by Michel Bussi
Immediately, Malone leapt away, before Maman-da could react. All he had to do now was run straight ahead, then turn after he reached the big posters on the wall.
“Malone, stop!” yelled Maman-da behind him.
He stopped.
Not because she’d yelled; it had nothing to do with that. Maman-da had probably made everyone in the airport turn to look by screaming so loud, but he had barely even heard her.
He was looking at the poster.
It was Maman.
There she was, with her big smile, her long hair, and she was looking at him too, as if to tell him off.
How stupid he was! To think he’d almost disobeyed her.
Only now did he remember her advice, the advice he was supposed to never forget, the advice she’d made him promise to repeat to himself every night in his head—which he’d done, with Gouti.
He had to wait, that was all.
Maman-da’s hand took a firm hold of him.
“That’s enough, Malone!”
He had to wait for the right moment.
And, before that, he had to act as if Maman-da was his Maman. They passed yet more police and Maman-da took off her glasses, her watch, took her phone from her pocket. Malone only had to remove the medallion from around his neck. They went through a door without a wall. Maman-da made it ring; he didn’t. She had to take off a necklace and try again.
He waited patiently for her on the other side.
The police were laughing among themselves. There were others, a bit further away, with rifles, dressed as though they were actually going to war.
While they walked along the corridor, past the big windows and the airplanes they could see through them, Malone thought back to his mother’s last words.
“Gate 8,” said Maman-da. “Two circles, one on top of the other. Can you help me look for it, sweetie?”
Malone was looking the other way, at the walls, the shops, the doors.
He was going to have to be brave. He wished Gouti were with him. There was only one way to escape ogres! Only one way not to get on the plane that would take him to their forest.
Maman had repeated it to him, when she was saying goodbye to him, as he was holding Gouti to his chest.
It’s a prayer, it’s your prayer. You must never forget it.
It’s very simple. You can do it.
Just before you get on the airplane, you have to say one sentence, a sentence you’ve already said a thousand times, but you have to say it at exactly that moment.
Even if it’s not true. They have to believe you.
Two circles, one on top of the other.
Gate 8.
Maman-da smiled. A sort of big pipe, like an enormous vacuum cleaner, was connected to a white and orange plane. As if the people were just balls of dust. Or crumbs.
Malone pulled at Maman-da’s sleeve.
They have to believe you. Even if it’s not true.
“Maman.”
Maman-da smiled at him. All he had to do to make her smile was call her Maman.
“Yes, sweetie, what is it?”
“I need to go pee-pee.”
66
Today, at nearly midnight, he said sorry love, I never go to bed with someone on the first date. Me neither. Not after the last 317 dates.
Want to kill
I left him my high heels as a souvenir - one in each bollock!
Convicted: 97
Acquitted: 451
www.want-to-kill.com
The police car squealed to a halt outside the glass doors of the airport. The two car doors opened simultaneously, in perfect synchrony. Marianne and JB jumped out. The captain got ready to sprint, still holding Gouti in her left hand.
4:33 P.M.
The plane to Caracas, via Galway, was due to take off in nine minutes.
That countdown obsessed her, even if she knew that Alexis Zerda couldn’t possibly escape on this plane, from this airport. Not with the kid, not with Timo, not with Angie.
Not on his own either. They had informed every airport employee, every police officer, every flight attendant. No way could he slip through the net in an airport this small. That search for flight tickets was probably just another diversion, or one of Zerda’s many plans—Plan B, Plan Z, whatever, not the one he would actually follow. He was anything but stupid. He wasn’t about to leap into the wolf’s mouth.
4:34 P.M.
If in doubt, just keep going!
The sliding glass door opened in front of her. Marianne was about to go through it, when she felt something pulling her backwards. She was stopped in her tracks.
JB was holding her by the wrist.
The lieutenant’s ear had been glued to his phone ever since they parked, but all he did now was shake his head.
“Wait, Marianne.”
The feel of her deputy’s hand on her skin did not provoke any particular sensation. Three minutes earlier, when JB had put on a dry shirt in the car, she had shamelessly checked out his muscled torso and his perfectly sculpted six-pack. And yet the only image that came to her mind was of JB’s children waiting outside the school for their papa while he was busy screwing some pretty girl.
It was a stupid sort of rejection. JB was still a good cop, a nice piece of eye candy to be enjoyed on the sly, in the rear-view mirror. But as far as her fantasies were concerned, it was over. For now, at least. Marianne would try again after menopause, if handsome young JB hadn’t put on ten kilograms by the time he reached his forties.
Handsome young JB who was not letting go of her hand.
“What the hell is it?”
“It’s Constantini. They’ve found a corpse in the hideout at the NATO base. There was a ditch behind the house, filled to the brim with gravel, gobs of oil, seaweed, and water because of the high tide. Constantini had to go in up to his shoulders to get the body out.”
“OK, JB. We were expecting that.”
Marianne turned to the door of the airport and tried to advance, but still Lieutenant Lechevalier held her back. The glass doors slid open again, then slid shut a second later, as if disappointed that no one was entering.
“What, JB?”
“There’s just one problem. With the corpse.”
The lieutenant paused, squeezing Marianne’s wrist as if he were taking her pulse.
One hundred and fifty beats per minute.
“Spit it out, JB!”
“The corpse. It’s not Amanda Moulin!”
The lieutenant’s hand tightened around her wrist.
One hundred and seventy-five beats per minute.
“It’s Zerda. Two bullets in his chest.”
“Shit!”
At last JB let go of the captain’s wrist. She leapt free, heading straight towards the airport lobby, still throwing questions over her shoulder at her deputy.
“Anything else, JB?”
He was only a few centimeters behind.
“Yeah, and it’s even more of a surprise than the corpse’s identity . . . It’s Marouette, the intern. He’s good. Fast. He’s been doing some research into Angélique Fontaine.
Marianne bit her lip. The backlit glass door reflected her image, deformed. JB was about to tell her that they’d found a photo of Angie or, better yet, a witness: the waiter at Uno. Angélique Fontaine had been meeting up every week with a woman who strangely resembled Marianne. Honestly, I’m not kidding, she’s your spitting image!
“Marouette checked out her whole life story,” JB went on. “From her childhood in Potigny up to today. She works in a hairdressing salon in Le Havre, and she lives in Graville . . . ”
A hot flush enveloped Marianne. Of course, she would explain things. Of course she would admit how stupid she’d been. All she was asking for was a few minutes, so she could save the kid.
Two soldiers, armed to the teeth, were marching towards them.
“There’s no trace of any kid! Nothing in her background since the age of twenty that makes it possible she even had one!”
Marianne thought back to their conversation at Uno: Angie’s car accident, when she was pregnant, deliberately caused by the child’s father; how upset she was never to be able to have children. All those secrets that made sense only in this final scene.
“How could she have hidden a child?” Lieutenant Lechevalier asked. “And for three years? There’s always so much paperwork, for God’s sake: maternity wards, crèches, childminders, grandparents, doctors, neighbors. You can’t hide a baby in your apartment while you go to work, or keep it under your coat when you go shopping. Marouette and the others could not find any trace of a child in Angélique Fontaine’s life. None at all!”
The two soldiers were standing less than two meters away.
A disillusioned voice sniggered inside the captain’s head. Well, yes, JB, we all have our little secrets. You and your floozies. Me and my best friend.
Marianne held up her police card to the soldiers and kept running forward, enjoying her pathetic show of authority over the boys with shaved heads. A sort of gallant last stand. For a second, her gaze lingered on the posters pinned to the wall opposite.
The faces of Alexis Zerda, Timo Soler, and Angie stared back at her.
And all for nothing. It was Amanda Moulin they had to search for in this airport; she was the one who was going to try to board the airplane with the kid she’d adopted, who bore her name. And the customs officials had no reason to stop her. Very clever, Amanda . . .
The captain checked her watch as JB, too, came to a stop in front of the posters. He was probably thinking this case was drifting out of control. Poor man.
Less than five minutes to take-off.
She continued running through the lobby, still holding Gouti in her hands. JB might be a good cop, but he was wrong on that point. He’d been left behind by events, with no grasp of the situation.
But she understood, thanks to this cuddly toy.
Amanda must not be allowed to fly away with Malone. Absolutely not! Not because she was guilty of Alexis Zerda’s murder; she probably had a good case for having killed him in self-defence. No, there was another reason.
Angie hadn’t lied to her. Angie had simply put a message in a bottle and thrown it into the sea, an SOS that echoed her own. In a way, she had even told her friend the truth. That was where the urgency lay—only there—and as for the rest, she would sort through her feelings later, in front of the police’s internal affairs committee.
Still without slowing down, in an almost intuitive ballet with her deputy, Marianne pointed towards the security officers while she headed towards the check-in desks. No need to explain. They were pros, perfectly coordinated.
Marianne found herself facing another soldier, barely twenty years old, who was looking incredulously at the cuddly rat she held in one hand and the captain’s badge in the other. She was about to put him in his place when the phone in her pocket buzzed.
She surprised herself by praying. Which wasn’t like her at all.
Dear God, please let it be Papy!
Let him help her to make the right decision, this time; let him confirm what Gouti had revealed to her a few minutes earlier, as she was climbing up the stairway of the abandoned NATO base.
Three simple words sewn into his fur, which no one but her had noticed. Banal. Unexceptional. The same words sewn into thousands of identical cuddly toys sold all over the world . . . and yet they shone an unearthly light on the truth.
Angélique was not Malone’s mother . . .
67
Little hand on the 4, big hand on the 7
There was hardly anyone in front of them now. The vacuum cleaner must have hoovered up most of the dustballs. Whoosh . . . straight into the plane.
Malone pulled a face. The hand that was holding his hurt him slightly, especially the ring that pressed against his skin. He forced himself not to cry.
He looked up.
One, two, three.
Three last dustballs ahead of them. The queue was advancing quickly. The lady in a suit was much faster than the others, faster than the one behind the glass earlier when they had handed over their papers, faster too than the one who had asked them to take off their belts and watches. This one barely even looked at people as they went past, never mind the passports with their photographs that they held out. All the lady did was take the little piece of card, the one you needed to get on the plane, tear part of it off, and then hand back what was left.
One, two, three, Malone counted again.
This was the third time they’d had to show their papers. It was normal that this lady was paying less attention the third time round.
The mouth of the vacuum cleaner had swallowed up the last dustballs; it was their turn now.
Malone hesitated; he was a bit afraid of this lady. She had long red fingernails, fire-colored hair, dark skin, black eyes, and a mouth that opened wide when she spoke and never closed completely, as if she had too many teeth.
Malone understood.
She was a dragon.
She guarded the entrance to the cave, the one that led to the forest of ogres. She allowed the other dustballs in—she didn’t care about them—but would she let them in?
The dragon took their passports, hardly even glancing at them, then tore the piece of card and opened her mouth without looking up.
“Have a good trip, madame.”
It was quite dark inside the vacuum cleaner. A bit colder too. At the end, Malone saw another hole: the doorway to the plane.
The forest of ogres . . .
This time, Malone couldn’t hold back his tears.
The hand in his was soft. The voice in the tunnel was gentle.
“You’ve been very brave, my love.”
Malone didn’t care about being brave. He didn’t care about ogres. He didn’t care about the dragon. He didn’t care if the plane took off with or without them.
He just wanted Gouti.
He wanted his cuddly toy.
“You’re going to have to be a bit brave again, my love. Gouti would be proud. You’ve done exactly what he wanted you to do.”
She took Malone in her arms.
“OK, my love?”
Malone sniffed, then they continued walking. Just before he came out of the vacuum cleaner and into the plane, there was a little gap: you could see the tarmac of the runway beneath. And just after that, there were another two ladies in suits who asked for the torn-up piece of card. Not their passports this time, just the card. The numbers of their seats were written on it—Maman-da had explained that to him. These two ladies had mouths with too many teeth too, but they kindly showed them where they should sit on the plane.
The hand gripped his more tightly.
“Ready, my love? I promise: Papa will join us soon.”
She kissed him. Malone sniffed. Without Gouti to stroke, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. His eyes continued to cry, but he managed to smile in the end.
“OK, Maman.”
68
Today, he came back to buy bread. He’s handsome. He’s an engineer, or something like that. He wears a suit and tie and he makes his children laugh by carrying them on his back. He didn’t look at me once as I handed him the baguette. Not once did he glance at my low-cut blouse. Not once did he look at me like I was anything more than a stupid shop assistant.
Want to kill
I invented a story and emailed it to his wife. She smashed his skull in with an iron—I read it in the local paper.
Convicted: 2,136
Acquitted: 129
www.want-to-kill.com
&n
bsp; The figures coming up behind Marianne looked like ghosts. Immense, translucent . . . the closer they came, the bigger they grew, until they were now as big as the airport’s white and red control tower, dwarfing the two Boeing 737s on the runway. For a brief instant, they became darker, almost menacing, then vanished in the next second. A cloud in the sky, probably, which had been enough to erase the reflection of the two policemen rushing towards the captain.
Marianne didn’t look behind her though; her gaze remained fixed on the runway.
Gates 5 to 9. Amsterdam. Galway. Lyon. Barcelona.
JB stood beside his boss, out of breath.
“Marianne? Listen to this. We’ve found Soler! An anonymous phone call from a woman. He was lying on the passenger seat of a Twingo parked in the airport parking lot.”
Marianne, abruptly dragged from her torpor, turned away from the planes and faced her deputy.
“Timo Soler . . . At last! How is he?”
“Not good. A punctured lung, an open wound on his shoulder blade, internal bleeding. But he was still alive when Bourdaine and Benhami opened the car door. They even spotted a few signs of consciousness fluttering eyelids, trembling lips, that kind of thing. But don’t expect him to start confessing!”
The captain stared at her deputy.
“What’s your prognosis, JB?”
“Hard to say. The ambulance is on its way. A one-in-ten chance, maybe? One in a hundred? Soler has survived until now, after all. It’s a miracle he’s not dead already.”
To their right, the man in charge of airport security was getting agitated. Clearly, he didn’t give a damn about Timo Soler’s chances of survival. He was a small man in a suit and tie, with thin-framed glasses that slid down his steep nose and drops of sweat that trickled down his bald head into what remained of his hair between his neck and his ears. He was flanked by a flight attendant with red hair and painted fingernails, a good head taller than him, and two young shaven-headed soldiers wearing combat fatigues, machine guns strapped over their shoulders. The four of them looked like Mafiosi. A shady businessman, his moll, and two bodyguards. He had the cold, cutting voice of someone without natural authority.