The Beast of the Camargue Read Online Free PDF Page A

mentioned in such terms! You have a career full of big cases and high-profile prosecutions. Most important, you go all the way. You have the courage to do that. And it’s you who knows the local underworld best. All of your former colleagues agree about that. And I think that the underworld is involved in this business. There you have it.”
    â€œWhat makes you think I’ll be interested in this case?”
    â€œNothing. It’s just that my client …”
    â€œI don’t follow you.”
    â€œOf course, you will be paid for what I’m asking you to do. And, believe me, you won’t regret it.”
    â€œAnd you know perfectly well that I can’t accept! I may be on sick leave, but I’m still on the force and intend to stay there till I retire.”
    â€œI know, I know … all I’m asking for is a few days’ spare time. In any case, the affair will become public knowledge in a few weeks’ time. We won’t be able to keep it secret as long as we should like to. This article has done us considerable harm. I don’t know where their information came from … Well, never mind.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWhat I mean is, officially, or at least up until today, William Steinert has gone off on a little jaunt to the tropics. But you know as well as I do that there’s no fooling people in a scene like this one. Last Friday, questions were already being asked. When this article comes to the right people’s attention, I hate to think what will happen. At the next board meeting, the wolves will be baring their teeth. I suppose I am making myself clear?”
    â€œLoud and clear. But once again, I don’t see what I can do to help.”
    â€œWhat I want you to grasp is that I’m ready to do all I can so that, in a week’s time, the theory of a kidnapping can be ruled out.”
    â€œSo what you want to know is whether a ransom is in the offing or not.”
    The lawyer tightened his lips and nodded.
    â€œAnd perhaps you’d also like to know if Steinert is still alive?”
    â€œYou are reading me like a book! So, yes, we quite understand one another, M. de Palma.”
    â€œI still haven’t said yes.”
    Chandeler clenched his jaws several times and focused on a point in front of him.
    â€œDo you know where he disappeared?”
    â€œIn Tarascon.”
    De Palma smiled: the emperor of the machine tool disappearing in the town of Tartarin …
    â€œI know, it might seem funny to you, but that’s how it is. William Steinert hasn’t been heard from since June 24.”
    For the Baron, Tarascon was an unlikely name and place, with a castle adorned with beautiful towers and spanking new arrow slits. The home of the true-blue Provençals, in the heart of their eternal land, a white town at the top of the vast Rhône delta.
    â€œHis wife wasn’t worried for the first few days. In those circles, people don’t see each other all the time. But then she made some phone calls to Germany, and then to his Paris office, and she had to face the truth: her husband had indeed vanished somewhere between his office in Tarascon and the farmhouse where they live a few kilometers away, between the villages of Maussane and Eygalières.”
    Maussane: part of the golden triangle of Provence, the home of snobs, fading artists, and natives proud of their stuffy traditions. Everything that the Baron most detested.
    â€œSo what do you think, M. de Palma?”
    He took a deep breath then curled his lip skeptically.
    â€œI think that you suspect someone, or some organization, and that you don’t know how to contact them … I mean, you don’t want to contact them. That’s why you thought of me and were given my phone number. Probably by some retired old bastard who keeps going on about what a great cop he used to be. How he arrested gangland bosses … never mind.
    â€œAnd it’s