Time Is a Killer
Page 43
A silence. This time it was Palma who filled it.
‘What would you do … with the name … Idrissi?’
Valentine stared at her. She seemed to be looking behind her grandmother’s wrinkled features, trying to find the seductive woman described in her mother’s notebook.
‘Were you an architect, Grandma?’
‘Yes.’
Silence again. Clotilde picked up the baton and repeated her mother’s question.
‘What good would it do you, Valou, to have the Idrissi name?’
Valou stared at the crypt again, then at the spot in the sea where she had claimed to see the dolphins, and then the Roc e Mare marina.
‘Not to let all of that go to ruin!’
Twenty-seven years later
‘Mamy, can we play in the swimming-pool?’
Mamy said yes, with a complicit smile at her grandchildren. She, not their mother, was still the one they went to if they wanted permission to do something. Their mother wouldn’t let them. Their mother always said no, about swimming and everything else.
Too cold, too hot, too wet, too dangerous.
Their mother was a bit of a bore.
‘Thanks, Mamy Clo!’
Félix and Inès jumped in, knees brought level with their faces, clasping their legs with their arms as they burst through the surface of the water. Clotilde observed them for a moment, then looked up to cast her eyes further away, towards Alga beach and the Revellata Peninsula. The pool looked out over the peninsula. Turiops, the dolphin sanctuary, had opened its doors almost fifteen years ago now. The main building, the reception area, the museum, the laboratories and the conference rooms had been built entirely in Corsican pine, according to Palma’s original plans. A minor masterpiece of integration with the natural environment, of energy self-sufficiency, using the wind and the sea, an educational success. Nothing remained of the ruins of the original Roc e Mare marina, apart from the Brando stones that had been used on the path and the stairs leading to the pool and on the observation deck for the dolphin pool.
‘Aren’t you coming swimming too, Mamy Clo?’
‘Leave your grandmother in peace!’ Valentine called out to her children before immersing herself once more in the columns of figures that marched up and down her tablet.
Clotilde hesitated. She still swam almost every day of the year, often with Cirdan and Eöl, the dolphins from the reserve, or Aranel, the porpoise they had saved from the fishermen’s nets in Centuri. And in the summer with Félix and Inès … At last she got up from her chair, deciding to make the most of the time she had left with her grandchildren. In two days’ time they would be returning with Valentine, to their apartment in the heart of Bercy-Village, with a direct view of Papa’s big office, and Clotilde would be left alone. At the end of August the crowds of tourists began to thin out, but the laughter of other children still echoed in the corridors of the sanctuary; from the start of September, Turiops was filled with groups from the schools of Corsica. It was her seventh ‘back to school’; Clotilde hadn’t left the island since she retired.
Her eyes wandered over to the universal clock that hung over the pool, the meter that measured the quality of the water, the built-in weather station, and paused on the wooden plaque, a tribute to the architect, that was placed below the high-tech equipment. Her mother’s name was framed by two wild roses, identical to the ones planted around the park, blooming in every shade of pink and mauve between April and July.
Her mother was buried next to her father, in the Idrissi family crypt. After being freed, Palma had lived on her own, in a dark little flat in Vernon, barely ever leaving it, and Clotilde had been terrified that her mother might not wake up one morning and that no one would know. She had understood that Palma would allow herself to die once the work was completed, so she called her on the phone every day, placing no confidence in her reassuring words, and insisted that Valentine take up the baton during the holidays. Clotilde couldn’t disentangle her feelings, somewhere between sadness and relief, when one evening on her way back from court she found her mother at home on her bed, serene and peaceful, as if she had fallen asleep; she had died only a few hours before, the doctor had told her.
Palma had wanted to be buried in Corsica, next to her husband. Room was made. In the crypt there was already another woman sleeping in her bed. So the decision was made to move the body of Salomé Romani a few layers down, so she could rest beside her mother. Speranza had died one evening in May 2020, in the yard at Arcanu, under the shadow of the holm oak, with a basket of freshly picked mastic, angelica and marjoram resting by her side; Lisabetta had followed three months later, her heart giving in one morning without warning, as she pulled up the nettles that surrounded her orchids.
Clotilde set down her towel and walked towards the pool in her swimming costume, confidently displaying the figure of a young seventy-year-old. She still felt comfortable in her skin, and admired without envy the perfect bodies of the young tourists who were reading, sleeping or kissing on the deckchairs. A life, she reflected, came down to that: enjoying the beauty of the world. Its harmony. Its poetry. Contemplating it before it all disappeared. Basically, you don’t die, you go blind. You understand that it’s over when all the wonders around us fade away.
But today, they still shone! In the pool below them, the one directly overlooking the Mediterranean, Eöl, the younger dolphin, was undulating gracefully in front of Matteo, the fair-haired, muscular angel who fed him; the young man’s calm, precise gestures seemed to meld with the dolphin’s choreography. Matteo had the crystal laugh of a Little Prince, she had first heard it about ten years ago when she had encountered him on Alga beach, immersed in Harry Potter, and had confessed to him that in the old days his father was nicknamed Hagrid! No one today would have dared use that name for Orsu, the serious, authoritarian manager of the Euproctes campsite.
Clotilde dipped a foot in the water. Under a sunshade, under his hat, under a book sitting open across his nose, Natale was asleep. She checked a sudden desire to go over and splash him. To ask Félix and Inès to help her to lift the deckchair all of a sudden and throw it into the water, or to suggest that they bomb into the pool beside him so violently that they would shower him with water.
Clotilde had separated from Franck a few months after Valentine had turned eighteen. They had signed the divorce papers in January 2020, by mutual consent, saving on lawyers’ fees. And then, for the rest of that winter, all through spring and all through July, Clotilde had had only one obsession: to go back to Corsica and see Natale. She was free. The Aryon, the sanctuary, the dolphins, it could all become a reality now, with Lisabetta’s money, Palma’s plans and the marketing done by Valentine, who was taking a preparatory class at business school.
The news had gone round, and Clotilde had received a long letter from Aurélia, telling her that if she came back to Corsica and Natale wanted to join her, if it was his choice, she wouldn’t stand in their way. (There were a lot of ‘ifs’ in Aurélia’s letter.) Even if Aurélia went on loving Natale, even if she sincerely thought she was the woman he needed, even if she had been able to protect him from his ghosts for all those years, even if she’d had to tiptoe around him since he came back to life. Even if Natale had never loved her, he wouldn’t have been happier with anyone else.
And it was true, Clotilde knew. It was Aurélia who had coordinated the Turiops project that Natale had always dreamed of. She had built the dolphin sanctuary almost despite him; Natale had had the will, but not the energy. Natale was indecisive. An extraordinary lover, Clotilde remembered, but a man she probably wouldn’t have been able to bear in the end. She had cursed his impassioned letters followed by months of silence; his magnificent promises, so quickly forgotten. The love had passed. Natale would remain an accomplice, a boy for whom she would always have an infinite tenderness, but Aurélia loved him more than she did. After her divorce, Clotilde had taken several lovers, travelling companions, handsome, intelligent, brilliant.
Sometimes married, sometimes foreign. When she had one that she’d kept until 23 August, she took him to the Casa di Stella to make love all night. Under the stars.
‘Watch out, Mamy!’
Clotilde gave a start and looked up at the big diving board outlined against the perfect blue sky. Slightly apprehensively. These days she couldn’t see anyone jump into the void without thinking of Cassanu.
Around the pool, the tourists in flip-flops were mesmerised.
The body flashed into the water like an arrow, almost without making a splash.
A perfect dive.
The dive of a professional.
Of a mermaid.
Maria-Chjara re-emerged a few seconds later. A pair of firm, pointed breasts swelled her transparent white bikini, a seventy-year-old water nymph.
Félix and Inès applauded. They loved Aunty Maria.
Clotilde burst out laughing. She and Maria-Chjara had become friends. Maria liked to joke about how she had her breasts reinflated each year, just before the summer. The day she died they would lay her in her coffin, but wouldn’t be able to close the lid!
And no Corsican polyphony, lamenti or voceri at her funeral.
She adjusted her transparent bikini in front of men with V-shaped and hairless torsos, startled by this particular grandmother. In front of their scandalised wives, consenting victims in the dictatorship of beauty.
Time is a killer.
But sometimes there are extenuating circumstances.
‘Are you coming in, Mamy?’ Félix and Inès called.
Clotilde smiled and was rocked by gentle melancholy at the sight of Natale lost in his dreams, Valentine concentrating on her accounts, and then Maria-Chjara winking at handsome Matteo who was just about to finish feeding his baby dolphin.
Sempre giovanu.
Acknowledgements
To Luc Besson and Gaumont.
AFTER THE CRASH
Michel Bussi
On the night of 22 December, a plane crashes on the Franco-Swiss border.
All the passengers are killed instantly, apart from one miraculous survivor – a three-month-old baby girl. But who is she? Two families step forward to claim her, but is she Lyse-Rose or Emilie?
Two decades later, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, the detective who investigated the case makes a discovery that could change everything …
‘One of the most remarkable books I’ve read in a long time … I doubt I’ll read a more brilliant crime novel this year’ Sunday Times
BLACK WATER LILIES
Michel Bussi
Jérôme Morval, a man whose passion for art was matched only by his passion for women, has been found dead in the stream that runs through the gardens of Giverny. In his pocket is a postcard of Monet’s Water Lilies with the words: Eleven years old. Happy Birthday.
Entangled in the mystery are three women: a young painting prodigy, a seductive schoolteacher and an old widow who watches over the village from a mill by the stream. All three of them share a secret. But what do they know about the discovery of Morval’s corpse? And what is the connection to the mysterious, rumoured painting Black Water Lilies?
‘Ends with one of the most reverberating shocks in modern crime fiction’ Sunday Times
DON’T LET GO
Michel Bussi
In an idyllic resort on the island of La Réunion, Liane Bellion and her husband Martial are enjoying the perfect moment: blue seas, palm trees, a warm breeze.
Then Liane disappears. Despite his protestations of innocence, the police view Martial as their prime suspect. Helicopters scan the island, racial tensions surface, and bodies are found.
Is Martial really his wife’s killer? And if he isn’t, why does he appear to be so guilty?
About the Author
Michel Bussi is the author of the bestsellers After the Crash and Black Water Lilies, both of which were Waterstones Thriller of the Month. In France, where he has published eleven novels, he is the second bestselling author overall, and he has won over sixteen literary awards. When not writing fiction, he is a Professor of Geography at the University of Rouen.
Also by Michel Bussi
After the Crash
Black Water Lilies
Don’t Let Go
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Copyright
A Weidenfeld & Nicolson ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
First published in French as Le temps est assassin by Presses de la Cité, a department of Place des Editeurs, Paris.
This ebook first published in 2018 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Copyright © Michel Bussi and Presses de la Cité, a department of Place des Editeurs, 2016
English translation copyright © Shaun Whiteside 2018
The rights of Michel Bussi and Shaun Whiteside to be identified as the author and translator of this work, respectively, has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 4746 0670 7
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