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.