Inside The Mind Of A Killer Read online

  ‘What were you doing that day?

  ‘In the early afternoon, I was having a snooze on the bed in my van. Then Martin came and knocked at the door, after whistling from his window. He told me that a woman had just had her throat slit on the beach. I didn’t go and have a look straight away, I waited till the next day. I don’t like crowds. The police were still at the scene. From what I read in Le Télégramme and Ouest-France, the victim’s name was Aline Pérès. I saw her photo. I might have met her during my stays at the Hôpital Morvan, but I’m not sure. According to the papers, her bag was found nearby and she hadn’t been raped. I’d like to have seen the body to see how it was done. I say that because I was in the police for a while, that’s the only reason, you understand.’

  I was intrigued by this character and disturbed by his interest in the details of the murder. I pursued my line of questioning. ‘Could you describe the victim?’

  ‘Again, only from what I’ve read. She was forty-nine, divorced, mid-length brown hair.’

  This behaviour foxed us. Was he speaking the truth, or was it a serious lead? It was vital to establish his movements on 14 May. His neighbour, Martin, was also brought in for questioning, and then his friends were interviewed, and their apartments and cars searched. In the end, we had nothing on him. Another red herring. Once again, time and energy had been spent only to conclude that here was a character who was definitely bizarre, but nothing more.

  On 19 June at 10.30 a.m., the gendarmerie at Saint-Clair-sur-l’Elle in the Manche region received a call. One of the homeless men from the Emmaüs hostel whom we’d been looking for had just been picked up. I left Brest at once. The longest a person can be held without charge is forty-eight hours from the time they are stopped, and the countdown had begun. There wasn’t a second to lose. After the forty-eight hours have elapsed, the suspect cannot be rearrested. I stopped off at the Rennes gendarmerie en route. I needed backup, for this type of interview was likely to take time. Major ‘JR’ – his initials had become his nickname – was on duty. He was a good investigator, one of the pillars of the force. It was a real stroke of luck that he was there. He came with me.

  3 p.m., Saint-Clair-sur-l’Elle, at last, after hours on the winding rural roads of Lower Normandy. At the gendarmerie, one of the chiefs greeted us.

  ‘Your client is here, in the next office,’ he said. ‘He’s a strange character. He’s waiting for you. We’ve looked in his bag, there’s nothing suspicious. You’ll see for yourself. He told us he was caught travelling on a train without a ticket. He claims that’s why he was hitch-hiking through here. He doesn’t know why he’s being held.’

  I appreciated his professionalism. Nobody had mentioned the murder and that was just as well. The door to the office was ajar, and I observed the man unseen by him. He was standing waiting. I knew almost nothing about him. No previous convictions, no fixed abode. He was there simply because he’d been staying in the Emmaüs hostel at Le Relecq-Kerhuon on the eve of the murder.

  As I watched him, I tried to get his measure. The first contact in custody is often difficult, yet I hoped I could break the ice quickly. If I couldn’t get through to him, or if he took against me, then JR would take over. I glimpsed him in profile, standing in a corner of the room with his hands behind his back. He was tall, about one metre ninety, and thin, with short, straight brown hair. I knew he was thirty, but it was hard to tell his age. He wasn’t unkempt, but was poorly dressed in a blue, yellow and red-striped short-sleeved shirt and blue canvas trousers. He held himself erect and seemed tense and jumpy, with an anxious expression. He kept jerking his head to examine the office windows one by one. He reminded me of a caged animal.

  Major JR was ready, and we walked in. The man spun round. His alert brown eyes bored into me. His face was contorted by a grimace, as if some inner pain was eating him. What an expression! I tried not to show any surprise and walked towards him with a pleasant ‘Good afternoon!’ Then there was a brief, limp handshake. He shunned physical contact. He did not take his eyes off me. Suddenly I realised I was the only officer in plain clothes. JR too proffered his hand.

  I decided to take the initiative before things became uncomfortable. In a reassuring voice, I said, ‘I’m sorry to detain you but we need to speak to you, to ask you a few questions about your movements. It shouldn’t take long. We’re just setting up the typewriter and then we’ll start. Can I get you anything?’

  He was still staring at me. His lips were pinched and I noticed his fists were clenched.

  ‘Are you from Saint-Lô?’

  I realised then that he thought I came from the neighbouring town. As I wasn’t in uniform, he assumed I outranked the others. I smiled at him, as if acquiescing.

  ‘Would you please state your name.’

  ‘My name is Francis Heaulme,’ he began flatly. ‘I was born on 25 February 1959 in Metz.’

  ‘You’re older than me, but only a few days.’

  ‘So I could even call you by your first name,’ he grinned back.

  I agreed, it sometimes makes things easier. Sitting in front of the typewriter, I foresaw a tricky interview. He went on, in a controlled tone, ‘I’m currently out of work and I stay at various Emmaüs hostels …’

  To avoid asking questions about the murder too soon, I then said, ‘Francis, could you tell me about yourself? How did you end up on the road?’

  He replied naturally, almost relieved, ‘I grew up in my parents’ home. I have a twenty-two-year-old sister. My mother died in 1984. My father remarried. I did all my studies in Metz. At seventeen, I qualified as an industrial electrician at the Fabert technical college. At eighteen, I signed up for two years in the territorial army. I served in radio communications in Frankfurt. In those days, I took part in manoeuvres. Although I was in the radio section, I did combat training. They taught different fighting techniques, and I learnt how to use a knife.’

  My fingers poised on the keyboard, I held my breath. What an opening! What was he leading up to? His intense gaze still drilled into mine. He spoke in fits and starts, interspersed with endless pauses. He was in control of himself. Was he testing us out? Heaulme was disconcerting. I knew I must show no emotion, no reaction.

  He went on, ‘For example, to take out a guard you have to surprise him from behind. You use your left hand to raise his head and make sure you place your forearm over his mouth to stop him shouting. With your right hand you stab him in the carotid, then in the heart, and one last time in the spine. In any case, you have to use all your strength … I even saw films about these things in the army.’

  I did not answer. I discreetly tried to catch JR’s eye. I found it hard to believe what I had just heard. The major did not react. And yet Francis Heaulme had just described the way in which Aline Pérès had been killed. Was it provocation, a coincidence? It wasn’t possible, the investigation was over, it had to be him …

  The interview continued:

  ‘After the army, I worked as an electrician for my father, and then for two or three contractors. In 1984, my mother died. I took it very badly and tried to kill myself with a shotgun. I can’t remember the date, but my mother died on a Sunday evening, and I tried to kill myself three days later. After that I was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Jury-lès-Metz. I was sectioned by the Prefect. When I came out, I started working again. After that incident, I was on medication, I was given anti-anxiety pills. In January 1988, when I was living at 12, Rue Charlemagne in Metz, I packed my bag on impulse and got on a train to Nice. I didn’t know where I was going. Since then, I’ve stayed at different Emmaüs communities in France.’

  I gently interrupted him and asked him to talk to me about the previous month, i.e. May.

  ‘I have to tell you that I spent most of May 1989 at the Emmaüs community in Brest. I arrived there at the end of April and I left the day before a woman was killed on the beach near the hostel. I left on a Saturday evening, after asking the director, Mr Pascal, for my wages, 520 francs.’

/>   I didn’t know what to think. He referred directly to the crime and went into detail. I remained impassive.

  ‘I caught a bus near the Longchamp bar, six hundred metres from the hostel,’ he continued. ‘That bus took me directly to Guilers, to my friend Raymond’s house. I had met him at the Emmaüs auction room in Brest. I’d never been to his house, but he’d given me his address. I’ve lost it since. I spent the night in Guilers and on the Sunday I took the train from Brest to Saint-Brieuc at around eight or nine o’clock.’

  That meant he had left the community but remained in the area. I wondered who this man was. He was still staring at me fixedly. It was extraordinary, he did not blink. I felt he was on the verge of exploding.

  He rattled off his journey without difficulty. ‘I stayed in Saint-Brieuc for two days and then I went down to Quimperlé. That’s where I stayed in the psychiatric hospital.’

  I wanted to ask him why, but I allowed him to follow his train of thought.

  ‘I sort of ran away from the psychiatric hospital in Quimperlé. From there I took the train back to Saint-Brieuc where I slept for two days at the Emmaüs hostel. Then I hitched to San Malo and Cherbourg. In one day. In fact I arrived in Cherbourg on 22 June and stayed there until Wednesday 28 at the Emmaüs hostel. On 28 June, I took the train to Caen. But I got off too soon because I was drunk …’

  He was constantly on the move. He had a good memory for dates and places, unlike most of the vagrants I had met recently.

  ‘I should tell you that I often drink. I take anti-anxiety pills, and other medication. It’s bad for me to drink, because it gives me urges. I fantasise about fight scenes with a knife, I see my hands covered in blood. I feel the need to look at my hands to see if it’s true.’

  What an astonishing confession! I was convinced that I was sitting opposite Aline Pérès’s killer. It was almost too easy, all I had to do was listen. I shot Major JR another look. I felt he was on the same wavelength. He signalled to me to allow Heaulme to continue. Francis Heaulme watched our reaction.

  ‘In the past,’ he went on, ‘I don’t know exactly when, probably in 1988, when I was in Dijon, I even acted out my fantasy. For no reason, I felt this urge and I attacked a woman. In the middle of a pedestrian street, I grabbed a woman by the arms and squeezed very hard. She screamed and I let go. I hid and nobody caught me. I went to see a doctor to tell him about my problem. I was never charged, even though a police inspector questioned me.’

  I let him speak and asked him to go back to his stay in Brest.

  ‘On 10 May 1989,’ replied Heaulme, ‘I went with Henri L from the Emmaüs community to the beach where the murder took place on 14 May. I suddenly felt an urge. I wanted to attack a girl. She was aged about eighteen or twenty. She was coming out of the water. She was wearing a bikini. I ran towards her to grab her. I wasn’t armed, I had nothing in my hand. But in my pocket I did have a knife with a wooden handle. The girl began to scream and ran towards a man who was her father. This man grabbed my arm and called me names. That brought me to my senses. A few moments later, I felt ill and Henri L went to get somebody from the Emmaüs community to help me back there. In the community, a doctor came to examine me. After receiving treatment, I carried on with my usual activities. But then, on the Thursday evening, I felt the urge to go back to the beach again to do something. So I went down at around 8 p.m., after supper. I didn’t have a knife, only a piece of cable that I could use as a cosh. I didn’t do anything that day.’

  What was all this about and who was this individual? It was 6.30 p.m., we had already been listening to Heaulme for three hours. I urgently needed to talk with my colleague. We broke off the interview, but decided to keep him in custody. We had to find a hotel. I thought we would need forty-eight hours, perhaps less. We had to find a strategy. I was convinced he was the murderer. We couldn’t let him go without telling us more. I had heard too much, or not enough.

  In the car I asked Major JR what his thoughts were. His reply alarmed me.

  ‘I have already come across this type who rambles on and sometimes strikes close to the truth. Besides, if he were really the killer, he would never have talked to us like that.’

  In a second, he had turned Heaulme’s attitude on its head, making his declarations sound like the best possible defence.

  ‘He’s bound to have read the papers and he’s stringing us along.’

  I reminded him of the victim’s wounds and what our suspect claimed to have learnt in the army.

  ‘He opened up like that because he thinks I’m from Saint-Lô, not from Brest. He thinks I won’t make the connection with the Moulin Blanc affair. He’s manipulative.’

  It was no use. The major would not back down. A wise reaction or appalling blindness? In spite of everything, I had high hopes that the rest of the interview would prove me right.

  8.30 p.m. After having eaten dinner and given Francis Heaulme a sandwich, we resumed. I asked him what he had been planning to do on the beach that Thursday evening with a cosh.

  ‘When I mentioned Thursday evening to you,’ Francis replied, ‘I should tell you that I was planning to break into a car. In the end, I didn’t do anything and I went back to the hostel at around 10 p.m.’

  The atmosphere had changed. Heaulme was aware that he was in danger. He suspected he had said too much. He had probably realised that I was not an investigator from Saint-Lô.

  ‘I didn’t go to the beach on Friday 12 May, but I did go there on the 13th, after work. I was with Henri L, at around 8 p.m. Henri shared my room at the hostel. He is about forty years old. He wears a black leather bomber jacket and has short, greying hair. It was definitely that day, 13 May, that after supper I decided to leave. It was 8 p.m. when I asked for my wages. I had no particular reason for leaving, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. That evening I was wearing black trousers and a white shirt, and I was carrying my rucksack.’

  ‘What about Sunday 14 May?’

  ‘I recall going to sleep on the beach at Brest, opposite the bus stop near the bar called the Longchamp.’

  Suddenly, he stopped talking and changed his demeanour. He straightened up and looked at me as if he were emerging from a dream. ‘I have to add to some of the things I’ve told you. First of all, on 13 May 1989, during the afternoon, I hitch-hiked to Quimper. Secondly, when I got to Quimper, I had a giddy spell and I was taken to hospital. I was sent to the cardiology ward of the Laënnec hospital. I stayed there until 16 May 1989, the day I moved into the community at Quimperlé. So I have no connection with your case.’

  The thread had just snapped. I pressed him, ‘Francis, are you certain about what you’re saying?’

  He clammed up. By now it was 11.30 p.m. I left the office and grabbed a telephone. It was vital to check his whereabouts on 14 May. I was sure that he had not been in Quimper hospital on the Sunday afternoon. I picked up the receiver and asked for the cardiology ward. I was asked to ring back the next day. I explained the urgency of the situation, and that I needed to check whether Francis Heaulme had indeed been an in-patient there on 14 May. The duty nurse checked the ward register.

  ‘The gentleman in question was a patient here, in the cardiology ward, from 13 to 16 May 1989.’

  It couldn’t be true. That was eighty kilometres away from Moulin Blanc beach. I refused to believe it. I probed further. Had he left the ward on the Sunday afternoon? I added that I suspected that he had been involved in an assault. The nurse assured me that you can’t just walk out of a cardiology ward and return a few hours later. I was politely informed that people didn’t just wander in and out. Then I called the Quimper gendarmerie to ask to have a team sent straight to the hospital to check the records. I waited. My colleagues would probably discover the source of the error.

  Meanwhile, Francis Heaulme was in the adjoining room. Half-past midnight. The telephone rang. The chief of the Quimper gendarmerie on the line assured me that they had checked everything, and that our suspect had not gone out that day. Somethin
g wasn’t right, and I still wouldn’t believe it. In the meantime, the presumed killer had an alibi, and I couldn’t hold him any longer. I returned to the office and discreetly told Major JR the results of my inquiries. He didn’t seem particularly surprised. He was even condescending. In his eyes, I could read: ‘Young and inexperienced, getting all worked up over nothing …’

  Even so, I wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to keep Heaulme in custody while we confiscated his hospital record. I called the investigating magistrate and explained the situation. He thought it better to let him go so as not to use up the last hours of custody. I volunteered to go to the cardiology ward myself, the next day.

  I went back to the office. Heaulme was amused, relaxed. He knew that we had nothing on him. As it was getting late, he asked me if he could sleep there, in a cell. Why not? I had no reason to say no.

  ‘I’ll wake you up at 7 o’clock.’

  ‘Thanks to you, I had a good night,’ he said, without any shame and without the slightest hint of irony.

  Before he left, we had a coffee together. I tried to understand this strange character a little better, but he didn’t speak. I ventured to say to him, ‘If you have a problem, if you start seeing war scenes again, don’t be afraid to seek medical help.’

  He retorted, ‘François, you’d make a good psychiatrist!’

  François instead of Jean-François – had he registered my first name or not? I made a mental note but said nothing.

  Some mug shots were taken. Amused, he gave me his identity photo. I took a sample of mud from the soles of his shoes. A search of his rucksack yielded nothing and the clothes he owned came from charity, the Secours Catholique in Caen. He had no knife, no letters. I did not glean any more clues.

  Finally, we parted company. I watched him set off calmly in the direction of Caen, with his shambling gait and his rucksack slung over his shoulder. I had the feeling that something serious was happening but that I couldn’t do anything about it.