The Double Mother

by Michel Bussi

  The Lukowiks had agreed to the swap; they had agreed to cover for Zerda, in order to fool the police. Lieutenant Pasdeloup thought about the file lying open on the passenger seat of his police car. Josèf had got into trouble with the law a few times when he was young. Drunk and disorderly, fighting in the street, insulting a police officer . . . nothing too bad, and it was nearly fifty years ago, but it was enough to make him understand why Josèf and Marta were not the type of people to spontaneously go to the police.

  There were still gray areas in the file, though. Angélique Fontaine had not had a child: there wasn’t a trace of any child in the research. Lucas Marouette had been categorical about that.

  “Tell me about Angélique Fontaine,” Papy said.

  A broad smile spread over Marta’s face.

  “Little Angie was always the most intelligent one in the gang. Crafty, talented, gracious. A bit dreamy, too. When she was a little girl, in Potigny, you’d never see her without a doll or a book in her hand. And pretty as a picture . . . Pretty and romantic: you can probably guess the rest, detective. Angie’s problem was boys. Boys, and authority in general. In the list of all her lovers, Timo Soler was the best. Not that there was much competition . . . He was still a bad boy, and they kept their relationship secret. That’s why most people never realized Angie was sharing Timo’s bed. For Angie, it all exploded in adolescence. Her mother was cheating on her poor father—everyone knew about it, including him—but I don’t think that was even the problem. It was just that her parents weren’t at her level anymore; little Angie was an extraterrestrial for them; their house, in Impasse Copernic, had become a lifeless planet, and Angie was dreaming of another galaxy. But everything went wrong after she moved away. Her father’s cancer, which killed him within six months; her famous blog, want-to-kill.com, and then the accident, of course.”

  “Accident?”

  Papy had jumped. Marouette’s file did not mention any accident. Was this the missing piece of the puzzle?

  “Angie was in a car crash in January 2005, near Graville, with her boyfriend at the time. Another one of her bastards. She collected them, seriously! He got away without a scratch, but Angie was a few months’ pregnant. She lost her child and the doctor told her she could never have children again. And God knows she loved kids, Angie. I can still see her, the poor thing, as a little girl with her dolls, pushing them around Potigny in her little pink pram.”

  Seeing the lieutenant’s surprised expression, Josèf added:

  “Not many of us knew about it, but we had the same doctor as the Fontaines, Dr. Sarkissian—he still lives in Potigny, actually. We play boules with him every Friday afternoon. He’s one of ours, as they say. Well, for a doctor to stay here, he’d have to be one of ours.”

  Papy swallowed. Everything was becoming clear. Nearly. He put his hand on top of Josèf and Marta’s, then asked his question before they could remove them.

  “When was the last time you saw your son and your daughter-in-law?”

  He felt the two hands wanting to escape, but he pressed down firmly.

  Who would reply? He’d have bet on Josèf, but in fact it was Marta.

  “It all depends on what you mean by ‘saw,’ detective. Cyril and Ilona dropped by briefly once or twice before the robbery, just for a coffee or a meal, not long enough to go for a walk or play a game of belote, but we were happy with that. It was better than before.”

  “Tell me,” said the lieutenant.

  “Cyril had had a hard time, when he was a teenager. The mines had just closed. He started dealing and selling stolen goods—dope, car radios, cars, alarm systems pinched from holiday homes. He was no angel, and neither was Ilona, but they paid for it. More than two years in prison, all told. After they got out, they married and went straight. I mean it, detective! They rented an apartment in Le Havre, in the Neiges quarter. He became a dock worker. He worked hard, he liked his job. Then after four years on the Quai d’Europe, they left.”

  “To go to French Guiana, right?”

  “Yes. In the large seaport at Remire-Montjoly, Maersk opened an extra line. The pay was better than in Le Havre, much better, but Cyril had to sign an overseas contract that would last several years.”

  “But they didn’t hesitate?”

  “No. They left in June 2009. Six years ago now. I don’t think I saw Cyril for more than seven whole days after that, before he was . . . ”

  New tears fell. She turned her face away and stared at the rusted swing at the bottom of the garden, as if it were a symbol of the life they had lost from this house. The ant-child was just another ghost.

  Josèf took over.

  “After five years, when Cyril came back to Le Havre, there was no more work for him on the docks. More than half the workforce had been laid off. Muscle power wasn’t necessary anymore: one guy could unload a ship with fifteen thousand containers using just a joystick. I’m sure you can guess the rest, detective: no job, no money . . . Cyril started seeing Alexis again.”

  Marta dabbed at her tears with an embroidered handkerchief.

  “They had responsibilities now,” Josèf said. “We never thought, when they left for French Guiana . . . ”

  “You never thought what?” Papy insisted, although he already knew the answer.

  Outside, near the child, in the badly mown grass, a butterfly took off. The boy didn’t even react.

  It was Marta who replied.

  “We never thought Cyril and Ilona would bring us back a grandson!”

  70

  Papy left a long pause, to give himself time to recall the key points from the files, the ones that had intrigued him the night before when he’d stayed up late at the station before calling Anaïs in Cleveland.

  Intuition!

  Through the conservatory window, he looked out again at the child lying in the long grass.

  “We never thought Cyril and Ilona would bring us back a grandson!”

  According to the report, the police in Caen had gone to see Josèf and Marta Lukowik on January 20, 2015 to question the child belonging to Cyril and Ilona Lukowik. Everything seemed to be in order. The grandparents had taken over as guardians of the little orphan. They’d shown the boy photographs of all the possible suspects, including Alexis Zerda. They’d questioned him for a good hour. Nothing!

  The kid, according to the report, seemed barely conscious, borderline retarded. The police had recorded this in the report without sounding particularly surprised: the child had just lost both his parents in the most violent way. They recommended psychological monitoring, and they’d had a conversation with the grandparents, but as far as the investigation was concerned, it was a dead end. It was logical, really: the questioning was purely routine, a simple case of not overlooking any possible lead. The report of the interview took up only ten lines in a dossier comprising several hundred pages of testimonies and expert opinions. No one, apart from Papy, had paid it the slightest attention.

  Now, he saw every detail clearly.

  “How old was your grandson, when you saw him for the first time?”

  Marta’s voice shook with emotion, as it had when she spoke about Angie.

  “Just under two. He was born in French Guiana, it was the only place he’d ever known. He was used to the equatorial climate. That was the first thing I noticed: the kid was cold all the time in Normandy. I was always telling Cyril that he needed to wrap his son up in warmer clothes, but he didn’t seem to care. The boy was very cheerful, and advanced for his age. He already spoke a lot, all the time, especially about the big Amazonian forest, about monkeys and snakes, about the Ariane rocket that took off from Kourou, even if he was beginning to forget things, and get them mixed up.”

  With her eyes, she pointed to the plants around the conservatory.

  “He used to have fun pushing the pots close together to make a little jungle. He would pile up
glasses to build a rocket and imitate the noise with his mouth. He’d pretend to be a monkey, shrieking on the swing.”

  “And I imagine he never let go of his cuddly toy?”

  New tears welled in Marta’s eyes.

  “His Gouti? Oh no, he’d never let go of Gouti! His parents had bought the toy for him over there. They could have chosen a better-known animal—a jaguar, an armadillo, a sloth, a puma, a parrot—they were spoiled for choice really. But it was a nod to the street they’d grown up on. Gryzon means ‘rodent’ in Polish.”

  Agouti, Gryzon, rodent . . .

  Papy had only solved the puzzle when he arrived in Potigny: that five-year stay in French Guiana mentioned in Cyril and Ilona’s file, the cuddly toy named Gouti, and a few other clues, like that photo album that Marianne had told him about over the phone, decorated with monkeys, parrots, and tropical trees, the photograph of a wicker cradle protected by mosquito netting, all the memories in the child’s brain that mixed up the NATO base, the jungle, the rockets.

  Marta stood up and raised her voice.

  “A golden child,” she said. “His head in the clouds. We saw him once or twice a month after that. At least that one could have been happy. He was born near the sky, not underground, like all the kids from this village. That one at least could have escaped. He had a chance, before . . . ”

  “Before what, Marta?”

  The old woman leaned against the cold conservatory. Her words turned to gray mist on the glass.

  “Before he saw his parents being shot dead right in front of him! Do you have children, detective? Can you imagine a more monstrous plan than using a two-and-a-half-year-old child to help you get through police blockades after an armed robbery? To use your own kid? I’m talking about my son, detective! My son and my daughter-in-law! How could the child have survived that? Alexis told us how it happened, he didn’t shy away from the details: how Cyril, already wounded, just had the time to put his hand on the door of the Opel Zafira and meet his son’s eyes, before running away and getting another three bullets in his back. How could a child be expected to recover from a trauma like that? The poor kid is screwed, detective, just like all the others!”

  She turned around and, still standing, held her husband’s hand again.

  “Screwed like Josèf, who spent his whole life digging a tunnel just to end up getting silicosis. Screwed like Cyril, struck down for wanting to touch all that glittered. A third generation screwed.”

  She looked around the garden, at the three brick walls. The child lying in the grass seemed to have fallen asleep.

  “He won’t escape, lieutenant. Never.”

  “Unless he forgets,” said Papy.

  For the first time, Marta appeared to lose her composure.

  “And how do you expect him to forget? That child has no parents anymore! We’re too old. As soon as his time with the Moulins is over, he’ll just be shunted from foster home to foster home, with the mark of death engraved on his brain. A mark that can never be erased.”

  A mark that can never be erased.

  Papy thought again of the conversation he’d had with Marianne, about Vasily Dragonman’s theories. Was it possible to suppress the memories of a child before his memory stabilized? Even of a trauma. Especially a trauma. To bury the memory rather than obliging the person to live with it for the rest of their life? How reckless, how desperate, how determined would you have to be to make that bet?

  He didn’t say a word, though.

  Marta turned back to the garden and looked at the child sleeping on the lawn, with a smile on his face, a thin trail of dribble dangling from his lips, his hair mingled with tufts of grass that moved gently in the wind.

  “This little angel will probably be happier.”

  Josèf seemed lost in his thoughts. Papy stood up and pulled out his phone. He had to call Marianne urgently, now that he had the whole story. He took two steps away from the old couple. The changed angle of light showed him his reflection in the conservatory window. Whether because of his proximity to the Lukowiks or for some other reason, Papy suddenly felt old.

  Three generations, all screwed, Marta had said. Despite himself, he thought of his own children—Cédric, Delphine, Charlotte, Valentin, Anaïs, all of whom had flown the nest—and of his six grandchildren, whom he hardly ever saw. Yes, he felt old. Was he screwed too?

  He stood there a long time, observing his reflection. Marta thought he was looking through the window, at the child.

  The old woman’s voice turned nasty.

  “Are you going to take that one away from us too?”

  71

  Today, I am crossing the Pont des Arts.

  Alone.

  Want to kill

  Like the straw that broke the camel’s back, I would like to be the one who fastens the last padlock to this bridge, the padlock that finally makes it collapse into the Seine.

  Convicted: 19

  Acquitted: 187

  www.want-to-kill.com

  The fifteen soldiers deployed around the airplane appeared to be following a choreography directed by the head of security, with a simple hand movement, from behind the large airport window.

  Marianne didn’t even glance at him as she hung up the phone. Papy’s words continued to echo through her head, mingling with those of Vasily Dragonman, a few days before.

  Was it possible to erase a child’s memory? To bury a trauma? To stop that trauma growing bigger, taking root, eating away at a life?

  Why not?

  The brain of a three-year-old child was like plasticine to be moulded. Why shouldn’t this child forget that his parents were dead, murdered in front of him, since that memory was unbearable and a fairy godmother was ready to wipe it away with a wave of her magic wand?

  Yes, that child believed that Angie was his Maman. Angie had manipulated him, in order to save him. Gouti had been her instrument, her accomplice. Angie had simply used the oldest trick in the book, opposing one truth with another, Amanda against Angie, an alternative that was already so complicated for his little brain. Two loving mothers, that was already too many, the best way of making him forget that the third was no longer there to bring him up, making him forget that she had died in front of him, forget the trace of the bloody hand print that his father had left on the car door. Making him forget that rain of sharp glass, and—soon afterwards—forget this ordinary rain too.

  Under the frowning eyes of Security Man, Marianne gripped the cuddly toy in her hands.

  Angie had wanted a child, more than anything. Angie would be a good mother. Malone would grow up happy, with her.

  Angie had not killed anyone.

  Angie had become her friend for this reason: so that Marianne would understand that she wanted to save the child. Because Angie was his only chance.

  Angie had only accepted Zerda’s plan—swapping the two kids—so that she could get rid of him more easily, when the time came. Alexis Zerda had been incapable of imagining how far a mother would go in order to protect her child. So two mothers, both wanting the same kid . . . You stood no chance, Alexis! The first one, Amanda, put two bullets in his chest with a gun that the second, Angie, had given to her.

  The head of security seemed to have decided to put an end to this stand-off. He wiped his forehead, made a brusque hand gesture to tell the flight attendant with the painted nails to leave, and placed himself in front of Marianne.

  “So, Captain? Are we going in or not? It’s a woman and a kid. They’re not armed. So what the hell are you waiting for? You were the one who gave the order not to let this plane take off!”

  JB, still immobile behind them, accompanied by Bourdaine and Constantini, looked like he was keeping score.

  Marianne did not respond. She suddenly felt dizzy. The airplane standing on the runway. The men in uniform encircling it. This bald dwarf barking at her.
The stoical rigidity of the two soldiers. The flight attendant’s rictus smile. As if everything around her had frozen, except for the yapping of Security Dog.

  “Don’t you understand? If you block one take-off, you block them all! I’ve got four flights waiting behind this one! For God’s sake, there are over a dozen armed men on the runway. We can storm the plane in seconds.”

  “Calm down,” said the captain, almost reflexively. “We’re talking about a child and his mother.”

  The dog kept barking.

  “Then why go to such extremes? Why keep this plane on the ground and delay all air traffic for twenty minutes?”

  He was trying to defy the captain, pitting his authority against hers, his sense of legitimacy against hers, his physical power against hers if necessary. The intimidation dance of the dominant male.

  Marianne didn’t even deign to look at him. Instead, she turned to the flight attendant with the red smile and the fiery hair.

  Putting a friendly hand on her shoulder, Marianne reached out with her other hand, to let the woman know that the captain was entrusting her with the most delicate part of this entire operation.

  The attendant’s hand closed. It was soft, even if she still didn’t understand what was expected of her.

  In a raised voice, so that everyone could hear, Marianne explained the situation to her.

  “The kid forgot his cuddly toy. He can’t leave without it.”

  72

  Little hand on the 5, big hand on the 3

  The Cap de la Hève was now nothing more than a small dot on the horizon, disappearing in the next moment beneath the wing of the Boeing 737. Straight ahead, through the window, Angie could now see nothing but the ocean, with a few cotton-wool clouds floating above it. They went through the clouds without splitting them, like dreams passing through a feather pillow.