The Double Mother

by Michel Bussi

  Marianne pressed the phone closer to her ear. She waited until she was sure they’d understood her, then yelled down the phone:

  “Yes, of course you should also put her picture in the airport at Le Havre! That’s the number-one priority!”

  The captain had not heard JB coming up behind her.

  “You’re right, Marianne.”

  She answered without seeming to have heard him.

  “Still haven’t found Amanda Moulin’s corpse?”

  JB shook his head and repeated:

  “You’re right, Marianne.”

  “About what?”

  “About the priorities. The airport.”

  Marianne’s eyes grew wide as her deputy lifted the laptop up to her face.

  “Look, I retrieved this from the computer’s memory.”

  The captain could see only a cluster of tiny symbols, impossible to read, on the dimly lit screen.

  “Go on, Champollion3, decipher it for me . . . ”

  “You won’t believe this, Marianne. It’s the history of a search on one of the airline comparison sites. All the enquiries have the same place of departure and the same destination: Le Havre to Galway, and then Galway to Caracas. There’s a flight leaving today. At 16:42.”

  He checked his watch.

  “That’s in half an hour!”

  He looked up at the sky, then down at the cold water, as if he were about to dive in. He checked the depth of the water, then put the computer under his arm and said, in a confident voice:

  “The airport’s less than a couple of kilometers away. We should be able to make it.”

  3French scholar famous for deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs

  63

  Little hand on the 4, big hand on the 3

  Amanda grabbed Malone by the waist and lifted him up so that the woman behind the counter could see him. It was a measly physical effort compared to what she’d just been through: carrying Malone up the last three hundred steps of the stairway at the cliff, before driving to the airport in Zerda’s Ford Kuga. All the same, she hammed up her fatigue to the girl who was checking their papers and tickets. A complicit smile. The girl was not very pretty, stuffed into her blue uniform, but this was compensated for with a harmony of details—small, round, apple-green glasses; a little emerald cat on one ring; nails painted in the colors of the rainbow—that gave her more charm than the slender women behind the other counters with their perfect curves, powdered faces, lipstick and eyeshadow, like cloned Barbies, straight out of the box.

  A shy girl, thought Amanda. A daydreamer. Jeanne, her name badge said. She liked children, that was obvious. Children and cats.

  The woman signaled that Amanda could put Malone down. As soon as his feet touched the floor, he hid behind her legs.

  Jeanne did not look like a nitpicker, but all the same she meticulously checked every document, presumably because of something to do with all these soldiers roaming the lobby, those photographs of Alexis Zerda and Timo Soler on the walls. Amanda felt the sweat trickling down her back, even as she repeated to herself that there was no reason to be afraid, that all her papers—and Malone’s too—were in order, and that no cops would be calling the airport or putting her name on a blacklist because, even if they had found the old NATO base by now, they would assume she was dead.

  “Have you ever been on a plane before, dear? Have you ever travelled this far away?”

  Malone hid behind her again, and Amanda adored that reaction, like a frightened cat reaction. The woman went on.

  “You’re not afraid, are you? Because you know, where you’re going, there’s . . . ”

  A silence calculated to make Malone react. The drops of sweat running down Amanda’s back had reached her jeans. It seemed impossible that this woman could not smell the bitter stench.

  “There’s a jungle . . . Isn’t that right?”

  Malone remained silent.

  The stamp banging down twice against the passports sounded inside Amanda’s head like two sledgehammer blows destroying the walls of a prison. “But there’s no reason to be scared, sweetie. You’ll be with your mother!”

  Soldiers walked past behind them. Jeanne glanced at them suspiciously before continuing to address Malone.

  “Ask your mom. She’ll tell you all about the jungle.”

  Amanda thought she was going to faint.

  And Malone wasn’t even looking at her.

  When that stupid, over-chatty woman pronounced the word “mother,” he had turned his head in the other direction, towards the wall, towards the posters that were pinned there, of Zerda and Soler.

  And Angélique Fontaine.

  The police had made faster progress than she’d expected. They’d already identified that woman, so presumably they knew that she was Malone’s real mother. They knew everything now . . .

  Amanda forced herself not to panic. Thankfully, Jeanne wasn’t looking at her and was still focused on Malone.

  The police knew everything . . . Except that she, Amanda, was alive, and that no one was going to steal her child from her! Angélique Fontaine had abandoned her child, she was an accessory to murder, she would end up in prison for years; Malone needed a mother who was free, a mother who loved him; he had already almost forgotten his previous life. In a few days, Angélique would be nothing more than a blurred face on a photograph. In a few weeks, she would simply never have existed for him.

  The woman behind the counter was still looking at them, her face folded into a frown.

  She couldn’t fail now, when she was so close to her goal.

  Amanda turned towards the posters on the wall and looked beyond them, at the airplanes behind the large windows, the tarmac runway, the sea, and casually ruffled Malone’s hair.

  A mother and her son, before the big departure, already dreaming that they were in the sky.

  The moment lasted an eternity, punctuated by the heavy footsteps of young soldiers in combat gear. Finally, Jeanne slid the passports through the opening in the glass window.

  “Everything seems to be in order, madame. Have a good trip.”

  “Thank you.”

  These were the first words Amanda had pronounced.

  At the end of the runway, a sky-blue KLM A318 Airbus was taking off.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Lechevalier looked up at the Airbus that was crossing the sky. He followed its progress for a moment over the oil-black ocean, before running down the steps.

  Marianne was standing about fifty steps below, out of breath.

  “I’ve got a witness!” he shouted. “And not just any witness . . . ”

  He stood in front of the captain and handed her the cuddly toy.

  “Where did you find that?”

  “In the brambles, a few steps higher up. Alexis Zerda must have thrown it there before he disappeared.”

  The captain did not reply. For an instant, he’d hoped for a compliment, a smile, something along the lines of “Well done, JB.” The lieutenant was no fool: this toy was a crucial discovery. The kid was never separated from it; this ball of fur was his security blanket, the thing that calmed and consoled him. If Zerda had got rid of the toy, it meant he intended to get rid of the child. Maybe he already had, in a place more discreet than a thorny ditch next to a stairway.

  Marianne grabbed the furry toy and hugged it in her arms with a tenderness that Lieutenant Lechevalier thought excessive, as if his superior officer had also started believing that this toy really could talk and was cuddling it to squeeze out its secrets.

  “Let’s go, JB!” said Marianne. “Get a move on!”

  Once again, the captain had barked her order without even glancing at him. In three strides, the lieutenant was already five steps ahead of her. He was baffled by the change in Marianne’s attitude towards him. She seemed constantly an
noyed with him, aggressive, in a way that couldn’t simply be due to the pressures of this case, to their repeated failures, to the urgent need to catch Zerda and Soler. It seemed much more personal than that.

  Special treatment. Directed at him.

  As if their almost instinctive complicity had been smashed into smithereens and he was now nothing more, in his superior’s eyes, than just another male cop competently carrying out his orders, one of dozens of other male cops competently carrying out her orders. It gnawed away at him, not being able to understand the reasons for this sudden change. He’d done a great job, after all: he’d spotted the kid’s car seat in the Opel Zafira parked outside the Deauville casino; he’d unearthed the search history for those Le Havre-Galway-Caracas tickets on Zerda’s laptop; he’d found Gouti in the brambles . . .

  Seeing admiration in Marianne’s eyes was, bizarrely, one of those things he was most fond of in his life. There was nothing sexual about it. For a change. There was nothing ambiguous like that in his relationship with his boss; they were just a good team, a bit like a couple of dancers or ice-skaters.

  Another Airbus streaked across the sky. The airport in Le Havre was less than two kilometers away as the crow flies. The plane to Galway would take off in fifteen minutes; they would get there in time, even if—with all the warnings and surveillance—it was unlikely that Zerda, Soler or Angélique Fontaine could get through security.

  One minute later, JB had reached the top step. He turned back to Marianne: she was thirty steps below, staring out to sea, holding Gouti the way a little girl might hold her handbag on the train. Trembling.

  For a fraction of a second, he had the illusion that the cuddly toy had waited until it was alone with the captain to make a crucial revelation, and that Marianne was still in shock from it. It was a stupid idea, obviously, but that was just how the captain looked. As if, simply by observing Gouti, she’d realized that they’d been on the wrong track from the very beginning.

  He crossed the parking lot. By the time he’d reached the car, started the engine and driven to the top of the stairway, Marianne would be there. He’d open the passenger door for her so she didn’t even have to slow down.

  Efficient. Quick-thinking. Syncopated. Like a pair of ice skaters.

  As he flashed the car’s headlights, one thought bothered him; he’d always wondered how they did it, those couples—whether dancing on wooden boards or thick ice—rubbing against each other for years without eventually falling in love.

  64

  Perhaps Anna was continuing to bark orders alone in the car. Papy didn’t know. He’d turned off the engine, parked the Mégane and abandoned the GPS in order to move on to Plan B.

  The old-school method: a good map of the village.

  While it was easy to find his way around the modern part of Potigny—a main street with a row of shops, surrounded by new houses—the old miners’ quarter hid modestly away from the few visitors who came by there. It consisted of about ten rows of dwellings, each two hundred meters long, divided into ten shabby little houses, all of them identical.

  Lieutenant Pasdeloup had marked out Rue des Gryzon´s on the map, along with the addresses of each person involved in this case. Lucas Marouette had even found for him, in an old book on the history of Potigny, photographs of the area taken at the time when the mine was still working.

  Federico and Ofelia Soler, 12 Rue des Gryzon´s

  Tomasz and Karolina Adamiack, 21 Rue des Gryzon´s

  Josèf and Marta Lukowik, 23 Rue des Gryzon´s

  Darko and Jelena Zerda, 33 Rue des Gryzon´s

  Before leaving the car, after Marianne’s panicked message, he had added another cross. The one marking the address of Angélique Fontaine’s parents, on Impasse Copernic, three streets away from Rue des Gryzon´s. That was the house he found first, a little cottage that was not touched by any of the others due to the miracle of a small garden. It was quite stylish. Or must have been, once. Now the shutters were closed, the flowers wilted, the gate rusted. A ghost house. Hard to believe that children’s laughter or the shouts of teenagers had once rung out within those walls.

  Potigny was not a village where you could grow up, only grow old.

  He turned right onto Rue des Gryzon´s. What struck him first was the uniformity and linearity of the architecture. Monotonous and monochrome, with nuances in the red brick that only a rare ray of sunlight could pick out.

  Rust red, wine red, blood red.

  The kids had left this place too. All that remained was a sign advising motorists to SLOW for CHILDREN AT PLAY and a sleeping policeman. The sign was probably only ever true once or twice a year, when the grandchildren visited for Christmas or a birthday.

  Papy walked slowly. The street was straight, empty, windy. It felt a bit like the Wild West, with him the stranger in town, his progress tracked by hundreds of eyes behind the curtains. He almost expected Billy the Kid to appear at the other end of the street.

  But there was no one.

  He arrived at number 12, the Solers’ house. According to Marouette’s files, the house had been sold a few months after the death of Timo’s father. A bargain price. Federico Soler had preferred to spend the few months of retirement that he’d slaved away his entire life for on home improvements rather than chemotherapy. Papy played spot the difference with the photograph of the house taken around the time when Timo was a teenager: the sandpit had been replaced by a flowerbed, the football pitch by a boules court, and the basketball hoop by a barbecue. A curtain twitched open, revealing a pink dressing gown. Papy kept walking.

  Number 21: Tomasz and Karolina Adamiack. There was a sign on the fence.

  For Sale.

  The house’s dilapidated state—it had clearly been abandoned years before—stood in stark contrast to the meticulous care paid to the gravestone of Ilona’s parents.

  Number 23, two houses further down: Josèf and Marta Lukowik. Lieutenant Pasdeloup decided that he would leave the Zerdas’ former house, number 33, until last; the Zerdas had left the village more than ten years ago, whereas—if Lucas Marouette’s files were correct—Cyril’s parents still lived here. The shutters were the same pale green color as they had been in the photograph from back then; same vegetable garden, same slide, same swing hanging from the high branch of the cherry tree. As if their child had never left home.

  Papy walked up to the gate.

  A letterbox. The logo of the Pays d’Auge. A doorbell, a few centimeters higher up.

  His index finger trembled slightly as he pushed the button, as if the sound might not just wake up the house’s occupants, but the entire neighborhood, the whole village, even those who were sleeping in the cemetery.

  Had he guessed correctly?

  Was it the right thing to do, following this path, alone, without Marianne or any other colleagues?

  The doorbell rang.

  He waited for quite a while before the oak door opened.

  He was expecting Marta Lukowik to appear, but in fact it was Josèf.

  Short gray hair, matching jumper, the look of a Polish customs official on the Oder-Neisse line. All that was missing was the hunting rifle in his hands. Instead, his two dark, close-set eyes were trained on Papy like a double-barrel shotgun, ready to blow away intruders.

  “Yeah?”

  Despite the best efforts of Josèf Lukowik to intimidate Lieutenant Pasdeloup, to get rid of him as fast as possible, without even waiting to find out what he wanted, Papy didn’t even meet his gaze.

  Instead, he was looking beyond him.

  Behind him.

  Through the tiny crack between the open door and the corpulent mass of the retired miner. It had taken him only a fraction of a second to realize that he had not come here in vain. That he had guessed the truth, from the very beginning.

  65

  Little hand on the 4, big hand on the 4


  Maman-da?”

  She turned to Malone, her eyes blazing. He immediately corrected himself:

  “Maman?”

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “Why are people taking off their shoes?”

  Malone did not really understand the answer. He couldn’t see the connection between belts, women’s jewellery, glasses, shoes and the computers.

  Maman-da—after all, he was allowed to call her that in his head—kept repeating the same two words to him:

  “Hurry up.”

  Her hand was on his back, and her arm propelled him forward. Two police officers—a man and a lady—checked their papers again. While Maman-da was handing them over, Malone took a step sideways. She grabbed him at the last moment.

  “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

  Malone noticed that her voice was softer and kinder, probably because of the police. It was a bit like how they had to behave properly when his teacher was around. This was his chance.

  “I want Gouti!”

  Malone saw his toy again, Gouti’s head caught in the spiky bushes. Maman-da had had no right to take him away!

  NO RIGHT to leave him there.

  NO RIGHT to go on without him.

  Amanda stared stupidly at the police while she hugged the child tight in her arms.

  “Where we’re going, sweetie, there are lots of Goutis, just the same as him. I could buy you another one, a nicer one.”

  Malone wasn’t listening. His eyes were looking through the gap between Maman-da’s locked arms. The airport lobby was big, but he could run fast. Faster than Maman-da, that was for sure. He just had to save himself. It wouldn’t be hard.

  He whispered, in a tiny voice.

  “OK, Maman.”

  Maman-da released him.