Irene

by Pierre Lemaitre

  He stumbles around the car, jerks open the passenger door and puts a hand on Louis’ shoulder. Louis shrugs that he is O.K. so Camille leaves him to collect himself and goes to rummage in the boot where he finds a rag to wipe his forehead. He stares at the bloody scrap of cloth, his fingers feeling for the gash just below his hairline. Studying the car, he sees that all four doors are damaged, as are the rear wings. Only now does he realise that the engine is still running. He puts the flashing light bar back on the roof and notices that one of the headlamps is broken. Camille slides behind the wheel again, glances at Louis who nods as the car reverses off the pavement. The relief at realising the car is still functioning is so great it is almost as though there never was a crash. Camille puts the car into first gear, accelerates, shifts into second and a moment later is once again hurtling through the dark suburbs.

  *

  The clock on the dashboard reads 2.15 a.m. when Camille finally slows. They are approaching a junction where roads fork left and right, running along the edge of the forest. Camille drives straight on, brutally accelerating, as though determined to drive through the dark bank of trees in the distance. He drops the bloody rag he has managed to keep pressed against his forehead, takes his gun from the holster and sets it between his thighs. Louis does likewise, then sits forward and grips the dashboard with both hands. The needle of the speedometer is touching 120 when Camille finally brakes about a hundred metres from the lane that leads to the studio. The dirt track is rutted and potholed, and Camille would usually drive very slowly. The car weaves to avoid the deepest holes, but jolts and judders over others. Louis hangs on. Camille turns off the light bar and brakes as soon as he sees the shadowy building plunged in darkness.

  There is no car outside. Maybe Buisson decided to park out of sight, behind the studio. Camille switches off the headlights and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. The front of the one-storey building is dominated by the large picture window on the right. The place looks deserted. Camille feels a pang of doubt. Could he be wrong? Could Buisson have taken Irène somewhere else? Perhaps it is the darkness and the eerie silence of the forest stretching away behind, but the studio looks suddenly ominous. Though they do not speak, both men are wondering why there is no light on. They are thirty metres from the door. Camille cuts the engine and allows the car to coast the rest of the way. He brakes gently, as though afraid to make a sound. Still staring straight ahead, he gropes for his revolver, opens the door slowly and climbs out of the car. Louis finds that his door is stuck and when he manages to shoulder it open, it makes a dull grating sound. The two men stare at each other, about to say something when they hear a muffled, erratic thwocking. In fact there seem to be two different sounds. Camille creeps towards the building, his gun cocked; Louis stays several paces behind. The door is closed; there is no sign of anyone having been here. Camille looks up, then tilts his head to listen to the pulsing hum which seems louder now. He turns with a puzzled look, but Louis is staring at the ground, trying to focus on the sound which he cannot identify.

  In the instant that both men finally recognise the droning whirr, the helicopter rises above the treetops, banks quickly and hovers above the studio as powerful spotlights illuminate the roof and the surrounding trees in a blinding glare. The noise now is deafening, a wind whips and dust whirls in eddies. The tall trees surrounding the clearing rustle and sway. The helicopter wheels for a moment, and the two men instinctively crouch and find themselves pinned to the ground not far from the door.

  The helicopter dips, its skids almost touching the roof, and the ear-splitting roar of the blades makes it impossible even to think.

  The rush of air is such that they cannot look up and have to huddle to protect themselves. Only now do they see the source of the second noise they heard – three huge black vehicles with tinted windows roaring up the lane towards them. The S.U.V.s move in perfect formation, oblivious to the confusion, tyres bounding over the rutted track.

  They are briefly blinded by the searchlight mounted on the first vehicle. The helicopter suddenly wheels again, training its spotlights on the rear of the building and the surrounding woodland. Spurred on by the sudden irruption of the rapid response unit and still dazed by the thunderous roar, the wind, the whirl of dust and searchlights, Camille turns towards the building and breaks into a run. The long shadow cast by the spotlight on the van behind him shrinks with every step as Camille summons his last ounce of strength. Louis, who has been right behind him, suddenly veers off to the right. Camille reaches the porch in seconds, scrambles up the woodworm-riddled steps and swiftly fires two bullets into the lock, causing the door and the frame to splinter. He shoves the door open and steps inside.

  Barely has he taken two paces when he slips on something viscous and falls heavily on his back, flailing for something to grab on to. Behind him the door bounces off the wall and slams shut. For a second, the studio is plunged into darkness, but since the lock is shattered, the door swings slowly open again. The spotlight on the S.U.V. suddenly picks out a wide board set on trestles and the supine figure of Irène, her hands bound. Her face is turned towards him, her eyes open, her expression frozen, her lips parted. Her belly is no longer swollen, but furrowed with rolls of flesh.

  Just as he feels the tremor of heavy boots pounding on the wooden steps behind him, just as the shadowy figures of the R.A.I.D. officers fill the doorway, Camille turns his head and, through the shadows fitfully illuminated by flashes of blue light, he sees a cross that seems to hover in the air and on it, a small, dark, almost shapeless figure, its arms spread wide.

  Epilogue

  Monday, 26 April, 2004

  Dear Camille,

  A year. One year already. Here, as you can imagine, time is neither swift nor slow. Here the time that trickles in from the outside world is so deadened once it reaches us that we wonder whether it passes for us as it does for others. Especially as my position is less than comfortable.

  Ever since your lieutenant chased me through the woods in Clamart and shot me in the back in a cowardly fashion, causing irreparable damage to my spinal cord, I am confined to the wheelchair from which I write this letter.

  I have become inured to it. Indeed, there are times when I am grateful, since my condition affords me privileges other inmates are denied. I receive greater care and attention than others. I am not expected to perform demeaning chores. It is a small blessing, but in here, every little thing counts.

  In fact, I am much better than I was at first. I have settled in, as they say. My legs may be useless, but my other faculties are in perfect order. I read, I write. In short, I live. And, gradually, I have carved out a niche for myself. Indeed I can say that, contrary to what one might expect, I am envied. After so many months in hospital, I finally arrived in this establishment to discover my reputation had preceded me, something that ensured me a certain grudging respect. Nor is that the whole story.

  It will be a long time before I go on trial, though it scarcely matters to me since the verdict is a foregone conclusion. Actually, that is not quite true. I am looking forward to the trial. Despite the law’s interminable delay, I am confident that my lawyers – you cannot imagine how the vultures squeeze me dry – will finally succeed in securing publication of my novel which, given all that has been written about me, is bound to get great publicity. It is destined to be an international bestseller whose sales can only be enhanced by a protracted trial. In the words of my editor – that mangy cur – it will be good for business. We have already had offers for the film rights, which will give you some idea.

  I felt it only right, while I await the next flurry of articles, features and profiles, to take a moment to pen you a few words.

  Despite my precautions, events did not unfold as perfectly as I had hoped. This is regrettable, given that I came so close. Had I simply adhered to the timetable (one that I drew up, I acknowledge), had I been a whit less confident about my plan, I would have disappeared as I intended the mom
ent your wife breathed her last, and I would now be writing to you from the little paradise I had planned, and would still have the use of my legs. It appears, after all, that there is some justice. That must be a comfort to you.

  You will note that I speak of my “plan” rather than my “masterwork”. I have no further need of that pretentious verbiage that served only to further this plan, those grandiose delusions in which I never for a moment believed. Making you believe that I was “charged with a mission”, “swept along by something greater than myself”, was no more than a novelistic trope. And not, I’ll grant, the most original. Happily, I am nothing of the sort. Indeed I was somewhat surprised that you embraced the idea. Once again, psychological profilers have proved their mettle and once again they have been found wanting. No, I am an eminently pragmatic man. And humble, too. In spite of my creative urges, I was never under any illusion about my talents as a writer. Nonetheless, borne along on the wave of scandal and the horrified prurience that violent tragedy arouses, my book will sell millions, it will be translated, it will be adapted; in the annals of literature, it will endure. These are things I could never have attained through my talents alone. I simply sidestepped the obstacles in my path. I shall have earned my fame.

  As for you, Camille, the future seems less certain, if you will forgive my saying so. Those close to you know what sort of a man you are. A man far removed from the Camille Verhœven I described. In order to comply with the rules of the genre, I felt obliged to flatter, to indulge in a little hagiography. Readers expect such things. But in your heart of hearts, you know that you are no match for the character I created.

  Neither you nor I are the people others imagined us to be. Perhaps, after all, we are not as different as we might like to think. In a certain sense, did we not both kill your wife?

  I will leave you to ponder that question.

  You remain, Sir, my humble servant,

  P. Buisson

  Acknowledging Debts

  Irène was my first novel. Since I owe almost everything I am to literature, it felt natural to begin by writing a novel which was a homage to crime fiction. In fact, I made this the subject of my novel, since Irène is the story of a killer who re-enacts murders ripped from the pages of crime novels.

  I began with Emile Gaboriau’s Le Crime d’Orcival, one of the great precursors to the detective novel. And having paid my debt to history, I decided it was impossible to begin Camille Verhœven’s investigation with anything other than The Black Dahlia (1987), James Ellroy’s masterpiece. There is crime fiction before Ellroy, and crime fiction after. Knowing the man himself is a great admirer of Hammett and Chandler, I took the liberty of taking inspiration from him.

  American Psycho was a tremendous shock to the reading public. Bret Easton Ellis raises so many moral questions with such intelligence, such skill. Though not considered a crime novel, this defining work deftly addresses readers’ ambiguity towards the very violence which is an essential “pleasure” of crime fiction. Yet many criticised the visceral brutality in American Psycho, as though the purpose of such fiction is to exorcise our hyper-violent societies, but to remain within “reasonable limits”.

  Laidlaw, by William McIlvanney, was among the most devastating revelations for me as a reader. Laidlaw is a haunting, wounded figure and the backdrop to his investigation of Jennifer Lawson’s murder is a novel of great social and political depth. I was privileged to meet McIlvanney recently, and it brought tears to my eyes.

  John D. MacDonald’s ground-breaking The End of the Night, following four murderers all the way to the electric chair, is a dazzling and utterly original achievement. In Irène, the false trail it inspires is a mark of my genuine admiration.

  Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s Roseanna is a novel with few peers: a slow, deliberately measured book in which, though nothing seems to happen, the reader is held spellbound. Evoking it within the pages of my own book, I pay tribute to Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, two truly great writers.

  These acknowledgements would not be complete without acknowledging the debt I owe to Christopher MacLehose, who, in publishing my work, has brought me to an international readership.

  And my sincere thanks to Frank Wynne, an outstanding translator, to whom this book, and all the others, owes much. This novel rather more than the rest.

  PIERRE LEMAITRE, 2014

  About the Author

  PIERRE LEMAITRE was born in Paris in 1956. He worked for many years as a teacher of literature before becoming a novelist. He was awarded the 2013 Crime Writers Association International Dagger for Alex (MacLehose Press, 2012), and for his literary novel Au-revoir là haut he is the 2013 winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt.

  FRANK WYNNE is a translator from French and Spanish. His translations include works by Michel Houellebecq, Marcelo Figueras’ Independent Foreign Fiction Prize-shortlisted Kamchatka, and Alex by Pierre Lemaitre.