by John Brooke
‘Sure, boss.’
But Bénédicte’s gaze was less so. It dropped as she made a note.
Prompting the boss to clarify further. ‘By all means, monitor the Miri thread. But we will not attempt to cross the gap between those psuedonyms and the real names behind them, no matter how convenient and simple, Inspector, until we are sure there is a real link to the fire.’ …As simple as canvassing servers for phone bills. ‘If we have that, I’ll take the Miri thread to the judge. Maybe we can go back to the Proc.’
Bénédicte nodded, jotting in her notebook.
Aliette added, ‘But we don’t really need to.’
Bénédicte looked up. ‘Boss?’
‘The Miri crusaders on the Internet are part of a larger group, by which I mean a townful of parents who think he’s evil, and fear for their children’s safety. Knock on the door of anyone with a child in the care of Monsieur Giffard — I’m quite sure you’ll soon know who’s who.’
‘Quite sure, boss?’
‘Very sure, Inspector.’ Aliette had no idea if Bénédicte Barnay had been talking with Isabelle Escande about IssaE and she was not going to ask. She could not afford to know. Removing the BatiMat Marteaux cap from her drawer, Aliette added it to the mix. ‘And you should have a visit with the Saint-Brin rugby club.’
Bénédicte picked up the cap, examined it, put it on Magui’s head. ‘Why?’
‘Beards… powerful, pumped-up guys with beards.’ Aliette laid out the murky link between Luc’s past and the rugby club’s current fly-half, whose mother had been sorely mistreated by his father… ‘Awful man. Sat right where I’m sitting now,’ she added. ‘But that’s for Magui.’
Bénédicte was busy writing.
‘And you should also get back to Francine Tabler, the mayor at Prades. We would love to know the father of her child.’
‘Do you think it’s Malarmé?’ Bénédicte Barnay’s eyes were growing wide as the strands of the web expanded.
‘Talk to Mathilde,’ directed the boss.
Bénédicte scribbled further, then stared at her copius notes. ‘To be clear: I’m everything from Miri to the children…and these donkey girls.’
‘Think of yourself as the Morals beat, Inspector. And rugby.’
‘Should I talk to him?’
‘Of course you should.’ Aliette sat back, considering Bénédicte Barnay. ‘I suppose you should also know he’s sleeping with Chloé Dafy. At the bank?’
Which got an abrupt laugh from Magui Barthès.
Bénédicte said, ‘But that’s not in the report.’
The boss asked, ‘Should it be?’
4:28 am
Leina: Anyone out there? I can’t sleep.
IssaE: I’m here.
Piaf: I’m here too.
SainteThérèse: Hate these dead nights!
Leina: I keep seeing this person setting fires.
Piaf: He would never do that.
Leina: My guy says that too.
Piaf: Trust your guy.
Leina: Why do I have these dreams?
SaintThérèse: Take a pill.
IssaE: I don’t believe in pills.
Leina: Me either.
Guerrière: Pills kill bad dreams.
IssaE: Trust your dreams.
Guerrière: Who are you?
IssaE: Who are you?
Leina: What about me?
Piaf: Try sex.
• 21 •
FORGET THE FEAR IN YOUR HEART
The night was hot and windless. The bedroom window and the balcony door were both wide open, eager to welcome any hint of air that might pass through. Chloé Dafy lay motionless on the sweat-infused pillow. Mercifully, the stink of fire had faded to a presence, more a colour through the window than an odour — if she couldn’t see the blackened fields, the tinge in her nose wasn’t there. But now the fusty smell of his bed dominated. Their bed? It was her smell too, after all. As if the fire had reinforced this feeling of a space for just the two of them, where it was Chloé and Luc against the world. She whispered, ‘Do you hear it?’
His reply was a soft snore. He rolled slightly. ‘What?’
‘Something out there.’
‘It’s normal… Sleep.’ He snored, lightly like a child, not worried.
It was not that Luc Malarmé was a brave man — brave in the sense she’d been taught. He was not in any way like that. No, Luc was fateful. Chloé was starting to understand he expected it and accepted it — the resentment, and the threat that travelled with it.
‘Whatever happens, happens…’ This was his logic and he refused to be cowed.
But it was wearing on her. She had told Luc of the chief inspector’s visit to the bank. He said, ‘Why does it have to be a secret?’ They weren’t breaking any law. She had to learn how to move past it with him. How to be like him. It was a strain.
Chloé loved playing music with Luc, voices and instruments blending in a place like time out of mind. It was getting serious. Ten days till the Night of Music — there’d be no more secret then. But he was exacting and they practised hard. It was exhausting after a day at work. By the time she fell into bed, the bank seemed like another lifetime. Luc had a natural, uninhibited touch, a silence that was like an open space where she could respond in kind… Chloé Dafy knew she hardly knew Luc Malarmé and never would. He seemed to have no centre. But wasn’t that the most enticing part of it? For her sins, for all her mother’s hurtful recrimination, her brothers’ shame, her papa’s sad acquiescence, Chloé loved everything surrounding this unknowable man.
Their grubby bed, most of all. God, her mother would just die.
But Chloé’s nerves were ever vigilant. She slept on a fine edge.
…She heard it again. A movement, a single step, as if testing the ground.
‘There’s someone out there…Luc!’
Luc was sleepy. ‘It’s the forest. It’s normal.’
‘No. It’s someone.’ With more matches — for the house this time? A bigger stick? This time a gun? When he’d made his interest known — a certain look across the desk as she sorted through his dormant accounts at the branch last autumn — she’d responded. But not in a vacuum. Chloé had left another futile try at love with another depressing man and gone to Luc. The fallout was not his problem and she hadn’t bored him with it. She knew it was the last thing in the world Luc cared about. Chloé didn’t ask him to explain about Miri. She didn’t care about that. She’d felt no need to know. Being inside a song with Luc precluded even Miri Monette.
But these things had started happening to Luc.
She should have told the chief inspector more.
But you can’t just stop in the middle of a song.
Chloé Dafy lay there till it happened again, a sound that was too careful, too calculated to be an animal, a forest sound. She left the bed and went to the bathroom and took the rifle and box of bullets from the linen closet shelf. Like most of the men in her life, her father and brothers were hunters and she’d long known how to handle a gun. She checked the action and loaded a round. Luc didn’t stir as she crossed the silent room to the balcony door and fired a warning shot into the dark. Ducked back instantly. Reloaded.
He sat up, aghast. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Shh!’…She heard steps retreating and fired again… Steps hurrying, then gone. ‘It was in the laundry room.’ On a shelf above the dryer, behind the extra sheets in what had appeared to be a saxophone case. Wrapped in special cloth, stored in bluing. It wasn’t much good there.
‘You shouldn’t touch it.’
She shrugged — too late, already have — and brought it to the bed.
Luc shrank back. ‘Keep it away from me… I’m on a program.’
‘But where did you get it?’
‘When I first came down here. Some of m
y new friends wanted me to go hunting with them.’
‘I’m sure.’ Chloé’s father would have been one of those new friends.
‘I went once. I’m no hunter. Haven’t looked at it in years, I mean since long before…the thing. If that inspector came in here and found I’d been playing with my gun, there’d be trouble.’
Chloé put the rifle on the floor and stretched out beside him. ‘You already have trouble.’
Luc got up and stood in the balcony door, naked, arms wide, a fully white wide open target.
‘Why do you do that?’
‘To show them…I’m no threat. I’m just music…’ Then he was pulling on his jeans. ‘Come on, it’s almost dawn, we’ll play a tune for the sunrise.’
‘Now?’
‘Hurry!’
Any other man, it would not have happened. For Luc Malarmé, Chloé Dafy rose and dressed and followed him out. But not without grabbing the rifle first.
Luc brought his pan pipe. They walked up into the pine forest behind the barn. The birds had not yet awoken. If the boars were out, they were lying low. If there was someone watching, Chloé couldn’t feel him. She was enchanted in the predawn silence, walking the spongy earth. Luc took his pipe from his pocket and began to blow some searching notes. They blended perfectly with the subtle changes of the rising light. Chloé wished she’d brought her flute. She began to hum along, following the echo of their tune through the trees into the still obscure light of morning.
It could make you forget the fear in your heart.
It could make you forget the gun in your hand.
• 22 •
ANOTHER FAN
Magistrate Martine Rogge asked for directions to the home of Luc Malarmé. She declined the chief inspector’s offer of back-up. She wanted an unmediated moment with their victim.
She made a wrong turn at Cessenon and ended up in Rocquebrun. When she finally drove on to the place at Prades, three adolescents about the same age as her two youngest were sitting on a bench smoking, more interested in their cellphones than each other. Martine Rogge waited till they acknowledged her presence. ‘Berlou?’ Without a word, texting fingers stopped and all three pointed to the road at the other end of the place. They even looked up to see who’d asked.
One had the curly hair, the slightly sleepy eyes resembling those of the man she was going to meet. She realized she was probably facing the daughter of the mayoress and possibly Luc Malarmé as described in the file. ‘Rachelle?’ The girl’s eyes brightened.
But first things first. ‘Merci, les filles.’ Martine dove off.
She found the turn two kilometres on, exactly as described by Chief Inspector Nouvelle. The stained white house sat amid the charred fields. Nearly two weeks after the fact, the windless air still carried a tinge of burnt wood and vegetation. She parked beside a car exactly like her own: a snow-white Polo GT with the sunroof and sporty red-blazed hubs. She thought it an interesting omen as she arranged her somewhat sticky clothes and rang the bell.
Martine’s sense of omen was diminished when, leaving the unanswered door, she found Luc Malarmé around back, by his pool. He was in pajama bottoms, shirtless, hair rumpled. The woman lying beside him was naked, hair still wet, beaded drops sparkling on her shoulders. Martine envied her. The city was stifling. To lie naked by a pool on an afternoon like this would be pure pleasure.
In the company of Luc Malarmé was an intriguing bonus.
The woman heard her approach and swiftly reached for a towel.
Reacting to the woman’s startled reaction, Luc turned, none too welcoming. ‘What now?’
‘Magistrate Martine Rogge…’ She flashed her card. ‘Sorry to disturb.’ She noted that the famous boyish face was not really so boyish at all any more. Still…
He glanced at the card, mumbled, ‘Not a problem.’
She clarified, ‘I’m instructing your case.’
‘My case?’ A look of alarm. Perhaps he thought his murder case.
‘The fire?’ Gesturing. The devastation stopped not twenty steps short of the pool.
He shook her hand, slightly uncomfortable. ‘Beer? Or wine?’ Then, remembering… ‘This is Chloé.’ Who only nodded, clutching her towel around herself with one hand, her things in the other.
Chloé said, ‘I have to get going.’ With another curt nod, she hurried into the house.
Martine Rogge, returned the nod. Chief Inspector Nouvelle’s report had not mentioned a naked Chloé reposing by Luc’s pool.
Luc turned his attention to her. Lifted his bottle, offering.
Martine smiled. ‘A drop of red, cold if you can, merci.’
‘I can… I guess we should talk inside.’
Martine shrugged. She would have been happy to conduct the interview by the pool. Or in it. Naked. But she followed him inside, where he poured from a bottle stowed in the fridge.
Handing the glass to his guest, Luc Malarmé accompanied her to the kitchen door and pointed. ‘Salon. I’ll meet you there.’
Magistrate Martine Rogge ventured through the hall, turning slowly, as if at a cocktail party, sipping her wine, studying the awards, the photos, the celebrated company he had kept, taking in the domestic space of an international rock star and high-profile ex-convict.
The spacious salon was strewn with guitars. The room could do with a dusting. She peered out at the magnificent view across the plain. It wasn’t every day one directed such a case. She was imagining telling her daughters all about it when she heard steps in the hall. She breathed and turned.
It was the woman, Chloé, now dressed, rather formally — like herself. ‘Back to work?’
‘Evenings in summers to allow for siesta. But I need to tell you something.’
‘Yes?’
‘There is someone out there.’
‘Out there?
She gestured to the window. ‘At night. I’ve heard him three times at least.’
‘Have you told the investigators?’
Chloé Dafy blushed, indicating no.
‘But now you are.’ Martine Rogge assessed Chloé. ‘Where do you work?’
‘The bank. In town.’
A banker. He was sleeping with a banker. ‘Have any ideas…Chloé?’
‘No.’
A veteran magistrate could see that Chloé probably did. ‘What does Monsieur Malarmé say?’
‘He isn’t worried. He thinks…’ She stopped, exasperated. ‘He says it’s normal.’
‘Normal to have people outside his window?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Seeing as you’re here, well, I thought you should know.’
‘Merci…Chloé. It’s noted.’
Martine Rogge watched Chloé Dafy drive off in the twin Polo and thought about omens.
Luc Malarmé had washed his face, used his comb, put on a shirt. He had brought the bottle of chilled red and another glass. ‘Sit, please.’ He did not smile. His eyes were aimed at the floor.
Martine sank into the sumptuous divan and extended her glass for a refill. ‘Do you have any idea who might want to harm you?’ Of course she was at a disadvantage here, and, in asking for a second glass, being more than a little unprofessional. Giddy? Call it a moment of vertigo. She realized life was lived differently in this place. Things had a different shape.
Luc flopped languidly down beside her. ‘Almost everyone?’
She could not get a bead on his mood. She was disconcerted by his refusal to meet her eyes for more than a passing instant. ‘How many guitars do you have?’
‘Too many.’
The visiting magistrate put her wine on the side table and pushed herself up out of the plush but somehow stale-seeming leather. It was a reaction. Martine Rogge was shocked at herself. She would do better standing. Wits regathered, she started asking questions. They needed more about the land deal,
the donkey farm, the house. Luc remained stretched loosely on the sofa, staring flatly. He had obviously got used to answering questions posed by judges, lawyers and police of every description. He knew it was serious — there was no sullen defiance or, worse, that laconic irony she too often had to work through. Martine Rogge sensed a man who had probably gone through both those useless passages and more; now he was committed to the process. Yes. Luc focused hard on her every point, nodding, concentrating, staring at her knees. But he could not fake ignorance and he clearly did not know much, if anything, in the way of the detail she was seeking. He kept referring her to the former mayor of Saint-Brin, the notary, local functionaries, officials at the prefecture, high civil servants and the elected.
Martine recognized some names. They were all from the past.
The report was right. Luc Malarmé had not involved himself in the actual business, and he did not appear to be interested now.
Martine had finished her glass. ‘And did you have a child with Francine Tabler?’
‘Francine?’ That was more interesting. He lit a cigarette. ‘It’s hard to know for sure. It’s possible…’ He drew smoke and thought. ‘She was pretty good, Francine.’
Martine resisted asking for a cigarette. She resisted losing her temper. ‘Someone doesn’t like you, monsieur. Why? …It can’t be that complicated.’
‘Complicated?’ He stared at the floor. ‘It’s because I sing. I play. It’s my music.’
Martine took a step back — into her inner judge? — puzzling over this man. ‘Is that it?’
‘That’s always it.’ He finally met her eyes. ‘Believe me, I know.’
The chief inspector had told her plainly: this man is unrealistic. But he wasn’t lying. Martine Rogge knew when a man was lying. She helped herself to another glass of wine. ‘Will you play for me?’
Luc made a sort of face, a grimace — to Martine Rogge, the face a child will make on being asked to perform for the guests, do the special thing he knows how to do that has delighted his mother and which she has claimed as her own, though the child still has to do the work.