Arrival in Geneva at 21.10. Taxi to the Hilton, quai du Mont-Blanc, with a view over the lake. A big, impersonal, modern luxury hotel. Françoise Michel checks in at reception and collects her key. Then she makes her way to the Lobby Bar, just behind the reception desk.
Françoise Michel makes her entrance, her bag slung over her shoulder. Noria follows her. In the meantime, Levert wanders around the shopping mall, buys a small cigar and starts to smoke it while waiting to return unobtrusively back to the lobby. Red is the colour of the carpeting, the armchairs grouped in fours around the coffee tables, the big banquettes lining the walls, the leather-covered stools, and even the big curved bar. There are soft yellow lights on the walls, spotlights embedded in the low lacquered copper ceiling, nothing intimate about the place, it looks more like a lobby fitted out between the lifts and the hotel entrance, in fairly aggressive style. Music plays in the background. In a corner, there’s a piano, but it has a cover on. There are quite a lot of people in small groups, especially men, and nearly all of them seem to be talking business.
Françoise Michel hovers on the fringes of the bar area. A man gets to his feet, a fit-looking individual in his forties, with short hair and a square jaw. She makes her way over to him, with a hint of uncertainty about her movements. They exchange a few words, then he pulls out a chair for her and she sits down. They have arranged to meet but they don’t know each other, notes Noria, close on her heels, ill at ease in these flash, pseudo-luxurious surroundings, her hand on her card wallet inside her coat pocket. She walks past the couple and sits down a few tables away, carefully choosing a corner. They order a tequila sunrise and a whisky. Noria has a herbal tea, watches and broods.
First of all a few formalities, then Françoise Michel leans towards the man over her glass, bringing her face very close to his (Noria imagines the carefully shaven skin, smooth, soft to the touch, breathes in the smell of stale tobacco. Photo), she wants a cigarette. The man takes a cigarette case out of his pocket and offers her one, lights it, the woman inhales deeply, studying him. She anticipates the initial contact of the two naked bodies, it will be surprise, discovery, climaxing almost instantly. Afterwards, they’ll start again, more slowly, but there won’t be the same thrill. She smiles at him. The man drains his glass, helps her up, takes her elbow and they leave side by side. Photo.
A well-paced act, skilfully executed, without any unnecessary flourishes. She’s a pro, thinks Noria, slumped in her chair, letting her thoughts drift as she sips her herbal tea. Flashback to Bonfils’s lips, gently defined, cool beneath her tongue. Levert threads his way slowly between the tables, joins her, sits down, crushes out his cigar in an ashtray and orders a brandy. Cigar, cognac, what must his lips taste of right now?
‘I haven’t been able to identify the man. Françoise Michel is registered under the name of Monica Davis, and they’ve both gone up to her room.’
‘Bornand prostitutes his mistress? Macquart’s scenario, with sexual blackmail thrown in, suddenly seems plausible. We must be getting close.’
‘Tomorrow, we’ll carry on taking photos. And now, I’ve booked the room next to Monica Davis for the two of us.’
Noria stiffens. Levert laughs.
‘Don’t start getting ideas, Ghozali. Never on duty, never with a colleague.’
Noria gets up, leans towards him and smiles:
‘And never with a dirty Arab, right?’
Macquart looks at his watch: nine p.m. already. Too late to go home to his large house in Chaumont-en-Vexin, surrounded by meadows. He pictures himself arriving well after ten, his wife and five children already in bed and fast asleep, nothing in the fridge, an interloper. To leave again in the morning, before they wake up … He’ll have a sandwich in a brasserie around Châtelet, and spend the night in a little hotel near the Gare du Nord where they know him under the name of Durantex, a travelling sales rep.
It’s not hard locating Cecchi. Almost every evening, after midnight, he drops into the Perroquet Bleu club, rue Pigalle, neutral territory where the kings of the pavement meet to negotiate boundaries and tolerance zones, plus a few cops who take part in the negotiations, a handful of politicians, and a great many famous and infamous night owls seeking thrills and cocaine. Fernandez knows the place well, having been a regular at various times, initially trailing around after Bornand and then on his own account. That’s where he met Cecchi. Beginning and end of a chapter.
Although Pigalle is animated at night, the narrow surrounding streets are very quiet, almost deserted. At around nine p.m., Fernandez, his nose buried in a huge bunch of gladioli, enters an apartment block in rue Henner behind a young woman who taps in the door code. He goes through to the dark courtyard, climbs over the back wall, forces open the door of a storeroom, a simple lock and two turns of the key, and finds himself in the back of a newsagent’s which overlooks the Perroquet Bleu.
Fernandez puts on gloves, moving around slowly with the help of a tiny torch, gropes his way to the window and puts the gladioli and a tool belt down on the counter, within reach. He checks the time: 21.23. It’ll be OK, but no time to hang around. He focuses his mind and tries to recall the exact layout of the premises on the other side of the metal shutter. He stations himself, suction disc, diamond cutter … with precise movements he cuts a big enough circle in the shop window to allow him to reach the metal shutter easily. He draws an oblong and takes out a pocket electric drill. Don’t attract attention. He listens out and attacks just as a car drives past the shop. Don’t let the drill bit go through the shutter and be visible from the street, that would be asking for trouble. He needs to be hyper aware of the intensity of the pressure and stop a second before the metal shutter gives way. His hands are skilled, his mind totally absorbed, he’s sweating all over. As he makes the first holes, he gains a fuzzy picture of what’s happening outside. He carries on with his painstaking task, a little less tense now. Few pedestrians actually, the people heading for the Perroquet Bleu are all on the other side of the street. After an hour and a half’s drilling, he’s cut out four-fifths of an oval. He tests the resistance of the metal with his fingertips: it gives. The satisfaction of a job well done. He puts away his equipment. Then he pushes the counter in front of the window and extracts from the bunch of gladioli a short-barrelled laser gun, borrowed from the Élysée gendarmes’ armoury which always has state-of-the-art weapons. He checks the mechanism, loads it, sits on the counter and lays the gun down next to him. It is 23.38. Then begins a long wait, his eye trained on the entrance to the Perroquet Bleu.
The Perroquet Bleu. His first snort of coke, on the corner of a table. The feeling that he was discovering life. Coke, warmth, a flashback: Katryn’s face, screaming, a dark hole beneath a helmet of black hair, the back of her neck split open, a bloodstain slowly spreading over the wall, her body sliding downwards in slow motion, doubled up, a heap of rags. No more sound, not now. Ghosts. A gold pill box, two amphetamines. Empty his mind, at all costs. He rehearses the sequence of actions over and over in his mind. Cecchi’s car slows down and stops, Cecchi gets out, straightens up …
At 12.16 a.m., Bornand, at the wheel of his Porsche, screeches to a halt in front of the Perroquet Bleu. Fernandez feels a jolt, an adrenalin rush. Bornand gets out and hands his keys to the doorman. Fernandez takes aim, gripped by an overwhelming urge to kill. Bornand goes inside the bar. Fernandez sighs. The adrenalin subsides. His hands are shaking. Amphetamines.