The Double Mother

by Michel Bussi

Marianne stood up suddenly, almost banging her head against the sloping ceiling.

  “He doesn’t really go to see his children,” Papy explained. “He goes to see the mothers, if you know what I mean. Handbags, not satchels.”

  “Huh?”

  Papy sighed. “Yeah. He likes to study all right, private lessons with pretty teachers . . . I was quite shocked too when I found out yesterday. It was JB’s wink that tipped me off, but apparently the whole station knew about it already!”

  Marianne leaned back against the wall with the painted slate on it, her jacket erasing the chalk words that she had written there. All that remained were a few question marks left hanging in the air, a few barely legible words.

  Mother, child, memories, killers . . .

  The captain stared at Lieutenant Lechevalier, who was semi-prone on the bed, covered in a child’s sketches. Fully focused on the investigation.

  A pro.

  Except he wasn’t working on Vasily Dragonman’s notes or Malone’s drawings. JB was looking through the file on the Deauville robbery: the shoot-out on Rue de la Mer.

  More interested in gangsters than scribbles and fairy tales, thought Marianne. A liar. Another bastard.

  JB turned away from her, and she took the time to examine him, and the details of this child’s room.

  The cream of the crop? The ultimate fantasy?

  In the end, JB’s infidelities did not change her vision of family. In fact, they strengthened them. Yes, sharing a few magical seconds with a child is, for a couple, a moment of complicity as intimate as an orgasm. Or, to be more precise, a moment that gradually takes the place of an orgasm for the couple.

  And then the mamans can find it with another man.

  And the perfect papas cheat on the mamans.

  Well, JB did, anyway.

  And yet they always demanded shared custody if they were caught.

  Marianne said calmly into the phone:

  “OK, Papy, call me when you have any news.”

  She turned off the phone and turned towards JB.

  “Close that file,” she said, her voice harsh. “We’ve already been through it a thousand times. You know about children’s drawings, about nursery school psychology and early childhood, don’t you? You’ve got kids, right? So get to work! Vasily Dragonman found out something, and surely we’re not more stupid than he was!”

  JB looked surprised by his boss’s sudden anger. He was about to reply when there was a yell from downstairs.

  “Captain Augresse. It’s Bourdaine. We’ve found a witness. Dévote Dumontel—she lives in the house across the street.”

  Marianne walked out onto the landing. Bourdaine was out of breath from running across the parking lot. He was waving a piece of paper, his arm curved like a tree branch in December under the weight of its last leaf.

  “I showed her the photo, Captain. She’s certain she saw Amanda and Malone Moulin get into a car, a black SUV she’d never seen before. She didn’t recognize the make, but we can find out. He joined them a few seconds later. The mother and the kid looked terrified, she said. She also offered me a coffee, but I . . . ”

  “Who, for fuck’s sake? Who joined them?”

  Bourdaine waved the photograph as if, from three meters above him, Marianne would be able to recognize the portrait.

  “Zerda!” he shouted. “Alexis Zerda!”

  Captain Augresse grabbed the banister.

  Her mind jumped back to Dimitri Moulin’s bullet wound, straight between the eyes. The corpse would already be on its way to the morgue, inside a body bag. Next, she went through the interminable list of crimes planned by Alexis Zerda, the murders he was suspected of: two dead at the BNP bank in La Ferté-Bernard, two others in the attack on the Carrefour van in Hérouville.

  And now, since yesterday, two more corpses to add to his list.

  Vasily Dragonman. Dimitri Moulin.

  And two more to come, probably, in a few hours.

  A woman and a three-year-old child.

  Why would Zerda stop now?

  Marianne ignored Bourdaine, who was, as usual, rooted to the spot while he awaited his orders. She had to take stock, at the speed of a computer that spat out an answer the second you pressed Return. They had no idea which direction Zerda had gone, but if he was taking Malone and Amanda Moulin with him, then there had to be some connection with the child’s memories. A crazy idea suddenly occurred to her: the only person who might know their destination was Gouti, and Malone probably had the cuddly toy with him in the back of that SUV.

  Their only informant.

  And—this idea seemed even crazier than the first one—they were able to communicate with him.

  Marianne turned to JB, who was still sitting on the child’s bed. Still looking through the photographs of the robbery.

  On top of Malone’s drawings, he had spread the photographs of the two corpses outside the Deauville spa, plus those of the blown-out windows on Rue de la Mer, the cars riddled with bullet holes. Obviously, the two-faced bastard would rather play cops and robbers than actually do any work. This annoyed Marianne, who had, after all, given him perfectly clear instructions a minute ago. But before she could open her mouth to vent all her fury and disappointment at him—the fury of a powerless cop doubled by the disappointment of an innocent woman—he raised his hand and spoke in a confident voice.

  A cheat, but a self-assured one.

  “I’ve found something in the file, Marianne. The connection between the robbery and the kid! This explains his trauma, his fear of rain, his double identity and the rest.”

  53

  Little hand on the 1, big hand on the 5

  It’s not rain, Maman-da said.

  Rain falls from the sky to the earth, and that’s why it hurts—because it falls from so high up, from the clouds above our heads, clouds that we think are small but which are really bigger than anything we know. The tiniest of clouds is bigger than the entire earth. The drops fall all the way through the universe, past the stars and the planets, before smashing down on us.

  But not these drops that are wetting your face, Maman-da assured him, even if Malone found it hard to believe her. These drops, she went on, are brought by the wind. They don’t smash down on us, they fly away. They come from clouds too, but little clouds made by the waves, white foam that crashes against the pebbles, bounces up and is carried by the wind to the beach, and sometimes even up the cliff.

  To convince him, she then used other words that he didn’t know. Froth. Swell. Spray.

  Still, he didn’t trust her. He protected his face with the hood of his coat. When he looked straight ahead, the sky and the sea were the same thing. They were the same color—gray—and all mixed together. As if the person who was coloring them had messed up. There wasn’t even a line to separate them.

  It scared him, not to be able to tell the difference between the rain that cut you and the rain that only made you wet. So, Malone lowered his head, under his hood, and looked down.

  The castle towers. The pirate ship. The houses, he couldn’t see those yet, but he knew they were there. They had to go a bit further down a small staircase, after the big one. His house was the third one.

  He didn’t know why, but he was sure of it. Everything was just the way it was in Gouti’s stories, but now he remembered the images too.

  * * *

  “Give him your hand,” said Zerda’s voice.

  Alexis scanned the horizon. There was no one in sight. It was a godsend, this icy wind. No walkers to disturb them, here or on the beach below. Even hang-gliders, which were pretty common in this area, would not risk going out on a day like this. As an extra precaution, the SUV was parked behind a copse of chestnut trees: it was impossible to spot, even if you drove slowly along the Saint-Andrieux road.

  From this improvised parking lot, however, y
ou had a view over the entire coastline to the Cap de la Hève. An autumnal Norman landscape, painted in black and white. Zerda imagined for a moment that Vasily Dragonman’s ashes were adding to the grayness. The cops had already left the crime scene, the viewpoint where his motorbike had burned; Alexis hadn’t noticed any movement there when he passed by a few minutes earlier. He’d just slowed down, for the pleasure of closing his eyes for a second and reliving the moment when he’d flicked the cigarette end into the puddle of petrol. One corpse after another. A trail of them behind him. At this very moment, the entire Le Havre police force was probably trampling all over Amanda’s living room carpet in Manéglise.

  How long would it take for the cops to find them? It had taken the Romanian shrink weeks. And even with their greater resources, Zerda doubted the police would be any more intelligent. That was no reason to hang about, though, nor to change his tried-and-tested method . . . the Hansel-and-Gretel strategy.

  He put his hand on Amanda’s back, then leaned down to her ear, opening his other hand and bringing it to the side of her head to protect her other ear from the wind.

  “Time to go, Amanda. We’ll go down to the hideout, get what we came for, and then we’re out of here.”

  His hand slid a few centimeters down, to the hollow in her lower back. A curve that he imagined more than his fingers actually felt, beneath all the layers of clothing.

  Amanda did not react.

  Still impervious to my charms? wondered Zerda. That will come. It’s bound to after a life spent with that brute Dimitri. A life spent feeling him inside her, on her, behind her, while the rest of her skin never felt the slightest caress or kiss.

  Slowly, his hand descended to the top of her buttocks, as if to urge her forward, to urge her to take Malone by the arm and lead him down the steps carved into the cliff.

  * * *

  They had already descended thirty or forty steps. Amanda went first, holding her son by the hand. Malone said nothing, his head lowered, apparently preoccupied by the drops of sea spray. His little legs did not even seem to tire as they went down the steps.

  Amanda could sense Alexis close behind her. She knew that if she slowed down, or stopped to catch her breath, he would stand one or two steps above her and put a hand on her shoulder, gently touch one of her breasts, move his body a few centimeters from her mouth, using urgency as an excuse. Don’t hang about. Hurry up. We’ve got to grab the loot, the cops are after us, we have to protect Malone.

  All this as an excuse to fondle her.

  She wasn’t an idiot. He was playing with her, but she did feel aroused. Despite everything. Despite herself. She wasn’t so naive as to imagine that she was desirable, that she had any particular charm, that there was any chance of softening Zerda up with a wink and a sway of her hips. She simply calculated that Zerda might want to take advantage of her. Before going on the run for several weeks or months, he might want to make the most of the situation. To rape her, if necessary.

  Malone slipped on a step that was higher than the others. She grabbed him at the last second, her grip firm.

  Maybe that was a stroke of luck, in the end. Not for her, but for her son. Maybe she could place herself between the boy and the killer? She could be his shield. She liked that image. The extra weight she’d put on might come in useful in that role.

  She felt Malone’s little hand gripping hers more tightly with every step. Malone was the only male who found her beautiful. The only male for whom she was soft, tender, sensitive. Unique. The only one capable of loving her, without judging her. The only man, when it came down to it, for whom her life was worth living.

  She looked down: the stairs seemed to go on forever. At the very bottom, the black carcass of the boat seemed to come apart with each wave, sinking deeper into the dark water each second that followed. And yet the wreck had been there for an eternity.

  Still smiling at her son, Amanda pulled on his arm and went a bit faster, trying to put at least three steps between her and the snake at her back.

  * * *

  Malone felt reassured. He always felt reassured when he was holding hands with Maman-da. She was as strong as a mountain. She always held him—without him being able to resist, hold back, run or fall—when they crossed a road or walked down a street, or to prevent him tumbling down a staircase, like she’d done just now. Maman-da’s hand was like a big elastic band, holding him close.

  Malone thought that it must be the same for him and Gouti. He must be a big elastic band for Gouti. Even bigger, in fact: he could do things with Gouti that Maman-da couldn’t do with him, like holding him by the hand with his feet not touching the ground, carrying him around all day, throwing him in the air and catching him. He could even sew his arm back on. Yes, Maman-da was much nicer to him than he was to Gouti.

  He was never scared, with Maman-da.

  He wasn’t scared of the ogre behind them either.

  He knew how to escape him. He remembered it all now. Almost all, anyway: only the forest and the rocket were missing. The rest was all here. Soon he would be back in the house where he had lived before, with Maman. The third house, the one with the broken shutters. Maybe Maman was waiting there for him. Maybe all three of them were going to live there together: him, Maman, and Maman-da.

  He was still cold, but he wasn’t scared anymore.

  Except of the drops—the ones from the sea—even hidden like this under his hood.

  54

  JB stood up and stared at the captain, his blue eyes on hers. Those charming eyes, those clever eyes. The eyes of the man who had found the solution before anyone else.

  How many girls had he seduced with those eyes?

  “Look,” said JB, holding a photograph from the Deauville file under Marianne’s nose.

  Marianne observed the picture, which she had already examined dozens of times. The Rue de la Mer, outside the spa. The Lukowiks dead in the middle of the street. Cars riddled with bullet holes, parked across from the casino. She didn’t see where her lieutenant was going with this.

  “You remember, Marianne, that we wondered how Cyril and Ilona thought they would escape, what their plan was for getting out of Deauville? The most likely theory, given that they couldn’t run with those bags, was that a car was waiting for them.”

  “I know, JB, I know all that. We checked all the registration plates on the cars parked nearby. We didn’t find anything.”

  “Look at that Opel Zafira. In the foreground, a few meters from the bodies.”

  Marianne tried to concentrate, but JB was impatient: he placed his index finger on the glossy paper.

  “There, Marianne.”

  “Shit,” the captain hissed.

  In the back of the gray sedan, they could make out the shape of a child’s car seat. The window at the back of the Opel had been shattered by police bullets into thousands of tiny shards that were covering the vehicle’s back seat . . . and the booster seat.

  “A shower of glass,” said JB. “Remind you of anything?”

  “Malone Moulin’s phobia about rain.”

  “Timo Soler’s supposed son.”

  JB and the captain stood side by side in the little, toy-cluttered bedroom. She felt JB’s leather jacket brush against her arm, glanced at his stubble, smelt the scent of his ever-present aftershave—Diesel, Fuel for Life, or something like that. The concerned father and the submissive husband were now gone; the mask had fallen.

  He was just a predator, like the others. A wild beast.

  A bastard.

  But a good cop.

  “So what’s your theory?”

  The lieutenant gazed at the captain again, his blue eyes like two bullets at point-blank range.

  “Just follow the thread, Marianne, you’ll come to the same conclusion. We always thought that a driver was waiting for the Lukowiks outside the casino, and that the driver
must have gotten rid of the stolen goods afterwards. But we couldn’t prove it; there were probably a hundred cars parked nearby at the time of the robbery, and lots of them disappeared in the scramble that followed the shoot-out. So let’s modify our theory a little bit . . . What if the driver was a woman? Timo’s girlfriend. And sitting in the back of the car was their son, a boy less than three years old.

  The lieutenant examined the picture again: the bodies, the crowd around them.

  “That would actually have been a pretty shrewd idea. Deauville was likely to be blocked off by police barricades after the robbery, but who would suspect a family with a little kid in the back seat?”

  “Except that they were shot before they reached the Opel.”

  “Yes. If I’m right, then Timo Soler’s girlfriend and child were among the dozens of people who were on Rue de la Mer just after the shoot-out, and who vanished soon after.”

  “Hundreds, you mean. All those people walking on the beach, along the streets, coming out of the Grand Hotel, the casino, the beach huts, the spa. Once the hail of bullets was over, the whole of Deauville showed up to cover the event. That could be an advantage too, JB: if the registration number of the Opel Zafira doesn’t give us anything, we have hundreds of amateur photographs in the file, a whole CD of them. We’d just have to go through them all, hoping to find little Malone Moulin on one of them.”

  “Holding his Maman’s hand.”

  Marianne touched the photograph again with her fingertip, cautiously, as if the shards of glass might cut her.

  “Those lunatics,” she whispered. “Involving a child of two and a half in an armed robbery . . . ”

  “He was away from the action, though,” JB pointed out. “With his mother. The gang thought they could escape without spilling a drop of blood.”

  The captain glared at him. His explanations sounded like excuses to her, and his excuses were a sign of irresponsibility. She was being unfair, almost ridiculous, but she didn’t care.