The Forgotten Dead

by Tove Alsterdal

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if I’m coming back.’

  Salif seemed not to notice as I held out my hand. His eyes had shifted to survey the bare walls of the room.

  ‘The boy pretended he was Ronaldo.’

  ‘I’m not going back with you,’ said Arnaud as we left the building. ‘I’m worried about Salif.’

  ‘Why don’t you want to talk about Alain Thery?’ I asked.

  Arnaud refused to meet my eye.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You didn’t translate everything Salif said. Why not?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t speak French,’ said Arnaud.

  ‘I lived here for several years when I was a child. Out in the country,’ I told him. ‘What do you have to do with Thery?’

  ‘Nothing,’ snapped Arnaud. ‘I just don’t want to drag you into something that could have consequences you don’t understand.’

  ‘Save your concern for your poor refugees.’

  His dark eyes flashed.

  ‘You don’t know shit,’ he said. ‘You come barging in here and think that everybody is going to help you find your American colleague. People disappear every day. People who are never found.’

  ‘So one more isn’t important? Is that what you’re saying?’

  A woman approached, carrying two heavy shopping bags. Arnaud held the door open for her. The woman glared at him and went inside.

  ‘I put Patrick in touch with the young men,’ said Arnaud. ‘I gave him the facts. That’s all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to help that poor woman go upstairs. The lift is broken, as you know.’

  He went inside to the stairwell, and the door closed behind him. I kicked the door with all my might. Salif had to be protected at all costs, yet Patrick had been allowed to disappear without anyone seeming to care. Why was everybody else in the world more important? And of course old ladies needed help with their groceries.

  I grabbed the door handle, which was hanging loose. I wanted to yank open the door, run up the stairs two at a time, and slam Arnaud Rachid against the wall. I wanted to tell him what a cowardly and petty person he was. He helped only those who were weaker than him, which made him feel good. I wanted to pound his head against the wall. But instead I let the door fall closed again. I was vaguely aware of three teenage boys sauntering past. I noticed only their baggy, drooping pants, and their sneakers, their shuffling gait. I glanced at my watch. Getting close to five o’clock.

  At five I was supposed to meet Caroline Kearny.

  ‘So what are you doing in Paris? Are you a reporter?’

  ‘No,’ I said as I sat down at the table in the glassed-in veranda. ‘No. I actually work in the theatre.’

  Caroline Kearny was almost sixty. She was clad entirely in purple, from her patent-leather shoes to her hair and the big scarf draped around her shoulders. I had expected a French woman, but she was from Boston, though she’d lived in Paris for more than thirty years.

  ‘Well, then, of course you realize you’re sitting on legendary chairs. They have all sat here: Verlaine, Oscar Wilde. Jean-Paul Sartre sat here and wrote for hours. He and Simone de Beauvoir came here every morning.’

  I had recognized the café from the photo on the wall in my hotel room. The original decor had been refurbished so it seemed new. From the ceiling inside hovered two full-size Chinese figures. They must be les deux magots, I thought. Doomed to hang there for all eternity.

  ‘I think I’ll have some juice and something to eat,’ I said. ‘I don’t drink alcohol.’

  Caroline snapped open the menu.

  ‘Just imagine if I’d been that wise at your age. Then I wouldn’t be sitting here.’ She motioned for the waiter and gave him our orders.

  ‘Did you see Patrick when he was here?’ I asked. ‘Did he tell you about the story he was working on?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, giving me a big smile that showed all her teeth. ‘But I never answer questions if I’m not sure where they’re leading. You know how reporters are. You’re married to one.’

  The waiter brought two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice and numerous plates holding ham, salads, an omelette, foie gras, bread, and cheese.

  ‘I don’t drink either,’ said Caroline. ‘Not any more. So food is my indulgence.’

  She broke off a piece of bread and spread on a dollop of ripe cheese.

  ‘How’s your husband doing? He’s a real cutie, if you ask me.’

  I started crying. I clenched my fists and tried hard to restrain myself, but it was like a dam had burst. I wiped my face with a napkin. My nose started running as I attempted to apologize to the woman seated across from me, but I couldn’t stop the tears. It was a flood of sorrow and panic and everything I’d been holding back for the past few weeks, maybe my whole life, and I sobbed loudly as it all came tumbling out. Through a fog I saw that everyone in the café was staring at me. Caroline handed me her napkin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, when the flood had receded, turning into a quiet rippling. I blew my nose on the napkin. ‘I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this.’

  ‘Has he left you?’ asked Caroline. ‘I know it may feel terrible right now, but believe me, it’ll get better.’ She spread a thick layer of foie gras on another piece of bread. ‘My husband left me after twenty-two years of marriage, and here I sat, all alone in Paris. That’s when I started writing. I had to make a living, you know. Now I can’t picture going back. The States have become so vulgar, lacking all finesse, but maybe it’s just that I’ve become French over the years.’

  I tried to smile through my tears. ‘I don’t think he’s left me,’ I said. ‘I’m scared it’s something much worse.’

  And then I told her the whole story, from beginning to end. About Patrick’s last phone call, and Richard Evans, about the envelope from Paris, and what I’d found out over the past three days. Actually, it was now almost four days that I’d been following his trail. Caroline ate her food with a hearty appetite, occasionally interjecting a question. When I got to the meeting with Salif, she put down her fork and knife and handed me a tissue. My tears had turned all the cloth napkins into soggy rags.

  ‘Patrick contacted me almost three weeks ago,’ she said, taking her pocket diary out of her bag. ‘We met on Tuesday, 9 September, at one thirty in the afternoon.’ She nodded at me. ‘He was sitting right there where you’re sitting now.’

  ‘That was a week before he checked out of the hotel,’ I said.

  ‘He wanted me to look at some photographs,’ she went on. ‘He wondered whether I could help him identify some of the people in the pictures.’

  I took out the envelope and handed it to her.

  ‘Are these the photographs?’

  Caroline put on a pair of gold-framed glasses. As she studied the pictures I quickly ate what was left of the food.

  ‘Not all of them, but I do recognize several,’ she said. ‘Terrible quality. I told him he’d be worthless as a paparazzo.’

  ‘I recognize Alain Thery,’ I told her as I ate. ‘But who are the others?’

  She tapped a long, purple-painted fingernail on the photo on top.

  ‘Marcel Defèvre. He’s a politician and a member of the European parliament, where he hasn’t done much of importance. But the person who interested Patrick the most was this man.’ She placed another photo on top of the stack.

  ‘Guy de Barreau,’ she said.

  ‘The name doesn’t mean anything to me.’ I took a closer look at the man she was talking about. He was in his sixties, with thick grey hair. He looked a little like a Hugh Grant who had aged with dignity.

  ‘He’s a lobbyist,’ said Caroline. ‘That alone makes him an odd duck in French politics. They don’t have the same tradition of professional lobbyists, not like we have in the States.’

  She pulled a book out of her bag, and I saw the author’s name on the cover. Guy de Barreau.

  ‘L’art de convaincre,’ she read aloud from the
cover. ‘The Art of Persuasion. My curiosity was piqued after I talked to Patrick, so I went out and bought the book.’

  I riffled through the pages as she explained. Guy de Barreau had started the think-tank, La Ligne Française — the French Line — in the early ’90s. He lobbied for reducing immigration, though without appearing to be openly racist. Instead, he talked about preserving French culture and French values. And he’d been extremely successful. La Ligne Française was thought to be behind several new laws instituted over the past few years. For instance, immigrant citizens were not allowed to bring their families to France unless all of them had full-time jobs, spoke fluent French, and could sing the ‘Marseillaise’ in their sleep. The group promoted the importation of workers, but only on a temporary basis. Obtaining citizenship was made more difficult. Those who came into the country and stayed without official permission were criminals and would be deported immediately.

  ‘He has managed to market ideas that would have been impossible twenty years ago,’ said Caroline. ‘In spite of everything, the French used to take liberty, equality, and fraternity very seriously.’

  She paused as the waiter came over to clear the table.

  ‘We must have coffee and dessert,’ she said.

  I leaned back while she ordered. I looked through the glass wall that ran the entire length of the café’s veranda. The crying jag had been like a cleansing bath. I felt more clear-headed than I had in a long time.

  ‘Did Patrick say anything about what those two were up to?’ I asked, taking out a photo in which de Barreau and Thery were sitting at a table in some café or restaurant. I realized it could be the Taillevent, given the brown background.

  Caroline smiled and shook her head.

  ‘No. Only that he was onto something big. He was poaching on my territory, so he was probably afraid I’d steal his story.’

  ‘If I’ve understood correctly, this Alain Thery is mixed up in criminal activities in some way.’ I didn’t give a damn whether someone stole Patrick’s story. ‘It has to do with slavery, and even with murdering those who try to escape … But I don’t understand how it relates to La Ligne Française.’

  ‘Maybe they’re just old friends,’ said Caroline, taking out a lipstick and freshening her make-up. ‘Although I doubt it. Thery is a climber. He’s from Pas-de-Calais in northern France. A place that has been left behind by the textile factories and the metal industry and the rest of the world.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ I said.

  ‘He made his first hundred million in the IT business.’

  ‘I don’t mean him. I’m impressed by you. Do you know this much about everybody in business and politics?’

  ‘No, but I decided to read up on things after meeting your husband.’ Caroline laughed. ‘I actually know much more about the love lives of celebrities. Gossip pays better than politics, but the two combined is unbeatable. The president’s love affairs have made me financially independent for the rest of my life. Although I write those stories under a pseudonym, of course.’

  She straightened up, making room for the waiter, who set coffee cups on the table, and two tall glasses of ice cream and sorbet in various colours, garnished with fruit, chocolate wafers, and almond slivers.

  ‘By the way, Alain Thery usually shows up at high-profile gatherings,’ Caroline went on. ‘Every Sunday when the actors finish their performances, he holds court at his regular table in the Plaza Athénée, with champagne corks flying. When winter comes to Paris, he leaves on one of his yachts. He has two, according to the gossip bloggers. He keeps one in Saint-Tropez and one in Puerto Banus on the Spanish Costa del Sol. They’re floating luxury palaces, with lots of parties and all sorts of delicacies on the menu, but they never go further than a few hundred metres from the harbour. And do you know why?’

  My mouth was full of melting vanilla ice cream, so I couldn’t reply.

  ‘He can’t swim!’ exclaimed Caroline Kearny.

  I smiled, but couldn’t manage a laugh.

  ‘There’s a Plaza Athénée in New York too,’ I said. ‘Nice drinks, expensive people.’

  Caroline tasted the yellowish-red sorbet. ‘Passion fruit,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘It’s their best.’ She licked her spoon and closed her eyes for a few seconds before going on.

  ‘If I’ve done my homework right, Alain Thery is obsessed with status. He doesn’t want to be the boy from the coal heaps in Pas-de-Calais. But in France it’s not enough to make money. You have to be from the right family and go to the right schools.’

  She tapped her fingernail on the cover of the book. ‘This man, on the other hand … He knows people at all levels of power — members of the government, public officials, supreme court justices. His family can be traced back to the 1700s. Royalists who served at the court of Louis XVI. He’s gone to all the best schools.’

  She sampled the other sorbets, the flavours mingling in her mouth, as she listed the schools that mattered. The political elite were all former classmates from Sciences-Po, the university for political science. A few years back, the admissions system was revamped so that talented students from even the worst suburbs could be admitted. That prompted an outcry from the upper classes. How were they supposed to tell people apart? It was also desirable to have a degree from ENA, École Nationale d’Administration, which was founded by de Gaulle. The previous president diverged drastically from tradition, since he had not graduated from that school. On the other hand, he did have a very attractive wife. Now order had been restored in the palace, since the president was a genuine énarque. Besides, despite his bland image, he had shown himself capable of keeping an actress as his mistress, which was practically a requirement in French politics.

  At that point I lost interest.

  ‘This isn’t getting anywhere,’ I said. ‘I feel like I’m going in circles, picking up loose threads here and there, but nothing makes any sense. And time keeps moving along.’ I placed my hand on my stomach and looked out of the window, seeing the square and an ugly church. A couple, arms around each other, stood there, studying a statue that portrayed a Cubist woman. The couple wasn’t doing anything, just standing close together and looking at the statue. I felt sobs rise again, and I had to hold them back. I felt such an intense and painful longing to be with Patrick. Doing nothing. Just looking at something would be enough. It didn’t have to be a Picasso statue. It could be the weather forecast.

  ‘Over the past few years they’ve focused on the EU,’ said Caroline Kearny.

  She glanced at me as she slowly ate the last of the ice cream and sorbet, which had melted together.

  ‘On the borders,’ she went on. ‘That’s where the battle is being fought. If the immigrants keep on entering through Italy and Spain, not to mention Turkey, the French police will have a hard time throwing out everyone who continues on into France. Of course a lot of people come here legally, as tourists, and then they simply stay. But La Ligne Française and their friends prefer to talk about those who are pouring in by boat and hiding in trucks, because that’s an image that frightens Dupont.’

  ‘Dupont?’

  ‘The average decent Frenchman, the worker who makes an average income, who is not a racist, but wants his children to grow up in a country that he recognizes from his own childhood.’

  ‘Do you know whether Patrick interviewed any of these men?’ I asked.

  ‘He said that he’d met Alain Thery once, but it didn’t go well. Thery ended the interview when Patrick got to the more interesting questions.’

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me. I’m a competitor, after all.’

  ‘But you both work for the same magazine.’

  Caroline laughed and slurped up the dregs of her ice cream.

  ‘I offered to do an interview for him. Apparently Thery had made himself unavailable. He wasn’t answering his emails, and Patrick’s calls were all diverted to his secretary. Patrick thanked me for the offer and said he’d be in t
ouch.’

  ‘Did he get back to you?’

  Caroline smiled regretfully and shook her head. I understood. Patrick would never have involved another reporter in his story.

  ‘Could you try to do it now?’ I said. ‘Schedule an interview with Alain Thery?’

  ‘Nothing new from your husband?’ asked Olivier when I returned to the hotel that evening.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Have you thought of anything?’ I asked. ‘Anything at all? Someone he met, someone else who phoned?’

  ‘I don’t know whether this means anything, but …’ Olivier refused to look me in the eye.

  ‘What?’ I said, leaning on the reception desk. ‘Is it something you’ve remembered?’

  ‘He said they were going to the Louvre, and I thought …’

  ‘They? Who did he mean?’ I stared at Olivier, who was tugging nervously at his necktie. ‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’ In a flash everything fell into place. ‘It was a woman, wasn’t it? He was going to the Louvre with her, and you haven’t said anything to me because you thought she was his fucking mistress.’ I pounded my fist on his damn reception desk. There he sat, being so discreet.

  Olivier took off his glasses and then put them back on.

  ‘It was on one of the last days. Actually it was the day before he checked out because he’d just come back from the market, and I asked him if he’d bought anything, but he didn’t answer. Just went up to his room. And then, a little later, she arrived, this woman, and asked for him.’

  I froze when I realized the connection.

  In the market Luc had given Patrick a phone number to call. He was supposed to say: I want to talk about Josef K.

  And then a woman had arrived to get him, the same way someone had picked me up outside the Taillevent restaurant. This woman had met Patrick on Monday, the day before he left, and she knew something about Josef K. I paced back and forth. That meant she must know where he’d gone.

  ‘What did the woman look like?’ I asked, hearing the quaver in my voice. ‘Can you describe her?’

  Olivier looked away as he ran his hand through his hair. ‘Well, I mean, she was the kind of woman that a man would notice.’