The Double Mother

by Michel Bussi

  Another click. Two photographs appeared. A man and a woman.

  “Cyril and Ilona Lukowik,” announced Marianne. “Our very own Bonnie and Clyde. Cyril is from the area. He has a pretty long criminal record, mostly for drug-dealing, from the age of fifteen, after which he specialized in robbing holiday homes in the Pays d’Auge. He got a total of twenty-six months in prison, spread over four years and three sentences. He met his wife, Ilona Adamiack, when they were very young, in Potigny, the village where they both grew up, about twenty kilometers south of Caen. They were dealing together when they were in secondary school, and Ilona helped him with the robberies. Being a young woman who didn’t look suspicious, she was generally the one who did the scouting.”

  Marianne zoomed in close on the two faces of the robbers.

  “Ideal suspects, it would appear. Except that they’d been pretty quiet for the last few years. They got married in 1997. Cyril got a job as a docker, first in Le Havre, then in other ports in France and abroad. She went with him. He came back to Le Havre in 2013. Apart from a few short-term temporary jobs, he hadn’t been able to find work. Seems enough of a motive for him to return to crime . . . ”

  The captain was silent for a moment as she let the cops stare for a while longer at the photographs of Cyril and Ilona Lukowik. Side by side, young, smiling . . . the first image might have made you think you were about to watch slides from a wedding or an anniversary, with some Elton John or Adele as background music. You could imagine the images that would follow: Cyril and Ilona as babies in their parents’ arms, in prams, on bikes, disguised as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, newlyweds under a shower of confetti, tanned on Deauville beach.

  Marianne clicked.

  Another photograph. Two corpses lying on the ground, with a crowd of onlookers gathered around them.

  “You’ll find their detailed biographies in the folder. There is plenty more to say about this case, but essentially, since that armed robbery, the investigation can be summed up in three questions.”

  A click.

  Another slide.

  Letters flashed, forming words, then a sentence.

  That intern, Lucas Marouette, really knew his stuff. She’d like to see if he was just as talented away from the office.

  Marianne coughed and read out the question projected onto the screen.

  WHERE IS THE LOOT HIDDEN?

  “According to the Deauville shopkeepers, the hoard is worth about two million euros: one and a half million in jewellery and watches, a quarter of a million in leather goods, and another quarter of a million in luxury clothes, glasses and perfume. Even if the shopkeepers were exaggerating for insurance purposes, it’s a pretty good haul, and not too difficult to sell abroad. But what interests us more than the contents of those bags is how they were able to make them vanish. Ilona Lukowik had less than a minute to hide them, without being spotted by any witnesses—a sunbather on the beach, say, a doorman or a valet from the casino. Dozens of our men searched every house, checked every room in every hotel on the seafront. And nothing! Not a trace. There remained one obvious possibility: the ideal hiding place for four bags. The beach huts on the seafront. I know you don’t need a description of them, they’re the iconic image of Deauville. There are four hundred of them, facing the sea, each one bearing the name of a Hollywood star and belonging to a discreet but wealthy member of the Paris bourgeoisie. At that stage of the investigation, we had no choice: we had to open every single one of them until we got lucky.” Marianne rolled her eyes. “Our colleagues in Deauville took five weeks to get this done. The mayor’s office demanded a letter rogatory for each hut, signed by a judge, even though they were mostly just padlocked. It was a diplomatic minefield.” The captain suddenly raised her voice. “And all for nothing! There wasn’t a single trace of the hoard in any of the huts.”

  She took a few steps across the room. The thirty or so cops listened to her intently, like fearful pupils faced with a strict teacher.

  “So let’s try to think about this in another way. Let’s examine the strange behaviour of Cyril and Ilona Lukowik. How could they have hoped to get away, even if the diversion caused by the two motorcyclists worked? Even if they hadn’t been intercepted by any police near the boardwalk? Even if, thanks to the hat and the headscarf, they hadn’t been identified by the surveillance cameras? Deauville isn’t Paris, Anvers, or Milan. As soon as the first alarm went off, the police would have blocked every road out of the city, would have searched each car as it left, checking IDs. Cyril and Ilona could have waited a few days in Deauville for everything to settle down, of course, but we have not found any location—no apartment, no hotel room—with any trace of them. So, to sum up, as far as that first question is concerned, we have no answer at all. The location of the loot is a complete mystery.”

  Click.

  “Second question.”

  The letters spun around before falling into the correct order.

  WHERE IS TIMO SOLER HIDING?

  The captain’s index finger, without her even realizing it, was playing with the bandage on her nose.

  “The only certainty is that, on 6 January, Soler was wounded. Quite seriously wounded, according to our ballistics experts. And that’s not even counting the strain of having to lift up his motorbike in the middle of gunfire. All the hospitals in the area have, of course, been under strict surveillance since the robbery. Because one thing was beyond any doubt: if Timo Soler hadn’t died somewhere, been abandoned, or finished off by his accomplice, he would eventually have to resurface. Every police station on the estuary, from Caen to Rouen, has been on the alert.”

  Marianne smiled, and felt it tug on her nasal septum.

  “And we are the ones who’ve won the lottery! Soler has been hiding in Le Havre. Obviously, after this afternoon’s fiasco, we will be the laughing stock of all our colleagues. So we need to catch this man, and fast. I want ten men patrolling permanently in the Neiges quarter, day and night.”

  The captain exhaled.

  Penultimate slide, announced the bottom of the screen. And not a moment too soon.

  Marianne had only been speaking for twenty minutes, but already she felt spent. And to think that teachers had to do this eight hours a day.

  WHO IS THE FOURTH ROBBER?

  She coughed again to clear her throat.

  “We can’t be certain about this, because the biker who accompanied Timo Soler kept his helmet on throughout the chase. However, we do have strong suspicions.”

  Last click.

  A photograph of a man in his early forties with an angular face. Thick, slanted eyebrows and stubble on his upper lip forming a sort of brown X, with a thin, straight nose in the middle; pale green, almost translucent eyes, closer to those of a snake than an Abyssinian cat. Two other details jumped out: an impressive silver earring in the lobe of his left ear, and a small skull-and-crossbones tattooed at the base of his neck.

  “Alexis Zerda,” said the captain. “A childhood friend of Cyril, Ilona, and Timo. All four of them grew up in Potigny. They were in the same class, more or less, from nursery school onwards. They played in the same parks, messed around in the same holiday camps, hang out at the same bus stops. But of the four of them, Zerda is clearly the most dangerous. Although he has only been sentenced for four minor offences, he is the main suspect in several homicides. In 2001, during the robbery at the Banque Nationale de Paris in La Ferté-Bernard, he was suspected of opening fire on a police patrol. A young, married cop and another cop with children were killed instantly. Two widows, three orphans. Two years later, he was the main suspect in the attack on the Carrefour van in Hérouville. Five-thirty in the morning. A nightwatchman and a cleaning lady killed with bullets to the head. No evidence, no fingerprints, no witnesses, but all the same, the investigators had no doubt that it was Zerda. He would fit very neatly into what happened with the Deauville robbery, even if we do
n’t have any proof so far. We are keeping a discreet watch over him. He travels a great deal between Le Havre and Paris. For the moment, we can’t do anything, except watch him so closely that he can’t risk walking around with a Hermès scarf round his neck, a Breitling in one hand and a Louis Vuitton suitcase in the other.”

  The captain exhaled again, visibly relieved. Her nose was itching, but she resisted the urge to scratch under the bandage.

  “And that’s it, guys! An equation with three unknown factors. And the entire Normandy police force is counting on us to solve at least the second one.”

  Stupidly, JB started to applaud. And, just as idiotically, all the other officers followed suit. It was probably a show of sympathy and respect; a show of support for their boss after the botched attempt to arrest Timo Soler at the port. Marianne should have taken it as that. Except that she thought she must look like a big fat turkey with a red face and a flat nose, who was—the cherry on the cake—thinking less, at that moment, about Timo Soler than about the drawings of a three-year-old boy, the strange speech of a mesmerising psychologist and, most of all, about the report that Lucas Marouette—the intern she had sent off to make discreet enquiries near Manéglise—was supposed to give her before the end of the day.

  13

  Vasily parked his motorbike in the parking lot of the mayor’s office in Manéglise, close to the fence surrounding the school playground, but he didn’t get off it straight away. He wanted to wait until the last parent had gone before entering the playground and knocking on the classroom door.

  At the crosswalk, the woman in the fluorescent yellow vest eyed him suspiciously, letting the giant lollipop dangle from her hand before concentrating once again on the school fence, on the lookout for any latecomers who might be tempted to rush across the road without looking both ways.

  Vasily jumped.

  A shadow, a presence behind him.

  Clotilde.

  Unsmiling.

  The headmistress had spotted his bike and clearly didn’t intend to give any ground. She opened her mouth, determined, but her words remained stuck in her throat: the mother of two pupils was walking slowly past them, at the pace of the two children clinging to the pram she pushed. The school psychologist took advantage of this diversion to calmly remove his helmet and his gloves. Clotilde waited until the mother was about ten meters away before launching her attack.

  “You’ve got to stop this now, Vasily! I met the Moulin boy’s parents today. I have no doubt about it—Malone is their son. They love him, it’s blindingly obvious. I think that settles the question.”

  Precisely, meticulously, Vasily folded his gloves inside his helmet. Behind the fence, they could hear the shouting of children who had stayed behind for the after-school club. In contrast to his calm demeanor, the psychologist’s voice betrayed a mixture of anxiety and anger.

  “So you’re giving up on me? What are you afraid of, Clotilde? A red card from the mayor? The parent‒teacher association? A coalition rallying against the school? All the inhabitants of Manéglise uniting to see off outsiders, you mustn’t touch one of our own? Is that it?”

  From the corner of his eye, he watched the lollipop lady, who stood like a statue on the sidewalk, holding out the green side of her lollipop sign. He lowered his voice.

  “Come on, Clotilde! You know as well as I do that rejecting your responsibilities instead of assuming them, can end up hiding the worst . . . ”

  Vasily hesitated. Two of the bigger kids were watching him through fence. He knew one of them—Marin, a dyslexic boy. His despairing parents always left him in the after-school club for as long as possible because they couldn’t stand the hours they had to spend helping him do his homework every evening. Clotilde turned her back on the children and exploded with rage.

  “You end up hiding the worst monstrosities committed against children—is that what you’re insinuating, Vasily? Physical abuse, incest, that kind of thing? See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Is that what you’re accusing me of?”

  “Go and play over there, kids,” said Vasily.

  Clotilde did not hear this. Or she pretended not to.

  “Don’t pull that kind of emotional blackmail on me, Vasily! Don’t confuse the matter. You told me right from the beginning that this child wasn’t in any danger from his parents. Isn’t that right? But if you’re suddenly now telling me the opposite, if you’re implying that there’s the slightest suspicion of Malone being mistreated, then I’ll trust you: I won’t take any risks, I’ll go with you straight to the police station and report the matter. But all that crap you keep spouting about a previous life, and ogres and rockets, frankly . . . ”

  Vasily pointed vehemently, and this time the children obeyed him, running off, laughing, to the other end of the playground.

  “There’s no need to go to the station, Clotilde.”

  The headmistress put her head in her hands.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no longer any need, is what I meant to say.”

  “You’re kidding! You haven’t?”

  Clotilde had raised her voice. This time, the lollipop lady heard and almost jumped out of her skin, briefly flashing a red stop sign at the cars to her right. She was employed by the mayor’s office to work four thirty-minute shifts per day—morning, noon, and evening—but she had no objections to working extra hours for free, chatting with the village’s less busy mothers. A woman who believed in the importance of social ties. Even to the point of suffocation.

  Vasily put his hand on Clotilde’s back and gently steered her a few meters away from the unwanted eavesdropper.

  “Don’t worry, I haven’t done anything official. I just wanted to check two or three things that bothered me. This is an unusual case, Clotilde. I can’t just follow normal procedure, pass the dossier on to someone else, send the kid for tests. There’s something else going on here, I can sense it.”

  The headmistress glared at him.

  “If Mr. Moulin finds out about this, he’ll kill you. For God’s sake, I can’t believe you went straight to the police without going through the proper channels. If Mr. Moulin doesn’t kill you, the school inspectors will!”

  The children in the playground had now gone back into the classroom. The 4:30 P.M. rush hour was over, and silence reigned once again over the little square in Manéglise. Despite the added distance, the lollipop lady no longer had to make do with scraps of conversation overheard above the children’s yelling and the roar of car engines; now she could hear everything they said.

  Clotilde carefully articulated each word, just in case the lollipop lady was deaf and could lip-read.

  “Well, while we wait for the shit to hit the fan, I’m banning you from going anywhere near Malone Moulin.”

  “You’re joking?”

  “No.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Of all the shit you’re stirring. Especially what you’re doing to this kid’s life.”

  Vasily grabbed the headmistress by the shoulders. She was small and slender, with slim fingers and legs, and a neck almost as delicate as the fine gold frame of her round spectacles.

  “You have no right to stop me seeing Malone. This is my territory, and I am the only one fit to judge this matter. I’m the one who decides what is in the child’s interests. The Moulins signed the authorization before our first meeting. If you want to stop me entering your school, you’ll have to inform the local authority and explain the reasons for your decision.”

  A youngish father in a gray suit and tie came out of the school, holding the hand of a girl of about eight, who was breathlessly recounting her day. The father looked at her tenderly. The lollipop lady walked to the middle of the road, ensuring that they could cross without the girl’s feet—or her tongue—slowing down in the slightest.

  “But maybe,” Vasily went on,
“you don’t want a story like this spreading beyond your little school? Maybe you’re scared that the mayor will get angry with you and reduce your pencil and eraser budget by fifteen percent? Or the parent‒teacher association will refuse to man the coconut shy at the next school fete.”

  “You’re a bastard, Vasily.”

  “I just want to protect this child.”

  “I want to protect his family. Including him.”

  Vasily took a step towards his motorbike. He gave a small wave to the lollipop lady, who nodded at him, embarrassed.

  “I’ll be here to see Malone on Thursday morning. As usual.”

  “And what if the parents withdraw their consent? If they refuse to let you see Malone?”

  “Just don’t tell them they have the right to do so. We do that all the time, Clotilde—you know that as well as I do—with parents who are in denial about their child’s problem.” His voice sounded a little worried. “You haven’t . . . you haven’t told them they could put an end to the meetings? Did you advise them to withdraw their consent?”

  Clotilde looked at him contemptuously.

  “No, Vasily. I didn’t tell them anything. But let me give some advice, if you’re willing to listen: arrange a meeting with the mother. You don’t have a monopoly on that kid’s secrets. See the mother, Vasily, it’s important.”

  She smiled.

  “And one other piece of advice: stay away from the father.”

  14

  Today, after taking a bath with my lover, he told me I had a fat arse.

  Want to kill

  I have news, girls! It really works, the old chestnut about throwing a plugged-in hairdryer into the bathtub.