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.