After the Crash: A Novel

by Michel Bussi

  Because this was what Lylie wanted…

  Crédule Grand-Duc’s Journal

  Two weeks later, on January 11, 1980, Judge Le Drian convened a new meeting. Same investigators, same office in the same building on Avenue de Suffren… but this time, they met in the morning. The Eiffel Tower seemed to shiver in the fog, its feet covered by puddles that were slowly growing in the fine drizzle. Lines of tourists stood under umbrellas. This was the most visited monument in the world, and yet there was no shelter of any kind where people could wait, not even a simple glass roof.

  Judge Le Drian was growing increasingly irritated. Influential whispers had reached his ears, making it clear that everyone he knew was strongly sympathetic toward the de Carvilles.

  The judge was not stupid. He had gotten the message. But he could only act according to the facts at his disposal and he was hardly going to start fabricating false evidence.

  Dr. Morange was concluding his report on the child’s blood type. He had passed around photocopies of the medical analyses.

  “So, to summarize, our miracle child has the most common blood type, A positive, along with forty percent of the French population. We have learned from the hospitals in Dieppe and Istanbul that both Emilie Vitral and Lyse-Rose de Carville are also, without any doubt whatsoever, A positive.”

  “Is there no way of extracting any more information from these tests?” the judge asked.

  The learned doctor explained. “You have to understand: blood tests only allow us to eliminate the possibility of paternity, not to confirm it. We would only be able to assert a family connection if there was an unusual rhesus factor, or in the event of a rare genetic illness. But that isn’t the case here. The science can’t tell us anything about who this child’s family is.”

  I can sense you wondering now, with all this talk of science: What about DNA and all that jazz? But let us not forget, this was 1980. Back then, DNA testing still seemed to be in the realms of science fiction. The first legal case to have been decided on the basis of a DNA test occurred in 1987. But don’t worry, we will return to this issue; it was a question that had to be confronted eventually, but by then, the miracle child was much older, and the situation had changed completely.

  Back in 1980, the experts on Avenue de Suffren managed as best they could. Dr. Morange showed his colleagues a series of pictures.

  “These are models created by the lab in Meudon. We have applied computer-generated aging techniques to images of the miracle child, to see who the baby might resemble in five years, ten years, in twenty years…”

  The judge glanced at the photographs and seemed irritated: “If you think I’m going to base my decision on something as crazy as that, you’re dreaming!”

  On that point, he was right. Or partly, at least. Objectively, the artificially aged child looked more like a Vitral than a de Carville, although it wasn’t obvious, and the de Carvilles’ lawyers had little trouble ridiculing the process. Eighteen years later, having witnessed the miracle child grow up, year after year, I can tell you that those aging programs are complete and utter crap.

  “There remains the question of eye color,” the doctor continued. “The only real distinguishing feature of this baby… Her eyes are strikingly blue for her age. The color can still change, darken, but all the same, this appears to be a genetic characteristic.”

  Vatelier took over: “Emilie Vitral had pale eyes that were already turning blue. All the witnesses we approached—the grandparents, a few friends, the nurses in the maternity hospital—confirmed that. Pale blue eyes like those of both her parents, her grandparents, and practically the entire Vitral family. The de Carvilles, on the other hand, are mostly dark haired with dark brown eyes. The same goes for the Berniers—I checked.”

  Judge Le Drian appeared to be at the end of his rope. This was not good—not good at all for the de Carvilles. Outside, the drizzle had turned to a downpour, but the stoic tourists continued to wait at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, hidden beneath a canopy of umbrellas. The judge stood up and went to the light switch, bringing a little brightness to the room. His scarf slithered to the right. He did not bother to readjust it.

  “Hmm, I see what you’re saying,” he said, playing for time. “But really that’s just one more presumption—there’s still no proof. Everyone knows that two parents with brown eyes can have a child with eyes of any color whatsoever.”

  “That’s true,” Dr. Morange admitted. “It’s just a question of probability…”

  And probability was not pointing toward the de Carvilles. I remember a few weeks later, Science and Life magazine used the example of the “miracle child of Mont Terrible” to explain why the science of genetics was incapable of systematically predicting an individual’s physical characteristics based on his or her ancestry. I have always suspected that Léonce de Carville must have commissioned that article, directly or indirectly—the timing of it was just a little too convenient.

  Next, the judge interrogated Saint-Simon, the Turkish policeman, through the loudspeaker.

  “So what about the child’s clothing? Is it really so difficult to draw any conclusions from the clothes she was wearing on the day of the crash?”

  Calmly, Saint-Simon replied. “Gentlemen, let me remind you of the clothes the child was wearing when she was found. A cotton vest, a white dress with orange flowers, and a beige wool sweater. We can be fairly certain that the clothes were bought in Istanbul, in the Grand Bazaar, the largest covered market in the world…”

  Judge Le Drian did not let this opportunity slip: “The Vitrals were only on vacation in Turkey for two weeks, and they spent only two days in Istanbul. Logically, Emilie Vitral would have been wearing the French clothes she had brought with her for the journey. It seems highly improbable that her parents would have thought to dress her, a few hours before they went back to France, in clothes bought in Istanbul. If the child was wearing a vest, dress, and sweater bought in Turkey, then it seems to me that this baby must be Lyse-Rose de Carville. She was born in Istanbul, after all…”

  Saint-Simon retorted: “Except, your honor, that the Turkish clothes worn by the baby were relatively cheap. I checked—they are completely different from the rest of the clothes I found in Lyse-Rose’s closet in the de Carvilles’ villa in Ceyhan. I will send you a detailed description. Lyse-Rose’s clothes were all well-known brands, bought in the eastern district of Istanbul, in Galatasaray. Not in the Grand Bazaar.”

  Before he could launch into a sociological analysis of the various districts of Istanbul, Le Drian interrupted him: “OK, I’ll look at the list. Vatelier, could you tell us about the ballistics report?”

  Rubbing his beard, Vatelier gave the judge a wary look.

  “The experts tried to reconstruct how and at what precise moment the baby was ejected from the plane. We know where each passenger was sitting. The de Carvilles were in the tenth row, on one side, toward the back of the cabin; the Vitrals were in the center of the Airbus, roughly level with the wings. So the two babies were more or less equidistant from the door that broke open on impact—the door through which the baby was ejected. All the experts agree on that point. I’ve sent you the files. They were able to reconstruct the point of impact in detail, the way the door twisted, and they all say that only a human being weighing less than twenty pounds could possibly have escaped alive.”

  “All right, Superintendent,” interrupted the judge, who, that day, was sporting a mustard-yellow scarf that was not a particularly good match for his bottle-green jacket. “But since then, there has been the Le Tallandier theory. Unless I’m mistaken, the physics professor Serge Le Tallandier demonstrated the unlikelihood of a baby being ejected laterally. Meaning, in other words, that it is less probable that Emilie Vitral should have been ejected, because she was sitting in the center of the cabin. What is your opinion on that, Superintendent?”

  “To be completely honest, Le Tallandier’s calculations are so complicated that a mere policeman—even one from
the forensics department—wouldn’t dare to contradict him. But I should point out that Serge Le Tallandier was a classmate of Léonce de Carville at military school, and that he was also the advisor on Alexandre de Carville’s dissertation at Mines Paris-Tech…”

  The judge looked at Superintendent Vatelier as if he had just blasphemed.

  “Are you attempting to discredit the opinion of a renowned expert who runs his own laboratory at the Polytechnique, the best military school in France?”

  Vatelier smiled and said: “I am not attempting to discredit anyone, Your Honor. I have no competence in that field. But I can tell you that, when I talked to Le Tallandier’s colleagues at the Polytechnique about his theory, they burst out laughing.”

  The judge sighed. Outside, the Eiffel Tower had completely disappeared in the fog. Hundreds of tourists had probably waited hours in the rain for nothing.

  The weeks passed and the case seemed to be heading into a legal and scientific impasse that was of ever-decreasing interest to anyone except the two families involved.

  The police persisted.

  The journalists didn’t care.

  The general public, which had been so fascinated by the case in the days following the “miracle,” quickly wearied of it as the uncertainty dragged on. The mystery seemed unsolvable, and everyone was bored by the experts’ squabbling. As the furor died down, the police attempted to work discreetly, while de Carville’s lawyers did their best to ensure that, as far as possible, the inquiry took place outside the public eye. It was clear that, if the case was decided purely by senior government officials, the judgment was likely to be in their favor. Judge Le Drian was a reasonable man, after all…

  The Est Républicain, which had carried the initial scoop, was the last newspaper to continue providing a daily update on the case, although the updates became increasingly brief. The journalist who was writing about the investigation, Lucile Moraud, had spent decades covering the sleaziest stories in eastern France; she did not miss them. She soon found herself faced with a dilemma: What should she call the miracle child? It was impossible to remain neutral if you used either of the names, Emilie or Lyse-Rose, and circumlocutions such as “the miracle child of Mont Terrible” or “the orphan of the snow” or “the girl who lived” tended to slow down her prose, which she wanted to be simple and direct so she could appeal to her readership. Inspiration arrived in late January 1981. At that time, as I’m sure you will remember, a song by Charlélie Couture was playing constantly on the radio, a song that seemed eerily topical: “Like an airplane without wings…”

  Infuriated by the slowness of the inquiry and the timidity of Judge Le Drian, Lucile Moraud convinced her editor to run, on January 29, a full front-page photograph of the “miracle child” in her glass cage in the pediatrics wing of the hospital. Below it ran a caption in bold lettering, consisting of three lines from the song:

  Oh, dragonfly,

  Your wings are so fragile,

  As for me, my body is broken…

  The journalist had hit the bull’s-eye. Now no one could hear Charlélie Couture’s hit without thinking of the miracle child with her fragile wings. For the French people, the orphan of the snow became “Dragonfly,” and the nickname stuck. Even the families began to call her that. And so did I.

  What an ass! Dragonfly…

  I even went so far as to become interested in the insects themselves, and spent a fortune collecting them. When I think about it now… All of that, just because some shrewd journalist knew how to manipulate the sentiments of the masses.

  The police were less romantic. In order to refer to the baby without implicitly siding with either family, they invented a neutral acronym that linked the beginning of one name to the end of the other. By crossing Lyse-Rose with Emilie, they created Lylie…

  Lylie.

  Superintendent Vatelier was the first to use this name in front of journalists.

  And, let’s be honest, it isn’t bad. As with Dragonfly, the nickname Lylie stuck, a bit like an affectionate diminutive.

  Not Lyse-Rose or Emilie, but Lylie.

  A chimera. A strange being composed of two bodies. A monster.

  Speaking of monsters, I think it is time I told you more about Malvina de Carville.

  Léonce de Carville was a strong-willed, determined man, used to getting what he wanted in life. However, so far none of the evidence in this case was working in his favor, and he became frustrated, impatient. And so it was that he made two mistakes. Two very serious mistakes.

  The first concerned his granddaughter Malvina. She was only six years old at the time: a lively child, and treated like a little queen. Naturally, it was always going to be difficult for her to get over the death of both her parents and possibly her little sister, too. But, supported by her family and an army of shrinks, she would probably have recovered, the way people do.

  Except that she was the sole eyewitness, the only living being to have seen Lyse-Rose in Turkey, during the first two months of her life. Perhaps the only two months of her life.

  Is a six-year-old girl capable of recognizing a small baby? Or of distinguishing it from another baby?

  It was a question worth asking.

  Against the affirmations of the Vitral grandparents, Malvina was the de Carvilles’ sole asset, the only one capable of identifying Lyse-Rose. Léonce de Carville should have protected her; he should not have allowed her to testify; he should have thrown the police out of his home. He had the means to do it. Malvina should not have had to answer questions; she should have been left alone, sent far away from the turmoil to a special retreat filled with attentive caregivers and happy children. Instead of which, Malvina had to testify, over and over again, in front of judges, lawyers, police, experts. For weeks on end, she was shuttled from office to hearing room, from waiting room to courtroom, constantly surrounded by sinister-looking men in suits and muscled bodyguards. To protect her from journalists, of course.

  Malvina systematically repeated the exact same words to every person she saw:

  “Yes, this baby is my little sister.”

  “I recognize her. She is Lyse-Rose.”

  After a while, her grandfather didn’t even have to encourage her to do it anymore. She grew certain of what she was saying; she no longer had any doubts. She could not possibly be mistaken.

  The clothes she was shown were Lyse-Rose’s. It was her face that she recognized. Those were her cries that she heard. And she was ready to swear it—before the judge, on the Bible, on the life of her favorite doll. At only six years old, she was strong enough to stand up to the Vitrals.

  Since then, I have watched Malvina grow up. Well, perhaps that is the wrong term. Let’s just say that I have watched her grow older, becoming an adolescent, then an adult. I have seen the madness rise within her.

  That girl scares me, I can’t deny it—I believe she ought to be in a psychiatric hospital, closely watched at all times—but there is one thing I have to acknowledge: she is not to blame in the slightest for what happened to her. Her grandfather Léonce de Carville bears all the responsibility for that. He knew what he was doing. He deliberately used his own granddaughter. He knowingly sacrificed her mental health, against the advice of all the doctors and the pleas of his own wife.

  And, what’s worse, it did him no good at all.

  Because Léonce de Carville made another mistake, perhaps even more serious than the first.

  9

  October 2, 1998, 9:43 a.m.

  Lylie had not moved in the last thirty minutes. She was sitting on a marble balustrade on the Esplanade des Invalides. The cold of the stone was seeping into her legs, but she wasn’t really bothered by it. It was a cold, dry day. Across from her, the dome of Les Invalides could hardly be distinguished from the almost monochrome white sky.

  A dozen rollerbladers were practicing in front of her, indifferent to the weather. Almost as if they were trying to impress her.

  The Esplanade des Invalides is mostly use
d to practice speed, slaloming, and jumping. The rollerbladers had put down two lines of plastic orange cones, and they were racing one another over a hundred yards. It was like a modern version of a medieval joust, with the fastest, or the last one standing, winning the heart of the watching princess.

  Lylie liked watching the rollerbladers: their speed, their laughter, their shouts. The noise and the movement helped her to stay calm. This wasn’t easy, as everything in her life seemed to be in a state of flux. She thought again about Grand-Duc’s notebook. Had she been right to give it to Marc? Would he read it? Yes, of course he would, but would he understand it? Marc had a complicated relationship with Crédule Grand-Duc: the detective wasn’t exactly a father figure to him, but all the same, he had, for many years, been one of the few masculine presences in Marc’s life. And Marc was always so sure of things—his instinct, he called it. His convictions. Was he ready to accept a different kind of truth?

  One of the rollerbladers was staring at her with black, hawk-like eyes. He was older than the others, maybe in his forties, with a thin, chiseled face and hair that was already beginning to go gray. He had won all his races hands down. He had taken off his leather jacket, and would lift up his T-shirt at every opportunity, revealing his muscular body.

  Lylie had not even noticed him. She was thinking about Marc’s present now, that macabre setup.

  Was there any point to it?

  Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She had no choice: she simply had to distance herself from Marc, at least for a few hours, a few days; she had to do this without him, to protect him. Afterward, when it was all over, perhaps she would have the courage to tell him everything. Marc was so fond of her. But who was she?

  His Lylie, his dragonfly. What she would have given to be known by a single, ordinary first name…