Affairs of State

by Dominique Manotti

  And the phone goes dead.

  Beauchamp, heroin, the SEA, so that’s Chardon’s source. Bornand hasn’t identified it. The Crime Squad hasn’t made the connection between Katryn’s murder and the Iranian arms deals. I’m several steps ahead of the lot of them, and with the war between the police departments, I’ll be ahead of the game for a while. And I’m determined to make the most of it.

  Cecchi immediately erases the message and turns to Mado:

  ‘Here’s the ideal opportunity. This time, I shan’t pass anything on to Bornand. I’ve got a treasure trove, and I’m keeping it, and I’m going to use it all for myself, like a big boy. Make me a coffee, then I’ll be off. I’ve got things to do. I shan’t be coming to pick you up tonight. Call a taxi.’

  Noria goes home. At last. The end of an exhausting day. She’d had to console the concierge, comfort Bonfils, answer the Crime Squad’s questions precisely, without it being easy to explain why and how they were there, with Bonfils almost incoherent, go over all their movements, see the body in the bathroom again. And wait for the results of the autopsy.

  According to the pathologist, the elderly woman appeared to have died from an embolism, some time on Wednesday, 4 December, between midday and five p.m. – in any case before the magistrate arrived home from the law courts. The magistrate could have committed suicide: the pathologist insists that it is possible to commit suicide by slitting one’s own throat. Given the shape of the wound and the position of the razor, in this case, it was even highly likely. The Crime Squad reckon that the magistrate learned she’d been taken off the case, went home depressed (the clerk confirms that is the case) and discovered her mother dead. So the suicide theory is highly plausible. The door and windows are locked from the inside, there are no signs of an intrusion, three people including two cops were there when the door was opened, suicide is certain, and the inquest will soon be over.

  She does not switch on the light, but walks over to the window. The city is shrouded in mist and darkness. The Eiffel Tower is barely visible despite its illuminations, and La Défense not at all. The neon lights of the Grand Rex cinema are off, it must be after eleven p.m. She can hear the muffled noise of the traffic, quietly reassuring.

  No hurry, she needs time to recover. First of all, a bath, feet resting on the rim of the tub, hair piled loosely on top of her head. No massage glove today, everything soft and gentle, take things easy. She lingers in the warmth of the bathroom, brushes her hair for ages, a ritual she finds relaxing, splashes on some eau de cologne and slips into a towelling bathrobe that’s several sizes too big for her. Then she puts away some clothes that are piled on a chair, makes the bed and gives the shelves a quick dust to remove the biscuit crumbs. She goes into her tiny kitchen, which is less than basic. Here there are never dishes simmering for hours, hissing, the smell of which reawakens family nightmares. She makes herself a steaming chocolate and butters a few slices of bread, which she places on her little Formica table. Next to the magistrate’s notebook. She can’t delay the moment of confrontation any longer.

  Noria shudders. She touches the yellow leather cover and inhales its odour, to convince herself that it really is there. Because it shouldn’t be on her kitchen table. Curiosity, wanting to know. What? The fascination of that naked body, lying in the bathtub with its throat slit. Sensing violence, the violence of a woman, so close, the same as me, all warm, in the pit of her stomach. And vertigo. She visualises the movement, the razor, and suddenly, blood gushing everywhere, spurting onto the walls, the tiled floor, that self-destructive rage, she feels herself to be in danger.

  And Bonfils. Flashback: in the lobby, on familiar terrain. A good-looking guy, his lips parted, lightly defined. Charming and hazy. Flashback: in the kitchen, on the brink of the abyss. Where’s he in all this?

  The yellow notebook: she must pluck up the courage to open it.

  She skims the pages quickly.

  … Every time I come in or go out, I hear her double-turn each of the three locks, one after the other, the metal shutters clang down over the windows, noises I find heart-rending, day after day … and the minute I’m out, all I can think of is getting back as quickly as possible, behind the bars …

  … Jeanne is preserving her energy, she never leaves the apartment any more (‘I don’t want to die away from home’), eats very little, scarcely breathes, all her energy goes into her determination to live, with a sort of fury, like a daily rebuke … She’s there, all the time, she invades me, she suffocates me, she says: you’re abandoning me … Impossible to focus my mind …

  … Legs heavy, heart pounding, tiny veins on her thighs have burst creating red and blue filaments. An imaginary landscape …

  … Mother and daughter facing each other. Absolute solitude, shared loathing. Jeanne is only interested in the weather. Clouds, sun, rain, the darkness – which fell very early today, the only dimension of history that is still accessible to her. I can’t bring myself to talk to her any more … Thoughts pass, like fleeting images, instantly forgotten … Her or me? …

  … I look at my hands, the joints inescapably becoming deformed, like hers … I’m losing my grip, I feel as if nothing imprints itself on my memory any more, time is monotonous, ravaged. What cases did I read yesterday? Who did I meet? I have to piece together my memories from scattered clues. And frequently, I fail … Over the Rashed case, this afternoon, moments of confusion, as if my muddled thoughts were only holding together thanks to a huge effort of concentration. If I give way a little, everything disintegrates …

  Noria gets her breath back. She hears the distorted echo of her own nightmares. But I got out, I saved my life. She stretches, massages her face and goes over to the window. The city, as always. And sits down to finish reading.

  The last entry is very different:

  At work, Simone put a phone call through to me: the Dupuis and Martenot law firm. Why did I take the call? I knew exactly what was going to happen. Lack of resolve, of self-confidence, as before. Nicolas greets me very politely, asks after my health, then my mother’s. Ten years since we last saw each other. Then he informs me that Mado is one of his clients. I already know this. That she won’t respond to my summons. As I’ve seen. And kindly warns me that incriminating Mado will upset a lot of people in high places. I hate him with every fibre of my being.

  Noria closes the diary. The magistrate hated right to the death. Bonfils, not a word about him in all these pages. He’s somewhere else, a blip. And a mystery man, this Nicolas who played a part in the magistrate’s suicide. He’s protecting Mado who Katryn worked for, and Katryn was trying to blackmail one of Mado’s clients. This guy is somehow linked to the murder. What do I do with this information?

  Three o’clock in the morning, much too early to wait for sunrise. To bed now, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

  Saturday 7 December

  In a little studio flat belonging to Mado in a quiet apartment building in the well-heeled 16th arrondissement, Karim sits naked in a low, deep, winged armchair smugly contemplating his bulging paunch, the line of curly black hairs running down from his navel and his flaccid penis resting on the red and white striped velvet. An afternoon and a night spent fucking two of Mado’s girls, perfect as always. And he’d been masterful, he gloats, scratching his testicles. One of the girls brings him a tray which she sets down on the coffee table beside him. She’s wearing a short navy-blue silk pyjama shirt, with nothing underneath it. He slips his hand between her thighs and fondles her crotch, then attacks his breakfast. English-style. His favourite: astringent tea, bitter-tasting, toast and marmalade, freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice. A sigh of contentment. The girls have vanished into the bathroom.

  Another reason for his complacency is yesterday’s meeting with Bornand, not half as tough as he’d expected. The lost plane was an excuse to edge him out. He proved to be a real pushover. That was unexpected.

  Better watch the time: he mustn’t miss the flight to Beirut.

  He
gets up and ambles lazily into the bedroom, dragging his feet, calls the other girl, the one wearing a basque revealing her generous breasts, and has her dress him while he buries his face and hands in her bosom. Then he sends her away with a slap on the buttocks.

  ‘Call me a taxi.’

  Alone in the bedroom, he checks the contents of his leather briefcase: the papers he’d been planning to use to put pressure on Bornand. He hadn’t needed them. A few hours’ work in Beirut, and the whole affair will be closed. He checks his appearance in the mirror: impeccable.

  ‘A white Mercedes will pick you up within a few minutes,’ says the girl.

  He says his goodbyes, his hands roaming everywhere, and leaves, feeling elated.

  Outside the building, a white Mercedes is waiting, its engine idling. The driver steps out and opens the door for him.

  ‘Roissy.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  He gets in, the door slams, and the taxi pulls away quickly. Karim vaguely notices that there’s a glass partition between him and the driver, which is unusual for a Parisian taxi. He opens his leather briefcase, leafs through some papers, reliving the night he has just spent. Mado’s establishment really is top class.

  The taxi doesn’t seem to be taking the most direct route. Usually … He leans over to the glass partition. It’s fixed shut. He raps twice. The driver doesn’t respond. He looks at it more closely. Toughened glass. Sits down again. The rear windows are tinted and appear to be of toughened glass too. He presses the control switch. Nothing moves. Grabs a door handle. Locked. A moment of panic. Bangs the windows and rattles the handles, in vain. Sits back. What’s going on? The taxi: the girl called it. The girls: work for Mado. Mado: a great friend of Bornand’s. And her pimp, caught sight of him a couple of times, a notorious gangster … Is it possible?

  The Mercedes drives fast, there’s little traffic on a Saturday morning, they’re already on the motorway heading south. The driver turns off onto an empty secondary road heading deep into the forest.

  Scared out of his wits, Karim pisses himself.

  At the wheel of his metallic grey Porsche, Nicolas Martenot heads for home. He drives slowly in the direction of Paris. An eighteen-hole round of golf at the Saint-Cloud club, a session in the sauna, a quick lunch, then a long game of bridge with plenty of booze which he’d won hands down. And yet, alone in his luxury car, he has a sense of unease triggered by the call from the police yesterday informing him of his ex-wife’s suicide. He says her name out aloud: Laura Luccioni. She slit her throat. Remorse? … It was her choice. As it had been her choice to be a magistrate. And to believe in it. Good, evil. Frigid. Her icy distance scared me, fascinated me even. The ultimate inaccessible woman, and morally upright into the bargain. He can still hear Bornand’s voice, in the spacious lounge in his apartment at the foot of the Eiffel Tower: ‘Your wife is an uptight pain in the arse. She’ll make your life a misery.’ He’ll have to cancel all his appointments on Monday and go to the funeral. Half the law courts will be there. Her throat slit. Martenot shudders. And sees Françoise’s face, contorted by something akin to hatred. Hatred. Why hatred? For me? Women’s violence, impossible to cope with. The feeling of unease grows more acute. Bornand’s doing. A snatch of a refrain keeps going round and round, like the chorus of a ditty: power, politics, sexual dysfunction.

  I don’t think it’s my thing.

  Irritated, he turns on the radio. Newsflash: ‘Two fire bombs have exploded in Paris department stores. One went off in the china department of the Galeries Lafayette, at five thirty p.m., and the other, in the leather goods department of Au Printemps, twenty minutes later. Initial reports state that around fifty people have been injured, ten of them seriously. No one appears to have been killed. The bombs were homemade incendiary devices. The police think it was probably the act of a loner or someone mentally unstable, or an act of vengeance.’ Come off it! Disinformation or incompetence? In the heat of the moment it’s guesswork, of course, but after all, it’s barely a week since the plane disappeared. Iran’s at war with France again. ‘Given that the bombs exploded at peak shopping time on a Saturday afternoon, two weeks before Christmas, it is a miracle that the toll, albeit provisional, is no higher. The police estimate that there were nearly a hundred thousand people in and around the stores, making it difficult for the emergency services to get through. By eight p.m., all the wounded had been evacuated, but the area is still completely sealed off, and the police are currently urging motorists driving through the centre of Paris to avoid the right bank.’

  Feeling powerless and bitter, Martenot switches off the radio and bangs the steering wheel with the palm of his hand in rage. What a mess. That’s it. I’m dropping Bornand. He’s finished. My firm’s interests first. It’ll be a relief.

  He smiles: the ritual murder of the father. About time too, at my age.

  Monday 9 December

  The New York-Paris night flight. Bornand lands at Roissy without having slept, feeling pretty groggy. He buys the newspapers and repairs to the airport bar, amid the hubbub of comings and goings. A strong double espresso and two pills, just to wake him up.

  Paris Turf, first of all, to read the commentary on Crystal Palace’s triumph yesterday at Longchamp, in the group 3 race. A clear win, by two lengths. The makings of a champion. He closes his eyes, the Aigles track at dawn, smells the horses’ powerful odour after exertion, hears them snorting. A mirage …

  And the national press. The headlines are devoted to Saturday’s bomb attacks. It didn’t take the Iranians long to react. Idiotic editorials claiming it to be the work of a deranged loner! The mind boggles. He turns to the financial section. In one column, he finds the article he’s expecting:

  Rumours of bankruptcy in Beirut.

  The International Bank of Lebanon is the biggest private bank in the Middle East. With a presence in the region’s many arms markets, it is also the biggest investment bank for oil magnates to deposit their private fortunes, and therefore has close ties with the leading banks in the London, New York and Geneva financial markets.

  Until now, it had managed to avoid the devastating effects of the Lebanon war, by striking a balance within its board of directors between the different Lebanese communities and between the Syrians and the Gulf states. That was its real success story.

  It seems that this era is over. In the past few days, several of the bank’s major customers, whose investments are highly volatile, have begun to close their accounts. If this trend continues, it is likely to force the bank to sell off some of its property assets, in a highly unfavourable market.

  To make matters worse, one of the bank’s main partners, the Franco-Lebanese Walid Karim, vanished three days ago, taking with him certain confidential documents relating to the current crisis … The fate of the IBL should become clear by the end of the week.

  Bornand folds the papers, stretches his legs, pulls back his shoulders and his arms. Karim. A chapter of my life unravelling. Sinister. His choice, not mine. Business will resume with Iran, this time with the Americans. They need the IBL as much as I need them. The hostages … It’s not for want of trying. And floating guiltily around in his mind is the thought that the longer the embargo lasts, the better it is for business. He contemplates the crowds milling around him.

  When he arrives in his office, Bornand finds a number of messages, one of which says: ‘Call Flandin back urgently.’ He wrinkles his nose. The boss of the SEA, a hysterical panic-monger. What can he want to talk to me about that’s so urgent? A bad omen.

  On the phone, Flandin sounds at the end of his tether, his voice cracking uncontrollably.

  ‘Have you read the Tribune de Lille?’

  ‘No. I’m not interested in that kind of local paper.’

  ‘Then you’re wrong. I shall therefore have the pleasure of reading you an article from the front page of today’s Tribune. Are you listening?’

  Bornand pours himself a whisky, sits down and sighs:

  ‘I’m lis
tening.’

  ‘It’s entitled: Mystery plane crash.’

  ‘In true provincial press style,’ thinks Bornand.

  Flandin continues: ‘This is the article:

  On 29 November 1985, Turkey signalled the disappearance of a Boeing 747 cargo plane in its airspace, in the vicinity of Lake Van. So far, no airline company has reported the disappearance of one of its planes, nobody seems bothered about the death of the crew of possibly three, four, five or more people about whom we know nothing, not even their nationality. The owner(s) of the cargo have not come forward either to demand an investigation or to request compensation. And as the explosion took place at the start of winter, over a semi-desert in a perilous mountainous region, no doubt it will take a long time before a team of investigators from the Turkish civil aviation authority completes a report on this incident.