The Empire Of The Wolves Read online

  She dipped her head beneath the cool flow, mixing her sobs with the translucent water. As it flowed, she continued to whisper to it: "What's the matter with me? What's the matter with me?"

  PART II

  7

  A little golden sword.

  That is how he saw it in his mind's eye. In reality he knew that it was just a copper paper knife, with a Spanish-style carved pommel. At the age of eight, Paul had stolen it from his father's workshop and hidden in his bedroom. He could perfectly remember the atmosphere at the time. The closed shutters. The stifling heat. The calm of the nap.

  A summer afternoon like any other.

  Except that these few hours would alter the course of his life forever. "What are you hiding in your hand?"

  Paul tightened his fist. His mother was standing at his bedroom door. "Show me what you're holding."

  Her voice was calm, with just a hint of curiosity. Paul tightened his grip. She advanced into the half-light, the sunbeams filtered through the slats of the shutters, then she sat down on the edge of the bed and slowly opened his hand.

  "Why did you take the paper knife?"

  He could not see her face in the shadows. "To defend you.”

  “To defend me against who?"

  Silence.

  "Against your dad?"

  She leaned over him. Her face appeared in a ray of light. It was swollen, covered with bruises. One of her eyes, white and full of blood, was staring at him like a porthole. She repeated, "To defend me against your dad?"

  He nodded. There was a moment of uncertainty, of stillness, then she hugged him in a wave of abandon. Paul pushed her back. It was not tears and pity that he wanted. All that mattered was the coming battle. The promise he had made to himself the previous evening, when his drunken father had started beating his mother until she fainted on the kitchen floor. When the monster had turned around and seen him, a little boy trembling in the doorway, and had warned him: be back. I'll be back to kill both of you!”

  So Paul had armed himself and was awaiting his return, sword in hand.

  But he never did come back. Not the next day, nor the day after that. By one of destiny's coincidences, Jean-Pierre Nerteaux was murdered on the very night that he had made his threat. His body was discovered two days later, in his own taxi, near the gasoline warehouses in the port of Gennevilliers.

  When she learned of the murder, his wife, Françoise, reacted in a strange way. Instead of going to identify the body, she wanted to go to the place of the crime to check that his Peugeot 504 was still in one piece and that there would be no problems with the cab company.

  Paul remembered the slightest details: the bus ride to Gennevilliers, the mutterings of his devastated mother, his own apprehension faced with something he did not really understand. But when they reached the warehouses, he was struck with amazement. Huge crowns of steel rose up from the wasteland. Weeds and shrubs sprouted between the concrete ruins. Steel rods were rusting like metal cactuses. It was a landscape for a Western, like the deserts in the comic books he read.

  Under a sweltering sky, the mother and child crossed the storage areas. At the far end of these abandoned fields, they found the Peugeot. Half sunken into the gray dunes. Paul soaked up everything that an eight-year-old could understand. The police uniforms, the handcuffs glinting in the sunlight, the muted explanations, the black hands of the servicemen in white light as they busied themselves around the car…

  It took him a while to understand that his father had been knifed at the wheel. But only a second to see the lacerations in the back of the seat, through the half-open rear door.

  The killer had attacked his victim through the seat.

  The child was at once struck by how coherent the event was. A day before, he wanted his father to die. He had armed himself, then revealed his criminal plans to his mother. This confession had acted like a curse:

  Some mysterious force had made his wish come true. He might not have held the knife himself, but it was he who had mentally ordered the murder.

  From that moment, he had no more memories. Not of the funeral, nor of this mother's complaining, nor of the financial difficulties that marked their daily lives. Paul was completely drawn in on this truth: he was the real murderer.

  The true organizer of the massacre.

  Much later, in 1987, he enrolled in the law department of the Sorbonne. By doing odd jobs, he had managed to save enough money to rent a room in Paris, away from his mother, who now drank all the time. As a cleaning woman in a supermarket, she was thrilled at the idea that her son was to become a lawyer. But Paul had other ideas.

  When he obtained his master's degree in 1990, Paul joined the Cannes-Ecluse police academy. Two years later, he was first in his class and could have chosen one of the jobs most coveted by apprentice police officers: OCRTIS, the temple of dope chasers.

  His career looked set. Four years in a central office or an elite unit, then he could take the internal examination to become a commissioner. Before he was forty Paul Nerteaux would have a top-ranking job in the Ministry of the Interior, on Place Beauvau, amid the gilded paneling of headquarters.

  But Paul was not interested in such a career. His vocation as a policeman lay elsewhere, still linked to his feelings of guilt. Fifteen years after their expedition to Gennevilliers, he was still haunted by remorse. His career was guided by the sole desire to wash away his crime and recover his lost innocence.

  He had had to invent personal techniques and secret methods of concentration to master his anxiety attacks. Thanks to this discipline, he had found the means to become an unbending cop. In his company he was hated, feared and sometimes admired, but never liked because no one understood that his inflexibility and desire to succeed were his defenses, a security barrier. It was the only way for him to control his demons. No one knew that in the right-hand drawer of his desk, he still kept a copper paper knife…

  He tightened his grip on the wheel and concentrated on the road.

  Why was he digging up that shit again now? Was it the influence of the rain-soaked landscape? Because it was Sunday, the day of death for the living?

  On either side of the highway, all he could see were the dark furrows of plowed fields. The horizon itself looked like a final groove, opening out onto the nothingness of the sky. Nothing could ever happen in this region, except for a slow descent into despair.

  He glanced down at the map on the passenger seat. He now had to turn off the highway and take the A road toward Amiens. After that, he had to take the D235. Ten kilometers later, he would be there.

  So as to chase away his dark thoughts, he focused his mind on the man he was going to see: probably the only policeman he did not really want to meet. At the Inspection Générale des Services, he had photocopied his file and could now recite his CV by heart…

  Jean-Louis Schiffer was born in 1943 in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Seine-Saint-Denis. Depending on the context, he was nicknamed either "the Cipher" or "Mr. Steel." The Cipher because of the impenetrable mysteries that surrounded the cases he dealt with: Mister Steel because of his reputation of being implacable-and also for his silvery hair, which was long and silky.

  After his leaving certificate in 1959, Schiffer was called up for military service in Algeria, in the Aurès mountains. In 1960, he returned to Algiers, where he became an intelligence agent and an active member of the DOP (Détachements Operationnels de Protection).

  In 1963, he returned to France, ranked sergeant. He then joined the police force, first as an ordinary officer, then a sergeant in the territory brigade in Paris 's sixth arrondissement. He rapidly became noticed for his instinctive street savvy and liking for infiltration. In May 1968, he dived into the throng and mixed with the students. At the time, he wore his hair in a ponytail, smoked dope and discreetly noted the names of the ringleaders. During the clashes on Rue Gay-Lussac, he also saved a riot police officer from under a hail of paving stones.

  His first act of bravery. His first distinction.r />
  But that was only the beginning. After being recruited by the Brigade Criminelle in 1972, he was made inspector and continued to act heroically, fearing neither fire nor combat. In 1975, he received a medal for bravery. It seemed that nothing could stop his ascent. But then, in 1977, after a short period spent in the famous "anti-gang" squad, he was suddenly transferred. Paul had found a report written at the time and signed by Commissioner Broussard in person, who had noted in the margin unmanageable.

  Schiffer then found his true hunting ground in the First Division of the Police Judiciaire in Paris 's tenth arrondissement. Refusing all offers of promotion or transfer, for twenty years he dominated the west of the sector, imposing law and order in an area running from the central boulevards to the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l'Est, including part of Sentier, the Turkish quarter, with its high immigrant population.

  During that time, he headed a network of informers, put a check on illegal activities-gambling, drugs and prostitution-while maintaining ambiguous but effective relations with the leaders of the various communities. He also obtained a record success rate in the solving of cases.

  According to a widely held opinion in high places, it was thanks to him and him alone that a relative calm reigned in that part of the tenth arrondissement from 1978 to 1998. Schiffer even enjoyed the exceptional honor of prolonging his time on the force from 1999 to 2001.

  In April of that year, he finally retired officially. He had been decorated five times, including with the Order of Merit, and could boast of two hundred thirty-nine arrests and four deaths by shooting. At the age of fifty-eight, he had never risen higher than the rank of inspector. He was a cop on the beat, devoted to fieldwork in a single territory.

  So much for Mr. Steel.

  His Cipher side emerged in 1971, when he was caught beating up a prostitute on Rue de Michodière, by the Madeleine. The official inquest and investigations by the vice squad led to nothing. No one wanted to testify against the man with silver hair. Another complaint was made in 1979. It was rumored that Schiffer was racketing whores on Rue Jérusalem and Rue Saint-Denis.

  Another inquiry another failure.

  The Cipher knew how to cover his tracks.

  Things turned really serious in 1982. A stock of heroin disappeared from the Bonne-Nouvelle station, after the rounding up of a network of Turkish dealers. Schiffer's name was on everyone's lips. He was put under investigation. But a year later, he was cleared. No proof, and no witnesses.

  As the years went by, suspicions mounted: percentages gleaned from protection rackets, or from illegal gambling syndicates, fiddles involving local bars, or pimping… Apparently, he had a finger in every pie, but no one managed to trap him. Schiffer had his sector in a grip of steel. Even inside the force, internal investigators were confronted by the silence of their fellow officers.

  Yet everyone still saw the Cipher more as Mr. Steel. A hero, a champion of law and order, with a prestigious career behind him.

  But one last scandal nearly brought him down. In October 2000, the body of Gazil Hemet, a Turkish illegal immigrant, was found on the tracks of the Gare du Nord. The day before, he had been arrested by Schiffer himself as a suspected drug dealer. When accused of excessive violence, Schiffer riposted that he had freed the suspect before the end of the legal period of detention-which was rather unlike him.

  Had Hemet been beaten to death? The autopsy gave no clear answer, because the body had been torn to pieces by the 8:10 express from Brussels. But an independent forensic report spoke of mysterious wounds on the Turk's body, which could have been caused by torture techniques. This time, it looked as though Schiffer's career was going to finish behind bars.

  Then, in April 2001, the prosecutor decided to drop the charges again. What had happened? Who was pulling strings for Jean-Louis Schiffer? Paul had questioned the officers charged with the internal police investigation. They were so disgusted they did not want to reply. Especially because, a few weeks later, Schiffer personally invited them to his farewell drinks party.

  He was bent, a bastard, and cocky with it.

  Such was the shit that Paul was about to encounter.

  The highway exit to Amiens brought him back to the present. He turned off and took the A road. There were just a few more kilometers to go before he saw the sign to Longéres.

  Paul drove down the side road as far as the village. He crossed it without slowing down, then spotted another road that led down into a waterlogged valley. While driving between the tall grasses, brilliant from the rain, he had a sort of revelation. He suddenly realized why he had thought of his father while driving to meet Jean-Louis Schiffer.

  In his own way the Cipher was the father of all cops. Half hero, half demon, he alone incarnated the best and the worst, rigor and corruption, Good and Evil. A founding father, a Grand Old Man, whom Paul admired despite himself, just as he had admired, from the depths of his hatred, his violent alcoholic father.

  8

  When Paul saw the building he was looking for, he nearly burst out laughing. With its enclosing wall and two clock towers shaped like lookout posts, the Longéres police officers' retirement home looked just like a prison.

  On the other side of the wall, the comparison became even clearer. The yard was surrounded by three main buildings, laid out like horseshoes, each pierced by galleries with dark arcades. Some men were braving the rain and playing boules. They wore overalls that recalled the dress of the inmates in all the world's prisons. Just near them, three uniformed officers, presumably visiting a relative, were playing the part of wardens.

  Paul savored the irony of the situation. Longères, financed by the National Police Mutual Association, was the largest retirement home open to officers. It welcomed all ranks so long as they "suffered from no psychosomatic disorder based on or resulting in alcoholism." He now discovered that this famous haven of peace, with its enclosed spaces and masculine populace, was just another prison house. Return to sender, he thought.

  Paul reached the entrance of the main building and pushed open the glass door. A very dark, square hall led to a staircase topped with a dormer window of frosted glass. The place was as hot and stifling as a terrarium, and it stank of medication and urine.

  He turned toward the swinging doors to his left, from which a strong smell of food was wafting. It was noon. The inmates were presumably having lunch.

  He discovered a refectory with yellow walls and a floor covered with bloodred linoleum. On the long lines of stainless-steel tables, the plates and cutlery were carefully arranged. Vats of soup were steaming. Everything was in place, but the room was deserted.

  Noises came from the next room. Paul approached the din, feeling his heels sink into the sticky floor. Every detail added to the overall atmosphere of gloom. He felt himself age with every step he took.

  He passed the door. About thirty pensioners in shapeless tracksuits were standing with their backs to him, concentrating on the TV. "Now Hint of Joy has gone past Bartok…" Horses were galloping across the screen.

  As Paul approached, he noticed a single old man sitting in another room to the left. Instinctively, he craned his neck to get a better look at him. Slumped over his plate, the man was toying with a steak at the end of his fork.

  Paul had to face facts: this debris was his man.

  The Steel and the Cipher. The officer with two hundred and thirty-nine arrests.

  He crossed the room. Behind him, the commentary was blaring: "Hint of Joy, it's still Hint of Joy." Compared with the last photos Paul had seen of him, Jean-Louis Schiffer had aged twenty years.

  His regular features had shriveled over his bones, as though stretched on the rack. His gray, scaly skin hung loose, especially around his neck, making him look like a reptile. His eyes, which had once been chrome blue, were barely visible beneath his heavy eyelids. The former officer no longer had the long hair that had made him famous. It was now short, almost in a crew cut. The silvery mane had given way to an iron skull.

>   His still-powerful frame was obscured in a royal blue coverall, whose collar divided into two wavy wings over his shoulders. Beside the plate, Paul spotted a stack of betting slips. Jean-Louis Schiffer, the street legend, had become the bookmaker for a crew of retired traffic cops.

  How had he ever imagined that such a wreck could help him? But it was too late to turn back now Paul adjusted his belt, gun and handcuffs and put on his most impressive look-eyes ahead, and jaws clenched. The glassy eyes had already located him. When he was only a few paces away, the man said straight off: "You're too young to be a cop's cop."

  "Captain Paul Nerteaux, first section, tenth arrondissement." He rattled this off in a military tone that he at once regretted.

  "On Rue de Nancy?"

  "That's correct."

  This question was an indirect compliment. It was the address of the neighborhood station. Schiffer had recognized the investigator in him, the cop on the beat.

  Paul grabbed a chair, glanced around automatically at the gamblers, who were still stuck in front of their television. Schiffer followed his eyes and laughed.

  "You spend your life putting crooks behind bars, then what happens? You end up doing time yourself"

  He raised a piece of meat to his lips. His jawbones went to work beneath the skin like fluid, alert machinery Paul revised his judgment. The Cipher was not as far gone as all that. All he had to do was blow the dust off the mummy.

  "What do you want?" the man asked, after swallowing his meat.

  Paul adopted his most modest tone. "I've come to ask you for some advice."

  "What about?"

  "About this." He removed a brown paper envelope from the pocket of his parka and placed it next to the betting slips. Schiffer pushed aside his plate and unhurriedly opened it. He took out a dozen color photographs.