The Great Swindle

by Pierre Lemaitre

  In the meantime, he had money. Albert looked around for lodgings where he could bring Pauline, if she agreed to join him. He dismissed the idea of a hotel, deciding that, in the circumstances, it would be in poor taste.

  Two days later, he found a clean, tidy lodging house near Saint-Lazare run by two sisters, broad-minded widows who rented two apartments to straitlaced civil servants, but reserved a small second-floor bedroom for clandestine couples whom they welcomed, day or night, with a complicit smile, having had holes drilled in the partition wall at bed level: each sister had her own.

  Pauline had been hesitant. The same old refrain, “I’m not that kind of girl,” but then she agreed. They took a taxi. Albert opened the door to a room that was furnished in just the style Pauline dreamed of, heavy curtains that looked swanky, wallpaper on the walls. A small pedestal table and a squat armchair made it seem as though it were more than just a bedroom.

  “It’s nice . . . ,” she said.

  “Yes, it’s not bad,” Albert said.

  Was he a complete idiot? Whatever the case, he certainly did not see what was coming. Allow three minutes for going in, looking around, taking off her coat, add another minute for boots because of the laces, and you had Pauline, naked, standing in the middle of the room, smiling, accessible, confident, breasts so white you could weep, deliciously curving hips, a perfectly trimmed delta . . . All this to say that this was not her first time, and that, having spent weeks protesting about the kind of girl she was not, having paid lip service to respectability, she was keen to get started. Albert was completely out of his depth. Add another four minutes and you have Albert howling with pleasure. Pauline looked at him, puzzled and concerned, but quickly closed her eyes again because Albert still had reserves. He had not experienced anything like this since Cécile, the night before he was called up, some centuries ago, he had so much catching up to do that eventually Pauline had to say, it’s two in the morning, darling, maybe we should get a little sleep, all right? They snuggled like spoons. Pauline was already asleep when Albert started crying—quietly so as not to wake her.

  He would come home late at night after leaving Pauline. From the day she first lay on top of him in the little furnished room, Édouard saw less and less of him. Before picking her up on the nights when she was not working, Albert would go back to the apartment with his briefcase crammed with bills. Tens, hundreds of thousands of francs were stuffed into a suitcase and slipped under the bed he no longer slept in. He would check that Édouard had eaten and, before going out, he would say goodnight to Louise, bent over tomorrow’s mask, and she would answer distractedly with a sulky stare as though he were abandoning them.

  One evening when Albert came home—it would have been July 2, a Friday—with a briefcase containing 73,000 francs, he found the apartment empty.

  With a multitude of masks of every shape and color hanging on the wall, the huge room looked like the reserve collection of a museum. A caribou with outsized antlers fashioned from tiny slivers of wood glowered down at Albert. Everywhere he looked—from the richly bejeweled Indian with lips like snakes, to the strange, tortured individual with the enormous nose, like a liar caught in the act, who made you want to absolve him of his sins—creatures gazed at him kindly as he stood in the doorway with his briefcase.

  You can imagine his panic: Édouard had left the apartment only once since they had moved in. There was no sign of Louise. No note on the table. Albert dived under the bed, the suitcase was still there, and if there was any money missing, it was not obvious—there was so much cash, someone could take fifty thousand and it would be impossible to tell. It was 7:00 p.m. Albert dropped his briefcase and rushed down to Mme Belmont.

  “He asked if he could take Louise away for the weekend. I said yes . . .”

  It was expressed in her usual tone, clipped, impassive, factual, like a headline in a newspaper. The woman was utterly disembodied.

  Albert worried because Édouard was capable of anything. Imagining him at large in the city was enough to panic anyone . . . Albert had explained a thousand times that the situation was dangerous, that they had to leave as soon as possible. And that if they really had to wait (Édouard was deeply attached to the idea of his million) they had to be vigilant, and, above all, to not attract attention.

  “When people realize what we’ve done,” he said, “it won’t take them long to track us down. There’s evidence I was at the bank, people saw me every day at the post office on the rue du Louvre, the mailman has been delivering cartloads of mail here, we hired a printer who will turn us in the moment he realizes the mess we have got him caught up in. It will take the police a couple of days to find us. A couple of hours, maybe . . .”

  Édouard assented. A couple of days. Be vigilant. And now, two weeks before they were due to disappear, he had walked out of the apartment and gone wandering around Paris with a little girl, or elsewhere, as though he were no more hideous or identifiable than any other war veteran you might see on the street . . .

  Where in hell could he have gone?

  34

  “I have had a letter to say the artist is in the Americas . . .”

  Labourdin always used the plural when talking about America, believing that an expression that encompassed the whole continent thereby enhanced his own importance. M. Péricourt was irked.

  “He will be back in mid-July,” the mayor reassured.

  “That seems rather late . . .”

  Labourdin, who had anticipated this reaction, gave a smile.

  “Not at all, not at all, monsieur le président! He is so excited about the project that he has set to work already. And he is making great strides. Just think, our memorial will have been conceived in New York (Labourdin pronounced it Nooyeurk) and constructed in Paris, what a powerful symbol . . .”

  With a relish he normally reserved for richly sauced meats and his secretary’s derrière, he took a large envelope from his inside pocket.

  “I have here some new sketches sent by the artist.”

  M. Péricourt held out his hand, but Labourdin could not resist holding the envelope a fraction of a second longer.

  “Beyond magnificent, monsieur le président, consummate!”

  What did it mean, this prolixity? It was impossible to tell. Labourdin constructed sentences from sounds rather than ideas. M. Péricourt wasted no time thinking about it, Labourdin was a perfectly spherical imbecile—turn him any which way and he was equally stupid: there was nothing to be understood, nothing to be gleaned.

  M. Péricourt dismissed the man before opening the envelope, he wanted to be alone.

  Jules d’Épremont had enclosed eight drawings. Two elevations sketched from an unusual angle, as though the viewer were beside the memorial and looking up from below, it was very striking. The first was of the right-hand panel “France Leading Her Troops to War”; the second, the left: “Valiant Soldiers Attacking the Enemy.”

  M. Péricourt was thunderstruck. The memorial, previously inert, had taken on a very different quality. Was it the unusual perspective? The fact that it seemed to loom over you, dwarfing you, crushing you . . . ?

  He tried to articulate his impression. The word came to him, straightforward, almost senseless, yet it meant everything: “alive.” It was an absurd choice of word, the sort of thing Labourdin might use, but there was a truthfulness in these two scenes, a realism that surpassed the newspaper photographs he had seen of soldiers dying on the battlefield.

  The six other sketches were details from the whole: the face of the woman in flowing robes, the profile of one of the soldiers; the face that had persuaded M. Péricourt to settle on this design was not there . . . Exasperating.

  He leafed through the pictures, set them against the shelves, and spent a long moment trying to imagine walking around the actual memorial, even projecting himself inside it. There is no other way to express it: M. Péricourt began to live inside his memorial, as though he had a double life, a mistress holed up in his rooms, and sp
ent hours there unbeknownst to everyone. After several days, he knew the project so intimately that he could imagine it from perspectives the artist had not drawn.

  He made no attempt to hide anything from Madeleine, it was futile. Had there been a woman in his life, she would have guessed it in a heartbeat. When she came into the study, she would find her father standing in the middle of the room with the drawings spread out on the floor, or sitting in his armchair with a magnifying glass considering some detail. He handled the drawings so much that he was afraid he might crease them.

  A picture framer was summoned to take measurements (M. Péricourt refused to be parted from the drawings) and two days later returned with the glass frames; by evening, the work had been completed. In the meantime, two laborers had come to dismantle various sections of the bookcases to create space where they would hang. The study went from being a framing workshop to a gallery devoted to a single work: his memorial.

  M. Péricourt continued to work, attending conferences, chairing board meetings, meeting with stockbrokers and branch managers in his office, but more than ever, he could not wait to come home, to shut himself away. As a rule, he dined alone, having his meals brought to him.

  A gradual maturation had taken place in him. He finally began to understand certain things, to rediscover old sorrows such as he had felt at the death of his wife, the impressions of emptiness, of resignation he had experienced then. He no longer reproached himself about Édouard; in making peace with his son, he had made peace with himself, with the man he had been.

  This consolation was accompanied by another discovery. From the sketches Édouard had made in the trenches and these new drawings of the memorial, M. Péricourt began to have an almost physical sense of something he would never truly know: war. He who had always had little imagination suddenly felt his emotions stirred by the simple contemplation of the sketched face of a solider, the tumult of a frieze . . . And he experienced a sort of transference. Now that he no longer rebuked himself for having been a thoughtless, insensitive father, now that he accepted his son, his son’s life, he suffered all the more greatly from his death. A few days before the armistice!—as though the injustice of Édouard dying when others had come back alive were not enough. Had he died instantly, as M. Maillard had said? Sometimes, M. Péricourt had to restrain himself from summoning the poilu who now worked somewhere in his bank and wringing the truth from him. But, in the end, how much could his comrade really know about what Édouard had felt at the moment he died?

  The more he studied this work in progress, the more M. Péricourt felt himself drawn, not to the strangely familiar face that Madeleine had pointed out and he himself had remembered, but to the dead soldier in the right-hand panel and the inconsolable gaze turned on him by “Victory.” The artist had managed to capture something uncomplicated and profound. M. Péricourt felt tears start as he realized that his emotion came from the fact their roles had been reversed: he was now the dead soldier. His son was “Victory,” gazing down upon his father with a look that was sorrowful, desolate, heartrending.

  It was past 5:30 p.m., but the afternoon heat showed no sign of abating. Inside the rented car it was sweltering; even rolling down the window offered no relief, nothing but a warm, muggy breeze. Henri nervously tapped his knee. He could think of nothing but M. Péricourt’s remark about selling la Sallevière. If it came to that, he would kill the old bastard with his bare hands! What part had Péricourt really played in his predicament, he wondered. Had he stirred things up? Why had this government minion suddenly turned up, why had he been so dogged, so relentless? Was his father-in-law not behind it? Henri was lost in conjecture.

  His gloomy thoughts and his suppressed fury did not stop him from keeping a close eye on Dupré, some distance away, anxiously pacing like a man in a quandary.

  Henri rolled up the window so that he would not be seen, recognized, there was little point in hiring a car only to be spotted on a street corner . . . He had a lump in his throat. During the war, at least he knew his enemy! Though he tried to focus on the trials he had to face, his thoughts drifted back to la Sallevière. He would never give it up. He had been there only last week; the restoration work was faultless, the estate and the grounds looked magnificent. One could easily imagine the majestic facade as horses and hounds set off on a hunt, or the bridal party returning from his son’s wedding . . . He refused to give up on such dreams; nothing, and no one, would take them from him.

  After his meeting with Péricourt, he had one round left, just one.

  And I am an excellent marksman, he reassured himself.

  He had had only three hours in which to organize a counteroffensive, his shock troops amounted to Dupré. Too bad, he would fight to the death. If he won this battle—it would be difficult, but he could pull it off—his sole target would become that old bastard Péricourt. However long it takes, he thought, I will destroy him. Just the sort of pledge to rally his spirits.

  Dupré suddenly looked up, crossed the street, strode quickly past the entrance to the ministry, and grabbed the arm of a man who turned in surprise. Watching from a distance, Henri sized up the individual. Had he been the sort of man who took pride in his appearance, anything was possible, but the man looked like a tramp. This would be a delicate negotiation.

  Standing in the middle of the pavement looking bewildered, he towered head and shoulders above Dupré. Dubiously, he followed Dupré’s signal and glanced toward the car in which Henri was sitting. Henri noticed the man’s filthy, decrepit clodhoppers; it was the first time he had seen a man who resembled his shoes. Eventually, the two men turned began to walk slowly toward the car. A first-round victory, Henri decided, though no guarantee of a victory.

  This became clear as soon as Merlin got into the car. He was surly and smelled foul. He had had to bend low in order to get in and now sat with his head drawn in as though expecting a hail of missiles. He set down between his feet a fat leather briefcase that had seen better days. He was long past his prime, and surely close to retirement. Wild eyed, ill mannered, and unkempt, everything about the man was shabby and ugly, it was surprising he still had a position.

  Henri proffered his hand, but Merlin did not react, he merely stared. Best to get to the heart of the matter.

  Henri spoke with an affected familiarity, as though they had known each other for a long time and were discussing some trivial matter.

  “You wrote two reports, I believe . . . concerning the cemeteries in Chazières-Malmont and Pontaville?”

  Merlin responded with a grunt. He did not like this man who reeked of money and looked like a crook. The very fact that he had ambushed him here so that they could meet surreptitiously in a car . . .

  “Three,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Three reports, not two. I’m about to file one about the cemetery at Dargonne-le-Grand.”

  From the way he said it, Pradelle realized that the screw was about to tighten.

  “Whe . . . when did you visit the site?”

  “Last week. Not a pretty sight.”

  “In what sense?”

  Pradelle, who had been preparing to defend himself on two fronts, now found he would have to deal with a third.

  “You know . . . ,” said Merlin.

  He had bad breath and a grating, nasal voice. Henri had hoped to be smiling, genial, the sort of man who inspires confidence, but Dargonne . . . it was more than he could bear. Dargonne was a small cemetery, no more than two or three hundred graves; the bodies were being brought from Verdun. What the hell had his men done this time? He had heard of nothing untoward. Instinctively, he looked across the street to where Dupré was standing, smoking, peering into windows, plainly as nervous as Henri. Merlin was the only one who seemed calm.

  “You need to keep an eye on your workforce . . .”

  “Of course! That’s precisely the problem, monsieur. But it’s almost impossible given the number of sites we have to oversee.”

 
Merlin was not going to offer a crumb of sympathy. He held his tongue. For Henri, it was essential to get the man to talk, there is nothing to be had from a man who says nothing. He adopted the tone of a man intrigued by a story that does not concern him personally, something frivolous but fascinating . . .

  “So . . . Dargonne . . . what exactly has been happening there?”

  Merlin said nothing for a long moment. Henri wondered whether he had heard the question. When at length he spoke, his face was utterly impassive, only his lips moved; it was impossible to gauge his mood.

  “You’re paid by the unit, yes?”

  Henri held out his hands, palms upward.

  “Of course. That’s standard practice, we’re paid based on the amount of work involved.”

  “And your laborers are paid by the unit . . . ?”

  Henri made a face: obviously, so what? What was he getting at?

  “That would explain why you have coffins filled with dirt,” Merlin said.

  Henri’s his eyes widened; what the hell was the man talking about?

  “There are coffins with no bodies in them,” Merlin went on, “To pad out their pay packets, your men are transporting and interring coffins that contain no remains. Just soil to make up the weight . . .”

  Pradelle’s instinctive reflex was surprising. He thought: the fucking idiots, I’ve had just about enough of them! He casually lumped Dupré together with all the cretins hoping to make a little extra cash with this nonsense. For a brief moment, the whole affair no longer concerned him, let them sort it out, he was sick and tired of the whole thing!

  Merlin’s voice jolted him back to reality and the fact that, as director of the company, he was the one in the firing line; the minions would be dealt with later.

  “And then . . . and then there’s the Boches,” Merlin said.

  Still only his lips moved.

  “The Boches?”

  Henri sat up in his seat. This was the first glimmer of hope. Because when it came to the Boches, he could hold his own against anyone. Merlin shook his head—no—a movement so slight that at first Henri did not notice. Then doubts began to set in: the Boches? What did he mean, the Boches? What the hell had they to do with anything? His bafflement was could be read in his face, and Merlin responded as though he had voiced his confusion.