Talking to Ghosts

by Hervé Le Corre

  He did not know what he planned to do when he found him. He did not know what his promise was worth. The urge he had had to shoot him in the stomach and watch him die slowly was gone now: perhaps because something in Sanz was exhausted. The way you might say a seam of coal is exhausted. Vilar was about to come face to face with this man he had dreamed of slaughtering for months, and it was this man he was now allowing to guide him. He felt like a blind man in the darkness led by a mad dog. Perhaps he would get to watch Sanz die without having to touch him, watching this blaze that had consumed everything gutter out of its own accord. And it would happen in the darkest hour, there where the earth petered away, where the Médoc narrows to a jagged point and buries itself in the ocean.

  He took the pistol Pradeau had given him before he disappeared. He checked the ammunition. Fifteen cartridges. He put the gun on the passenger seat and, as he drove along the dark, straight road, passing the occasional speeding car, his fingers caressed the placid, warm steel.

  A little way past Pauillac, he came to a police roadblock. He slipped the gun into the pocket of his jacket and submitted to the questioning without mentioning he was one of them. The gendarmes were wearing bulletproof vests and some of them, who remained in the background, were hefting rifles, butts tucked into their armpits, fingers on trigger guards. He allowed them to open the boot and shine their torches inside. The number plate of Sanz’s Renault estate had obviously been circulated that afternoon so they were probably on the lookout for the car, and for the missing boys, but it was unlikely that Sanz’s mugshot had been sent to every patrol unit.

  Afterwards he strayed onto narrower roads, driving through pitch darkness interrupted only by the street lights of deserted villages, stopping three times to consult his map. When he got to Vertheuil, he made a tour of the village to get his bearings, passing the house where Sanz was waiting for him. He parked some fifty metres away and, engine and headlights off, found himself in shadows as thick and murky as oblivion. He suddenly felt a weight on his chest, and he had to inhale deeply two or three times to catch his breath. Through the rolled down windows, he could hear crickets. The night was warm, without a breath of wind. Nothing moved, nothing seemed to exist anymore. Vilar realised he could not even see his hands and was struck by the idea that his body too had ceased to exist, dissolving into the blinding void that surrounded him, that he was dead and had only just noticed.

  He opened the car door, leapt out and stood, gasping and feeling foolish as the light inside the car automatically came on, casting a dim glow on the grassy verge. He worried that Sanz was watching for him, perhaps could see him standing here, so he closed the door soundlessly and walked towards the house. The starry vault above his head cast no light.

  The gate opened without squeaking. The windows were dark, the shutters open. Vilar wondered if Sanz could see him. He also wondered where the people who lived in the house were now. He curled his hand around the pistol and circled the house, keeping his distance, trying to make something out through these windows that seemed to be staring at him like vacant eyes. From time to time, he saw the green or red L.E.D. of some device set on standby. Gradually, he became convinced that he was not circling a sleeping house, but a dead one.

  He found himself back at the front door and decided to open it. It swung noiselessly open and he waited for two or three seconds. He could hear nothing in the silence but the muffled ticking of a clock. He stepped inside, pointing the gun this way and that as though it might cast some light on things. He felt ridiculous gesticulating in the dark like this. He found a switch and the light immediately alleviated the pressure in his chest and he could breathe normally once more. He moved towards a door behind which he could glimpse the hulking form of a sofa and cautiously stepped into the room. He smelled stale cigarette smoke. He felt certain that Sanz had laid a trap for him and would jump out at any minute. He slid his feet across the floor, skirted around the sofa and, just as he reached the fireplace, a lumbering movement and a creak of wood made him start and turn towards the sofa.

  “Shit, you’re here …”

  Vilar fumbled for a light, switched on a lamp.

  Sanz sat up blinking. On his right temple was a huge gauze bandage soaked in Betadine, held in place by a piece of tape that ran across his forehead such that one eye was almost closed. The top of his T-shirt was brown with dried blood and the right leg of his trousers was also stained above the knee. Next to him was a hunting rifle and a cartridge pouch. He looked at Vilar, nodding, a twisted smile on his face.

  “What the fuck are you doing in the dark with that gun? You come to arrest me?”

  His voice was slurred. He blinked constantly in the dim light.

  “Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  “The people who live here. What did you do to them?”

  “I scared them. One look at me and they were shitting themselves. So I nicked their rifle before I passed out completely and I made sure they wouldn’t piss me off anymore.”

  “Where are they?”

  Sanz brought a hand to his thigh and gritted his teeth. Then he slumped back against the sofa.

  “I buried them in the garden.”

  A forced, guttural laugh wracked his throat.

  “I’m a natural born killer,” he said coughing, “and you’re fucking Super Cop … And I should know, we’ve got police in our family.”

  “I’m going to take that rifle,” Vilar said. “Don’t move a muscle.”

  He moved a round into the chamber of his pistol, cocked it and stepped towards Sanz.

  “Go ahead, I don’t need it anymore. You’re the one with the guns now. You see what you can do with them, whether they’re any use.”

  He touched the side of his head and his fingers came away smeared with blood.

  “Shit, it’s bleeding again. That little fucker ripped my ear off.”

  He did not move as Vilar lifted the weapon onto his shoulder and took the cartridge pouch.

  “Who ripped your ear off?”

  “My fucking son.”

  “How do you know he’s your son?”

  “I just know. I can feel it in my balls.”

  “And when exactly did you start to give a shit? What about your daughter? You don’t think about her much, from what I’ve heard.”

  Sanz was leaning back against the sofa, his eyes closed. His chest shook with something that might have been a chortle or a silent cough.

  “You talked to that slut, that’s how you know … how you traced it back to me … I don’t give a fuck about her and her little brat. I never wanted a kid. She was the one who wanted to keep it when she found out she was pregnant. I warned her …”

  Vilar stared at the man who, in the past four months, had murdered two women with his bare hands and slit a teenage boy’s throat. He had desecrated the memory of Pablo, sullied his name, twisted a knife in old wounds. His duty was to knock him out, drag him back to Bordeaux and have him banged up for as long as possible. Instead of which, and without the least curiosity, he simply watched the man writhe with pain as blood seeped into the sofa.

  And yet here before him was a human being capable of committing those crimes, motivated by such perversity. A human being with a face, an expression, one who could close his eyes, overcome by sleep, now so utterly drained and so helpless that any gendarme could probably come and slip the cuffs on him without waking him. He could hurt, he could suffer, even die. Perhaps Vilar believed in ghosts, but he did not believe in monsters. Neither monsters nor the heroes who hunt and kill them. But dealing with men like this, those who sow private chaos, falls to other men who must confront them with no assurance that they will defeat them. Vilar stared at the man. He had so badly wanted to make him suffer, to kill him. He had sometimes been woken in the night by terrible dreams in which he had the man at his mercy, but the blows he tried to rain down had no power, no effect, and his bullets bounced harmlessly off this body like paper pellets, and he would notice that
the body had no face and realising it was a dream would wake with a start, his heart pounding with impotent rage.

  Vilar vainly searched inside himself for some vestige of rage, of hatred. He wished that he felt overcome by a desire for revenge, because it would have been easier to lash out, to revel in each blow until the last, what they call the coup de grâce. But he felt nothing. There was nothing in him now but an expectation he no longer dared to name.

  “Where are we supposed to go when we leave here?”

  Sanz opened his eyes. He looked solemnly at Vilar, seeming to consider this question or perhaps the answer he might give.

  “I already told you. You know where we’re going. You know what we’re going to find there. It’s almost in the Dordogne. Two hours’ drive. My brother is waiting for us. He’s the one who figured it all out. He just had to check to make sure. He called me yesterday, he was going to call you anyway. He said it was the least he owed you.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “Who?”

  “Morvan, the gendarme.”

  Sanz shrugged and sighed as though the question were of no interest.

  “I don’t really know … My brother thought he was dangerous. When we saw what was on the computers, he said we couldn’t leave him alive. Apparently he had files on all the fuck-parties in the area and all the big shots who were at them, a bunch of rich arseholes, T.V. presenters, writers and singers off their tits on coke, a few politicians … Anyway my little bro didn’t want all this coming back to bite him, given we were both involved back in the day, before I got banged up. He used to hang around to keep the paparazzi out, he did it as a favour to some colleague from Toulouse he used to work with. Anyway, we got the gendarme to talk a bit and then we wasted him. It was one less problem.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Why? You surprised? Don’t you get it? Your friend tried it once and he got a real taste for this shit. Once the rot sets in, it doesn’t stop. You live by it and you fucking die by it. We might not be real brothers, but we’re a lot like each other, him and me. You should know better than anyone what it’s like, standing there like butter wouldn’t melt, when if you didn’t need me to drive you there, you’d be laying into me right now. You’d smash my face in and you’d get a fucking hard-on doing it …”

  He trailed off, brought a hand up to the bandage that covered his ear and held it there for a moment, his eyes closed, breathing heavily through his mouth as the pain wrenched his face to one side. He clicked his tongue and waved his arm in a vague gesture.

  “Fuck off, I’m done answering your questions. I’m thirsty.”

  He struggled to his feet and stood, swaying a little before he could take a step. Then he walked into the kitchen. Vilar followed him and stood in the doorway. With a large glass of water Sanz washed down a couple of pills he had in the palm of his hand.

  “He split my head open, that little fucker.”

  He splashed water on his face and drank some more straight from the tap.

  “Where are the people who live here? What did you do to them?”

  “They’re in the garage, for fuck’s sake. What, you think I butchered them and made a necklace out of their eyes? You watch too many movies.”

  Vilar hesitated about leaving Sanz alone for a minute, but seeing him, head bowed, leaning heavily against the sink he decided the man could not go very far.

  Even before he turned on the light, he smelled the acrid whiff of urine and heard the muffled cries. When the bare bulb came on, he saw two little girls sitting in front of a large chest freezer, tied back to back with a length of electrical wire, their mouths gagged with duct tape. Their eyes widened in terror when they saw Vilar appear with the pistol in one hand and the rifle slung over his shoulder, they struggled as much as their bonds would allow them. They had pissed themselves. He reassured them, told them he was a policeman, that it was all over, that they didn’t need to be scared anymore. From the opposite side of the garage the parents, who were similarly trussed up, grunted vehemently through their gags. He told them that there was nothing to fear and looked among the tools on a shelf above the workbench for something to cut them free with. He took a pair of wire cutters and walked over to the father, who looked at him, his eyes filled with fear or hatred. Just as he was about to cut him loose, he got to his feet again. The man stared at him in astonishment and grunted something, shaking his head wildly, while his wife tried to crane her neck to see what was going on. Her eyes were pleading, filled with tears, her face was red and swollen.

  Vilar set the wire cutters down at his feet and explained that he had something urgent he needed to do before he set them free. He told them the gendarmes would be here soon. He found a Stanley knife and a couple of cable ties which he looped together so he would only have to pull them tight.

  The man gave a strangled cry and the veins in his neck throbbed, the tendons bulged fit to burst. Vilar told him to calm down, said that he would send help and left the door ajar when he went out.

  He went back to the kitchen, but Sanz was not there. He took out his pistol again, but there was no need to hunt in the dark for long: Sanz was lying on the sofa, one arm covering his eyes.

  “Let’s go.”

  When he did not react, Vilar jabbed the muzzle of the gun into his ribs. Sanz started and looked at him, his eyes wide and vacant.

  “Let’s go. Move it. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us.”

  Sanz did not move. His breathing returned to the regular cadence of imminent sleep. Vilar grabbed the collar of his polo shirt and lifted him up. Sanz cursed and struggled feebly as he was hauled off the sofa, collapsing onto all fours on the rug. Vilar grabbed him by the belt of his trousers and dragged him along. They bumped into the coffee table and the armchair, knocked over a plant stand and a potted plant. As he was being dragged through the door into the hall, Sanz yelled that that was enough, that he could manage by himself.

  Vilar pitched him forward and he fell flat on his belly, then struggled to his feet.

  Once they were outside and had closed the door behind them, they were swallowed by the night and for an instant Vilar was once again gripped by terror and had to breathe through his mouth so as not to suffocate. He ordered Sanz to walk on ahead and – inasmuch as it was possible to gauge in the darkness – stayed two or three metres behind, rifle aimed at his back, finger on the trigger. The bodywork of the car shimmered in the faint ambient glow. Vilar pressed Sanz back against the bonnet and shackled his wrists with one of the cable ties he had prepared. Sanz babbled incoherent curses and threats, clearly groggy from the pills he had taken, and Vilar hissed at him to shut his trap, told him he had nothing left to say. He pushed him onto the back seat and lashed his ankles together. Then, he unloaded the rifle and stowed it with the cartridge pouch in the boot.

  Sliding behind the steering wheel, he asked which way they were headed. When Sanz did not answer, he repeated the question.

  “Nowhere. Let me sleep.”

  Vilar turned off the engine and the headlights and sat in the shadows, his pupils dilating in the darkness. Blind. Nothing outside existed now. He listened to his heart hammering in his chest. Rage left him breathless.

  “What did you say?”

  Sanz muttered some obscenity, his voice slurred.

  Vilar took a torch from the glove compartment, turned it on, then got out of the car and opened the back door. He lifted Sanz up, shone the beam into his drugged face and whacked his nose with the end of the torch.

  “You fucking tell me where we’re going – tell me where it is I’ve been wanting to go all these years, as you put it – or I’ll skin you alive.”

  Lying on the back seat, Sanz blinked into the torchlight, grimacing, but then suddenly a smile disfigured his face.

  “Tell me,” Vilar growled, his fist gripping the man’s polo shirt.

  “You’re looking for your son? Me too. Thing is, I found my son and he stabbed me in the thigh, the little queer, and the
n he smashed my face in. But that’s O.K., I get it. What about you, what sort of state do you think your son will be in when you find him?”

  Vilar lifted the bandage and gave a brutal tug. Sanz screamed and tried to struggle, but Vilar kept him on his back, his rigid arm pushing him into the seat. The gauze pad, which had been stuck in place with dried blood, made a ripping sound like Velcro as it came away, and in the torchlight Vilar could see the glistening wound: a deep, bloody gash that ran down along the scalp and through the outer ear, slashing half of it away.

  “Talk, or I’ll rip the rest of your face off.”

  Sanz was whimpering now, lashing out weakly with his bound legs, feebly hurling himself against the car door. Vilar hit him just above the mangled ear. Sanz spluttered and then let out a piercing wail that sounded almost like a child. Vilar wanted to hit him again, suddenly overwhelmed by the rage he thought he had mastered. Now that he was standing over this man, now that he had him at his mercy, he wanted to make him suffer; wanted to see him die. Wanted to watch the faint spark in his eyes snuff out.

  He grasped the bloody, scabbed ear and Sanz screamed “No!” and his teeth beginning to chatter. “Head for Castillon. After that, I’ll explain how to get there. I can’t take this any longer.” He curled up and pressed the sodden remains of the bandage to his ear with his bound hands.

  Vilar drove fast and, without passing another car or encountering any roadblocks, found himself on the road to Bordeaux. Once or twice on the dual carriageway he saw police lights in the distance, but they disappeared into the darkness like abstractions that might as well never have existed. He called the emergency services, alerted them to the people tied up in their garage. He would have liked to know what had become of Victor and the other kid that Sanz had mentioned. He asked but, knocked out by the tranquillisers, the man did not answer.