Caunes is one of the most beautiful villages in France, Sergeant Créancier said to himself as he looked at the case file for the women who had lost an eye the night before. On the other hand, he concluded, Caunes is as beset, in microcosm, as any ordinary village or town in France. With Algerians, Moroccans, rosbifs, Americans, pieds noirs, Caunois, and émigrés from elsewhere in France all commingled, the stew is not always tasty.
There have been break-ins of late, mainly targeting résidences secondaires of part-time residents. Too, sometimes someone leaves a door open and, invited, a greedy beggar enters and removes the contents of a wallet. The foreigners, in particular, complain --but if they left a door or window open, it is no concern of his.
The attack on Irine Fantôme did not fall into either of these categories, though. Créancier, a large man who had spent his career in the gendarmerie, sitting in cars, patrolling the countryside of Languedoc-Rousillon, thought violent crimes perpetrated against women particularly reprehensible. A man who would steal nothing, yet beat a sturdy woman so badly she lost an eye must be both physically very powerful and quite dangerous.
This kind of crime was not perpetrated by the Algerians in town. They were most usually suspected when property disappeared. Two sons of one family, raised by an older sister, had linked up with a gang operating out of Perpignan, to raid foreigner's homes. They were opportunists and found homes with latches unlocked or windows open until one day they decided to try a bigger caper, robbing one of the big homes in the hills. It had a radio alarm that brought the police there within minutes: Karim and Wassim spent six months in the penitentiary in Béziers before returning to their sister's house and work-release jobs at the SMIC rate at Kentucky Fried Chicken outside Carcassonne . They spoke of going to Canada, but so far they remained in Caunes. Neither was violent, Karim younger and less sure of himself, Wassim older and more serious. Créancier thought they had girlfriends, but after Béziers no illusions about prison or fame, their hip-hop hats notwithstanding.
Until their capture, Wassim and Karim had been the most enterprising of Caunes' petty thieves. All the others were just juvenile delinquents. They stole to brag to their friends, but only wallets, or the occasional stereo from an open car. Caunes was, Créancier thanked himself, very much a quiet place to live, where everyone knew everyone and one neighbor's curiosity about another operated as well or better than any security system.
Why, then would Irine Fantôme have been attacked? She lived on the main street, had for years. Known to everyone in Caunes as a good neighbor, a bit solitary. Divorced long before she came to Caunes, she set up a notions shop, selling anything you might need in a pinch, but didn't want to drive to Carcassonne for: a needle, an envelope, a bottle of glue, a screwdriver, a plug for the bathtub, all sold in quantities of one usually. Thrifty Caunois preferred to visit Irine than spend money on gasoline, particularly these days, when no one had any Euros to spare. That is to say everyone visited and knew Irine, because the Caunois are by nature thrifty. Visitors from the north might laugh, call them ploucs, and hillbillies, but Caunes had not survived for a thousand years because anyone threw away a piece of string.
It was hard to believe the attacker was from the village. With the exception of that one Algerian family, everyone in Caunes was neighborly, according to his merits. Even Cibiche, that pathetic charity case adopted by the Café de la Fontaine, would not so much as pick up a centime that was not his, nor raise his fist in anger against another Caunois. What could have provoked an attack on a woman at an age that could easily have led to her death, not just disfigurement?
What provoked men --if not drunkeness, which made beasts of men, but whose effects usually dissipated as the alcohol left the system --to conceive a plan to commit violence that required elaborate planning to avoid detection? Nothing had been stolen or destroyed in Irine Fantôme's apartment and the entry had not been forced. Fantôme said she had not left the door open by mistake, but even if she had, a man in black with his face covered does not just happen to open the door in the middle of the night so he can hit you in the face with all his strength.
The woman talked a bit too much, that was true. Instead of keeping her opinions to herself, she spoke and acted on them. When she first arrived in Caunes, wanting to make a good impression, she signaled to the Mairie that the sale of the dilapidated property next to hers at the end of Avenue du Minervois was being sold for a lower than reasonable price, probably because money was passing under the table. Indeed, the seller and the buyer had come to an agreement that the purchase price would be supplemented by a tax-free payment for the "furniture", which meant the State might have gotten less than it was entitled to. The Mairie looked into the terms of sale and found that the "antique" dining room table and chairs were worth much less than the 60,000 Euros the buyer paid. Thanks to Irine, the sale was canceled, the Mairie exercised its right of first refusal, buying the property for the contract price, then selling it at a handsome profit, plus the taxes. Both the buyer and the seller moved away from Caunes, but everyone remembered the history of the property, now a restaurant that catered to tourists.
Irine was right to tip off the Mairie, but she might have done better to keep very, very quiet about it. Instead, out of moral outrage, she told one of her neighbors, the biggest mouth in town, and when the Mairie took the property, everyone knew it was Irine who had informed. This, in a town where you had only to mention that a particular house was for sale and most people could tell you who the owner was fifty years ago.
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