Nada

by Jean-Patrick Manchette

  “What do we do?” asked the officer. “Take him in?”

  “I think we’ll have to. Unofficial though, okay? We’ll just lock him up good for now.”

  “With these politicals,” said the policeman, “you’ve got to watch it. This guy might fucking well take legal action later.”

  “Later, son, believe me,” said Goémond, “he won’t be in a mood to do that.”

  25

  “WHAT is it?”

  “Is this Monsieur Lamour’s residence?”

  “Yes. This is he. What is it? Do you realize what time it is?”

  “General Intelligence.”

  “You are from the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, in that case, come in, come in. What can I do for you?”

  Monsieur Lamour dutifully unlocked the garden gate. Two policemen followed him down a sandy path and into his detached house. Madame Lamour, in curlers, was standing worriedly by the stairs.

  “What is it, Joseph?”

  “These gentlemen are from the police. Go back up to bed.”

  “But what’s going on?”

  “Madame Lamour, I presume,” said one of the policemen.

  “Yes. What’s going on?”

  “Do you know a certain Marcel Treuffais?”

  “That lowlife!” said Huguette Lamour.

  Monsieur Lamour, director of Saint-Ange Academy, then engaged in a conversation, too short for his liking, with the two cops. Regrettably, no, he did not know Treuffais’s friends. Naturally, he had nothing to do with such people, and no, the names Buenaventura Diaz and André Épaulard meant nothing to him. But what had he done now, that thug Treuffais?

  “Just a routine verification. But one that needs to be conducted quickly and delicately. It is important that our inquiry not be widely publicized, you understand. Not before Monday morning, at any rate. I trust we may count on your discretion?”

  “The French police may always count on me,” declared the director of the Saint-Ange Academy.

  At various other addresses throughout Paris and its suburbs, similar inquiries were being made on the basis of the information in Treuffais’s datebook.

  26

  ANNIE Meyer was stricken with fear. This was her second night alone and she did not know where Meyer was or how many days would pass before he came home. She was drawing. Her picture showed two buildings in the desert separated from each other by a torrent of mud and shit moving at a terrifying pace. To connect the two houses, Annie drew a footbridge that seemed to her perilously frail. She rose suddenly, fancying that she heard a noise. She picked up the kitchen knife, which she was afraid of but which she kept with her wherever she went in the apartment, to defend herself against any attack. She circled the two rooms holding the knife ahead of her. Then she returned to her drawing table to put the finishing touches on her footbridge. She turned it into a hermetically closed suspended tunnel. After that she began drawing Taipings, Boxers, Thugs, Sikhs, Huns, and Mandingos rushing forward from the horizon to mount an assault on the twin houses. Then the doorbell rang.

  Annie froze.

  She stood rigid, holding her breath. The bell rang again, for longer this time. The young woman’s teeth began to chatter. She heard or thought she heard whispering on the landing, and a shuffling of feet. At last, after several more rings, came the sound of the elevator working. Had the intruders really gone down, or was this just a trick?

  After staying still for the better part of a minute, Annie tiptoed to the window that gave onto the street, opened it, and leant out. Two dark figures in overcoats had just emerged from the building, and one of them turned the pale patch of his face upward. The man pointed a finger toward the building’s façade—and toward Annie.

  “But there’s someone up there!” she heard him say to his companion.

  The young woman reared back. Her teeth clacked horribly. A moment later she heard the two men coming up by the stairs, quickly, noisily, confidently. She decided then that she was crazy, a mental case, and that Meyer had left purposely so that she would be picked up by male nurses with big dicks and taken to an asylum. As a thunder of pounding fists struck the front door, she fled to the bathroom, grabbed Meyer’s straight razor and clumsily gashed her throat. The sight of the spurting blood terrified her. She screamed and rushed to the hallway just as the cops broke down the door.

  “Help!” she screamed, pressing her hand to her neck in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.

  27

  AT FIRST light Cash slipped out of the bed where Épaulard was sleeping.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To feed my rabbits.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “Yes. Go back to sleep.”

  Cash left the room. Épaulard sat up in bed. He grimaced. His nighttime efforts had earned him aching muscles. He delved into the pockets of his pants, which were lying on the floor, and found cigarettes and matches. He smoked in the gray half-light. He could not visualize the future. He did not believe that the ransom would be paid or that he would be rich the following week. He did not even see himself living that long.

  Eventually he got up and dressed. He went downstairs. In the common area the hearth was cold and dark. Buenaventura was drinking coffee and listening to the radio turned low.

  “Morning,” said Épaulard, coughing over his cigarette.

  “Morning.”

  “Seen Cash?”

  “She’s feeding her rabbits.”

  “Huh,” grunted Épaulard, sitting down at the table.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “She’s a strange girl,” he said.

  “She’s a fine girl,” said Buenaventura.

  “Have you known her for long?”

  “Fairly, yes.”

  “Ever sleep with her?”

  “No. She didn’t want me.”

  Épaulard looked down at his coffee.

  “You’ve hardly slept,” he remarked.

  “Five hours. That’s quite enough.”

  “Anything new on the radio?”

  “Zilch. They piss me off. You can’t expect them to give an answer about the ransom before the last minute. All the same, it bugs me.”

  Cash came in from the rear wearing a filthy reversible sheepskin jacket, blond hair in her face. She pushed the strands back with one hand.

  “Everyone’s up, I see . . . I’ll have a cup with you.”

  She sat down and poured herself coffee. She turned the volume up on the radio. The transistor set began to quaver horribly.

  “Shit! The batteries!”

  “We don’t have spares?”

  “No.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “I’ll go for some at nine,” said Cash. “When the stores open in Couzy.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Buenaventura.

  “Why?”

  “I’m fed up with being here. It gets on my nerves.”

  “You go and get them with the Dauphine then. I’d as soon stay here.”

  “Okay.”

  Buenaventura stood up.

  “Hey,” said Cash, “you have to wait. They don’t open till nine, the stores.”

  “Right.”

  The Catalan sat back down.

  28

  LEAVING his aides to attend to Marcel Treuffais, Goémond had gone home to take a nap around two in the morning. Awakened at eight by the telephone ringing, he jumped out of bed, stumbled, and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” He looked at his watch and swore inwardly on seeing the time.

  “Commissioner, I believe we have them!”

  On the other end of the line the voice of his subordinate quivered with the enthusiasm of youth. He gave Goémond the particulars. In the process of checking the addresses in Marcel Treuffais’s datebook, they had given a hotel manager something of a grilling about a certain Véronique Cash, who was supposed to live in his establishment but who had not shown up there for two weeks.

&n
bsp; “So what?” said Goémond irascibly.

  He was exhausted. The six hours of sleep seemed to have done him no good. And he hated, he was outraged, that important developments might occur while he was sleeping. He was in a filthy temper. Standing by the bed in his burgundy pajamas, he cast a ferocious glance around his one-room kitchen-bath, a recent acquisition. He found it suddenly horrible, constricted, smelly, and grotesque.

  “Seeing the girl’s type, so to speak, her disreputable character, and that she seems to be more or less kept, a parasite with shameless disorderly tendencies, our guys went so far as to show him some pictures.”

  “Show who?”

  “Well, commissioner, the manager—”

  “And then what?”

  “He recognized Diaz.”

  Goémond chewed on his mustache. With his left hand he searched for his little Dutch cigars and performed the rather gymnastic feat of lighting one without letting go of the receiver.

  “This Monique—”

  “Véronique, commissioner. Véronique Cash.”

  “This Monique or Véronique . . . Don’t interrupt me,” shouted Goémond. “This girl, is she the one with two addresses in the datebook?”

  “Exactly, commissioner. Her other address is sixty-odd kilometers from Paris, out in the boondocks. So we are asking ourselves questions, and thinking of answers.”

  “Pascal, my boy,” said Goémond, his eyes glistening, “don’t you move, do absolutely nothing, while I make tracks to the Interior.”

  “The interior of what?” asked the subordinate, whose sleepless night had done nothing for his intelligence.

  “Place Beauvau, blockhead,” roared Goémond. “Await my orders!”

  He hung up the phone. He took off his pajamas, skipped his morning exercise routine, dressed at top speed (white man-made-fiber shirt, chocolate-brown suit, blue tie with red stripes), and shaved electrically. Before leaving he opened the window to air out the room. Down at street level, in a well-lit snack bar ensconced on the ground floor of his building between a laundromat and a youth club, he downed a very short espresso. The building was a new one, not far from the Seine. Where stores were not established on ground floors along the street, there were white walls defaced by daubed inscriptions, often obscene, always abusive and generally threatening. Goémond paid for his coffee and left the snack bar. He got into his Renault 15, which was parked in front of a large red graffito: TREMBLE RICH PEOPLE YOUR PARIS IS SURROUNDED WE ARE GOING TO BURN IT DOWN. The car headed for Place Beauvau.

  The minister of the interior’s chief of staff had dark circles under his eyes.

  “And that woman’s suicide attempt?” he asked.

  “That’s just it!” exclaimed Goémond. “The Meyer woman is in the hospital—in intensive care at Hôtel-Dieu. She can’t be questioned yet, but she’ll make it. She has us to thank, that one, for saving her life.”

  “Any news on other fronts?”

  “Better believe it!” said Goémond, and proceeded to put his interlocutor in the picture.

  “But you have no proof,” said the chief of staff. “You are just assuming that they can be found in the country at this Monique Cash’s place.”

  Goémond corrected him automatically: “It’s Véronique. And I am assuming enough to have the property surrounded.”

  “All right. Would you prefer CRS or mobile gendarmerie?”

  “CRS.”

  “Well, I’d rather assign you mobile gendarmes. So as not to always have the same guys sticking their necks out. I’ll call the Army Ministry for clearance. And I’ll have to apprise the prefect of Seine-et-Marne, who will want to be present at the site. We’ll let him know after the showdown is over, if showdown there is.”

  “I’d be surprised if there were a showdown,” said Goémond. “French leftists have no guts. They will surrender.”

  “They’ve already killed two people, including a motorcycle policeman.”

  “Nevertheless, they will surrender.”

  “To the contrary, I feel sure they’ll start shooting,” said the chief of staff.

  Goémond gave him a sidelong glance and took out a little cigar, which he lit in a leisurely way to give himself time to reflect.

  “Anyway,” the chief of staff added, “do you think it’s worth taking them alive?”

  “If it were just up to me, I’d put them up against the wall, as you well know.”

  “I know no such thing, Goémond.”

  “All right, so I’m telling you now. But I’m thinking of their hostage, you see . . . An ambassador . . .”

  “Indeed,” said the chief of staff. “If they eliminated him during an assault, how ghastly! It so happens that a slice of public opinion entertains a thoughtless sympathy for the far left, but such sympathy would be impossible to sustain if the leftists revealed their true nature by murdering a defenseless captive in cold blood.”

  “Yes,” mused Goémond, “and as for these people we’re looking for, they have already proved their viciousness by killing two policemen.”

  “One policeman, Goémond. One policeman and one American house-staff member.”

  “You’re right. What contempt for human life!” sighed the commissioner.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if they murdered their hostage,” said the chief of staff.

  Goémond looked at him.

  “And the minister, wouldn’t he be surprised?”

  “No.”

  “And the Americans, wouldn’t they be surprised?”

  “Goémond, a disciplined police officer should not concern himself with politics, especially international politics. Must I remind you of that?”

  “No, sir. Very well, sir,” said the commissioner.

  29

  TREUFFAIS was sitting on the floor against the wall with his back to it. Handcuffs chained him to a radiator. Goémond came in with his little cigar between his lips.

  “Son,” said the commissioner, “I came to see you before I leave. We know where your pals are, and where Ambassador Poindexter is.”

  Treuffais made no reply.

  “Would you like a smoke?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  Goémond took the cigarillo from his mouth and brought it close to Treuffais’s.

  “Assuming you don’t mind your lips touching a place just touched by a cop’s lips?”

  “Why should I give a shit?”

  Goémond shrugged, leant down and placed the cigarillo in his prisoner’s mouth. Treuffais inhaled with pleasure. The commissioner straightened up.

  “I like you,” he said. “I’m going to be straight with you. I admit that I’m not really sure about anything. I admit I don’t really know where your pals are. I admit I haven’t arrested either Diaz or Épaulard.”

  With his left hand, Treuffais removed the cigarillo from his lips. He was shivering a little from the cold. The radiator was not on. The young man wore only a light-blue cotton shirt and very ragged corduroy pants. His body hurt and his breath was fetid, but his face was unmarked. All blows had been directed elsewhere. He contemplated Goémond thoughtfully.

  “At the same time,” the commissioner went on, “I think I know where they are, your buddies. If that is where they truly are, you might confirm the fact for me and save me a little time. Your pals wouldn’t be any the worse for it, and as for you, it wouldn’t do you any harm to show a touch of goodwill.”

  Silence from Treuffais.

  “Apart from Diaz and Épaulard,” said Goémond, “there are two other guys, and I believe they are at Véronique Cash’s address in Couzy. What do you say to that?”

  Treuffais had nothing to say. He merely began to shake more violently. Goémond shrugged and snatched back the cigarillo. He crushed it in his fist, rolled it into a ball, and sprinkled tobacco, embers and ash on the prisoner’s head.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “As for me, I’m going to Couzy. If it turns out I’m wrong, we’ll resume our little chat later.”

  “Wait,
” said Treuffais. “I’ve had enough of this. I’ll tell you where they are.”

  Goémond kept walking towards the door.

  “They’re in Corsica!” shouted Treuffais. “They took a private plane. They were going to hide out in Corsica, but I don’t know exactly where. I swear that’s the truth!”

  “Don’t bother, you poor fool,” said Goémond, and left.

  30

  “HOW MAY I be of service, sir?” the man at the hardware store asked parochially.

  “Six 1.5-volt batteries.”

  “What size, sir? We have these, and we have those.”

  “Those.”

  “Six, you said?”

  “Yeah.”

  The storekeeper put the six batteries in a little promotional bag. Buenaventura paid and left. He did not want to return to the farmhouse right away. The inactivity was beginning to irk him. He walked past the Dauphine, parked alongside the curb, and went into a bar-tabac called La Civette de Couzy on the corner where the departmental road ran into the town’s little main square. The Catalan stood at the bar and ordered a marc. At the end of the counter, bundled-up and dirty-faced coalmen were drinking mulled wine. A fifty-something woman with a bosom as vast as a belly was knitting behind the cash register with packets of gris rolling tobacco piled up behind her. Depressed by the general atmosphere of apathy, unconsciousness, booze, and humidity, Buenaventura turned his back on his marc and leant against the counter to survey the street through the glass door. The roadway was wet, but the snow had melted and only grayish, spongy, and repellent little piles of it were left in the gutter. The Catalan would have liked Treuffais to be there. He pictured his friend playing poker with him, a game of Southern Cross with nine wild widows in a cross in the middle and a five-card deal—a rather slow variation leaving plenty of time to chat. A large gray bus full of gendarmes went by. Buenaventura reached in his pocket, produced a one-franc coin, put it on the bar, emptied his glass and quickly made his exit. A second bus passed by. The Catalan’s eyes followed it as he ran for the Dauphine. The wet sidewalks were a little slippery. He got into the car. The engine was old but still warm. He wanted to leave right away and immediately wrenched the car away from the curb.