Free Alex by Pierre Lemaitre Page B

letting Louis pay would be humiliating to the others, reminding them that though he works as a police officer, he’s not short of money. No-one would even think to ask Armand: if you invite Armand to dinner, you’ve already offered to pay. As for Maleval, he always had money problems and everyone knows how that turned out.
    Tonight, Camille was glad to pick up the tab. Though he doesn’t say as much, he’s happy to have his boys back. It’s unexpected. It’s something he couldn’t have imagined three days ago.
    “I don’t get it …” he says.
    Dinner is over; they’ve crossed the street and they’re walking along the canal, looking at the barges.
    “Nobody’s missed her at work? No husband, no fiancé, noboyfriend, girlfriend, no-one? No family? Though I suppose in a city this size, the way things are these days, the fact that no-one’s looking for her …”
    The conversation tonight is just like all the conversations they’ve ever had, punctuated by long silences. They each have their own: pensive, introspective or focused.
    “I suppose you used to check in on your father every day?” Armand says.
    No, obviously, not even twice a week – his father could have dropped dead at home and lain there for a week before … He had a girlfriend he saw a lot of – she was the one who found him, who let him know. Camille met her for the first time two days before the funeral. His father had mentioned her in passing as though she were a mere acquaintance. It had taken three car trips to ferry everything she had at his place back to hers. A small woman, fresh-faced and rosy-cheeked as an apple with wrinkles that looked new-minted. She smelled of lavender. For Camille, the idea that this woman had taken his mother’s place in his father’s bed was, in the literal sense, unimaginable. Two women who were like chalk and cheese. It was a different world, maybe a different planet; he sometimes wondered what his parents had had in common – nothing, on the face of it. Maud, an artist, had married a chemist – go figure. He’d asked himself the question a thousand times. The little apple seemed to him a more natural fit. Whichever way you think about it, what goes on between our parents can often remain a mystery, he thought. That said, some weeks later, Camille discovered that over a few short months the little wrinkled apple had siphoned off a large chunk of the chemist’s assets. Camille had a good laugh about it. He never saw her afterwards, which was a pity; she was obviously a character.
    “It was different for me,” Armand went on. “My father was in a home. But when someone’s living on their own, what can you do? They die, and for the body to be found straight away it would be sheer chance.”
    This thought puzzles Camille. He starts telling a story he read somewhere. Some guy called Georges. A combination of circumstances meant that no-one was surprised not to hear from him for more than five years. Officially, he disappeared without anyone asking questions; his water and his electricity were cut off. His concierge believed he’d been in hospital since 1996, but he had come home without her realising. His corpse was finally found in his apartment in 2001.
    “I read that in …”
    He can’t think of the title.
    “It was by Edgar Morin, a title like
Thoughts on
 … something.”
    “
Towards a Politics of Civilisation
,” Louis supplies gravely. He pushes his hair back with his left hand. Translation: sorry …
    Camille smiles.
    “Good, isn’t it, having the old team back together?” says Camille.
    “This case makes me think of Alice,” Armand says.
    This is hardly surprising. Alice Hedges, a girl from Arkansas, found dead in a skip on the banks of the Canal de l’Ourcq, whose body had not been identified for three years. When all’s said and done, disappearing without a trace is not as rare as people think. But still you can’t help wondering. You sit here staring at the greenish