by Jo Mazelis
Then just as suddenly, the man seemed to give up. He moved away from Jean-Pierre’s car and crossed the pavement to his own, shrugging at the woman behind the wheel as he did so. He got back in the car beside her, slamming the door behind him. They talked to and fro animatedly for a few moments, throwing the odd hostile glance at Jean-Pierre as they did so.
The boy in the back, Jean-Pierre noticed, was rocking rhythmically from side to side and letting his head repeatedly collide with the window. The couple, bickering now, did not seem to notice. They should stop him from doing that, Jean-Pierre thought, they should tie him up, pinion him, put his head in a brace of some sort. Drug him. Keep him home. In a home. He wasn’t safe.
Then the man tilted his body to one side in order to reach into his trouser pocket.
A gun? Jean-Pierre thought with alarm.
An object was brought into view and waggled aggressively in Jean-Pierre’s direction. A slim silver-grey object. No gun, but a mobile phone. Somewhat ridiculously Jean-Pierre mimicked the gesture. Two little boys threatening each other with toys. Bang-bang, you’re dead.
But this was even more banal, two grown men threatening each other with cell phones. Gonna tell the police. Gonna tell Daddy.
But this is a fight Jean-Pierre will win. He has a head start.
At first it’s difficult for him to explain over the phone, what happened yesterday, what happened today. Lines get crossed. The person on the other end of the phone thinks it is Jean-Pierre trapped in his driveway and when he persuades them it is the other way around they sound nonplussed. Why did you do that, sir? Because they were escaping. Escaping what?
So it goes. On and on.
Finally Jean-Pierre remembers the man slamming the flat of his palm on the bonnet. Three times. Hard. Causing untold damage. Deliberate. Reckless.
A patrol is on its way, the telephonist says.
Scott, speaking to another operator, is told the same thing.
Quietly, Scott told Marilyn to take Aaron back into the house. He could handle this. It was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
The Hanged Man
The layout of the police station was such that from Sabine’s window she could see into the briefing room, which was in a wing at right angles to the main block. She had been typing up a report when she glanced up to see Paul Vivier standing by one of the stacking chairs near the front of the room. His back was to her and his right hand was resting on the chair, while his left was hanging loose and lifeless. His head was bent forward, so that her first quick impression was that of a hanged man.
The first dead body she had ever seen had been that of a man who’d hung himself. This was long before she’d joined the police, long before anyone should see such a thing – she had been twelve years old. The man, a neighbour, was a bureaucrat of some sort (she never found out exactly what he did to earn his living) and Sabine’s mother, noticing that his shutters were still closed at midday, had sent her round to see if there was anything the matter.
‘If he’s not well, ask him if there’s anything he needs. I’ll make some of Aunt Bridget’s special garlic soup.’
Sabine had gone to the man’s front door first, rang the old fashioned bell and waited. The man lived alone, he had no wife or children, and his mother had died three years earlier after a long illness. Sabine’s mother took a great interest in him. ‘A young man like that…’ she’d say, though to Sabine he didn’t look young at all. ‘Poor thing, he was devoted to his mama. She gave him life, then she took his.’ It had taken many years for Sabine to understand what that meant.
She had rung the bell again, rattling the chain and enjoying the loud clamour that seemed to echo in the unusually quiet street. No one answered, but his car – a four by four fitted out with a special ramp so that he could take his mother out and about in her wheelchair – was parked in its usual place in front of the house. Sabine went around to the back of the house and, after rapping her knuckles on the glass panel, she tried the door and found it was unlocked. She crept in, calling loudly, ‘Monsieur Thorez! Monsieur?’
He was hanging over the stairs, his head lolling forward and his toes pointing down like a string puppet. He was in his black suit – perhaps he had no less formal clothes – but he’d taken his shoes off – perhaps to prevent damage to the belle époque chair he’d stood on.
Vivier moved then, lifting his head and looking around as if he’d suddenly had a new thought. Or as if someone had called his name. He moved to the corner of the room near the window where there was a flip chart. He stood staring at it, as if reading, though the sheet of paper was white and empty.
Sabine Pelat watched him for a few minutes. She remembered how earlier she’d teased him, laughed at him and then, delightfully, laughed with him. All over a stubbornly knotted shoelace. It had been as if a peculiar sort of insanity had overtaken them both. The nature of the work really, which was often so terrible. She knew from one or maybe several of her translated English novels, that one of the slang names for the police in the UK was ‘the filth’. Certainly filth was what they dealt in. Nightmarish, visceral, tragic and real. Filth. Not their filth, but when you dealt with it day in and day out it entered you; seeped into your pores, coated your tongue. You breathed it, lived it, dreamt it.
But Paul Vivier, that most remote of men, had laughed. And laughed. And it had been thrilling to see him laugh, to recognise that this was possible. Without recrimination. It could quite easily have gone a different way. He may well have been less than amused. And then?
But he had laughed. His face transformed. So that she could see his strong white teeth, the sharp incisors, with a single nugget of gold glinting towards the back. His eyes gleaming brightly, the creases at the outer edges of his lids, which were not unattractive, as one presumed wrinkles to be, but almost like accent marks which highlighted the act of smiling.
Sabine had been quietly focusing her attention on Paul Vivier for some time. For a year or two, if somewhat distantly. But now, in these three or four minutes, it dawned on her that lately her interest in him had been less formal, less to do with admiration and respect for a superior, with a keenness to watch and learn, and more to do with… She paused and looked away from him in order to gather her thoughts.
Was it lust? No, something deeper and more complex.
Then did she like him a great deal?
‘Like’ was such a flaccid word, it needed the hard on of a qualifier such as ‘very’ or ‘a lot’ or ‘loads’.
No, the word she was reaching for presented a leap of perilous risk; the word was (how could it be?) love.
She smiled. She could not help herself.
And then as if to remind her of where she was, of who she was, the phone rang.
She picked it up and gave her name. On the other end of the line there was only silence.
‘Who’s there? Hello.’
She listened. There was no breathing to be heard, only a sort of hollow quiet rushing noise, like faraway waves in a seashell. Like the sound of an asthmatic twelve-year-old girl’s lungs when something has frightened and shocked and saddened her, and stripped away the last illusions of childhood.
She listened and looked up again to where Vivier had been standing seconds before, but he was gone.
‘Paul?’ she said into the mouthpiece, then realising her mistake, she hung up the phone and went back to the report she’d been typing.
Road Rage
It was Lamy who was sent to deal with the traffic incident in the end. A waste of a morning as far as he could see. Two motorists squabbling over a parking space, turning nasty, but mostly just the loud venting of rage.
Dawn had been hazy, but now as he drove in the direction of the rising sun, its piercing light seemed to rip right through his eyeballs to drive a dagger of pain into his head. He adjusted the sun visor, but that didn’t help, and so with a flick of his hand, he slapped it back to its original position.
He turned onto rue Jules Verne; a tree
-lined avenue where the sun, now to his left, benignly sparkled and shone through the trees. Then, turning left, he saw La Coquille Bleue and, on the other side of the road, a blue Renault Clio parked on the pavement, and in the driveway beyond, a silver Saab estate. A tall blond man was sitting hunched on the garden wall a few feet from the car. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt, faded denims and yacht shoes. In the Renault another man sat defiantly upright. He had a sharp little face, all pointy nose and narrow chin and scrawny neck topped by an unusually bouffant hairstyle like a coxcomb, which gave him a disturbingly bird-like quality.
Lamy pulled his car onto the pavement in front of the Renault, effectively blocking that car’s escape and, after first sizing up the situation between the two men, he got out and signalled to the Renault driver that he should get out of his vehicle. In response, the driver in the Renault looked at the blond man who had been sitting on the wall, but was now leaning against it, then back at Lamy. His glance was theatrical, a head-twitching performance of double takes.
The blond man, watching this, pushed himself off the wall and made a move to approach Lamy. Lamy, like a cop on traffic duty, showed his palm to the blond man and beckoned to the scrawny man in the Renault. Reluctantly both men did as they were told and stood five feet away on either side of Lamy, shifting and posturing restlessly.
Lamy stepped forward and, applying a little theatrical panache himself, he removed his notebook from his pocket and flipped it open.
‘Now,’ he said, glancing from one man to the other, ‘which one of you gentlemen called the police?’
Both answered in the affirmative.
Lamy considered this, then as one man was illegally parked and a good deal smaller, he asked the Renault owner to get back in his car and approached the blond man.
‘So what’s the trouble here?’
‘I don’t know, sir. My wife and I were about to leave. We were in the car, in the drive,’ he jerked his head to indicate the parked estate car, ‘when this guy,’ he nodded in the direction of the other car, ‘blocks our exit.’
His French was laboured, but fairly good, Lamy noted, though the accent was slightly off.
‘And?’ Lamy asked.
‘And we tried to get him to move, but he wouldn’t. I mean, he just sat there. I don’t get it. It was like he had done it on purpose. But why? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Is this your house?’
‘No, but it’s ours while we’re here. The house belongs to a distant cousin. We’re Canadian. Here on holiday; we come every year.’
‘And do you know this man?’ Lamy thumbed the air in the direction of the other man.
‘No, never seen him before.’
Lamy considered this, and looked from the parked car in the driveway to the Renault on the pavement.
The blond man was growing agitated, shifting his tall frame around impatiently.
‘God damn it, this asshole is gonna make us miss our flight.’
‘All right, sir. Now let’s keep things under control, eh?’
‘I mean, is there some stupid French law that says if you want to use your goddamn cell phone you can just pull up wherever?’
The phrase ‘stupid French law’ was not music to Lamy’s ears.
‘Seems you are a little angry, sir,’ Lamy said.
‘Damn right I’m angry,’ the man said, through clenched teeth.
Lamy pretended to write something in his notepad, then said, ‘Could you go and get in your car now.’ As he said it he turned to indicate where he wanted the tall man to go, and happened to glance at the ground floor of the house where he noticed a red-haired woman standing at the window, watching them. One arm was crossed over her chest with the hand tucked into her armpit, while the other was raised to her lips. She was frowning and chewing on a thumb nail. Watching her, he heard a car door open and slam shut. His eyes followed the sound and he saw the blond man sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle. He watched him for a moment, then indicated that the Renault driver should come forward now.
The smaller man began to speak in rapid and formal French. His tone was pompous and he delivered his words with a jerky emphasis.
Lamy hushed him; he wanted to get to the point.
‘So you pull up here,’ Lamy said, ‘and he asks you to move?’
‘Yes, but you see the heart of the issue is…’
‘Sir, please just answer my questions.’
‘Alright, I apologise. I’ll try. Yes, he asked me to move my car.’
‘And you didn’t move straight away?’
‘No, you see what you are failing to appreciate here is the seriousness of…’
‘Sir,’ Lamy held a silencing palm up.
‘Sorry.’
‘Just the questions for now. So you didn’t move the car quickly enough for his liking and then what, he got angry?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, that’s right. Very angry. Swearing, waving his arms about, threatening me.’
‘He threatened you?’
‘Yes,’ the man was getting very animated now. ‘He threatened me. I stayed in my car, of course, but that just enraged him more. So then I tried to ring the local station, but I couldn’t get through, so then I called the emergency services and he starts banging on my windows.’
‘He banged on your car window? With force?’
‘Yes, I thought the glass would shatter. Then he started on the bonnet.’
‘What do you mean, he started on the bonnet?’
‘He hit it, three, four, maybe five times.’
‘With a weapon?’
‘No. Or at least I didn’t see a weapon. Perhaps it was concealed. I don’t know … but the noise it made!’
Lamy looked at the Renault’s bonnet, tilting his head from side to side to detect a dent or mark of any sort. He drew closer, still moving his head and studying the car.
‘Is it damaged?’ Lamy asked.
‘It must be,’ the man replied. He came nearer, then squatted down on his haunches so he was nose level with the tip of the bonnet. He couldn’t see any damage, but that, in his mind, meant nothing. His car had been violated.
Lamy leant over and stared carefully at the perfect blue surface. He couldn’t see any dents or damaged paintwork and was about to say this when he happened to glance over at the blond man sitting in the other car. Scott happened at that moment to be signalling his frustration to Marilyn who had been watching everything from the front room. Scott had pointed to his wristwatch, then to the two Frenchmen and then he tapped the side of his head to indicate madness.
‘I think there is a dent,’ Lamy said, noticing how an unusual shadow fell on one part of the bonnet’s curved surface.
Lamy took the Renault driver’s name, his address, the registration number of the car and ordered him to delay any repairs until the matter was sorted out. Then he sent Jean-Pierre Laniel happily on his way. Once the blue Renault had disappeared down the road, Scott got out of his car. He checked his watch again. There was still just enough time if they could get Aaron into the car quickly, if he floored the accelerator and drove like a lunatic, they might yet make the airport in time.
He gave a thumbs up sign to Marilyn and was about to thank the policeman when he spoke.
‘Sir, I must ask that you accompany me to the police station.’
‘What?’
‘I am charging you with intent to cause criminal damage and threatening behaviour.’
‘What? Are you kidding me?’
‘No, sir. This is an extremely serious charge and I would ask that you come quietly.’
Lamy, with deliberate calm and grace, gestured towards his police car as if he were the lord of the manor inviting one of the lower orders to ride in his gilded carriage.
Scott hesitated. It was all too strange to take in. It was surreal – everything that had happened since they left the house that morning. As bizarre as a René Magritte painting or a film by Louis Bunuel. Even the dappled light. The figure of his wife be
yond the window, her face drained of colour, while her red hair suddenly seemed to glow even redder as if it might crackle and spark with fire.
‘Surely…’ he began, but suddenly felt defeated.
‘Otherwise I will be forced to place you under arrest.’
‘My wife,’ Scott said hopelessly and flapped his arm towards the house.
‘You may inform her. Call her outside.’
Scott put his hands on his hips and letting out a low groan, looked down at his feet. It passed through his mind that one punch aimed squarely at the policeman’s jaw could knock him out, then they could get away from this country, never come back.
The absurdness of the fantasy matched the absurdity of the situation. He lifted his head to see Marilyn at the window. She mouthed some words at him which he could not read. With one hand still on his hip, his shoulders hunched in defeat, he gestured for her to come out. She touched her breast bone with the tips of her fingers, as if to say ‘me?’
He nodded then watched as she turned away. Her red hair which had been shining in the light near the window, dimmed, then vanished entirely as she moved into the shadows at the back of the room.
Pleasures Taken
‘Are you hungry?’ Florian asked.
‘Maybe,’ Suzette said.
‘Yeah? What do you fancy?’
Suzette thought about the food she had in the flat; some bread, some eggs, garlic, a handful of black Muscat grapes, a very little goat’s cheese, a short stump of saucisson that was probably past its best, apricot jam. In her freezer, wrapped up in a Carrefour carrier bag, a pair of mackerel an American tourist had given Suzette in the bar one day last summer.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘You know what I fancy?’
‘What?’
‘Steak and mayonnaise.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Yeah.’