Camille by Pierre Lemaitre Read Free Book Online

Quakers.
    Armand’s death four days earlier devastated Camille. It also liberated him. For weeks and weeks he had been visiting the hospital, holding Armand’s hand, talking to him even when the doctors could no longer tell whether he could hear or understand. And so now he simply nods to Armand’s widow from afar. After the longs months of agony, after all the words he has said to Armand’s wife, his children, Camille has nothing left. He did not even need to come today: he has given everything he had to give.
    Camille and Armand had a number of things in common. They had started out together at the police academy, a youthful connection made all the more precious by the fact that neither of them had ever truly been young.
    Then there was Armand’s pathological tight-fistedness. He waged a battle to the death against expense and, ultimately, against money. Camille cannot help but think of his death as a victory for capitalism. It was not this meanness that united them but the fact that, in their different ways, they were small men with an overwhelming need to compensate. It was a kind of solidarity for the differently abled.
    Moreover his long, slow death had confirmed that Armand thought of Camille as his best friend.
    What we mean to others can be a powerful bond.
    Of the four original members of his team, Camille is the only one now standing in the cemetery, something he finds difficult to accept.
    His assistant, Louis Mariani, has not yet arrived. Camille is not worried, Louis is a man with a strong sense of duty, he will be here – for someone of Louis’ social class, missing a funeral, like farting at the dinner table, is unimaginable.
    Cancer of the oesophagus gives Armand the perfect excuse for absence.
    That leaves Maleval, whom Camille has not seen for several years. Maleval was a brilliant young officer before he was dismissed from the force. Despite their differences, he and Louis were good friends, they were roughly the same age and they complemented each other. Until it was discovered that Maleval had been feeding information to the man who murdered Irène. He had not done so deliberately, but he had done it all the same. At the time, Camille could happily have killed him with his bare hands, the brigade criminelle came very close to suffering a tragedy worthy of the House of Atreus. But after Irène’s death, Camille was a broken man; he spent years ravaged by depression and afterwards his life seemed meaningless.
    He misses Armand more than anyone. With his death, Verhœven’s team has been wiped off the face of the earth. This funeral is the beginning of a new chapter in which Camille will try to rebuild his life. Nothing could be more fragile.
    Armand’s family are just going into the crematorium when Louis arrives. Pale cream Hugo Boss suit, very elegant. “Hi, Louis.” Louis does not say “Hello, guv.” Camille has forbidden the expression, they’re not in some T.V. police series.
    The question that sometimes nags Camille about himself is even more relevant to his assistant: what the hell is this guy doing on the force? He was born into a wealthy family and, as if that were not enough, is gifted with an intellect that saw him accepted into the finest schools a dilettante can attend. Then, inexplicably, he joined the police to work for a schoolteacher’s salary. At heart, Louis is a romantic.
    “You O.K.?”
    Camille nods, he is fine, in fact he’s not really here at all. Most of him is still back at the hospital where Anne, doped up on painkillers, is waiting to be taken for X-rays and a C.A.T. scan.
    Louis stares at his boss for just a second too long, nods, then gives a low hmm . Louis is man of great tact for whom hmm , like the tic of pushing his hair back with the left or right hand, is a private language. This particular hmm clearly translates: that long face isn’t just about the funeral, is there something else going on? And for that something else to intrude on Armand’s