Time Is a Killer

by Michel Bussi

  That’s the impression I get of how couples live, from the lofty vantage point of my fifteen years.

  I’ll stop there for today. I think you know enough about Papa now. I’m wondering whether to join the others at the beach or pick up a book. A book’s good. It ages you, reading a book, I think.

  Anywhere … on the beach, on a bench, outside a tent.

  It intrigues people.

  With only an open book on a towel, you pass from the status of little-idiot-on-her-own-who-has-no-friends-and-is-getting-bored to that of little-rebel-who’s-comfortable-in-her-own-bubble-and-couldn’t-give-a-stuff-about-anyone-else.

  You just have to find the right book.

  I need to find a cult book, the way I’ve done with my two films, Beetlejuice and The Big Blue. The kind of book you reread a thousand times and recite to the boys you meet to find out if they’re the right one, if they have the same taste.

  I’ve packed three novels in my bag.

  Three crazy books, apparently.

  The Unbearable Lightness of Being

  Dangerous Liaisons

  The Never-Ending Story

  OK, I know what you’re going to say, all three have already come out in the cinema. It’s true, I admit, I brought them along with me because I liked the films … and once I’ve read them, I’ll still be able to tell people I saw the film AFTERWARDS and was INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED by the adaptation. Clever girl, eh?

  Now, which of the three shall I read first?

  Right, I’ll go to the beach with Dangerous Liaisons under my arm.

  Perfect!

  Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil. They’re irresistible, John Malkovich behaving badly, and little Keanu Reeves …

  See you very soon, my reader in the next world.

  *

  * *

  With his index finger, he wipes away the tear that has welled up in the corner of his eye, before closing the diary.

  Even years on, he still couldn’t read that name without being overwhelmed.

  That name that lingered around the diary like a ghost. An inoffensive ghost.

  That’s what they’d all thought.

  8

  13 August 2016, 2 p.m.

  ‘It’s her handwriting!’

  Clotilde waited for a response.

  Any response.

  Nothing.

  Franck’s lips were busy sucking on the plastic bottle of Orezza, one litre, about as much liquid as he had just perspired through the pores of his skin. In the end he settled for emptying only three quarters of it, and poured the rest of the mineral water over his bare torso.

  Franck had run to the Sémaphore de Cavallo, nine kilometres there and back. Not bad going, especially in thirty-degree heat. He took a moment to hang up his sweat-drenched T-shirt.

  ‘How can you be sure, Clo?’

  ‘I just know, that’s all.’

  Clotilde was leaning against the twisted trunk of the olive tree. She was still holding the envelope, her eyes fastened on her name.

  Clotilde Idrissi.

  Bungalow C29, Euproctes campsite.

  She didn’t want to talk to Franck about the childhood postcards sent to her by her mother which she sometimes reread; the folders of signed and annotated correspondence that she had kept since school; the old photographs with words written on the back. Those phantoms that left only scratches. She merely murmured between her teeth:

  ‘My whole life is a dark room. One big … dark … room …’

  Franck came and stood in front of her, his chest dripping. The sun shone through his fine fair hair. Everything about Franck was the opposite of night, of darkness, of shadow. Some years ago, that was what she had liked best about him. That he took her towards the light.

  He pulled up a plastic chair and sat down facing her, his eyes fixed on hers.

  ‘OK, Clo. OK … You’ve told me, I haven’t forgotten. You were a fan of that actress when you were fifteen, you dressed like her, like a Gothic hedgehog, you behaved like the worst kind of ungrateful child towards your parents. You made me watch that film, Beetlejuice, when we met, do you remember? You paused the film when we came to that part where the teenage girl says, “My whole life is a dark room”, and you even smiled at me and said that the two of us would repaint it in all the colours of the rainbow.’

  Franck remembered that?

  ‘I think your Winona Ryder must have stayed like that, a frozen statue on the screen, for almost two hours, watching us make love on the sofa.’

  So he did remember …

  ‘Clo, whoever sent you this letter is playing a terrible joke on you.’

  A joke? Had Franck really said ‘a joke’?

  Clotilde reread the words that troubled her the most.

  Tomorrow, when you visit Arcanu Farm to see Cassanu and Lisabetta, please go and stand for a few minutes beneath the holm oak, before night falls, so that I can see you.

  I will recognise you, I hope.

  I would like your daughter to be there too.

  I ask nothing else of you. Nothing at all.

  The visit to her paternal grandparents was scheduled for the following evening. Franck was still trying to explain something completely unexplainable.

  ‘Yes, Clo. Someone’s playing a awful joke on you. I have no idea who it is, or why they’re doing it, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  This time Franck rested a hand on Clotilde’s knee before looking into her eyes again. The accomplice had disappeared, and now once again it was the preacher who was talking, the giver of lessons with his rosary of morals and his unanswerable arguments. A patient teacher faced with a pupil of limited intelligence. She couldn’t bear his smugness any longer.

  ‘OK, Clo, let me put it another way. On the evening of the accident, 23 August 1989, you are absolutely sure that all four of you were in the car; you, your father, your mother and Nicolas.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘No one could have jumped out before the Fuego plunged off the cliff?’

  Clotilde saw before her eyes the images that had been vividly engraved there since the tragedy. The Fuego hurtling like a bomb in a straight line. The tight bend. Her father not turning the wheel.

  ‘No, no one could have, it was impossible.’

  Franck ploughed on. That was his strength. He believed in two main things: rationality and effectiveness.

  ‘Clo, are you absolutely sure that your father, your mother and your brother died in that accident? All three of them?’

  For once, in her head, Clotilde thanked him for his lack of tact.

  Yes, she was absolutely sure.

  The mangled corpses in the carcase of the Fuego had haunted her for over thirty years. Her parents’ bodies, crushed between the steel jaws, the taste of blood mixed with the smell of petrol, the emergency services turning up at the site of the accident and identifying the three corpses, transporting them to the morgue and placing them in drawers so that the devastated family could pay one last visit. The inquiry. The funeral … Time making everything decay, nothing ever comes back to life, nothing ever flowers again, ever …

  ‘Yes, all three of them died, there’s no doubt.’

  Franck rested a second hand on a second knee and leaned towards her.

  ‘OK, Clo. Then the case is closed. Some joker is playing a sordid trick on you, an old boyfriend or a jealous Corsican, it doesn’t matter, but don’t let it make you believe anything else.’

  ‘What do you mean, anything else?’

  Clotilde felt hypocritical, frail, fake, to the point that she was lying to herself.

  Sometimes Franck’s candour simplified things.

  ‘Don’t let it make you think that your mother might still be alive. And that she’s the one who has written to you.’

  Bang!

  Clotilde’s milky skin, gleaming with sun cream, was flushed.

  Of course, Franck.

  Of course.

  What was she thinking?

&n
bsp; ‘Of course, Franck,’ she heard herself agreeing. ‘The thought never crossed my mind.’

  Fake! Hypocrite! Liar!

  Franck didn’t press the point. He had won, the voice of reason had spoken, and there was nothing else to add.

  ‘So forget it, Clo. You were the one who wanted to come back to Corsica. I followed you. So now, let’s forget it all and enjoy the holiday.’

  Yes, Franck.

  Of course, Franck.

  You’re right, Franck.

  Thank you, Franck.

  Franck suggested a drive to Calvi. The town was less than five kilometres away, less than ten minutes’ drive if you didn’t find yourself stuck behind a herd of donkeys or camper-vans.

  Franck went off to put on a clean shirt and Valou clapped her hands at the very mention of the word Calvi, which was synonymous with shopping streets crowded with tourists, the marina with its parade of yachts, its beaches crammed with towels. Watching Valou run off into the bungalow to slip into a tight dress, redo her hair in order to reveal her forehead, the back of her neck and her bronzed shoulders, and change into delicate sandals of braided, silvery leather, beaming at the idea of finding civilisation again, and not just any civilisation, but the tanned and wealthy civilisation that fascinated her, Clotilde couldn’t help wondering where it had all gone wrong between them.

  She and Valentine had been thick as thieves until Valentine turned ten. A dreamy little princess daughter and her crazy mother. Just as she had promised herself they would be.

  Silly games, wild laughter, shared secrets.

  She had sworn never to become a bitter mother, a mother who extinguished dreams, a mother who saw the world in black and white. And yet everything had become messed up without her even being aware of it. She’d been looking in the wrong direction. Clotilde had been expecting a rebellious teenager, as she had once been; she had prepared for that without losing any of her own values, any of her dreams. By staying the same person she always was.

  How wrong could she have been!

  So now here she was with a well-behaved, modern, adolescent girl who saw her as an outmoded old thing with the ideals of a different age. Now, her crazy mother left her indifferent at best, ashamed at worst.

  Valou had found a fringed emerald-green handbag that matched her skirt, and was waiting by the Passat. Franck was already at the wheel.

  ‘Are you ready to go, Maman?’

  No answer.

  An impatient teenage voice. Used to it, but still impatient.

  ‘Maman! Come on, let’s go!’

  Clotilde came out of the bungalow.

  ‘Franck, did you pick up my papers?’

  ‘I haven’t touched them.’

  ‘They’re not in the safe.’

  ‘I haven’t touched them,’ Franck said again. ‘Are you sure you haven’t put them somewhere else?’

  OK, Clotilde thought, I may be the silly brainless fool of the family, but I haven’t lost it completely.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure!’

  Clotilde very clearly remembered putting her wallet in the little safe built into the cupboard by the front door before taking a shower.

  Franck pushed his sunglasses back onto his forehead, and tapped nervously on the wheel, clearly inches away from honking the horn.

  ‘If they’re not there,’ he snapped, ‘you must have …’

  ‘I put them in the bloody safe last night and I haven’t opened it since then!’

  In a fit of irritation, Clotilde went back inside, hoisted her suitcase on to the bed and began to rummage through her things.

  Not a sign.

  She opened the drawers, ran her hand along the highest shelves, peered under the bed, the chairs and the various pieces of furniture.

  Nothing.

  Nothing in the roofbox, nothing in the glove compartment.

  Franck and Valou were silent now.

  Clotilde went back to the safe.

  ‘I put them in this stupid impregnable tin can. Someone must have taken them.’

  ‘Listen, Clo, there’s a key, a code, and there’s nobody here but us …’

  ‘I know! I know! I KNOW!’

  ~

  Clotilde didn’t like Cervone Spinello’s smile. She had never liked it. She remembered hating Cervone when he was a child, an adolescent, always trying to take charge of their gang on the grounds that his father owned the campsite.

  Liar. Boastful. Calculating.

  A few years later, with the power he had accrued, eighty shaded hectares with a sea view, he became something else:

  Obsequious. Pretentious. Lecherous.

  Quite the opposite of Basile, his father.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Clotilde,’ Cervone said defensively. ‘I haven’t had time to come and visit you. We’ll have to find a moment to …’

  She interrupted his suggestion of an aperitif, tearful tributes to his parents and twenty-seven-year-old reminiscences, explaining that her wallet had disappeared, and as far as she was concerned, that could only be explained by a theft.

  Cervone frowned with his large black eyebrows.

  Annoyed. Already …

  He picked up a bunch of keys and, leaving the reception, hailed a large man who was busy watering a flower bed.

  ‘Orsu, come with me.’

  Cervone’s order was accompanied by a hand gesture, a finger pointed towards the alley, as if marking his authority over an obedient animal. The gesture of a little Napoleon. The other man didn’t hesitate, and went to follow him. Clotilde took a step back when he turned around.

  Orsu was over one metre ninety tall. A big unkempt beard and long thick curly hair covered his face, but not enough to hide the deformity that marked his entire left side: a staring eye, an atrophied, almost hollow cheek, sagging skin from chin to neck, a twisted shoulder, an arm that dangled from his body like an empty sleeve on to which someone had sewn a pink plastic glove, a stiff leg.

  For some reason, Clotilde was more troubled than frightened. At first she took her reaction towards this giant to be a form of pity, perhaps an occupational hazard, but something else disturbed her, a feeling she couldn’t quite identify. As Orsu walked three metres ahead of them, Cervone whispered in Clotilde’s ear:

  ‘I don’t think you’ll remember him. Orsu was only three months old that terrible August. He’s had no luck since then. We’ve kept him, that’s how we do things here, we don’t abandon our three-legged goats. He takes care of pretty much everything at the Euproctes, and people call him Hagrid. He’s kind, not dangerous.’

  Everything about Cervone’s statement disturbed Clotilde.

  The way he addressed her informally, even though he hadn’t seen her for twenty-seven years. Talking about Orsu as if he were a rescue dog. Making himself out to be some kind of benevolent pope while Clotilde couldn’t rid herself of the image of the little sod who’d persecuted lizards, frogs, and any other poor animal unfortunate enough to fall into the spotty torturer’s clutches.

  *

  There were four of them, leaning over the tiny safe in the bungalow. Only Valou was sitting to one side on a chair, headphones in, painting her toenails. Cervone had no qualms about staring at her thighs.

  Lecherous, obsequious, pretentious, Clotilde corrected herself mentally. She had picked the right three words, but the wrong way round. Orsu, his enormous bulk bent over the steel cube, tried the keys with his one working hand, studied the lock, checked the bolt, the striking plate, the cylinders. Cervone watched over his shoulder.

  ‘Sorry, Clotilde,’ the manager of the campsite said at last. ‘There’s no sign of it having been forced. Are you really sure that your wallet was inside?’

  Clotilde’s brain was boiling. Had they spread the word? Franck and Cervone, her man and the man who disgusted her more than anyone else in the world. Clotilde merely nodded. Cervone thought for a moment.

  ‘Was there any money in it?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘And your daughter knew the code?’


  Cervone was very direct. Compared to him Franck was a diplomat.

  ‘Yes, but …’

  Clotilde was about to protest, but behind them Valou had risen to her feet.

  ‘If I’d wanted to steal money from my parents, I’d have pinched Papa’s wallet.’

  Cervone burst out laughing.

  ‘Good answer! That more or less gets you off the hook.’

  More than anything else Clotilde hated the complicit smile that Valou exchanged with the owner of the campsite. Franck, behind them, simply seemed irritated.

  ‘So what are we going to do? Given that my wife tells you her wallet was inside this bloody safe?’

  Thank you, Franck!

  Cervone shrugged.

  ‘One way or another, if your documents are missing, then you’ll have to go to the police station anyway. And while you’re there, Clotilde, you can report the matter if you like.’

  He smiled ambiguously, then added, ‘But don’t expect to see Cesareu at the station in Calvi. Your old friend retired a few years ago. I don’t know who’s there now. Officers only spend three years here before heading off to the mainland.’

  Hagrid was still studying the safe. Checking every part of the mechanism in the lock. He didn’t seem to understand. Clotilde inwardly thanked him for not settling for appearances.

  She was sure of one thing.

  That wallet had been there yesterday, so someone had taken it.

  But why?

  Who?

  Someone who knew the code or had the key to the safe.

  9

  Saturday, 12 August 1989, sixth day of the holidays

  Midnight-blue sky

  You know what?

  At last something is happening in my little corner of Corsica. I have something new to say in my diary! Something new and explosive. I hope you’re going to enjoy the way I tell stories.

  So are you ready, my mystery reader?

  It all started with a gigantic BOOM. At precisely 2.23 in the morning. I know, because the explosion woke me up and I immediately looked at my watch. I took a look outside, towards the sea, the Revellata Peninsula, Balagne, and its highest peak, the Capu di a Veta. I couldn’t see anything! Then I went back to sleep.

  The next morning there was great excitement in the campsite. The police were questioning tourists, who seemed more surprised than panicked, pretending not to notice the big grins on the faces of the local Corsicans.