Get out of here; go back down the corridor the way you came. Now.
The slightest suspicious noise and the beast would wake up. And Fontaine could show up at any minute. Get out! The desk. Servaz headed stealthily towards it: there was a pile of innocuous-looking papers next to the computer, which was switched off. He glanced again at the sleeping monster upstairs. He opened the drawers as silently as possible, one by one. Then he lifted up the papers. Bills, receipts, letters … nothing! He turned to the books, pulled out a few, put them back. Incredibly, the mutt wasn’t moving: what sort of guard dog was this? Servaz walked quickly around the kitchen: there was a big metallic refrigerator, induction hotplates, glass-doored cupboards, a post office calendar. Then he went into the bedroom. An erotic lithograph on the wall. A dresser. A thick shaggy bedside rug. Cupboards. He opened them. A clothes rail. He parted jackets, shirts. Dried his hands on his trousers: they were increasingly damp, and he mustn’t leave any traces. He found several uniforms with epaulettes; there was a pilot’s cap on a shelf just above: like most astronauts, Fontaine had been a fighter pilot and a squadron leader before joining the Space Agency.
He turned towards the bed and the night table. On it was one book.
Servaz went over.
His blood thickened in his veins like a sauce setting: the book was entitled Perversity at Work: Harassment in the Workplace and in Relationships.
There, on the night table. Not even hidden. A book that might be useful to people who were trying to protect themselves from perverts – but also to the perverts themselves.
Servaz felt that strange surge of power, of an investigator nearing his goal. But at the same time he was beginning to panic. He looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes: twenty-five minutes had gone by since Fontaine had left! Get the fuck out, right away! Suddenly, a strident sound broke the silence and he jumped as if someone had set off a firecracker at his feet. The telephone! It went on ringing, then an answerphone picked up in the living room. A synthetic voice invited the caller to leave a message after the beep, followed by a woman’s tense voice: ‘Léo, it’s Christine. I have to talk to you. Call me back.’ Who was Christine? His next victim?
The dog: the ringing phone must have woken him up. Get going, now. He was walking hesitantly back to the living room when a vibration started beneath his feet, something like an imminent earthquake. Still far away but clear nonetheless. It was moving through the ground. What was it? A boiler or some machinery that had just started up somewhere deep in the house? No, it wasn’t that … And then suddenly, in an instant, he understood. Hooves. Pounding on the ground. A horse approaching at a gallop.
Out!
This time he took to his heels, first through the living room, then along the endless hallway. On his way he caught sight of one eye opening on the mezzanine, still sleepy but not for long. The vibration grew stronger. Resounding through the floor, the walls. Servaz was about to open the door when he saw a car pull up on the drive. Shit! He stopped short in the middle of the hall. He glanced towards the living room and the picture window and could see Fontaine dismounting at this end of the meadow, just beyond the swimming pool. He heard the car parking next to his: he was trapped!
He glanced again through the half-open door. A woman was getting out of the car. In less than a minute, she would be inside the house. If only she could have been the fire department, or the postman come for his Christmas box. The postman. Of course: that was his last chance. He went back into the living room, rushed into the bedroom, opened the wardrobe and reached for the pilot’s cap on the shelf. Then he rushed into the kitchen and tore the calendar from the wall. That was when he heard it: the clicking of claws coming down the stairs from the mezzanine. He walked through the kitchen. And froze. The enormous beast was coming slowly down the steps, looking at him. It reached the floor of the living room and began to move, impassively, in Servaz’s direction. Its little eyes stared at him, shining with the brilliance of well-polished coins. His massive black muzzle was the most terrifying thing Servaz had ever seen that close up – except, perhaps, the barrel of a gun.
The dog began growling, showing his fangs: a low-frequency growl that struck Servaz in the plexus, and a row of teeth worthy of a shark. The animal was staring at him. Fifty kilograms of muscle ready to leap up and tear open his neck, and his face along with it. Servaz was trembling, sweating like a pig …
‘Darkhan!’
At the sound of the woman’s voice, the dog reacted. ‘Darkhan!’ she called again, from outside and – oh, mercy! – the monster suddenly lost interest in Servaz and began to bound joyfully towards the front door. Despite his desire to turn and run the opposite way, Servaz forced himself, still trembling, to follow the dog. On his way he picked up the pile of papers from the desk and placed the calendar on top, then walked to the door and reached it just as the woman was coming in, followed by the mutt. In her forties, she was wearing gloves and a winter coat; she looked self-assured and authoritarian. She froze when she saw him, throwing an immediate dart of suspicion in his direction.
Servaz flashed her a smile and held the calendar up briefly in her direction. ‘Morning, madame.’ His voice was calm and professional, astonishingly steady after what he had just been through. He walked quickly past her, under the watchful eye of the ferocious dog – which did not growl, this time – and he could tell she had turned around; he went down the steps to his car, expecting to be called back at any moment. He could not possibly run away like a thief – because then in all likelihood she would quickly take down his number plate. His heart was pounding like the horse’s hooves only minutes before. He tossed the cap and the calendar onto the passenger seat, then calmly walked around the car and got in behind the wheel. He turned the car around and headed along the drive. He looked in the rearview mirror: neither the woman nor the monster was following him. She must be playing with the dog, or telling Fontaine about the odd postman she had just run into. In a few minutes or hours Fontaine would discover the calendar had been taken from his kitchen wall, and that papers were missing from his desk. He would also discover, probably somewhat later, that his pilot’s cap had been stolen. They would conclude they had been the victims of an attempted burglary, which she had aborted. She certainly hadn’t had the presence of mind to write down his number plate; why should she have? Servaz could consider himself lucky: he could stay in the police, he had confirmation that harassment was a subject of great interest to Léonard Fontaine, and he would not die torn to pieces by the fangs of a pure killing machine.
* * *
She called Ilan when she came out of the lift.
‘Do you have what I asked you for?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great. Can you send it to my email?’
‘No problem. Christine…’
‘Yes?’
‘How are you?’
She almost told him about Iggy, but restrained herself.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the recording.’
‘Keep me posted,’ he said.
‘About what?’
He hesitated.
‘I don’t know … about what’s going on.’
‘Mmm.’
She hung up and unlocked her door. Her apprehension was quickly swept away by the strange feeling of coming home. Since she was no longer safe anywhere, she saw no reason to stay away any longer. And besides, her fear had left her, up there, above the void.
She went quickly around the flat. Nothing to report. No opera CDs, no sign of any intrusion. She opened one of her suitcases and removed Iggy, wrapped in his white towels like a mummy, and set him down in the bathroom. Then she dialled another number.
‘Hello?’
‘Gérald?’
Silence at the end of the line.
‘I know you don’t want to talk to me,’ she began, firmly. ‘And I understand. Everything you’ve been told, everything you think you know—’
‘Everything I think I know?’ he said, instantly a
nnoyed.
‘Yes. What you think you know is not the truth. And I have the proof.’
A sigh on the line.
‘Christine, for Christ’s sake, what are you talking about?’
‘Think. Just think about what you know exactly, and what you suppose. What would you say if I had you listen to something that will radically challenge all that?’
‘Christine, I—’
‘Gérald, please: give me five minutes of your time. After that, you can decide for yourself what to believe or not. And I’ll leave you alone. For good: you have my word. All I ask is five minutes. You owe me that, at the very least.’
He sighed again.
‘When?’
She took a breath and told him. And where to go. Then she hung up. She realised that the pleading tone she had adopted was pure farce, this time. A charade solely for Gérald. He loved to be implored. From now on she would never plead with anyone for anything ever again.
* * *
He looked both furious and frightened when she came into the café on the rue Saint-Antoine-du-T. She thought he looked like a little boy.
‘Hey.’
He glanced up and didn’t say anything. She pulled over a chair and sat down opposite him. She hadn’t put on any make-up, had made no effort to be attractive, and she must have looked terrible with the dark circles under bloodshot eyes, but he didn’t comment. He only seemed to be in a hurry to leave.
Nonetheless, he spoke: ‘The police did come and see Denise.’
She sat up straight.
‘About the intern you beat up, they showed her the photographs—’
‘I didn’t touch her,’ she replied firmly.
‘You should get help; you’re not well, Christine.’
‘Quite the contrary.’
The look he gave her through his glasses was hardly friendly. She switched on her smartphone and opened her inbox, then plugged in the headphones.
‘Do you remember that letter I got in my mailbox? That was when everything started.’
‘They think you wrote it yourself.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘I don’t know … because you’re … not well…’
She leaned forward.
‘Stop saying that, for fuck’s sake!’ she growled.
Oh, Lord. He had recoiled in his chair, and he looked like he was really frightened now.
Gérald was frightened of her!
‘Here, listen,’ she ordered curtly.
At first he merely stared at her and shook his head, looking disgusted; then he took the earphones. She began to play the recording from the radio broadcast that Ilan had just sent to her: the part where the man had rung up regarding the letter. She waited for his reaction, saw him frown, then concentrate, his eyes lowered. He removed the earphones.
‘So, that call,’ she said, ‘did I invent that, too?’
He didn’t answer.
‘That was the programme on 25 December – in other words, the day after I found the letter. You can check; it’s still available as a podcast,’ she lied. ‘Please explain, if I wrote the letter myself, how that man found out about it.’
He didn’t say anything. But he seemed less sure of himself.
‘And if I wrote it, how did he know about its existence and what it contained, given the fact that the letter was in your possession at the time he was calling?’
Gérald reddened.
‘It must be a coincidence,’ he ventured. ‘He doesn’t talk about the letter, just the fact that someone committed suicide.’
She rolled her eyes.
‘Oh, Gérald, for God’s sake! This is exactly what he says: ‘It doesn’t bother you that you let someone die? … you let someone commit suicide on Christmas Eve. Even though that person had called out to you for help.’ Of course he’s talking about the letter! He says just enough so that I alone can understand, that’s all!’
He blinked; she saw a fog of uncertainty cloud his gaze. Finally he shook his head, incredulous.
‘Okay,’ he conceded. ‘You’re right. He’s talking about the letter. But what you said to Denise…’
‘Denise told me that I was not the right person for you! And yes, that did set me off. How would you have reacted in my shoes?’
‘You seem to forget the email you sent to her.’
‘I did not write that email any more than I wrote that letter,’ she said, articulating precisely. ‘Shit, don’t you understand? That guy didn’t stop at calling me at the radio station: he got into my email, and he got into my house. He’s … he’s some sort of fucking stalker.’
This time he opened his mouth then closed it again without speaking. She saw him thinking.
‘When did he get into your house?’
‘The night I called you because of Iggy,’ she replied. ‘He was down in one of the rubbish bins in the basement with a broken paw; I found him thanks to his barking. I even thought for a moment that he was at the neighbours’ – and that same neighbour wasted no time telling the police I was out of my mind.’
‘How is he?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘Someone killed Iggy, Gérald. And I don’t know what to do with his body. He’s still in … in the flat. If you don’t believe me, just come and see.’
She watched him taking in what she had told him. Then she saw in his eyes the first signs of panic.
‘Christine, for the love of God, you have to go to the police!’
She snorted.
‘The police? You just told me yourself that the police think I’m guilty! That I’m crazy! Even you – you believed I beat up that poor girl. Fuck!’
He was looking at her closely now, his gaze increasingly worried.
‘What do you intend to do?’
‘Two things: find out who, and why. And there is only one person who can tell me.’
‘The intern,’ he said. ‘Of course. What do you want me to do?’
‘I think they’re watching me. I took every precaution in coming here. So they don’t know yet that we’re back in touch.’
‘You say “they”, so you think … Yes, of course: the intern, and the guy…’
‘I think there is someone else,’ she added. ‘Just an insignificant hard man. He’s probably been paid. He had no reason to go after me. Above all, he couldn’t have found out all that stuff without someone else’s help.’
He looked at her questioningly through his glasses.
‘Do you have any idea who it is?’
She stared at him, pensively.
‘Maybe. I want you to watch that girl for me,’ she said.
‘Shit, Christine! I’m not a cop, I don’t know how to do that!’
She looked at him, studied his smooth face, his sober, elegant, fashionable yet conservative glasses, his bespoke winter coat, his pretty grey silk scarf. She breathed in his clean smell, with its top note of rich cologne … When will you stop being a well-behaved little boy, Gérald? She clenched her teeth. And said in a firm voice:
‘All you have to do is follow her for a day or two. Tell me if she meets someone, and call me if she is at home alone.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘La Reynerie.’
‘Great.’
He suddenly took Christine’s hand in his and squeezed it.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I should have looked into it some more. I should never have simply taken it at face value. I’m so sad to hear about Iggy: I want to make up for the way I’ve behaved.’ He gave her a jaunty smile. ‘Okay, I’ll follow the girl. And those guys in La Reynerie had better behave: they have no idea what a guy who grew up in Pech-David is capable of.’
She couldn’t help but smile on hearing his typical Gérald bravado. She suspected he was afraid but that in spite of everything he wanted to help her. He was looking at her, smiling. You can count on me, said his smile, I’m not any braver than the average person, but I’m going to do this
for you.
She responded to the squeeze of his hand. She would have liked to lean across the table and kiss him, but she wasn’t altogether ready to forgive him yet.
‘One piece of advice,’ she said. ‘Change your clothes, first.’
* * *
Servaz watched the planes taking off from the industrial zone at Blagnac at five-minute intervals, with peak periods of one take-off every minute or two. He hated planes.
Something was nagging him. Mila’s diary was next to him on the passenger seat and he couldn’t stop glancing over at it. Why did she keep the child? Why didn’t she have an abortion?
He focused his attention on the building, all glass and concrete, that interchangeable architecture that could be found from Tokyo to Sydney by way of Doha, with the letters GOSPACE on the roof. Léonard Fontaine was still inside. Servaz reached for his telephone.
‘Vincent?’ he said, when Espérandieu had answered. ‘I need something else: have a look among recent complaints to see if there were any filed by a Christine; a complaint regarding physical abuse or harassment.’
‘Christine? You don’t have her last name by any chance?’ A pause. ‘Forget it.’
35
Encore
The A&E doctor was younger than she was. He was dark, with features that made her think he must be of Indian or Pakistani origin, and he seemed exhausted and stressed out. He was the one who needed care, she thought. When was the last time he’d got any sleep?
‘I’m listening,’ he said after glancing briefly in her direction. ‘You told the nurse you thought you had a cardiac issue last night.’ He checked his sheet. ‘According to the symptoms I see here, it might be a simple episode of tachycardia.’
‘I lied.’
A flicker of astonishment passed over his gaze. Just a flicker: he’d seen it all before.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s … rather delicate.’
She saw him lean back abruptly in his chair and fiddle with the pen in the pocket of his white coat, pretending to have all the time in the world, which was hardly the case: the corridor behind her was filled to bursting.
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