The lead story on every national news channel was the same: that morning, the bones of a small child had just been unearthed in the woods near Saint-Eustache.
The gendarmerie offered a guarded statement confirming the discovery and refused to speculate on the possible identity of the victim, but for the reporters and for those who lived in the département there was only one possibility: it had to be the body of Rémi Desmedt. Who else could it be?
Antoine had been waiting for this news. He had had more than ten years to steel himself for it, but in the end, as with the death of a loved one, he was not really prepared.
The reports kept coming, relegating all other news stories to the background. There was footage of the building site, the stationary trucks, the silent bulldozers, the crime-scene examiners from the Identité judiciaire in their white papery suits surrounded by police cars whose whirling blue lights strobed the cordon of barricades where there was a milling crowd of uniformed gendarmes and plain-clothes officers, but all this was merely set dressing, all the media really cared about was Rémi Desmedt. In the hours that followed the discovery, the photograph that had long ago featured on MISSING posters, appeared on every television screen and was seen by almost everyone in France. Reporters had rushed to find Madame Desmedt and laid siege to the apartment block in which she lived. Though they had not yet managed to interview her, they had no trouble getting statements from neighbours, shopkeepers, town councillors, passers-by, postmen, teachers, parents – everyone was moved to tears, the whole town seemed to relish the thought of being united in grief.
Everything that Antoine had rationally attempted to imagine was swept away by the ravages of this media feeding frenzy. Come on, think about it, what is going to happen . . .
It was at this moment that Laura decided to call. Antoine did not have the courage to answer.
While Madame Courtin continued to rave, her voice growing louder, Antoine spent the rest of the day glued to the television, following every new development, listening to theories about the disinterred remains, the identity of the victim (again, that photograph of Rémi smiling, hair neatly combed, dressed in the yellow T-shirt with the blue elephant), to speculation about the possible cause of death and the abuse the child might have suffered pre-or post-mortem. There were calls to reopen an investigation that the police, the judiciary and the ministry for justice insisted had never been closed. Calmly, confidently, people waited for officers to find a clue that would open up a new lead, and arrest the guilty party at last.
Antoine felt queasy as he watched a young woman, her face a mask of affected grief, hand clutching a microphone emblazoned with a news channel logo, reporting from the steps of the mairie surrounded by a solemn, mournful crowd who jostled subtly to get their faces into the shot.
“According to investigators, the theory that the child was abducted remains plausible, however, it seems clear that the boy was not taken far, and may have been kept prisoner in the immediate vicinity, in which case the inquiry will focus on the town itself . . . On Beauval, from where I am currently reporting.”
The tragic drama had come home, the serpent slithering towards the Courtin household. Antoine might well be questioned, the boy he had once been might be asked whether he remembered anything. Each new lie would be another gruelling weight to lift, he simply did not have the strength any longer.
When the gendarme came to the door, Antoine would without a word hold out his hands to be cuffed.
He had forgotten he was supposed to go to Beauval to pick up his mother’s papers. Although Madame Courtin was by now increasingly delirious and her ravings had grown more shrill, Antoine was so exhausted that he dozed off in the chair next to her bed; by the time he woke, it was five in the morning. Seeing himself in the bathroom mirror, he looked like a fugitive from justice. He left the hospital, walked as far as the station, found a line of taxis waiting for the first train from Paris and asked to be driven to Beauval, hoping he would get to his mother’s house without encountering anyone. And he did.
As he got out of the taxi, he could not help but steal a glance at the house next door. By intuition or sheer chance, though it was not yet six o’clock, Madame Mouchotte, frozen, ageless, was standing at the window watching his every move. Her spectral beauty evoked something from a nightmare, it was like seeing a spider in her web, ready to pounce . . .
He hurried indoors.
Madame Courtin’s house was spick and span as a parochial pin. Her papers had been kept in the same drawer since the beginning of time. The heavy, restless nap in the hospital chair had left his body stiff and aching. He lay down on the sofa and drifted off, only to wake in the late morning, dog-tired and depressed, as addle-brained as if he had spent the night on a drunken binge or at a Christmas party.
He fired up his mother’s ancient appliance to make himself a coffee with that same smell, the same taste he remembered from his childhood.
Unable to resist the temptation to pick up where he had left off, he turned on the television. The face of the state prosecutor immediately filled the screen, discussing, “the identity of the victim whose remains were discovered yesterday”.
“Forensic investigations have confirmed that the body is that of Rémi Desmedt, who disappeared on December 23, 1999.”
Antoine dropped his cup and it shattered on the floor. His first reaction was to glance towards the window, as though he expected to see the entire populace of Beauval gathered outside the old Desmedt house, to hear the crowd baying for revenge.
“The rising floodwaters of 1999 did not reach the hills of Saint-Eustache and the fact that the boy’s remains had been protected by the numerous trees brought down by the storm allowed officers from the Identité judiciaire to perform a D.N.A. analysis.”
Antoine stared at the shards of the china cup, the pool of coffee spreading slowly, like a wine stain across a linen tablecloth . . .
“There is evidence that the boy suffered a blow to the right temple, probably the cause of his death. It is too early to state whether he suffered any other injuries.”
Though it was illogical, Antoine was terrified that the investigation was already beginning to point to him. A panic that was exacerbated by the past two days, which had left him shattered and exhausted . . .
He got to his feet, clumsily gathered together the papers he needed to take to the hospital, called the taxi company in Fuzelières and went outside to wait. He desperately needed air.
He did not have time to turn back before being buttonholed by a radio reporter at the garden gate.
“Were you living in the house next to Rémi Desmedt at the time of his disappearance? Did you know him well, what sort of a boy was he . . .?”
Antoine stammered a few words which the reporter asked him to repeat.
“He was . . . uh . . . he was my neighbour . . .”
Antoine was hopeless: didn’t he understand they were looking for something more personal, more emotional? The reporter sounded frustrated.
“Yes, yes, of course . . . but what was he like, as a boy?”
The taxi pulled up and Antoine jumped in.
Through the rear window he saw that the reporter had already turned her attention to a young blonde woman. It was Émilie, stepping out of her house, wrapped in her mother’s shawl. She had filled out. As she answered the reporter’s question, she glared resentfully at the departing taxi.
*
Madame Courtin was still suffering from bouts of delirium, she tossed and turned, thrashing her head this way and that, muttering a few garbled words over and over, and now and then a name (Antoine! Christian!), her son and her ex-husband, and other names (Andrée!) that probably dated back to her childhood.
Antoine spent the whole day by her bedside, wiping her forehead, stepping outside when the nurses bathed her only to come back and slump into the chair again, shattered, sickened and distraught.
Madame Courtin’s ravings were like an endless loop, her head twitching in the same manner, her lips repe
atedly forming the same sounds (Antoine! Andrée!). Staying with her was all the more distressing since he had to listen to endless reports about the “Rémi Desmedt case” from the television mounted high on the opposite wall.
The newsrooms had unearthed archive footage. Though barely twelve years had passed, the images seemed from so terribly long ago: Beauval with the plane tree still standing in the main square; Rémi’s house and Monsieur Desmedt bellowing at reporters, trying to shoo them like a noxious swarm of flies; the mayor, Monsieur Weiser, bustling self-importantly on the morning of the search, the rescue parties setting off for the woods, then footage of the storm, the flood, the battered cars, the fallen trees, the weary, hopeless townspeople . . .
Laura spent all day sending Antoine text messages, all of them amounting to the same thing: I love you.
Madame Courtin began to emerge from her coma at about 6.00 p.m. Antoine shouted for the nurses. There was much upheaval and commotion, he was ushered out and waited nervously in the corridor. It was more than an hour before a nurse came to let him know that his mother had regained consciousness, she told him that they planned to keep her in for observation for several days, that he did not need to wait around, they would keep him informed of any developments.
He went into the room to gather up his clothes, he would go back to the hotel to sleep, sleep . . .
The television was still on. Antoine looked up at the screen.
“Officers from the Identité judiciaire have identified a hair on the body that does not belong to the victim. It is impossible to say with any certainty that the hair was left by the killer, though it remains a strong possibility . . . Forensic technicians are currently working to create a D.N.A. profile. Once they have a result – which could be very soon – it will be compared to those held on the National D.N.A. Database. If a match is found, the police will almost certainly call on the individual concerned to come forward and explain the presence of the hair on the remains of the dead child . . .”
18
Shortly before midnight, as Antoine was lying on the bed in his hotel room, he heard footsteps in the corridor and a knock on his door. Without waiting for a response, Laura came in, set her bag down and tossed her jacket onto a chair. Antoine did not have time to say a word before Laura was lying on top of him, her faced pressed into the crook of his neck, breathing hard as though she had been running. Antoine wrapped his arms around her. He did not know quite how he felt about her unexpected presence.
At any other time, he would already have rolled her over, but not tonight . . .
He could not begin to imagine how Laura would react when she found out the kind of man he really was. With his mother it was different, she had always known there was something. Laura would leave, his mother would die of shame. Having lain on top of him for a long time, Laura got up and undressed, then undressed him as though he were a child, lifted the sheets and they slid into bed, she snuggled close to him and fell asleep.
Though Antoine was utterly worn out, sleep still would not come. Laura’s breathing was deep and peaceful. He felt saddened by her unconditional trust. Softly, quietly, he began to cry.
Without opening her eyes, without shifting her position, Laura traced his cheek with her finger, wiping away a tear, then cupped his face with her hand.
Moments later he was asleep, and by the time he woke up it was daylight, his watch read 9.30 a.m. Laura had gone, leaving a scribbled note in the margin of a page torn from a magazine: I love you.
In the two days that followed, Madame Courtin’s recovery progressed in leaps and bounds. Though she was still pale and drawn and ate little, her speech now was only occasionally garbled, her sense of space and time returned, her balance improved and – after a final round of X-rays – doctors were planning to allow her to go home.
Doubtless to prove that she “still had all her marbles”, Madame Courtin insisted on packing her suitcase herself, steadying herself on the nightstand or the bed when her balance faltered.
As Antoine passed her clothes, she folded them neatly and carefully packed them into the case, but both of them were glued to the television screen where all talk was of new developments in the “Rémi Desmedt case”.
Antoine recognised the young female reporter he had seen outside Beauval’s mairie some days earlier.
“The D.N.A. results are in, and police now know a little more about the individual whose hair was found with the remains of Rémi Desmedt. D.N.A. profiling confirms that the individual in question is a male Caucasian, and while it is impossible to speculate as to his height, they can also confirm that he has fair hair and brown eyes. Such characteristics are common, and there is insufficient information to develop an E-Fit of the individual.”
Antoine waited until he had listened to this information several times before drawing a conclusion he could not quite bring himself to believe: the police had a D.N.A. sample, very probably his, but he did not appear in the police database, and as long as that remained the case, the chances of his being convicted of the murder of Rémi Desmedt were almost nil . . .
It seemed unlikely that the investigation would be reopened. After all, what other leads did they have? More than a decade after the event, the Rémi Desmedt case would make a few ripples and then fade away once more.
Would Antoine be able to pick up the pieces and carry on with his life?
“Well, now, Madame Courtin, we’d been counting on you staying with us for Christmas!”
The short, dark-haired nurse with the twinkling eyes probably made the same joke to every patient when they were discharged, and she was expecting the usual reaction. Instead she was greeted by two people sitting stock-still, staring at the television, and eventually she too turned to look.
The camera was trained on the supermarket in Fuzelières, on the side door reserved for staff only, as Monsieur Kowalski emerged flanked by two gendarmes.
“The lone suspect in the case remains one Monsieur Kowalski, the former owner of a charcuterie in Marmont, who was arrested at the time of the disappearance but later released for lack of evidence. It seems highly likely that detectives will compel the witness to provide a D.N.A. sample which may then be compared to that found on the victim.”
Madame Courtin seemed suddenly more agitated. She found it difficult to hide the anger that Antoine had always observed when it came to her former employer, as though she felt betrayed by this man. She had never made any secret of the fact that she thought him a skinflint and a slave-driver. She probably also felt the same bitter outrage anyone would feel on discovering that they have unwittingly rubbed shoulders with someone who later turns out to be depraved, devious, perhaps even a monster.
Antoine watched as Monsieur Kowalski was arrested for the second time, and for the second time he sensed, nebulously and with little shame, just how relieved he would feel if there were to be a miscarriage of justice. Not that it was a possibility this time: After all, D.N.A. could not lie, but still he felt a surge of hope that Monsieur Kowalski might be convicted in his stead. Antoine had not seen the man in years. He too had aged considerably, his hair was white and his gaunt face looked even more emaciated, he walked slowly, arms dangling limply.
His business had not survived his arrest in 1999. Trade in charcuterie had steadily declined, he had been forced to sell up and to take a job managing the meat counter of the supermarket in Fuzelières.
Monsieur Kowalski would be released in a couple of hours, in a couple of days at most, it would probably be the last development in a case that would shortly be filed away in the police archives. With each passing minute, Antoine felt the weight on his chest lift, a whirl of images flashed through his mind: Laura, finishing their studies, going abroad together . . .
Madame Courtin and he went home (“A taxi! We could just as easily have taken the bus . . .”), she threw open the windows to air the house (“Really, Antoine, you might have thought to do it when you were here!”), wrote out a shopping list (“Mind you get Heudeber
t biscottes, if they don’t have Heudebert, don’t get anything!”) . . .
The little frustrations Antoine had always found difficult to bear would soon be a thing of the past, but for now, he happily put up with his mother’s fussing and fretting, so relieved was he to see her back at home. “There was more fright than hurt in it,” she said to friends and acquaintances who telephoned. News of her return had already done the rounds in Beauval.
Antoine put off going into town for as long as he could to avoid being accosted by people asking for news of his mother. So Blanche is home, then? Oh, that’s good, that’s good, a terrible scare she gave us, you know, not that I was there myself, but I heard about the accident, dreadful, gave us all a terrible scare . . . He also wondered anxiously whether the Mouchottes had gone public with the news of their daughter’s “condition”, but no, no-one seemed to know. Neither Émilie nor her parents had been keen to acknowledge a situation they would have condemned in anyone else.
Théo, who was taking the mairie steps four at a time, gave him a little wave. He also ran into Mademoiselle, as Maître Vallenères daughter was known. Twice a week, pushed by an orderly, she would leave the nursing home where she had lived since her father’s death and take a tour of the town. She would sit for while on the terrace of the Café de Paris. In summer, she ordered ice cream, and the orderly wiped the drips from her chin, in winter she had hot chocolate which she drank in small sips. Though the outlandish multicoloured wheelchair was gone, she herself had not changed, she was as painfully thin as ever, her cold pale hands lay on the tartan rug and her eyes still blazed in a face that looked like a death mask.
In every shop he visited, Antoine patiently waited his turn as idle gossip was exchanged.
He was filled with a faint euphoria which, unsurprisingly, owed much to the exhaustion of recent days but which brought with it a feeling of reassurance. Were it not for this problem with Émilie Mouchotte . . . But even that was a minor embarrassment compared to the threats he had been facing. It might cost him a little money, big deal . . .
Three Days and a Life Page 16