Macquart summarises for them. ‘In other words, he’s telling us that he’s been out of Paris since Monday evening. But he’s right next to a busy train station where there’s no likelihood of his being identified … We’ll soon see about that.’
Bornand has shut himself up in his drawing room and sits slumped in an armchair. He’s had his mistress informed that he’s not available, sent Antoine away, locked his door, unplugged the telephone, and opened a bottle of vodka. The President refused to see him and congratulated himself in front of his closest associates for never having invited Françoise Michel to the Élysée. The verdict has been delivered and it is final: no scandals of this nature in the corridors of the presidential palace. Bornand is asked to leave his office at the Élysée immediately, and its door is now closed to him. With all his files inside. He is not the only one who understands the workings of power. He is to put an immediate end to this affair, and ostensibly go back to living with his wife. ‘Then, we’ll see,’ says the President, ‘it all depends on the reaction of the press and of public opinion.’
Bornand takes a large slug of vodka and closes his eyes. Go back to living with his wife. A half smile. They never had lived together. They’d lived in the same house while Thomas was alive, that’s all that can be said. Then Bornand’s wife moved away to live in Saumur, one day after the funeral. It was several days before he noticed she’d gone. So, resume their cohabitation, why not?
The vodka bottle is empty. His stomach’s burning. He feels shut in. Plagued, as in the past. Sees himself locked in his room with Thomas, his father-in-law to be, pacing the floor, shouting, randomly banging into furniture.
‘In the Militia! You idiot … What are you trying to do? Act the martyr? … Wake up. This is March 1943. The Germans have lost Stalingrad, the Americans are in North Africa and the Japanese are retreating in the Pacific. Can’t you see for yourself that Hitler has lost the war, and Vichy and the Militia will go down with him?’
He follows Thomas with his eyes and says nothing. Vichy, the new homeland, building the Europe of tomorrow, destroying Communism, the enemy of Western civilisation, is he the only person who believes in it?
‘The kids’ games are over. You’ll go and live with my mother in the country, and you stay put until further orders. Let people forget you. I’ll have enough on my plate trying to salvage my business after the war, without having a collaborator on my hands as well.’
He gave in, that’s all, neither a rebel nor a hero. Just like today. The solitude is unbearable. Of course he will step back in line and go back to his wife, at least for a while. He opens another bottle of vodka and falls asleep.
Friday 13 December
Bornand wakes up in a daze. Blood spurting in the telephone booth, strangers, their faces pressed to the glass, staring at him in curiosity, revulsion? He’s covered in blood. He gets up with difficulty, picks up a pretty Chinese lacquer box from the table behind the sofa and snorts two pinches of cocaine. Lies down again and breathes slowly, his eyes closed.
Dead. A man of around forty, who looks like an ordinary kind of man, a primary school teacher, three streets away from the Michel’s place, and a Communist before the war. ‘A man who supports the Resistance,’ said Michel. Five of them lay in wait for him, with coshes, under a porch on a street corner. In broad daylight. When he came out, they jumped on him. Bornand got him in the shoulder, he fell to his knees, more blows and he keeled over exposing the nape of his neck, and Bornand struck. A sound of snapping wood and the Communist’s body lay motionless on the ground. A few more kicks, to let off steam. Intense. No comparison with Flandin’s abstract murder. They return, accomplices and victors both. Then Thomas locks him in his bedroom. End of story.
He has always been attracted by killers. Flashback to Moricet walking through the streets of Beirut, his gun wedged into his belt in the small of his back, under his elegantly cut jacket. Killers with class. Even Cecchi … A lot of deaths recently. Karim … hardly a murder, more a vanishing shadow. Flandin, Cecchi … Cecchi whose corpse flashes into his mind, half his face blown away, on the pavement outside the Perroquet Bleu …
No doubt a gangland killing, even if I let Mado think I believe the Intelligence Service had him killed. In any case, his death came at an opportune moment, ridding me of a burdensome ally. I have to admit that in the end he had me completely at his mercy. This murder is a stroke of luck. Of course.
He gets up and sits down on the sofa, runs his hand through his hair and smoothes his moustache. The President also has his family secrets, and is very keen for them to remain secret. I am the man who knows. He can’t manage without me. I just need to lie low for a few days at my wife’s house, and I’ll be back.
He gets up and goes into the bathroom. A freezing shower and a handful of amphetamines to keep himself awake.
What do I do with Françoise? When she came to my place, the first time, blackmail and seduction, a real gift out of the blue. I fucked her and flaunted her. So, incest, it’s just a word. You get used to it, you get bored, as with everything else. Don’t want to fuck any more. Flashback to the blonde fury, the other day. I’m losing her. Almost relieved to leave her without a confrontation. When things have calmed down, I’ll set her up in a furnished apartment with an allowance. She’ll understand. She has no choice.
He gets into his Porsche, and drives alongside the Seine towards the west of Paris.
He is tailed by two cars from Intelligence. Departure 05.07. Erratic driving. Pont de Sèvres, 05.30, then he takes the N118. All good, he’s on his way. He accelerates suddenly, they lose him. Presumably he’s heading for Saumur, we’ll take the A10 motorway. Back on Bornand’s trail at the first service station. He fills up. The car is parked in front of the shop. Bornand buys razors, shaving foam. He goes into the toilets and shuts himself in a stall. Makes himself vomit. Then, standing bare-chested at the washbasins, he splashes himself with water, washes his face, rinses out his mouth and has a shave. Peering into the mirror, he is tense and on his guard. He trims his moustache with the razor and combs his hair. He goes into the shop, eats a sandwich, drinks three coffees, swallows two pills and gets back onto the motorway at 06.15. He drives at a steady, moderate speed. They have no difficulty keeping him in sight.
Another stop at Le Mans, where he calls his wife to announce his arrival. It is 07.45.
This is the chance Macquart’s been waiting for.
‘Ghozali, go and see Françoise Michel. She knows about Bornand’s business deals, we had proof of that in Geneva. Find a way of getting her to tell you all she knows. Woman to woman … I’m counting on you …’
He leaves the words hanging in the air.
On reaching the outskirts of Saumur, Bornand vaguely remembers having been there before when his wife bought the estate, but he gets lost. He asks the way, crosses the whole centre of Saumur, follows the Loire, drives up along the cliff and takes a dirt road between two big paddocks where the horses graze. At 08.50 he parks his car in a gravelled courtyard in front of a small eighteenth-century manor house built of white limestone with a blue slate roof. The front door opens into a hall that runs through the house and leads out via a French window to the terrace and the grounds. A man in his forties wearing brown velvet trousers and a heavy beige polo-neck sweater, greets him.
‘Madame Bornand is finishing off her inspection of the stables.’
Madame Bornand. He knew, of course, that she had kept her married name, but hearing it, today and in this house …
‘I’ll wait for her.’
He is shown into a sort of parlour, a small room adjoining the kitchen, all in white limestone, with a chequered white stone and slate floor, a tall narrow fireplace where a log fire burns lazily, a worn leather armchair in front of the fire, a big oak farmhouse table and a few straw-bottomed chairs. In a corner near the fireplace is a coat rack heaped with old raincoats, hats and leather chaps. There’s a smell of wet earth and horses. He goes over to the French window. In front
of him is the end of the terrace, then a vast tree-fringed manicured lawn stretching down to the stables below. He puts a log on the fire, pokes it, then returns to the window. Facing him is a sandy avenue leading directly to the far end of the estate. She’ll come up this path to meet him. His mind goes back to an image of himself standing in the chancel of the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot, aged twenty-four, wearing morning dress. The church is packed out, there are probably hymns and organ music, but he can’t hear anything. He stares at the red carpet stretching straight ahead of him to the open porch, and in the pool of light, a couple is walking towards him. Thomas, a dashing fifty-something, very slim in his grey morning coat, his daughter on his arm, in her wedding dress, slowly approaching. Thomas watches him intently, only him, smiling. He stops in front of him, places his hand on his shoulder, Bornand closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the girl is now alone beside him, her face concealed by the white tulle veil. What did she look like that day? Impossible to remember. And today, what will she look like? A woman without a face.
He shudders. Nothing stirs in the park outside. He goes back to the fire and sinks into the armchair, resting the back of his neck against the leather, his eyes half closed. A few images, the moving curve of a very long, pear-shaped breast, dense pubic hair, the warmth of an armpit, but no face. From the catalogue of his mistresses, not a single face emerges. Even that of Françoise, always overcast by the ghost of her adolescent mother’s face, is hazy, uncertain. For me, women have been no more than territories where I’ve met men, men with whom I’ve made peace or war, men whom I’ve loved or fought, which amounts to the same thing, he thinks half dreaming.
Christine Bornand comes in through the kitchen door. He jumps. He must have dozed off. He looks at her with curiosity. Not very tall, a bit plump, a lively woman with short, curly chestnut hair, hazel eyes and chubby cheeks, pink from the cold. She’s about the same age as me and not a wrinkle. He gets to his feet, she gives him a cold stare, then begins to remove her anorak and leather chaps. The man who showed Bornand in brings a tray from the kitchen with two china cups, a big coffee pot and a basket full of little pastries, puts it down on the table and leaves the room. Christine Bornand sits down and motions him to do likewise.
‘Coffee, is that all right with you? So to what do I owe this visit? I worked out that we haven’t seen each other for twenty-two years, not since my father’s death. Twenty-two years, exactly the age of the first brood mare that was born here. She didn’t get pregnant this year.’
She bites into a pain au chocolat.
He finds it very hard to approach her. Even though he prepared for this meeting, he’s not on top form as a result of the vodka and amphetamines.
‘I’m in a very nasty mess.’ Christine dithers, then takes a second pain au chocolat. ‘I got dragged into a deal selling arms to Iran that was borderline legal and which, for the time being, is costing me a fortune …’ not good, cut to the chase, you can see she doesn’t give a fuck … ‘worst of all it’s likely to get me into trouble with the law. Until the storm dies down, I’ve got to appear exemplary. But I’m not, and I never have been.’ Bite the bullet and get it over with quickly. ‘The woman who lives with me, or, to be more precise, in the apartment above mine, is my daughter …’
Christine knocks her coffee over onto her trousers, scalds herself, and groans.
‘… That has led to all sorts of rumours, unfounded of course. But I have to put an end to them. I’ve come to ask you if I might possibly come and stay here, or if you would accompany me to Paris, and live in my apartment for a few months.’
The telephone rings. Christine gets up, goes into the hall and picks it up. She calls:
‘François, it’s for you … have you already given your secretary my number?’
When he picks up the receiver, the caller hangs up. Françoise, without a doubt. Who else? She already knows? Who told her? I’ll sort that out when I get back.
Christine has poured herself another coffee and is smiling at him.
‘I don’t want to hear another word about that girl. You have no idea how delighted I am to learn you’re in the shit. How could you imagine for one moment that I would lift a finger to help you?’
‘We’re still married …’
‘We have never been married, François. You didn’t marry me, you were adopted by my father. Two very different things.’
Irritated, Bornand adds:
‘I meant we’re still legally married, and with a shared inheritance which your father insisted upon. Which means that this estate, for example, is as much mine as it is yours. Which means that we had better come to some agreement and support each other.’
He speaks in an assured, frankly menacing tone. Christine rubs her hand mechanically over her coffee-stained trousers. She remains silent for a long time, gazing at the fire. Then she gets up:
‘Wait here for me, I’m going to get changed.’
Once the door closes behind her, Bornand goes to sit in the old armchair and lets himself go, his body slumped, his eyes closed. Is it possible that I’ve won, once again? He feels a sort of numb indifference.
Noria rings the ground-floor bell of Bornand’s apartment. A man opens the door.
‘Police. I’d like to speak to Françoise Michel.’
He shows her into the drawing room, quite coolly, without offering to take her coat, and leaves her there without saying a word.
Noria walks around the room, fingering her card wallet. She feels so fundamentally foreign to the scenes of Venetian life that they make her want to laugh. Her intuition is to emphasise the difference between them, and so enhance her sense of superiority and safety. She pictures Bornand again, at the cemetery gate, pinning Françoise Michel to his side with a violent movement, which she accepted. I’m the stronger one.
Françoise Michel comes in, wearing a chunky white Arran sweater. You really have to be skinny to wear one of those. Noria looks at her with curiosity. She’s got class. I haven’t.
‘Antoine tells me you’re from the police …’
‘Officer Ghozali, Intelligence, Paris.’
Noria shows her ID.
‘What do you want of me?’
‘I have been asked to give you some information about an ongoing investigation which concerns you directly.’
Françoise Michel remains ostentatiously standing, propped against the mantelpiece.
‘I’m listening. Make it quick, please.’
Noria leans against the back of the sofa, to give an impression of composure, seems to falter, then takes the plunge:
‘The President was informed yesterday that you are Bornand’s daughter.’
Françoise Michel starts. Good point, I’m ahead, Macquart was right.
‘And what has my relationship with Bornand got to do with you?’
‘Me personally, absolutely nothing, but apparently, the President is not of the same opinion.’
‘What does he know of our private life? Nothing. And there’s nothing to know. We’re not married, as far as I know.’
‘That is not his view at all. He considers that a scandal among his entourage would be very damaging, with the elections coming up in March ’86, in a country which, as you know, still has a strong Catholic tradition and in which people take a dim view of incest.’
‘Who says we sleep together?’
‘Nobody. And I repeat that I don’t care. But Bornand didn’t react in the same way as you.’ She’s wavering. Go for it. ‘The President insisted on his going back home to live with his wife. To which he agreed.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it.’
Bingo. I’ve got her.
‘As you wish. He arrived at his wife’s place in Saumur at 08.50 this morning. And he’s still there.’
Shock. She hesitates, staring intently at Noria. Then she strides resolutely over to the telephone sitting on an occasional table, looks up a number in an address book and dials.
‘Hello … May I
speak to François Bornand, please …’
‘One moment …’ A woman’s voice dripping with irony, at some distance from the phone. ‘François, it’s for you. Have you already given your secretary my number?’
She hangs up, ashen-faced, unplugs the telephone and goes over to sit on the sofa. Concentrate, she’s mine. Noria takes off her coat and lays it on the wooden seat. Then she settles in one of the armchairs. Françoise doesn’t have the energy to protest.
‘What do you want from me? You haven’t come here just to tell me I’ve been dumped?’
‘No, I haven’t …’
Noria takes a set of black and white photos out of the back pocket of her trousers, and lays them on the coffee table. Françoise Michel and Moricet, easily recognisable, in Geneva, in the lobby of the Hilton, in the street, outside the banks … She spreads them out and contemplates them. I swear she’s afraid.
‘… I’m afraid you may not be aware of who the man beside you is …’
Françoise Michel loses track for a second. A disappointing night, once the initial excitement was over. As is often the case. Rough and ready virility … She turns her attention back to Noria, who adds:
‘… Moricet, a French mercenary based in Lebanon, wanted by the police in several countries for murder. You’re the one giving him money, are you aware what that means? Money that we can easily trace, since we have the date the deposit was made and the name of the bank. Money which we assume is of criminal origin, arms trafficking, corruption, and murder. You are an accomplice.’
Françoise Michel, huddled on the sofa, says nothing. She stares at this girl who looks so young, she could be anyone, with such an ordinary face, and suddenly, such power … I’m honestly afraid I’m no match for her. She picks up the photos, slowly inspects them, trying to buy time to muster her thoughts.
Affairs of State Page 17