The Double Mother

by Michel Bussi

  Amanda sat on the worn carpet, outside the upstairs toilet. She was trembling, scratching the door like a little cat that wanted to come in, speaking softly, ceaselessly, like a mother watching over her sick child. Strong, caring, close.

  Except that they were separated by a door.

  She listened to the jagged breathing of her child and guessed that he was holding back sobs.

  She was furious.

  Thousands of stars in the sky

  Thousands of flowers in the garden

  Thousands of bees in the flowers

  Thousands of seashells on the beaches

  And one, just one maman.

  “Forget it!” shouted Dimitri from the living room. “He’ll come out in the end.”

  Her husband was a moron. She could hear the clinking of ice cubes in his whisky. Alexis wouldn’t drink anything, not even a beer. He had a whistling sort of voice. To start with, it was possible to find this almost pleasant, almost sing-song, but eventually his lisping and shrill intonation became unbearable. The first time she’d met him, Amanda had even thought that if snakes could talk they would sound like Alexis. Not the Parseltongue of Harry Potter’s basilisks, but the language a rattlesnake would invent after it had gone mad from slithering alone for too long through the desert.

  “Forget it, Amanda.”

  Alexis Zerda’s orders brooked no discussion.

  After slowly going downstairs, Amanda sat in the imitation leather club chair, between her husband and Alexis. Dimitri held the glass containing his malt whisky in both hands, as if to melt the ice cubes as quickly as possible.

  “You’ve fucked up,” said Zerda.

  He turned to Dimitri, but Amanda knew that his words were aimed at her. Alexis was too intelligent not to realize that Dimitri had been out of his depth for a long time now.

  “The cops will show up,” Alexis continued.

  Dimitri looked as though he was about to respond, but Zerda ordered him to remain silent with a single hand gesture.

  “The cops would have come here, anyway. They’d have come with the shrink, if he were still alive. And if that had happened, you know as well as I do what the result would have been. By getting rid of the shrink, we’ve won ourselves some time. Although not much.”

  Amanda leaned forward. Each time she moved, she felt the springs of the chair pressing into her flesh.

  “Did you kill him?”

  Without even bothering to reply, Zerda glanced towards the picture frame that was hanging on the wall. Inside felt-tipped hearts, short poems had been handwritten; simple Mother’s Day rhymes that children learned by heart, decorated with dried flowers and pinned butterflies.

  “You’d better get rid of that too, before the cops show up.”

  He swivelled to face Amanda, his green eyes staring directly into hers. His voice grew even more high-pitched.

  “The boy should have forgotten everything a long time ago. For fuck’s sake, with a kid that age memories usually vanish within a few months. That’s what all the experts said. We did enough research. How can he still remember . . . ”

  “You?”

  Amanda smiled.

  “All of it,” Zerda went on. “All of it. That little brat had better shut his mouth if the cops come calling. He’s pissing me off with all his stories!”

  “Don’t talk about him like that,” Amanda said, raising her voice.

  Alexis stood up and went to take a closer look at the butterflies and dried flowers. He paused to listen for any sounds of the door opening upstairs.

  Nothing. Malone hadn’t moved from his cell. Finally, Zerda replied.

  “You take things too much to heart, Amanda. If the kid keeps his mouth shut, the cops won’t have anything on us; they won’t be able to make the connection. There’s nothing concrete, you see? No proof. Just some brat’s vague memories that should have been erased from his brain months ago. That was your job, Amanda. Wiping clean his past.”

  During this conversation, Dimitri Moulin had poured himself another whisky. The other two were no longer paying any attention to him.

  “And what if they take him away from us?” Amanda insisted. “What if they take him without even making the connection with everything else?”

  “They won’t take away your son, Amanda. He’s intelligent. He’s in good health. He loves you. Why would they want to separate you?”

  He shot a contemptuous glance at Dimitri, who, as if to save face, had only dared pour himself a small drop of Glen Moray. Amanda had long ago realized that, to Alexis, Dimitri was nothing more than a pawn to be sacrificed in this game of chess.

  His old friend.

  Dimitri had just been unlucky. He’d found himself in the same cell as Alexis in Bois-d’Arcy. Her husband had already been looking for a strong man to admire, to protect him too, the kind of man in whose shadow he could shine. He might have ended up with a bear, a shark, or a wolf. Instead, he drew the worst card possible. He ended up with a snake. A snake who would eliminate him as soon as he represented any danger, just as he’d eliminated Vasily Dragonman. As he would eliminate all of them. Her. Malone . . .

  “Go get the kid,” said Alexis in a soft voice. “If he doesn’t open that fucking door, I’ll smash it down myself.”

  While Amanda went upstairs, Zerda called after her:

  “I can’t stay long. The cops could show up at any moment, and I don’t want them to find me here. They were at the school in Manéglise this morning. As soon as they confirm the identity of the dead man on Cap de la Hève, they’ll visit every family that nosy bastard shrink was involved with, and yours will be top of the list.”

  Two steps higher.

  “The kid just needs to cooperate. I don’t care if he keeps banging on about pirates and rockets and all that shit; the cops’ll get bored with that after a while. The important thing is that he plays his role. Just the bare minimum, Amanda, you understand? He can’t remain silent, locked in the bathroom like a terrified oyster, or the cops will want to start opening his shell to find out what’s inside.”

  Another three steps.

  “If you want to keep him with you . . . ”

  Amanda did not reply. The only sounds were the rustle of her dress against the banister and the soft shuffle of her slippers on the carpet.

  Maman, Maman, my Maman dear

  Maman, Maman, take me in your arms

  Maman, Maman, a little kiss

  (Smack)

  Maman, Maman, a little secret

  (Whispered)

  I love you

  * * *

  She came back downstairs five minutes later. Dimitri had drained his glass but had not poured himself another whisky. Alexis, standing, was examining the collection of butterflies in the frame, while keeping one eye on the view through the window.

  Amanda clung to the wooden banister.

  “He wants to talk to his mother.”

  “What did you say?” asked Zerda, surprised.

  “Malone says he wants to talk to his mother.”

  “Impossible.”

  “He says he won’t come out until he’s talked to his mother,” Amanda went on. “He says if she can’t come here, he wants to talk to her on the phone. But I agree with you, Alexis, letting him do that would be the worst thing we could do.”

  They were silent for a few moments, and didn’t notice Dimitri standing and quietly picking up the cordless phone. He took a look through the window at the empty parking lot, and then spoke.

  “I’ve been living with this kid for a while now. It’s hard to know what’s going on in his head. He’s as stubborn as a mule.” He left a calculated silence. “But as blinkered as he is, there is one fool-proof way of making him obey.”

  Alexis froze, suddenly interested.

  “His mother.”

 
Amanda glared at her husband. Zerda looked away from the window for a moment.

  “Go on, Dimitri.”

  “Let the kid call her. Just for a minute or two. You can’t fool him—he’ll know it’s her. And then, when he’s hung up, we can do what we want with him. Lies are the best thing ever invented to keep kids in line. You see what I mean, don’t you Alexis? We could say something like: ‘You’d better be good, boy, if you ever want to talk to your mother again.’ It’s exactly the same as people saying ‘if you want Father Christmas to bring you presents’ or ‘if you want the tooth fairy to come tonight.’”

  Amanda moved away from the staircase and stood in front of Dimitri. He was forty centimeters taller than her. Tears were streaming from her eyes.

  “For God’s sake, Dimitri. Surely we didn’t do all of this for nothing? You can’t . . . ”

  Alexis’s warm hand touched her shoulder.

  Warm and sticky.

  “You know, what Dimitri’s suggesting is actually quite smart. Your kid is already convinced that you’re not his mother anyway. A quick phone call might buy us some time. A lot of time, in fact. And that’s exactly what we need.”

  “And then what?”

  Without waiting for Zerda to respond, Dimitri handed him the phone, smiling faintly, as if telling Amanda she was out of the picture. That the men would take care of this.

  Poor mad bitch.

  “You promised me,” she stammered.

  The ground gave way beneath her feet. Her hands and fingers trembled, and a long shudder travelled up her spine. She could guess what would happen next. Alexis would liquidate them, one after the other. As soon as he’d found what he was searching for.

  Zerda looked up at the stairs.

  “Dimitri, go get the kid. Tell him we agree: he can call his mother. Tell him he can talk to her for one minute.”

  45

  Marianne Augresse had opened the two panels of the patio doors and was standing out on the balcony. A view of the port, the gray cargo ships, the empty sky. Empty forever.

  The tulle curtains billowed in the wind, and inside the apartment a door banged shut. She didn’t care. Just like she didn’t care about the message Judge Dumas had left on her answering machine, expressing her surprise that Timo Soler had been allowed to escape again.

  What could she do about it? Her men had sealed off the Neiges quarter less than fifteen minutes after the surgeon’s call. If Soler had become suspicious of the surgeon, or had fled for some other reason, it wasn’t her fault.

  “Speak louder, Papy. I can barely hear you.”

  She had gone out onto the balcony to get better reception, but it was clearly Lieutenant Pasdeloup who was having problems. Marianne leaned her backside against the iron railing and, holding her phone to her ear with one hand, used her other hand to scroll down the messages on her iPad.

  Managing two cases at the same time prevented her from taking a breather, from dwelling, feeling emotion. It was a bit like reading a thriller with two parallel stories, with the switches between the two threads speeding up as the book progressed, forcing you to move from one thought to the next without mixing them, without even having the time to ask questions. Probably the same thing that a woman might feel if she had a husband and a lover. Thinking of one, talking to the other, without tripping up.

  Marianne had neither.

  The last man to have smiled at her had gone up in smoke on Cap de la Hève. One day later, all that remained of that smile was his jaw, kindly sent to her by Dr. Ortega. She observed it on the tablet, hovering weightlessly thanks to the miracle of 3D-modelling software. The macabre proof that Vasily Dragonman’s mouth would never kiss another girl.

  “Marianne, I’ve just passed Caen. I’m in the Laize valley. Do you want me to turn around?”

  Marianne opened another window on the iPad. On GéoPol, police patrols symbolized by red dots were moving around, searching for Timo Soler.

  “Nah, doesn’t matter, Papy. We’re not getting anywhere here, anyway. Just try to find somewhere with better reception.”

  “OK. I’ll leave the valley and call you back.”

  With her right index finger, Marianne clicked on another window. JB’s messages were accumulating along with a shower of attachments, at least ten with every email. All of them children’s drawings, taken from the dossier on Malone Moulin, which they’d found at Vasily Dragonman’s flat.

  Marianne opened them and zoomed in.

  Strange lines, bright colors, complicated shapes.

  Each drawing had been annotated in Vasily’s round, meticulous handwriting.

  Pirate ship, 17/9/2015

  Rocket flying over the forest of ogres, 24/9/2015

  Four towers of the castle, 8/10/2015

  An ogre, 15/10/2015

  Marianne’s gaze lingered on the potato-shaped head of the supposed ogre; on the lines for the eyes, nose, and mouth (unless that was a scar); on the black dot to the side that might have been a beauty spot, a badly drawn eye, or an earring.

  What could she do with all these scribblings?

  In his first message, JB had said that the drawings reminded him of those of his five-year-old son, Léo. He’d then asked if he could have some time off in the afternoon, an hour towards the end of the school day, so he could surprise his wife and children.

  Marianne had refused. Too much work today. She couldn’t take the risk. JB had responded with a vicious text: a smiley with a raised middle finger (normally, he’d just send her the one with its tongue sticking out), along with a few words:

  If you had kids, you’d understand.

  Touché. Right to the heart. Bastard!

  Yes, she had no children. That was possibly even why she’d been made a captain. But right now, she would almost certainly swap all the promotions in the world for a child who would wake her up in the mornings after she’d spent the night on stake-out, for a little brat who would throw himself in her arms as soon as she got through the door and make her forget all the sordid cases she had to deal with. But in the meantime, JB and the other males under her command no matter how indignant they were, or what perfect fathers were all on duty until tomorrow.

  Papy’s round head appeared on the screen of her phone.

  “OK, I’m on top of the church bell tower in Bretteville, and I’ve got a good signal.”

  “Just stop! While you’re busy being a tourist, we’ve got a corpse on our hands, a man on the run who’s probably bleeding to death, Alexis Zerda who seems to have completely vanished since this morning, and Timo’s mysterious girlfriend. And the only thing we know about her is that she wears lacy panties . . . ”

  “Is that all? Listen, I’m going to make you happy. I’ve found the answer to your existential question.”

  Marianne frowned at two officers who were moving the chest of drawers in the living room, a silent request for them to make less noise.

  “Which one?”

  “The key question. The one that will open every door.”

  “Just spit it out.”

  “Don’t you remember? Yesterday, in your office. The photo of the cuddly toy, ‘Gouti.’ You asked me what kind of animal it was.”

  The captain sighed and, instinctively, moved along the balcony while pulling the doors together.

  “So? What is it?”

  Papy’s happy-sounding voice contrasted with the anxious scrabble inside the apartment.

  “I had a hard time—I spent most of the night doing research on the internet—but, in the end, it was pretty obvious. Your toy is an agouti.”

  “A what?”

  “An agouti! The clue was in the name—you just had to know that such an animal existed. An agouti is a sort of guinea pig, originally from Amazonia. It’s a rodent, a bit bigger than a rat. Like a rabbit, in a way, but without the fluffy tail and the long ears
.”

  Marianne clicked on another drawing.

  Gouti, it said next to it, in Vasily’s handwriting.

  Malone’s drawing could only be deciphered as an association of ideas. Two circles, perhaps representing the animal’s body, were placed on a carpet of red and yellow dots. Blue lines flew up to the top of the page.

  “Great, another dead end. So Malone Moulin was talking to his guinea pig. Fantastic. Where do we go with that?”

  “Before you hang up, there is one other small detail I should tell you, if you’ve got time. It’s surprising.”

  “Go ahead, Papy. I don’t have anything better to do than take zoology lessons.”

  “The agouti is amnesiac.”

  “Sorry?”

  “It spends its life hiding seeds and fruit, generally taking the shell off them before burying them. In that way, it builds up a food reserve for periods of scarcity, or for when it ends its hibernation. Except that, when it wakes up, it usually forgets where it’s buried its treasure.”

  Marianne coughed. The sea breeze sneaked into the gap between her coat and her neck, freezing her whole body.

  “Brilliant, Papy! So the agouti is the dumbest rodent on the planet!”

  “The most useful, in fact,” replied Lieutenant Pasdeloup. “Unwittingly, it scatters and plants the seeds that a forest needs to regenerate, year after year. The agouti is the gardener of the equatorial world. So basically, it hoards treasure, hides it, then forgets it. And while it is dying of hunger, the forest grows back!”

  “Shit . . . ”

  The captain stared blankly at the carpet of colored dots on the child’s drawing on her iPad. Seeds? Fruit? Pieces of gold?

  She tried to recall a few fragments of Gouti’s stories, which she had already listened to several times on the MP3 player. They would have to listen to them all again, deconstruct and decode them. Maybe they could find a connection between Malone’s tales and the death of Vasily Dragonman.

  But first, she had to catch Timo Soler and his girlfriend.

  Her phone beeped a few seconds later. An email. From the Regional Judicial Identity Service: a standard secure message, identified by a file number that meant nothing to her. Without thinking, she clicked on the attachment.