by Michel Bussi
Malone had fallen asleep in her lap. Gouti was clutched tight against his chest. The cuddly toy rose and fell, as if it were breathing in time with the boy.
As if it, too, was exhausted. Sleeping the sleep of the just, like a hero in the epilogue of his greatest adventure.
Angie adored this sensation, this feeling of being trapped, unable to move an arm, a leg, feeling the numbness rise through her until it controlled her breathing. Nothing could wake her treasure.
A flight attendant walked past, smiled, and thoughtfully asked if everything was all right. Angie adored the tender expression on the face of that woman when she looked at her big sleeping baby.
She had spent so long dreaming of this moment.
Giving this child a second chance. Or was he the one who was doing that for her? It didn’t matter. Like Gouti, she would match her breathing to Malone’s from now on.
Gently, she lay back against the blue velvet seat and closed her eyes.
It had all been so easy, in the end.
Alexis Zerda was dangerous, but predictable. She’d had no trouble convincing him to spare the child, to simply swap him for a few months, long enough for the child to forget everything. That fool! The child would forget the worst, of course, but he would remember the rest, what he had to remember, when he had to remember it, thanks to Gouti.
How could she abandon that child, whom Ilona and Cyril had barely even looked after? For the months preceding the robbery, she had been his nanny, his big sister, his Maman even; she was the one who put him to bed, who got him up in the mornings, who washed him, who told him stories while the others went over their plan for the zillionth time, each street in Deauville, each centimeter of the map, each second of the hold-up that was not supposed to last more than three minutes but would give them enough money to last for the rest of their lives.
Gouti had not lied, not really. Angie was Malone’s Maman, his real mother, long before his parents went to heaven.
Amanda Moulin had been predictable too, in a different kind of way. Of course, she fell in love with the new Malone. Of course, she was ready to do anything to keep him, to stay with him, to escape with him to the other side of the world, if she found two tickets to paradise; to get rid of anyone who stood in her way, if she found a weapon to help her. It hardly mattered if the cops had discovered the computer search for the plane tickets; that was just another way of covering her tracks. She’d bought them using Zerda’s laptop, the one he’d hidden with the loot at the NATO base, but she’d taken care to delete all the files mentioning the names of Amanda and Malone.
The only unknown factor was Marianne Augresse. It was essential that she understood. Not too early, because that could have jammed the gears, and not too late, because she needed time to think over Angie’s confidences. Sending her an anonymous letter had been enough to trigger their meeting, and after that Angie had given it her all, put her heart and soul into it. Never before had she gone to such lengths with a female friend.
Sincerity wrapped inside a lie. That was her strategy, her gamble. A desperate bluff, the price of her freedom.
One last time, she thought about the psychoanalytical assertions that she was sweeping away. She was fully aware of the fact.
Despite the long conversations she’d had with Vasily Dragonman about resilience, she had never been convinced by the idea that it was better to wake the ghosts, confront them, rather than simply letting them slide into oblivion.
She could never accept that it was better to make a child carry the burden of the truth for the rest of their life, in the name of their right to know, rather than allow them the lie that might give them the chance to tear out the page full of crossings-out and start again, on a blank page.
Of course, she didn’t know anything about traumatic memory, the unconscious, and the chimeras that would haunt Malone throughout his life. But she couldn’t believe that love—her love—wouldn’t outweigh all of that on the scales of happiness.
The Boeing continued to rise, and the estuary shrank below them. In a few seconds, they would move above the clouds, to the other side of the world. In the growing darkness, the last traces of life in the city were the garlands of light that decorated it. She imagined that most of the cars down there would already have their headlights on.
Before leaving this land and flying to another continent, Angie couldn’t help thinking of Timo. That had been the only limitation to her plan. He couldn’t escape with them. He was on the police blacklists. No way could he have taken the plane, or even got through security.
She put her hand to Malone’s forehead, then whispered in his ear, to imprint the words in his dreams.
“Papa will join us later.”
She hoped that was true. She hoped it so much. Timo would be a wonderful father.
Taking care not to wake Malone, she leaned towards the window to have one last look at the place she was leaving. The final image she saw, before the clouds swallowed up all traces of life on earth, was of the urban spiderweb, yellow and shining, with the exception of a single blue light weaving through the others at a faster speed.
73
Today, I got the results for my first year of medical school. I came 1,128th. They only keep the first 117.
Want to kill
Because wanting to heal got me nowhere! Now I just have to choose my speciality. Executioner? Hitman? Thriller writer?
Convicted: 27
Acquitted: 321
www.want-to-kill.com
The flashing blue light and the screaming siren announced the danger. As the ambulance hurtled out of Avenue du Bois-au-Coq, the high walls of the Mare Rouge tower blocks were stained blue for a very brief moment. It was enough to bring a few of the building’s inhabitants out onto their balconies, although they barely had time to see the ambulance speed past, to hear the siren echo off the brick walls.
The ambulance sped past the Mont-Gaillard shopping center. For three hundred meters, neon signs competed with the blinding blue light, then they disappeared, along with the vast parking lot and the vehicles trapped inside it.
The ambulance went down Avenue du Val-aux-Corneilles.
The Monod hospital was now only two kilometers away: 1 min 32 seconds, to be precise, as the SMUR’s signalling system always was.
Just ahead, a motorbike braked suddenly. A van pulled off to the side.
Yvon continued at the same speed. He was an experienced driver. He wasn’t trying to break any records, just get there on time.
It would have been madness to try to go any faster.
The ambulance dived into the city. Yvon went the wrong way around the next roundabout and continued along the bus lane.
55 seconds.
He just had to drive up Avenue de Frileuse, and they’d be there.
Yvon felt the gloved hand on his shoulder.
He was used to it. This happened once or twice out of every ten trips. Tanguy, the other paramedic, his colleague for more than three years, didn’t even need to say a word.
They were driving along the bus lane. Yvon braked and shifted down a gear to park behind a bus. He stopped the siren and the blue light, then turned back to Tanguy. In the back of the ambulance, there was also Eric, the emergency doctor, and a girl he didn’t know—very young, in a white coat, presumably a newbie.
It was Eric who spoke. This was his privilege, if you could really call it a privilege.
The last word, the last gesture.
Beside them, shadows rushed off the number 12 bus and disappeared one by one into the black mouths of the buildings along the sidewalk.
“It’s over,” said Eric, covering up Timo Soler’s boyish, handsome face.
Six months later
74
On the terrace of the Brigandin Hotel, almost everyone was a man.
A single man.
Docto
rs, computer experts, logistical experts, technicians, all of them working at the Guiana space center in Kourou to help the Ariane rocket blast off for the two hundred and seventeenth time. It was almost routine now and blast-off was set for two o’clock. These men in shirts and ties—or Lacoste polo shirts or khaki Bermuda shorts, to help them bear the afternoon humidity—did not seem especially stressed by the situation. In fact, a little further off, behind the wall of bamboo, the sound of laughter could be heard coming from the hotel swimming pool.
Beyond the fence, a few hundred meters away, in the heat haze, Ariane towered against the horizon, plunging the palm trees and warehouses into shadow. It was tall and elegant, like a spotlessly white cathedral, built in its own clearing even before a city encircled it. A capricious cathedral that would blast off, defying God, and sow metal angels in the sky.
Maximilien, mojito in hand, spotted her as soon as he set foot on the terrace.
The only woman!
The dolls with brooms or the mixed-race waitresses with plunging necklines, behind or in front of the bar, did not really count in his conception of equality.
The woman was lost in her thoughts, sitting in front of a mint cordial. Young, pretty, with dark sunglasses covering her eyes, and long braided hair falling down over her flowery dress, arms and legs tanned but not too tanned. She must have been living in French Guiana for several months, but less than a year. Maximilien, as an enlightened connoisseur, had learned to date the cooking time of female flesh simply by the color of their skin.
He walked over.
“May I sit down?”
The terrace was packed. It was a reasonable excuse. The girl smiled. A good sign.
“Yes, of course.”
She lifted up her sunglasses for an instant. She found him attractive—that complicit look wasn’t wrong. Another good sign.
He wasn’t much older than her, five years at most. He had a long-term suntan, but its intensity was reduced by his alternating schedule: three weeks in French Guiana, three weeks in Paris. He’d explain to her, without much need for exaggeration, that the fact this rocket was able to blast off was partly due to him, that he was the leader of a team of thirty engineers and technicians, that each blast-off gave him a massive surge of adrenaline, and that even after fifteen of them, he’d never lost that feeling; he’d also tell her that he made a very good living, that he often came here, that he got a bit bored, after the launches, that he liked meeting people, that he’d dreamed of being an astronaut when he was a little boy, and he’d almost made it.
He offered the young woman his hand.
“Maximilien. But I prefer Max.”
“Angélique. But I prefer Angie.”
They each forced a laugh, the two perfectly synchronized. Yet another good sign. Max introduced himself, gave a rundown of his CV with tried-and-tested inventiveness, and made sure he listened to Angie, even if she remained much more discreet than he was. Almost worried. She explained to him simply that she was only here for a few days, to take care of business, and that she mostly lived in Venezuela. Observing the Western Union pen placed next to her, he was briefly reminded of the drug dealers who sought to evade the French police by swinging into France occasionally before returning to anonymity in the equatorial forest.
She looked as if she was traveling incognito, with her black sunglasses. That added to the girl’s mystery.
She did not withdraw her hand when Max’s fingers first began to caress it, then capture it. No ambiguity.
She wore a wedding ring. Max showed his hand, also without ambiguity. The privilege of expatriates, of the equator, of the humidity.
“You’re beautiful, Angie.”
“And you’re a charmer, Max.”
Their fingers intertwined, rubbing together for a first tango. Angie’s eyes shone.
“And undoubtedly a wonderful lover. If I told you how long it has been since I last made love, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Max seemed momentarily disconcerted by the girl’s boldness.
“But all those qualities are not enough, Max. I’m looking for something else.”
“A challenge?”
The engineer was smiling again. This girl liked to play. He adored that. He didn’t have time to ask about the nature of the challenge, however, because the answer materialized right in front of his eyes.
Lively and cheerful.
“Maman, can we stay a bit longer? The rocket’s about to blast off!”
The four-year-old boy had appeared suddenly from between the tables and leapt up onto his mother’s lap, making the mojito and mint cordial tremble even before the Vulcan engines had started spitting flames.
“Of course, my love. That’s why we came.”
The kid ran off again, laughing mischievously, picking up a foul-looking cuddly toy that appeared to be a rat on his way. He kept running, weaving between tables and waitresses until he reached the guardrail that offered a perfect view of the gigantic white rocket.
Max downed half his cocktail, then asked the girl:
“Four?”
“Nearly five. The additional quality I’m search for is for him. I need a lover, he needs a father.”
“Two indivisible qualities?”
“Yes.”
“And this is non-negotiable?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Max laughed openly. He turned on his iPhone with one finger then put it on the table to show Angie the photograph on its screen.
“Sorry, Angie. I already have three of those! Allow me to introduce Céleste, Côme, and Arsène, respectively three, six and eleven, as well as their mother, Anne-Véronique. I adore them all.”
He stood up, grabbing his mojito.
“Hasta la vista, señorita.”
He took one last look at the child, who’d climbed on top of a plastic chair to get a better view.
“Take care of yourself, Angie. Offer him the stars—he deserves them.”
He blew her a kiss.
“There’s no lack of potential fathers here.”
Angie watched him walk away into the lobby of the Brigandin Hotel, then her gaze returned to the tables around her, where men—on their own, in pairs, in groups—were laughing, playing, looking bored. Dreaming.
75
Amanda Moulin was sentenced to four months in prison. The murder of Alexis Zerda was considered self-defence, without Amanda having to claim it, and without her lawyer having to argue it.
But Amanda Moulin also had to answer for other crimes: identity theft, failure to report an accident, attempted kidnapping.
She was incarcerated in the correctional center in Rennes. For the first two weeks, she received a letter every morning, after her walk, postmarked Potigny. The address on the back was 23, Rue des Gryzon´s, home to Josèf and Marta Lukowik.
She didn’t open them. Not a single one.
She knew what they contained. Photos of Malone, always the same. The account of his days, always the same. Malone was not going to die; that was the first thing her lawyer had told her. Dimitri had, with Alexis Zerda, tampered with the results of the Joliot-Curie clinic.
True, in Malone’s brain, there was a tiny crack through the Pons Varolii, between the brain stem and the spinal cord, reducing his motor skills and sensitivity to almost zero, but no vital functions were affected.
She didn’t care now. It was all the same to her. If anything, she’d have preferred Malone to be dead. Preferred it all to be over. For someone to leave her a nail, a sheet, a stool in her cell so she could hang herself.
Then, three weeks after her incarceration, she was told she had a visitor. A woman, younger than her. She was a social worker. She explained that the children’s judge had made his decision. He was taking away the guardianship of Malone from the Lukowik grandparents, as they weren’t blood relations of the chil
d, and therefore had no rights, and no authorization for him to be their ward. The child would be sent to a medical institution for the rest of her prison sentence.
“And then?”
The young social worker lowered her eyes, but said nothing. She just gave her some papers to sign, for the judge, for the Regional Health authority, for the institution. Amanda signed everything without even reading it.
The judge’s order provided for a supervised visit every week.
Amanda, firmly held by two guards who gave her no choice in the matter, found herself face to face with Malone the following Wednesday, at ten thirty in the morning, accompanied by a female caretaker, in a small, windowless room.
For the ten minutes of the visit, Malone just stared at the fly that buzzed on the wall behind Amanda. The educator, who was also younger than Amanda, stammered a few questions to start with: Aren’t you going to hug him? Or kiss him? Aren’t you even going to speak to him? Then she, too, learned to be silent.
Every Wednesday.
Amanda obediently attended each visit. There were no more buzzing flies.
Each time, Malone was accompanied by a different female caretaker. Strangely, this was what finally made Amanda react. This image of Malone coming and going with a different woman each week, like some troublesome object being constantly handed on. A burden.
Something inside her awoke, slowly. Then grew, Wednesday after Wednesday.
She began to hope again. In a few weeks, she would be released. Malone would be handed back to her. She would look after him. She would accept him the way he was.
One week before her release, the children’s judge ordered further examinations, for Amanda as well as for Malone. Amanda answered the questions of the prison psychologist for half a day, and Malone spent two days in the paediatric neurosurgery department led by Professor Lacroix, the same doctor who had operated on him after his fall.