The Double Mother

by Michel Bussi

  This time, Lieutenant Lechevalier turned and managed a smile.

  “You’ve got my number if anything happens. But if you want my opinion . . . ”

  He didn’t even bother finishing his sentence, and deep down Marianne had to admit that JB was probably right. What was the point in staying at the station all evening, twiddling your thumbs and reading the same reports over and over again. She’d had Alexis Zerda followed all day long, from the moment he emerged from the grocery shop on Rue du Hoc until he got home (on Rue Michelet), via a Ford dealership, the Admiral Nelson bar and the Physic Form gymnasium.

  All for nothing.

  Several times, Officer Bourdaine, tasked with tailing the suspect, had called Marianne to ask for instructions, weary as he was of constantly trying to remain hidden.

  “Zerda isn’t in hiding! He’s living this laid-back life like he’s a retired gangster. Either this guy is as pure as the driven snow or he’s fucking with us.”

  Pure as the driven snow, Marianne repeated in her head. That seemed to have a particular meaning in this context—he was living in the Neiges quarter, the Snows neighborhood, after all—but ultimately the captain had no doubt.

  “He’s fucking with us!”

  She did not believe in coincidences, the miraculous chance that might have led Alexis Zerda to that particular pharmacy the day after the failed attempt to catch Timo Soler; with him buying exactly the medicines needed to treat an open wound. Nor was there anything innocent about those medicines mysteriously vanishing a few minutes after he came out of the pharmacy.

  He was the fourth robber. He was protecting Timo Soler. All they had to do was trap him!

  “Don’t stop following him!” the captain thundered into the telephone. “He’ll end up leading us to Soler. Either that, or he’ll have to let him rot wherever he is.”

  Then she added, in a gentler voice: “But watch yourself, Bourdaine. Don’t take any risks. Timo Soler might be some poor bastard who got in out of his depth, but Alexis Zerda is a dangerous madman. A cop killer. A killer, full stop.”

  On the radio, a series of listeners called up to talk about the economic crisis. One of France’s main logistics companies, employing 157 people, had just filed for bankruptcy. In a carefully organized contrast, each unemployed caller was given twenty or thirty seconds to rail against the system, before being succeeded by someone in work, furious at having to pay for the unemployed. To each, his own revolution.

  While half-listening to this, Papy had spread out the entire haul from the Deauville robbery over his desk. He had printed a color photograph of every stolen item and then cut each object out.

  A Piaget tiara, a glasses case by Lucrin and a few dozen other luxury items. Treasure fit for a princess. When the case was over, he would send all the cut-outs to Emma, his granddaughter. For the moment, he amused himself by moving the objects around the table, inventing an avant-garde fashion parade for an invisible man and woman.

  “Actually, what surprises me is the opposite,” grumbled the lieutenant.

  “The opposite of what?” Marianne asked.

  “Everyone panicked after the Deauville armed robbery, you know? We were all so surprised, so worried. But what staggers me is that armed robberies are so rare. That passers-by are not tempted more often to help themselves from the shops. Don’t you find it strange, Marianne? All those people walking by the shop windows without wanting to smash them? All those people content to look through them, without even daring to imagine that they have as much right to these objects—which they could never afford as anyone else. Those people who never think to themselves: since money is something invented by the rich, why shouldn’t the poor invent theft as a mode of transaction?”

  The captain yawned in front of her screen, but Papy was on a roll.

  “Frankly, don’t you find it amazing that all those people who fill their carts continue obediently to pay for their items at the register just to make multi-billion-euro companies even richer, instead of all running out together and smashing through the revolving doors? Don’t you think it’s crazy that people can still drive around the streets in their Porsches without having stones thrown at them? That they can wear a Rolex on their wrist without having their arm cut off? That people with nothing left to lose agree just to withdraw from the game, without even gambling the little they have left, just for honor’s sake, or to impress their girlfriend, or to save face in front of their kids . . . Jesus, even in poker, you don’t get down to your last chips without going all in!”

  The captain took advantage of a brief pause in Papy’s tirade. Once he got started, Papy could monologue for hours.

  “That’s because we’re good at our job, Papy! And we’re even paid for it. We’re supposed to scare people. Guardians of the peace—the civil peace and the public peace—that’s been our title for a hundred and fifty years. Even if the world has gone to hell.”

  “So, more Cerberus than St. Peter? I get it, Marianne.”

  With the back of his hand, Lieutenant Pasdeloup pushed aside a cut-out of a Longines watch, then continued:

  “Alexis Zerda is a dangerous nutcase and we should lock him up—I agree. But according to the dossier, Timo Soler was a fairly good guy. Same goes for Cyril and Ilona Lukowik. To me, those youngsters from Potigny, with their underage parents, seem more likeable than the CEO of some faceless multinational.”

  “I don’t know, Papy. I don’t know. I’m not sure we should even ask ourselves those questions. Do you remember the three tons of counterfeit Nikes we intercepted a month ago with the customs guys, which had come in a container from Cebu? Why throw all those in the skip, eh? The Philippines is in more need of development than the USA. Poor countries have nothing to lose, when you think about it. The world’s just a big poker game? So why not go all in, little countries!” She rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t work like that, Papy, and you know it. There have to be rules, and good little soldiers like us to enforce them.”

  Papy nodded, Sphinx-like, while his fingers twisted a strip of brown paper: a Hermés-Paris belt.

  “You’re right. One last thing, do you know who Hermes was?”

  “A Greek god, wasn’t he?”

  “Exactly! One of the stars of the pantheon with his headquarters on top of Mount Olympus. He was both the god of trade, and thieves. The Greeks understood everything, didn’t they? More than three thousand years before the Central Bank confirmed the oracles of Delphi.”

  The captain gave a brief snort of laughter, pushed back her chair and paced around the corridor for a while. The station was emptying. She typed a text to Angélique while pouring herself a coffee.

  Fancy a drink at Uno tonight?

  The reply arrived a few minutes later.

  Not tonight. Going to see my folks. Need cash.

  Marianne smiled as she crushed the plastic cup in her hand. She had no desire to go home alone, no desire to run alone on the treadmills of the Amazonia, no desire to eat alone, to go to bed alone, to get up alone the next morning. She suddenly thought about Vasily Dragonman. She had his mobile number, but she wasn’t about to call him and invite him to dinner. What excuse could she invent?

  “You staying late?” she asked Papy.

  “Yeah. I won’t leave this place before three in the morning.”

  “You aren’t paid overtime, you know.”

  “I know. I’m just waiting until it’s 8 P.M. in the United States so I can call my daughter in Cleveland on the office phone. If I do it at home, it’ll cost me half my month’s salary!”

  Marianne didn’t pursue the matter. She didn’t even wonder if Papy was joking or not. She put on her coat and went out.

  Alone.

  24

  Little hand on the 5, big hand on the 11

  Malone slept for three hours. He slept a lot in the afternoons, much more easily than he slept at night. />
  Before his afternoon snack, Amanda gave him a new toy. A green and yellow airplane, with a propeller, sky-blue wheels and five little figures who all had bendable knees, brown helmets, and large black goggles.

  Amanda gave Malone a new toy every Wednesday, making them appear as if by magic. And every Wednesday, this made Malone happy. During the days that followed, he wouldn’t let the toy out of his sight. Nothing else counted for him but that toy—except for Gouti, of course.

  A Happyland airplane this week; a fire engine last Wednesday; a dinosaur, a cowboy on his horse, a racehorse in the weeks before. And even when a new toy replaced the previous one in the order of his affections, Malone still remained keen to ensure that each object, each character, each plastic figure should find its rightful place in his imaginary universe—even if it had been stowed away in the bottom of a crate or lay scattered among a dozen other toys on the carpet. In accordance with an order that no one but Malone could understand, as if he were a budding God, blessed with an infinite memory that allowed him never to forget any of the creatures on the earth that he had created.

  “Thank you,” said Malone, eyeing it admiringly.

  He did not say “Thank you, Maman-da.” Nor did he say “Thank you, Maman,” even though he realized that was what she wanted him to say.

  He would have liked that, too. To call her Maman.

  He wanted to do it every time she gave him a present, or kissed him, or told him “I love you.” Which was pretty often, in truth.

  But he mustn’t.

  As soon as Maman-da turned to prepare his snack, he ran to the dining room, put Gouti on the floor, rolled the airplane around under the table, and then—hidden between the chairs—he took the sheet of paper from his pocket.

  It was folded up very small, so he could take it everywhere with him without anyone seeing it. Each time he felt that urge to say Maman instead of Maman-da, when he couldn’t talk to Gouti because someone might hear them, in those moments, in order to avoid doing anything silly, he would unfold his drawing.

  Or, rather, the drawing he had done with Maman. The secret drawing that he must never show to anyone, not even Vasily.

  His little fingers unfolded the paper as he kept an eye on the open kitchen door. He looked quickly at the image: the star, the green tree, the tinsel, the candles, the presents, the three figures. He paused for a moment on the drawings of him and Maman. She had done them. He thought she was really beautiful with her long hair. He was too little back then; he didn’t recognize himself in the drawing.

  His heart beat very fast, as it did every time, but all the same he took the time to look at the letters at the top and the bottom of the drawing, those letters he knew by heart.

  Ten at the top, above the star at the top of the tree:

  Noël Joyeux

  And thirteen at the bottom, next to the presents:

  N’oublie Jamais

  A Merry Christmas.

  Never Forget.

  His eyes moved from the top to the bottom, then very quickly he folded the paper up again. Maman-da was already coming back with his snack. She’d even put a straw in his strawberry cordial.

  Little hand on the 6, big hand on the 3

  Malone was still playing on the dining room carpet when Dimitri came in.

  Without even saying hello to the child, he headed directly for the refrigerator in the kitchen and opened a bottle of beer.

  Amanda was peeling vegetables, indifferent.

  Dimitri drank half the bottle in a single swallow before saying, “We have to talk.”

  Amanda went to close the kitchen door, but before she did, Malone got up on his knees, smiled at Pa-di, and used the tea towel on the table to wipe the crumbs from his chin and the red stain from around his mouth.

  “Leave us for a minute, sweetie. Go and play in the living room with your airplane.”

  Malone jumped joyfully to his feet. He didn’t care. He was the cleverest! He’d left Gouti next to the television in the kitchen, leaning against the plastic box.

  Dimitri paced in circles, his almost-empty bottle of Leffe in one hand.

  “I’ve been thinking. All day long. Found it hard to concentrate on work, that’s for sure. We don’t have a choice anymore. We have to call him.”

  Amanda, who had not even looked at Dimitri to this point, her gaze focused instead on her carrot peelings, glanced up at him furiously.

  “No way! We agreed, didn’t we? There is no way we’re getting involved with him again. Do you hear me?”

  Dimitri pressed his foot on the pedal of the dustbin. The glass bottle clanked against the bottom and he cursed Amanda’s obsession with emptying the trash when it was only half-full. He opened the fridge door, opened another beer, and licked the foam that quivered at the neck of the bottle.

  “Fucking hell, Amanda, can’t you see? It’s the only solution!”

  Amanda replied calmly, tersely, precisely, in rhythm to the vegetable peeler.

  “The kid won’t be telling any more stories. I talked to him. He promised.”

  “But it’s too late! The whole village is gossiping about it. Apparently the cops have been nosing around, asking questions.”

  Amanda opened the bin and dropped the peelings inside.

  “So?”

  “So? They’re going to be all over me. They’ll bring up my record, the months I spent behind bars. They won’t leave us alone.”

  “And after that? What are they going to do? You think they’re going to take the kid away from us because of some stories about ogres, rockets, and pirates? Let them get worked up. They’ll grow tired of it all in the end.”

  “Not that shrink! He can’t stand the idea that a kid like Malone could be brought up by people like us. He’s the one who went to the cops. I’m calling. We have to put an end to this. He has to get us out of this shit.”

  The second empty Leffe fell silently onto its vegetable bed. Amanda continued peeling more vegetables with the same mechanical movement, but inside she was choking on her fear.

  Put an end? Calling? Get us out of this shit . . .

  Just how naive was Dimitri?

  While she was searching in vain for a way out, she noticed that her husband’s hand was trembling as he reached for his phone.

  He was hesitating!

  Amanda seized the opportunity.

  “So you’re not capable of dealing with this on your own? Is that it? You can’t talk to the Romanian man-to-man and make him leave us alone?”

  She turned and stood in front of him.

  “You didn’t need help when I met you.”

  In an instinctive gesture, she picked up the cuddly toy that was lying next to the TV and put it on Malone’s chair. Dimitri had already put the phone back in his pocket, almost relieved, as if deep down he had been expecting this kind of reaction from his wife.

  “If that’s what you want. So I can deal with this in my own way, then?”

  He stared at the plastic box next to the TV, the one in which Amanda had put all the insects that Malone had spilled, then added:

  “If that’s what you’d prefer . . . But I get the feeling that you’re losing it a bit too.”

  Amanda looked down at the insects, then at the cuddly toy, and then once again at the plastic box. Finally, she moved towards Dimitri. Clasped in her fist, the peeler looked like a pathetic fake knife, like the ones with a retractable blade used in the theater.

  “Well maybe I have reasons for being crazy, don’t you think?”

  25

  The captain’s footsteps faded, and the police station fell into silence. Lieutenant Pierrick Pasdeloup had turned off the radio. Papy enjoyed these moments of calm when he could sift through the evidence in an investigation, spread the exhibits out like a puzzle, take as long as he liked to put them in order, connect them, like a craf
tsman building a piece of furniture bit by bit, using the right tool for each part of the process.

  He liked to let his mind slip away for a few moments, then sink back into the arcane details of the investigation.

  And while he did so, he thought about his children, as he always did.

  He had been only twenty when Cédric was born. Delphine had come next, two years later. His first two children were now over thirty and lived in the South. Both had become parents themselves; two children for Cédric, three for Delphine, a total of five grandchildren, whom Papy hardly ever saw. The eldest, Florian, was already in secondary school. A few years more, and he in turn would leave his parents and probably live even farther away. The cycle of life.

  Two photos of corpses on the desk. Cyril and Ilona Lukowik. Shot on January 6, 2016, on Rue de la Mer in Deauville.

  Papy had gone through a divorce five years after Cédric’s birth. He’d fought for months to get shared custody of his son and daughter; he’d even offered to change his job, but that bastard judge wasn’t interested. In the following years, he had seen his children only every other weekend. Which meant that, with school on Saturday mornings, he’d probably seen them less than thirty-six days per year. Around one in ten . . .

  When he met his second wife, Stéphanie, he was twenty-six and he already knew that they wouldn’t last as a couple. She didn’t realize it; she was in love. Stéphanie was too young, too beautiful, too fond of life. She was seven years younger than him and had never been with another man: it was inevitable that she would cheat on him eventually. They had two children together: Charlotte and Valentin.

  When they divorced, four years later, after Stéphanie took a lover, Papy held all the aces. The break-up was obviously Stéphanie’s fault. Even she felt guilty, and it was Papy who allowed her to share custody. For the kids’ sake. He was a good sport.

  Those were some of the most beautiful moments of his life.