The Three Evangelists

suddenly lose all your illusions. I know the feeling.’

‘Did you ask her about it?’

‘Not so loud, for God’s sake, I told you. No, I didn’t ask her about it. You don’t ask about that kind of thing. I’m guessing, inventing and comparing. It’s not that difficult.’

‘Do you think some man’s thrown her out?’

Oh please, keep your big mouth shut.’

The godfather pursed his lips and kicked a stone.

‘That was my stone,’ said Marc tartly. ‘I left it there last Thursday. You might ask before taking it over.’

Vandoosler kicked the pebble for a few minutes, then lost it in the long grass.

‘Very clever,’ said Marc. ‘D’you think they grow on trees?’

‘Go on,’ said Vandoosler.

‘OK, the waterfall. Add to that the aunt’s disappearance. It’s a lot to take. My impression is that the girl is straightforward. She’s gentle, truthful, fragile, lots of delicate qualities to be careful not to break, like her neck. But she’s touchy and susceptible. At the least thing, she sticks her lip out. Well, not exactly-let’s say she’s straightforward but has mixed feelings. Or perhaps straightforward thoughts in a mixed-up temperament. Oh hell, I don’t know. Let’s drop it. But where this business about her aunt is concerned, she won’t let matters drop, you can be sure of that. Is she telling us the whole truth, though? I don’t know. What is Leguennec going to do-or rather, what are you and he planning to do?’

‘We’re not going to keep it under wraps any longer. In any case, as you say, the girl is going to move heaven and earth to find Sophia. So we might as well go official. Open an investigation under some pretext. It’s all been too vague, it’s going to get away from us. We should try and make the first move. But it’s impossible to check the story about the star on the card, and the rendezvous in Lyon. The husband doesn’t remember the name of the hotel on the card. Or where the card was posted. He doesn’t remember anything, Relivaux. Or else he’s doing it on purpose, and the card never existed. Leguennec has run a check on the Lyon hotels. No-one of her name has registered.’

‘Do you think the same as Mathias? That someone has killed Sophia?’

‘Slow down, my boy. St Matthew is jumping to conclusions.’

‘Mathias jumps to the right conclusion when he has to. Hunter-gatherers are like that sometimes. But why does it have to be a murder? It might have been an accident?’

‘An accident? No, we’d have found a body long ago.’

‘So you think it really is possible? Murder?’

‘That’s what Leguennec thinks. Sophia Simeonidis is extremely rich. Her husband on the other hand is at the mercy of a change of government and a return to a subordinate job. But we haven’t found a body, Marc. No body, no murder.’

When Leguennec emerged, he and Vandoosler conferred again. He nodded and went off, a small determined figure.

‘What’s he going to do?’ asked Marc.

‘Open an official enquiry. Play cards with me. Try to reel in Relivaux-and it’s no fun being reeled in by Leguennec, believe me. He has infinite patience. I’ve been on board a trawler with him, I know what he’s like.’

Two days later, the news came as a bolt from the blue. Leguennec announced it that evening, though in measured tones. The fire services had been called out the night before to an intense fire in a deserted alleyway in Maisons-Alfort, in the southwest suburbs. The fire had already spread to some nearby houses, all empty and abandoned, by the time the firemen got there. It had not been put out until three in the morning. In the ashes were three burnt-out cars, and in one of them an unrecognisable body. Leguennec had been informed at seven o’clock, while he was shaving. He went to find Relivaux in his office at three that afternoon. Relivaux had positively identified a little piece of volcanic rock which Leguennec showed him. It was a fetish that Sophia had always had with her; it had been in her handbag or her pocket for the last twenty-eight years.

XVIII

ALEXANDRA, DISBELIEVING, SITTING CROSS-LEGGED ON HER BED, HEAD in hands, was insisting on details and facts. It was seven in the evening. Leguennec had authorised Vandoosler and the others to stay in the room. It would be all over the papers in the morning. Lucien was watching to see whether the little boy had marked his carpet with his felt pens. He was concerned about that.

‘Why did you go to Maisons-Alfort?’ Alexandra was asking. ‘What did you know?’

‘Nothing at that stage,’ Leguennec assured her. ‘But I’ve got four missing persons in my zone. Pierre Relivaux didn’t want to report his wife missing. He was sure she would come back. But because you had arrived, I had, let’s say, persuaded him to make the report all the same. Sophia Simeonidis was on my list, and in my mind. I went to Maisons-Alfort because it’s my job. I wasn’t alone, I can tell you that. There were other inspecteurs, looking for missing teenagers and vanished husbands. But I was the only one looking for a woman. Women go missing far less often than men-did you know that? When a married man or a teenage boy disappears, we don’t worry so much. But when it’s a woman, there are reasons to fear the worst, you understand? But the body, forgive me, was unidentifiable. Even the teeth were gone, burnt to ashes.’

Vandoosler interrupted him: ‘You can spare us the details, Leguennec.’

Leguennec, he of the jutting jaw, shook his bullet head. ‘I’m trying, Vandoosler,’ he said. ‘But Mademoiselle Haufman wants facts.’

‘Go on, inspecteur,’ said Alexandra quietly. ‘I need to know.’

The young woman’s face was swollen with weeping, her black hair was ruffled and on end, from the times she had repeatedly run her wet hands through it. Marc wished he could dry it for her, comb it tenderly back into shape. But there was nothing he could do.

‘The lab’s working on it, and it’ll take several days before we get any more results. But the burnt body was small, indicating a woman. The wreck of the car has been gone through with a toothcomb, but there was nothing, not a shred of clothing, no belongings, nothing. The fire must have been started with many cans of gasoline, and quantities of it had been thrown not only all over the body and car but on the ground around it and the facade of the nearby house, which fortunately was empty. Nobody lives in the alley. It’s down for demolition and there are only a few abandoned cars there. Tramps sometimes use them to shelter in at night.’

‘So the place had been chosen deliberately, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes. Because by the time the alarm was raised, the fire had already done what it was meant to.’

Inspecteur Leguennec kept twisting with his fingertips the plastic bag containing the black stone, and Alexandra could not take her eyes off this exasperating movement.

‘And then?’ she asked.

‘Beside the feet, we found two lumps of melted gold, which suggested a ring or a chain. So it was someone well-enough off to have some gold jewellery. And finally on what was left of the front passenger seat, we found a little black stone that had survived the fire, a chunk of basalt, probably all that remained from a handbag placed on the seat by a woman driver. Nothing else. Keys ought to have survived too. But oddly enough, there is no sign of any keys. I placed all my hopes on the stone. You understand? My other missing persons are all men, and big tall ones. So the first person I called on was Pierre Relivaux. I asked him if his wife took her keys with her when she went away, as most people would. And no, she didn’t. Sophia used to hide her keys in the garden, like a child, according to Relivaux.’

Of course,’ said Alexandra with a fleeting smile. ‘My grandmother was scared stiff of losing her keys. She taught us all to hide our keys like squirrels. We never carry them about.’

‘Ah,’ said Leguennec. ‘That makes things clearer. Then I showed Relivaux the piece of basalt, without telling him what we had found at Maisons-Alfort. He recognised it at once.’

Alexandra held out her hand for the plastic bag.

‘Aunt Sophia picked it up on a beach in Greece, the day after her first big success on stage,’ she said softly. ‘She never went anywhere without it. In fact that used to annoy Pierre. The rest of us would laugh at her about it,