The two hearses arrive in convoy at the main entrance to Père-Lachaise cemetery. They take the left-hand avenue flanked by tombstones leading up to the funeral parlour. A procession forms and follows behind. Noria Ghozali walks beside Bonfils. All around, there’s little emotion, the gathering appears to be made up of officials, magistrates, lawyers, police officers, and a few strangers. Impressive ‘institutional’ wreaths. Handshakes between cops and magistrates. Walking alone at the head of the procession is a man in his forties, athletic, dark, hair on the long side, good-looking. Towards the back, Noria spots Simone, the clerk, head bowed and tears in her eyes. She slips in beside her, takes her arm. There’s a moment of uncertainty, then the clerk recognises her and leans on her for support.
‘Alone, completely alone,’ she murmurs.
The magistrate? Her? Both of them?
‘Who’s the man at the front?’ asks Noria quietly.
The clerk looks up for a second, and bows her head again.
‘Nicolas Martenot. They were married. They divorced about ten years ago. Now, he’s one of the top corporate lawyers in Paris. A shark and a regular on the night-club circuit. She ended up hating him.’
‘Did they see much of each other?’
‘No, never.’ They walk in silence. The clerk continues, a slight hesitation in her voice: ‘An out-and-out bastard.’
‘He was involved in having her taken off the case …’ Noria’s words hang in the air, intimating a question.
‘I’m sure he was.’ Then, with a start: ‘What makes you say that?’
Noria dodges the question.
‘And the magistrate thought that Mado had something to do with Fatima Rashed’s murder?’
‘Listen, to be honest, I have absolutely no idea about that. My feeling is that she was going after Mado because of the challenge. Why do you ask me that?’
The procession has reached the open grave. A deep vault, two coffins already at the bottom of the cavity. This is the end of a family history. Simone wipes her eyes. Noria takes advantage of the moment to step back and join Bonfils. An impasse. Not surprisingly.
Martenot throws in the first handfuls of earth, and the flowers, then receives people’s condolences, without putting on a big act of mourning. Nor does anyone else as a matter of fact. Noria closes her eyes and has a flashback of the blood-soaked body in the bathtub. When she opens them again, the clerk has disappeared.
People gather in small knots at the exit, waiting for their chauffeur-driven cars, exchanging a few words, taking out their engagement diaries. Noria and Bonfils stand to one side. Noria watches Martenot as he goes from group to group, smiling, urbane. He greets a couple, the man in his sixties, tall, very slim, with a long, mobile face and a white moustache, she younger, barely forty, a decorative blonde, sophisticated chignon and make-up, in a rather theatrical black overcoat. On seeing Martenot coming towards them, she starts as if to turn away, possibly to avoid him; the man suddenly freezes, grabs her arm and pins her brutally to his side. The woman sways. Noria feels his fingers digging into her flesh through the fabric. The couple exchange a few sentences with Martenot who moves on to another group. A few metres away, a man is in conversation with the clerk who points at Noria and Bonfils. He makes his way towards them.
‘Inspector Dumont, Police Intelligence, Paris Section. Superintendent Macquart is expecting you in his office at headquarters at two p.m. this afternoon. He’ll inform your superiors.’
Bonfils’ jaw drops in surprise. Noria drags him away.
‘Let’s go and have lunch, we’ve just got time. I need to talk to you.’
A luxury private dining room lavishly decorated in shades of sea-green with two vast windows overlooking the gardens of the Champs-Élysées and a circular table laid for three. Bornand, extremely elegant in a pale grey, immaculately fitting worsted suit and a dark grey silk and wool tie, is pacing up and down, waiting for his guest, his face expressionless. Fernandez, stands stiffly in a corner, on the alert, trying to keep a low profile.
Flandin arrives accompanied by Beauchamp. Bornand shivers. Impossible to get hold of, Beauchamp? He tricked me. Chardon … Lebanese heroin … Beauchamp too. The dossier, it’s him. Both of them working for Intelligence? It’s possible. The Djimils, a red herring? So what about Moricet? Danger. Too late to back out, take things as they come.
Bornand warmly shakes his guests’ hands and introduces Fernandez, joking: ‘My head of staff, if I had a staff’, has another place laid, and asks the maître d’hôtel to serve the aperitif. A glance around the room. Two bodyguards for guests — this was how politics and business was conducted in Paris, in the winter of 1985 …
‘What will you have to drink, my friend?’
‘Whisky. A light Scotch, neat.’
‘Same for me.’
Once the drinks have been poured, Bornand goes over to the window and gazes out over the Champs Elysées in the greyness and the cold, then returns to his guests. He signals to Fernandez that he should take care of Beauchamp then joins Flandin, steering him over to one of the windows.
‘Sad, Paris at this time of year.’ Flandin, his face drawn, lets him speak, without reacting. ‘I’m just back from the USA, with some interesting opportunities.’ Still no response. Bornand puts his glass down next to a huge bouquet of flowers on a pedestal table between the two windows, and takes a long envelope from his inside pocket. Specific proposals, in writing and with figures. He proffers the envelope to Flandin. ‘I’m simply asking you to read these documents after lunch, before going to see your journalist.’
Flandin, a little taken aback, wavers for a moment, then puts his glass down on the table and takes the envelope, turns it over and over, then folds it and puts it in his pocket. Bornand has already picked up Flandin’s glass, while Flandin picks up the one left on the pedestal table. Then they both make their way over to the centre of the room where Fernandez is engaging Beauchamp in conversation as best he can:
‘We’ve met before …’
Beauchamp snaps:
‘I’d be very surprised. We don’t move in the same circles.’
Fernandez, very ill at ease, feels a crazy urge to beat the shit out of Bornand who raises his glass with a smile.
‘Come, whatever happens, let’s drink to the success of our venture, it’s not too late.’
Shortly after, Flandin follows suit, takes one, then another slug of whisky, and suddenly stiffens, his mouth open. Noiselessly, his face drawn and mottled, he slowly slumps to the floor and lies in a contorted heap. Bornand watches him collapse from high above, from a long way away, almost surprised. Flashback: another body, long ago, killed in a courtyard, and he himself kicking the body relentlessly. No comparison, this death is sanitised. He leans over to retrieve the envelope he’s just given Flandin. Then it’s all stations go. Fernandez rushes over to perform cardiac massage. Beauchamp calls the waiters. The ambulance, the cops, the room fills with people. The words ‘heart attack’ are on everyone’s lips.
Bornand, stock still, contemplates the scene. I’m spared the gourmet lunch.
Bonfils and Noria Ghozali enter Macquart’s office. It is very ordinary looking, unlike the man sitting at his desk ready to ambush them. Leaning slightly forward, his forearms resting on the desk, his broad, stubby hands folded, he scrutinises them, without making a movement. He has a round, fleshy face, very thin lips, and a fixed, expressionless stare. He’s a little on the corpulent side without being fat, and wears his hair plastered back along with a salt-and-pepper moustache trimmed very short. He’s wearing a navy blue three-piece suit with very thin white stripes, a white shirt and a tie. The archetypal civil servant, with a slightly 1950s touch. Noria instinctively thinks: a real killer. Instinctively she says to herself: a cop who commands respect. Instinctively thinks: my lucky day.