particular school during those very years and…"

"Do you have any supporting evidence for this supposition?"

"No."

"Have you checked the other schools?"

"Not yet"

Crozier blew into his pipe, like Popeye. Karim went over to him and adopted his sweetest tone:

"Let me lead this investigation, superintendent. I just know there's something strange about all this. A link between the various elements. It sounds incredible, but I'm sure that this was a professional job. They were looking for something. Let's start by finding the kid's parents, then I'll give the vault a thorough search. I…you agree?"

The superintendent kept his eyes down and set about filling the dark bowl of his pipe. He murmured:

"It was a gang of skins."

"What?"

Crozier looked up at Karim.

"I said, the cemetery job was done by a gang of skinheads."

"What skinheads?"

The superintendent burst out laughing and crossed his arms.

"See? You still have plenty to learn about our little region. There are a good thirty of them. They live in a disused warehouse near Caylus. An old mineral water depot. About twelve miles from here."

As he stared at Crozier, Abdouf thought it over. The sun was shining on the superintendent's oily hair.

"I think you're wrong about that."

"Sélier told me it was a Jewish grave."

"No, it wasn't! I just told him that Jude was originally a Jewish name. That doesn't mean a thing. The vault has no Judaic symbols on it, and Jews prefer to be buried alongside the rest of their family. Superintendent, this child died at the age of ten. In cases like that, Jewish graves always have a design, or pattern, to illustrate this broken destiny. Such as an unfinished pillar, or a felled tree. This tomb is a Christian one."

"Quite a specialist. How come you know all that?"

"I read about it."

But Crozier simply repeated:

"It was a gang of skins."

"But that's ridiculous. This wasn't an act of racism. It wasn't even a piece of vandalism. The grave robbers were looking for something…"

"Karim," Crozier cut him off, in a friendly but slightly tense tone of voice. "I always appreciate your judgment and advice. But I'm still the boss here. Trust an old timer. The skins are the ones to question. I reckon if you paid them a little call, then we might learn a thing or two."

Karim stood up and swallowed hard.

"Alone?"

"You're not telling me you're scared of a few kids with short hair, are you?"

Karim did not reply. Crozier liked this sort of test. To his way of thinking, it was playing the bastard, but also a sign of respect. The lieutenant grabbed the edges of the desk. If Crozier wanted to play, then he was willing to play along.

"Let's make a deal, superintendent."

"What kind of deal?"

"I'll grill the skinheads, all on my own. Shake them up a bit and give you a written report by one p.m. In return, you'll get me a warrant to search that vault. All above-board. I also want to question the kid's parents. Today."

"And what if it was the skins?"

"It wasn't the skins."

Crozier lit up. His tobacco crackled like straw.

"It's a deal," Crozier wheezed.

"After checking Caylus, I lead the investigation?"

"Only if I have your report by one o'clock. In any case, we'll soon have the regional crime squad on our backs."

The young cop strode over to the door. His fingers were on the handle, when the superintendent called to him:

"You'll see. I'm just sure that your looks are going to go down a storm with the skins."

Karim slammed the door on the old veteran's guffaws.

CHAPTER 10

A good cop needs to know his enemy thoroughly. Inside and out. And Karim was a world expert on the subject of skinheads. During his years in Nanterre he had fought several bloody battles with them. Then he had written a report about them while at the police academy. As he drove at high speed toward Caylus, the Arab ran through what he knew. It was a way to work out what his chances were against those bastards.

The first thing that crossed his mind was the uniforms worn by the two main branches. All skinheads were not extreme right-wingers. There were also the Red Skins, on the extreme left. Multi-racial, highly trained and following a code of honor, they were as dangerous as the neo-Nazis, if not more so. The Fascists wore their pilot's jackets the right way round, green side uppermost. The Reds, on the other hand, wore theirs inside out, fluorescent orange side uppermost. The Nazis tied their Docs with red or white laces. The Lefties with yellow ones.

At about eleven o'clock, Karim came to a halt in front of the disused warehouse, "The Waters of the Valley". With its high walls made of corrugated plastic, the depot faded away into the clear blue sky. A black DS was parked in front of the gate. After a moment's preparation, Karim leapt out. The skins were presumably inside, sleeping off their beer. As he walked over to the warehouse, he forced himself to breathe calmly while reciting the words which would determine his immediate destiny: green jackets and white or red laces meant the Nazis; orange jackets and yellow laces, the Reds.

Only then would he have a chance to get out of there without a fight. He took a deep breath and slid the door along its rail. He did not need to look at their laces to know where he had ended up. The walls were tagged with red swastikas. Nazi symbols were daubed alongside pictures of concentration camps and blow-ups of tortured Algerian POWS. Beneath them, a gang of cropped-hair kids in green jackets was observing him. Their steel-capped Docs gleamed in the darkness. Extreme right-wing, militant tendency. Karim knew that all these characters had the word "SKIN" tattooed on the inside of their lower lips.

Karim concentrated on his own movements and looked round for their weapons. He knew what sort of arsenal these crazies usually had: American knuckledusters, baseball bats and pocket revolvers with a double magazine of buckshot. The bastards probably also had some pump-action shotguns stashed away somewhere, loaded with rubber bullets.

What he then saw looked even worse.

Girls. Female Skins, with shaved heads, except for tufts sticking up over their foreheads and locks dangling down over their cheeks. Fattened up bitches, dowsed in booze and probably even more violent than their men. Karim swallowed hard. He now realised that what he was up against was no group of bored street kids, but a genuine gang which was presumably hiding out there while waiting for some new contract to go and beat someone up. He reckoned his chances of getting out in one piece were diminishing rapidly. One of the girls had a swig from her beer, then opened her mouth to burp. For Karim's benefit. The others burst out laughing. They were all as big as the cop.

The Arab forced himself to speak loudly and clearly:

"All right you lot, I'm a cop. I'm just here to ask you a few questions."

They came over toward him. Cop or not, Karim was first and foremost an Arab. And an Arab's hide was not worth shit in a warehouse full of these bastards. Nor even, perhaps, as far as Crozier and the rest of his fellow officers were concerned. The young lieutenant trembled. For a split second, the earth seemed to fall away from under his feet. It felt as if he was up against an entire town, a country, even the 'world.

Karim took out his automatic and pointed it toward the ceiling. This gesture stopped his attackers in their tracks.

"I repeat: I'm a cop and I want to play this fair and square with you."

He slowly placed his gun down on a rusty barrel. The skins watched him.

"I'll leave my piece here. And no one'll touch it while we all have a nice little chat."

Karim's automatic was a Glock 21 – one of the newest ultra-light models, made of 70% polymer. It had fifteen rounds in its magazine, plus one in the barrel, and a phosphorescent sight. He was sure that they'd never seen one before. He had got them.

"Who's the boss round here?"

Silence for an answer. Karim took a few steps forward and repeated: "Who's the frigging boss? We're wasting time here."

The biggest one came forward, his entire body pent up ready to launch into the attack. He spoke in the rocky regional accent. "What does this little runt want with us, then?"

"I'll forget you said that. Now, let's talk."

Nodding, the skin walked over to him. He was taller and broader than Karim.

The Arab thought of his dreadlocks and what a handicap they were. In a fight, they made for a perfect handhold. The skin kept coming, his hands open, like metallic wrenches. Karim did not budge an inch. A glance to his right: the others were approaching his gun.

"So what does our little Arab want…"

The head-butt shot out like a missile. The skin's nose was flattened into his face. As he doubled up, Karim span round and kicked him in the throat. The hooligan took off and landed again six feet away, rolling in agony. One of the skins grabbed the gun and pressed the trigger. Nothing. Just a click. He tried to load the breech, but the charger was empty. Karim took out a second automatic, a Beretta, from a holster behind his back. With one foot on his victim, he aimed his gun at the gang and yelled:

"Did you really think I was going to leave a loaded gun lying around with little fuckers like you?"

The skins were petrified. The man on the ground gave a strangled groan:

"Fair and square, eh? You cunt."

Karim kicked him in the groin. He screamed. The cop knelt down and twisted his ear. The cartilage cracked between his fingers.

"Fair and square? With shitheads like you?" Karim laughed nervously. "You gotta be joking…Now, you bunch of cunts, turn round! Hands against the wall! The bitches too!"

He shot out the neon lights. They went up in a blue flash, the metal casing ricocheted against the ceiling before crashing down onto the ground in an explosion of firecrackers. The hoodlums were now running round left, right and center. Pathetic. Karim yelled fit to bust a gut:

"Empty your pockets! One move, and I'll knee-cap you!"

The room was now a vibrant darkness. Karim stuck his gun into the leader's ribs and quietly asked him:

"What are you lot on?"

The man was spitting blood.

"Wh…what?"

Karim dug deeper with his gun.

"What junk are you getting off on?"

"Speed…glue…"

"What sort of glue?"

"Di…Dissoplastine."

"What? For bicycle punctures?"

The skin nodded dumbly.

"Where is it?" Karim went on.

The hooligan rolled his bloodshot eyes.

"In the trash bag…over there by the fridge…"

"One move, and I'll kill you."

Karim backed off, staring round the room as he went, pointing his gun at the wounded skin, then at the motionless figures facing the wall. With his left hand, he tipped over the bag: thousands of tablets spilled out, as well as some tubes of glue. He picked up the tubes, opened them and walked across the room. He squeezed out gluey snail trails onto the floor, just behind the cornered skins. As he went, he kicked them in the legs and the kidneys while pushing away their knives and other implements to a safe distance.

"Turn round."

Their Docs shuffled uneasily.

"Now, you're all going to show me how many press-ups you can do. The bitches as well. Right on the glue."

Their hands squelched down into the Dissoplastine, which oozed up between their clenched fingers. After three pushes, their palms were stuck firmly. The skins slumped down, chests on the floor, twisting their wrists as they hit the concrete.

Karim went back to his initial attacker. He sat down, cross-legged in the lotus position and breathed deeply to get his calm back. His voice became more relaxed:

"Where were you last night?"

"It…it wasn't us."

Karim's ears pricked up. He had humiliated these skins as a challenge and was now asking them questions as a matter of form. He was sure that these shitheads had had nothing to do with desecrating the cemetery. But now this skin seemed to know what he was after. The Arab bent down.

"What are you talking about?"

The leader leant on his elbow.

"The cemetery…it wasn't us."

"How do you know about it then?"

"We…we were over that way…"

Karim suddenly caught on. Crozier had a witness. That morning, somebody had tipped him off that the skinheads had been seen round the cemetery the previous night. The superintendent had then packed him off without saying a word. Karim would settle that score later.

"Go on."

"We was hanging round there…"

"What time?"

"I dunno…about two o'clock, maybe…"

"Why? "

"I dunno…for a bit of fun…we was looking for building site caravans…to beat up a few blacks…"

Karim shuddered.

"And then?"

"We went by the cemetery…and the fucking gate was open…we saw these shadows…some guys was coming out of one of the graves…"

"How many?"

"T…two, I reckon."

"Can you describe them?"

The skin sneered.

"We was out of it, man."

Karim gave him a clip round his shattered ear. He stifled a cry, which came out like the hissing of a snake.

"What did they look like?"

"I dunno…it was pitch dark!"

Karim thought it over. If there was one thing he was sure of, then it was that this had been a professional job.

"And then?"

"It fucking freaked us out…so we beat it…I just knew they'd fucking pin this one on us…'Cos of what happened in Carpentras…"

"Is that all? You didn't notice anything else? Any other details?"

"No…nothing…at two in the morning, that dump's totally fucking dead."

Karim imagined the loneliness on that little road, with its solitary streetlamp, a white gash in the night drawing moths. And the gang of skinheads, jostling along, glued out of their minds, singing Nazi songs. He repeated:

"Think again."

"It was…a bit later…I think we saw one of them East European motors, a Lada, or something like that, it was speeding down the road…from the cemetery…on the D143…"

"What color was it?"

"Wh…white."

"Nothing else?"

"It…it was covered in mud."

"Did you get the registration number?"

"What do you think we are? Fucking pigs, or something?"

Karim's heel shot into his guts. The man writhed, blood gurgling from his mouth. The lieutenant got to his feet and dusted off his jeans. There was nothing more to be learnt there. He heard the others groaning behind him. By then, they must have had third or fourth degree burns on their hands. Karim concluded:

"Do me a favor and go along to Sarzac police station later today and make a statement. Tell them I sent you and they'll roll out the red carpet for you."

The skin's panting head nodded; he had the eyes of a cowed animal.

"Why…why you doing this, man?"

"So as you'll remember. A cop is always a headache. And an Arab cop is a fucking migraine. Go out beating up on niggers again and your head will be splitting…" Karim gave him a last kick "…fit to bust"

The Arab backed off, picking up his Glock 21 as he went.

Karim drove off rapidly and then stopped in a small wood a few miles away to let the calm flow back into his veins and think things through. So, the profanation had happened before two o'clock. There were two grave robbers and they were driving – probably – an Eastern European car. He looked at his watch. There was just enough time to get all that down in writing. Enquiries could now get seriously under way. They would have to send out an APB, trace the car, talk to people who lived on the D143…

But his mind was already elsewhere. He had carried out his mission. And Crozier was going to have to give him a free hand. The enquiry could now be run his way. And the first step would be to find out what had happened to a little boy who had died in 1982.