Out in the garden, he wonders if they are watching him walk away, through the curtains. He feels as if he has visited ghosts and, were it not for the fact that he held the insubstantial body of the old woman against him, that he felt her resist when he pushed her forward, he would now expect to see them pass through the walls and accompany him. And that is why he does not turn around and he hurries to leave this place, dazed and unsteady.
30The last line of Victor Hugo’s poem “Conscience.”
18
Martine Carol is dead. Darlac is holding a photograph of Mariette Mazeau, one of those smooth, soft-focus portraits that people can get taken in one of the studios on rue Sainte-Catherine or on the rours de l’Intendance and that make them look better. Subdued lighting, a hazy glow. But Darlac knows that this face had no need of such artifice. He knew it ten days ago, the moment that woman appeared bearing cups and a coffee pot on a silver tray, her mere presence erasing the room’s nouveau riche bad taste. Straight away, he thought of the actress who would sway into the jaws of the trap, as in a film. So he repeats it to himself like a newspaper headline or a radio announcement: Martine Carol is dead.
And I saw you die. I think I knew as soon as you entered the room that it was all going to end badly. I saw the bullet that would tear off your arm as it left the shotgun. And the terror in your eyes as your blood poured out, your arm in tatters. In the palm of my hand I held your warm, slender neck. And I shot the stupid bastard who did that to you, shot him like a dog.
He relives every second of that morning. He sees Jeff again, collapsed at the foot of the wall, his eyes just as round and empty, dead as they were when he was alive. He enjoys this image. Relief and pleasure.
I killed him for you.
At her bedside, behind the screen in this main hall of the SaintAndré hospital, he waited whole evenings for her to open her eyes again, he wiped her burning forehead with a handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne, he spoke to her in a whisper, come on, stay with us, don’t worry . . . But the woman didn’t move, her wan face on the pillow like a wax mask. Only her chest rose, as she breathed too fast, her breaths sometimes convulsed with what sounded like sobs. The doctors thought she would make it. She had lost a lot of blood, but they’d given her a transfusion in time. The heart was what worried them: less robust than they would have expected for a woman of thirty-five.
Yesterday she opened her eyes, stared fearfully at Darlac, and closed them again to let a few tears fall, murmuring indistinctly. That night her heart stopped beating.
He contemplates the photograph placed on his desk amid a disorder of reports, notes, other photos. He hears nothing of the morning bustle, banging doors, bursts of laughter and angry shouts, the obsessive rattling of typewriter keys. All those stupid fucking cops running around and barking at each other. This photograph does him good. He likes to think that there is, in the chaos of this world, a person worthy of affection and tenderness. That face, like a sacrificed saint’s, would, if she’d been allowed to live, have been capable of redeeming men’s sins.
Commissaire Darlac hears himself rationalizing. He knows exactly what his two-penny mysticism and his teenage virgin’s adoration is worth. He is past the age of jerking off over photographs of stars or naked sluts then hiding them under his coat again to keep them safe from teachers and priests. And anyway, he’s seen too much in his life. Done too much. He is immune to any kind of giddiness. His heart will never skip a single beat. But he surrenders simply to the beauty of that face, to the memory of that body, to the whole of that being who appeared just before the massacre.
Earlier, when the telephone rang and the nurse announced the woman’s death, he sat down heavily and took out her photo from the folder devoted to the disappearance of Inspecteur Mazeau and he merely examined it, full of sadness. It is so long since he has felt sad that he can’t even remember the last time. He abandoned himself to this delicious weakness. Perhaps to forget that he arrived early this morning in order to be able to work in peace and quiet and to put an end to that sleepless night with his wife, as wide awake as he was, curled up in a ball, fists tensed on the edge of the sheet pulled up to her neck. He had tried touching her so he could tire himself out a little bit, hoping it would help him sleep, but her legs were so cold, her feet so icy, that he felt as if he were pawing a corpse. He spent hours in the dark alongside this inert body, barely even able to hear her breathe. About five, he got up, driven from his bed by nausea and a migraine.
So, the office. Its smell of stale tobacco, sweat and dust. He avoided his night-shift colleagues so he wouldn’t have to hear the usual litany of fights on the docks between drunken sailors, whores picked up for disturbance of the peace, car thieves caught with their hands in the glovebox, tramps slashed with knives, all those dropouts and losers brought in by the police vans, this nightly routine where the scum is skimmed off the deep black water the way a head of foam is removed from a pint of lager, to make sure it doesn’t overflow. All this shit, typed up in triplicate. Typos, blurred carbons, wrongly followed procedures. The lingering stench of unwashed bodies, vomit.
He puts the photograph in a drawer, then stands up and walks over to the window. Clear blue sky. The sun readying itself to spring above the rooftops. Cigarette. First of the day. His head spins a little, but the taste of tobacco, and the smell of the smoke hovering around him, disperses the daydream that lulled him for a few moments.
Martine Carol is dead, but the Mazeaus were attacked by a former deportee, Jean Delbos, back in Bordeaux to wreak his revenge. Unmasked by Inspecteur Mazeau, he had violently attacked him before stealing his service revolver. Inspecteur Mazeau has disappeared, probably taken from his home during the attack that left his wife dead. Darlac thinks over the details and digressions of this fabrication: yes, it holds water. The dickhead journalists all bought it. He feels like a cat that has jumped from a tenth-floor window and has landed on the back of a stunned dog. A survivor. All-powerful. Even Commissaire Divisionnaire Laborde seemed convinced: he has decided to throw the kitchen sink at this case. A cop killer must not get away with it, he said.
Since the previous day, half a dozen detectives have been following up old leads, delving back into the past. The war and the Occupation are likely to confuse things, cover the tracks. Thank God. Darlac would prefer to avoid his own past being investigated. It is riddled with old footpaths known only to him. He opens a folder and takes out the photograph of a young man, which he procured from the prefecture’s identity-card department: it is Daniel Delbos, son of Jean and Olga Delbos, born 18 March 1939, officially adopted by Maurice and Roselyne Jouvet on 10 November 1946. Parents dead after being deported. Currently in Algeria with the 85th infantry regiment.
He remembers having held that little bastard in his arms, two or three times. Having taken him sweets. Given him a toy, maybe. It has to be said that Olga was so pretty, and so alone, some nights . . . But a bit Jewish, a bit ginger . . . Secretary in a factory where she hung around with communists. Bordenave, a detective in secret services, had warned Darlac in late ’40: you should watch yourself with Delbos and his wife. They’re not the kind of people you need to be seen with right now. With him, Jean, it was maybe alright: he was a clown, a small-time gambler, we could pick him up whenever we wanted and control him. But with her, you need to beware: her parents were Hungarian Jews, living in Paris with the grandparents. And on top of that, she was a communist—or as near as makes no difference. This was the war—surely he’d noticed. And we were occupied. Did he grasp what that meant? The Yids and reds were for it, without a doubt. He should distance himself from that lot pronto. And it was better that he, Bordenave, was the one to tell him, rather than the riff-raff that was taking over now—and he wasn’t only talking about the Krauts. “Stay on the right side and nothing will happen to you,” he had added.
Darlac took this warning to heart. In any case, Olga was too contemptuous of him for her to be of any
use to him: she wouldn’t say anything, reveal anything, even inadvertently, because she considered him a mortal enemy of her and her husband and a danger to her life and her son’s life. And he didn’t give a shit about politics. Pétain was an old fool, the Jews were a filthy race, the Commies dangerous cretins, and the Krauts inarguably the victors who must now be taken into consideration. Full stop. He simply had to get used to that fact and not get his fingers caught in any doors. What he was gradually coming to realize was this: there were positions to be filled and there was money to be made. Play his cards right, and it could all fall his way without him even having to ask. He just had to seize his chance when it came. To be there: right place, right time. Not difficult, when you’re a cop. So not only had he held the big stick, but he’d used it when he’d had to, hitting and hurting, dealing body blows and cracking heads without any reluctance at all. Ruthless and respected, he’d soon imposed his authority on his classroom of enemies. This was war. They could hate him all they liked. He would teach those little fucks.
And now he has the feeling that the war has started again.
At this moment, he is driving north towards the docks, jolting over the cobblestones, stuck behind slothful trucks, their engines roaring as they rev up, only to move fifty meters and then get stopped by the press of traffic again. He hardly looks beyond the fences surrounding the dock area where men and machines are busy working. All that unionized work disgusts him, those lazy-ass whiners, those pinko protesters, they sicken him. And ports have always made him anxious. Those murky zones where cities start to drown, where fog hovers, those places of exchange and transit, all those strangers arriving, all those people and goods leaving for God knows where. Ports are places of disorder and upheaval, with their unwritten laws laid down by crooks who are never caught. Once he had to run an investigation here: a stake-out lasting three nights. And he felt as if he were in enemy territory, sensing the hostility of each object, fearing the threat of the slightest shadow, hating the night itself, deeper than in town, and its silence, always broken suddenly by a peal of laughter or metallic screech. An unstable silence, just like the water and its ever-shifting reflections. Even the boats worried him, steeped in that deep blackness with their illuminated portholes, behind which he imagined foreign faces, concentrated on some plot, some deal, some stiff that needed to disappear.
He leaves this uncertain space behind him and crosses the swing bridge. Muffled thunder of wheels. Francis is waiting for him on the corner of rue de New York, opposite the police station, smoking with his elbow out the open car window. He extricates himself with difficulty from the driver’s seat and nods at Darlac, then the two of them walk rapidly towards number thirty-five without saying anything.
“Roselyne Jouvet?”
The woman who opens the door stares back at them with her dark, surprised eyes. Then the lines in her face tense as she appears to understand, even before they show her their police I.D.
For a moment she holds the door half open, probably blocking it with her foot.
“What do you want?”
Putting his card back in his pocket, Darlac holds open his jacket so she gets a good look at the Colt .45 in its shoulder holster. He sees the look in her eyes when she notices it.
“To talk to you. Isn’t your husband there?”
“He’s working.”
“What about your daughter? Irène, isn’t it?”
The woman visibly shivers. She stares at the two men, her gaze lingering on Francis, who is rummaging around in the pocket of his raincoat. The sound of keys.
Darlac steps into the doorway.
“Can we come in? Unless . . .”
She opens the door wide and precedes them through a narrow hallway that leads to the kitchen. Water is boiling in a washtub on the hob. The smell of soap is sharp and acrid. Francis sneezes. The woman leans on the sink and watches the two of them standing on the other side of the table, hats on heads, eyes ferreting around in the shadows. Their presence seems to fill the room, to suck all the air out of it.
Darlac already knows that this will be difficult. He senses her tension, hostility, suspicion. She’s seen cops here before, without a doubt. He knows that the husband nearly got taken in ’43. He knows that Poinsot had planned to take care of her, but had not had time. He should check that, when he gets the chance. She’s probably seen nervous detectives here before, one of them pistol in hand, sitting a child on his knees, stroking its temple with the barrel of his gun while his colleague carries out a body search.
“Did you know Olga and Jean Delbos?”
“They’re dead. Leave them in peace.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Darlac nods at Francis, who goes out into the hallway and starts opening doors and cupboards and drawers.
“Answer me and we’ll be on our way.”
“Of course I knew them. You already know that, or why would you ask? We took in their son, Daniel, and adopted him. So?”
“Do you read the newspaper?”
“Not every day.”
They hear Francis tipping out the contents of a drawer. The rough jingling of coat hangers on a rod.
“Well, guess what . . . Jean Delbos is not dead. He’s come back, and we’re looking for him.”
Roselyne puts a hand to her mouth and closes her eyes for a few seconds. When she opens them again, they are filled with tears that do not fall.
“I was closer to Olga. She was like a sister to me. None of this has anything to do with you.”
“Oh, but it does . . .”
Darlac pulls a chair out and sits down with a sigh. He takes off his hat and looks up at the woman, who has not moved. She appears paralyzed, breathing through her mouth, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she tries to control her emotions. At the back of the house they hear Francis whistling as he empties cupboards and wardrobes.
“Jean Delbos is accused of six murders. Including those of a policeman and his wife. That makes him one of the most wanted criminals in the country. Starting to get the picture now?”
Roselyne does not react. She wipes her palms on her apron, hands flat, as if she was smoothing down the fabric.
“Sooner or later, he’s going to come here to see you, to see his son. Always happens with men like this. When they feel hunted, even the most cunning of them, they go to their old lairs, like animals, where they can pick up their own scent again. That day, when he comes back, I want you to tell me. Find a phone and call us. You’ll figure out a way to arrange another meeting. Invite him in, just like the good old days. And we’ll be there.”
Roselyne stands up and grabs two dish towels then picks up the washtub by its handles and moves it from the hob to a steel plate. The shrieking of metal. Francis enters the kitchen and leans on the door frame, watching her do this.
“And you seriously think we’ll do what you say? You think he’ll fall into your trap?”
“Seriously, yes. I have never been more serious in my life.”
“Get out of here. I have nothing to do with all this. It’s in the past. Just do your job and leave me in peace.”
She leans back against the sideboard, arms crossed over her chest.
Darlac gets up and stands in front of her.
“Did you hear that?” he asks Francis, without taking his eyes off Roselyne. “She brings up a murderer’s son and she claims it’s all in the past! I don’t think she’s really aware of how much shit she’s in. So listen: your adopted son—what’s his name again?—oh yes: Daniel. He’s in Algeria at the moment. That’s good. He’s doing his duty for his country, no problem there. Except that he was brought up by communists so he’s probably one himself, and guys like that can never be trusted in a war. He’s probably just as worthless as his father. You should know that there are disciplinary battalions in the army, and he could find himself in one of those next week
if you don’t make an effort. And those units, they’re in the thick of it, you know what I mean? On the front line. All it would take is a phone call and—” he snaps his fingers—“national security . . . the general staff will take care of him. The army has plenty of ways to fuck up a young soldier’s life. So it’s up to you: if you don’t help me, I can make you pay. And your . . . adopted son will pay too. He’ll come back to you in a box cos, you know, a brave kid like that, he’ll be the first to attack the enemy lines. You beginning to get the picture?”
Now the tears are rolling down Roselyne’s face. She tells them to leave but they don’t move. Hands in pockets, they watch as she wipes her cheeks with a large handkerchief then covers her face with it and tries to suppress her sobs. Finally they leave without another word, closing the door softly behind them. Out on the sidewalk, Darlac shrugs and says it’ll probably do no good, but at least it puts those sorts of people back in their place, makes them respect him. He adds that he enjoys this kind of thing. Nailing them to the floor alive and watching the fuckers struggle. “Strategic terror,” he says proudly.
Francis nods but does not reply. He hasn’t talked much since Jeff died. Darlac is no longer sure he can really count on Francis to have his back for him. And he’s not at all sure that it’s in his interest to have to keep one eye on this trusty mutt that is currently walking with its ears down, growling faintly. He thinks strategically. He knows it is safer to face ten enemies than to rely on an ally you can no longer trust. At least with the enemies, you know what you’re up against.
They agree to meet the next day. Darlac looks into Francis’ eyes: clear, blue, straightforward, but almost hard and icy, even if their color is more suggestive of azure skies, mild April days. Francis gets into his car after glancing vaguely over at the sidewalk on the other side of the road: no-one there, the cobbles sloping down towards the gutter.
After the War Page 29