After the Crash: A Novel

by Michel Bussi

  He crossed a bridge over the canal. The Chemin des Chauds-Soleils was the first street on the right as you entered the village and, like everywhere else, it was quiet. More of a path than a street, in fact, disappearing into darkness as it wound through the forest. Marc walked on cautiously. Who were the de Carvilles, really? Victims of fate, as he was? Lylie’s true family, as he hoped? But also, perhaps, the people who were responsible for the murder of his grandfather.

  Enemies or allies? Or both?

  There were a few cars parked in the cul-de-sac, all of them expensive-looking. Mercedes, Saabs, Audis. All of them large and powerful—with one exception: a blue Rover Mini. Marc froze.

  He had seen this car. Recently.

  But where?

  Marc had spent most of the day underground in the metro. The only time he had been outdoors was here, in Coupvray. And…

  At Grand-Duc’s house.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and something metallic digging into his lower back. Possibly a gun.

  A harsh voice demanded: “Looking for something, dickhead?”

  26

  October 2, 1998, 12:50 p.m.

  Oddly, Marc did not feel an attack coming on. He had none of the usual symptoms: no breathlessness or palpitations. All he noticed was a slight acceleration in his pulse.

  Don’t panic.

  Turn around.

  Chemin des Chauds-Soleils was utterly deserted. The shadows of tall trees from the adjoining properties swayed over the pale gray gravel. Marc turned around very slowly, raising his hands so that his attacker would know he was not about to offer any resistance.

  “Don’t get smart with me, Vitral.”

  Marc squinted. A girl, less than five feet tall and weighing no more than ninety-eight pounds, stood in front of him. She was dressed as if she had just come home from boarding school, but her face was that of a thirty-year-old woman.

  Malvina de Carville.

  Marc had never met her, never even seen a photograph of her, but he knew it had to be Malvina. She was aiming a revolver at him, a strange fury in her eyes. Marc’s brain struggled to make sense of all this new information. So, the blue Rover Mini, parked a few yards away, had, one hour earlier, been parked in Rue de la Butte-aux-Cailles, and it belonged to Malvina de Carville. Which meant she had been at Grand-Duc’s house a few hours earlier… carrying a revolver…

  Had she killed Crédule Grand-Duc? And would Marc be next?

  Malvina stared at him, examining him from head to toe.

  “What the fuck are you doing here, Vitral?”

  There was something almost comical in Malvina’s tone, like the high-pitched yelp of a tiny poodle warning visitors away from its master’s house. But Marc knew he should not allow himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. This girl was capable of anything. She could easily laugh as she put a bullet between your eyes. But even knowing this, Marc couldn’t quite manage to take her seriously. And bizarrely, considering the situation, he felt no symptoms whatsoever: no fear, no panic.

  “Don’t move, Vitral. I said, don’t move!”

  Smiling, Marc walked a couple of feet toward her, his hands still raised.

  “Stop looking at me like that!” Malvina yelled, as she retreated. “You don’t fool me with your bravado. I know everything about you. I even know that you’re sleeping with your sister. Don’t you think that’s disgusting, fucking your own sister?”

  Marc smiled again. He couldn’t help it. The insults sounded false coming from Malvina’s mouth. She was like those eight-year-old boys at the leisure center in Dieppe, who swore in order to cover up their shyness.

  “Surely, from your point of view, it’s your sister I’m sleeping with.”

  Malvina appeared to be surprised by this reply. After a few seconds, she came up with a response: “That’s right. It’s my sister you’re fucking, because she’s too beautiful to be a filthy Vitral pig. But Lyse-Rose won’t need you anymore, not now that she’s eighteen…”

  Malvina’s insults had no effect on Marc. They seemed unreal. He did not even feel the need to defend himself, to deny that he was fucking Lylie. Instead he continued along the path, not allowing himself to betray the slightest hesitation. The girl pointed the Mauser at him more aggressively.

  “I told you not to move.”

  Marc kept walking, without turning around.

  “Sorry, but I didn’t come here to speak to you. I want to see your grandmother. This is the right house, isn’t it? The Roseraie?”

  “Keep moving and I’ll kill you, cocksucker.”

  Marc pretended not to hear. Was he right to trust his instinct, to assume the absence of agoraphobia meant this girl was not really dangerous? Or would he end up like Grand-Duc, shot through the heart? Sweat ran down his back. He stopped in front of the huge gate to the Roseraie.

  “What are you doing, you prick? I told you already: I’ll kill you!”

  Malvina scampered after Marc, like an excited child, then stood in front of him, the Mauser still aimed at his chest. Again, she looked him carefully up and down.

  “Looking for something?” Marc asked ironically.

  “You didn’t bring your bag. Are you hiding something? Under your shirt, perhaps?”

  “Oh, you want me to strip, do you?”

  “Keep your hands in the air, dickbreath!”

  “Ah, I see… You want to undress me yourself. Rub your little hands all over my body…”

  Malvina hesitated. Marc wondered whether he might have gone too far. Malvina’s finger was tightening on the Mauser’s trigger. On that finger, Marc saw a silver ring set with a beautiful translucent brown stone, like the color of her eyes, but more luminous. Malvina continued to examine him. She was undoubtedly looking for Grand-Duc’s notebook: he had been right to take precautions.

  He forced himself to be cruel: “Sorry, Malvina, I prefer your sister.”

  Ignoring Malvina’s reaction, he walked forward and pressed the intercom button. He now had no way of seeing what the mad girl was doing behind his back.

  “You little shit, I’m going to…”

  A woman’s voice crackled over the intercom, interrupting Malvina:

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Marc Vitral. I’ve come to speak to Mathilde de Carville.”

  “Enter.”

  The gate opened. Malvina hesitated, as if embarrassed now to be found pointing a gun at Marc. Then her eyes flared and she barked at him: “Didn’t you hear her? She told you to go in. What are you waiting for?”

  Marc had known it would be a luxurious property, one of the most lavish in this wealthy enclave, but even so he was impressed by the vastness of the tree-filled park, the flower beds, the climbing roses. How big was this place? Three acres? Four? He walked along the pink gravel path, his armed guard stalking him five feet behind.

  “Can’t believe it, can you, Vitral? How big and beautiful the Roseraie is. The biggest park in Coupvray. From the second floor, you can see the entire bend of the Marne. Now do you realize what Lyse-Rose missed out on all these years?”

  Marc suppressed the urge to slap her. Malvina had shot so many poison darts at him that, inevitably, one or two had found their mark. Marc could not help comparing the Parc de la Roseraie to his grandmother’s garden in Rue Pocholle. Ten by fifteen feet. With the Citroën parked there, they had not even had a garden at all. Farther off, close to the greenhouse, a squirrel flashed past, glancing nervously at the visitors.

  “Now that you see what you deprived her of, I hope you feel some remorse.”

  Remorse?

  Marc could still hear Lylie’s laughter in his ears. The happy shouting of children when Nicole drove off in her Citroën to work on the seafront, leaving Lylie and Marc to play hopscotch or ball in the little garden.

  Three steps. Malvina overtook him, the Mauser still aimed at his chest, and opened the thick wooden door.

  Marc followed her inside.

  Was he mad, going in like this, of his own fr
ee will? He had come here alone, and no one else knew where he was going. Malvina pointed him down a wide hallway. They climbed three more steps. Paintings of bucolic landscapes adorned the walls. Fur coats hung from forged iron hooks. An oval mirror at the end of the hallway gave the illusion that it went on forever.

  Malvina gestured with the Mauser to the first door on the right: a heavy door with red moldings. They went in.

  Marc found himself standing in a large living room. Most of the furniture was covered with white sheets, presumably intended to protect it when it was not in use. Directly across from him was a wall entirely covered by bookshelves. In the opposite corner was a white grand piano, a Petrof, one of the most expensive models on the market. Marc knew how much it must have cost.

  Mathilde de Carville stood in front of him, tall and straight-backed, her only adornments being the cross that hung around her neck and a few incongruous mud stains on the lower part of her dress. Next to her, her husband slept in his wheelchair. Indifferent. A tartan blanket was spread across his lap, covered by a few yellow leaves. The black widow and the paralytic… it was like being trapped in a bad horror movie.

  Mathilde de Carville did not move. She merely smiled at him strangely.

  “Marc Vitral. What a surprise. I never thought for a minute that you would come here one day…”

  “Neither did I.”

  The smile grew slightly wider. Malvina moved away and stationed herself next to the piano.

  “Put down your gun, Malvina.”

  “But Grandma…”

  Mathilde de Carville gave her granddaughter a stern look. Pointedly, Malvina laid down her weapon on the piano. It was obvious that she was desperate to pick it up again.

  Marc could not help staring at the piano. Of course the de Carville family would have a piano. He could have guessed that, even without having set foot inside their house. No member of the Vitral family was musical. Neither his parents nor his grandparents had ever played a musical instrument. There were not even many records in the house on Rue Pocholle. And yet, from her very first months in Dieppe, Lylie had always been spellbound by sound, all kinds of sounds… in nursery school, she had been fascinated by musical instruments, and it had seemed logical when, at the age of four, she joined the local music school. It was practically free. Her music teacher had been full of praise for her, Marc remembered proudly.

  “A nice model, isn’t it?” said Mathilde de Carville. “It’s genuine. Ordered by my father in 1934. You surprise me, Marc. Are you interested in the piano?”

  Marc, lost in his thoughts, did not reply. When Lylie turned eight, her music teachers became more insistent. She was one of their best and most passionate students. She happily played every instrument that was handed to her, but her favorite was the piano. She ought to practice more regularly, her teachers said; she ought to be playing her scales every day, at home. The teachers quickly dismissed the Vitrals’ first objection to this, that they didn’t have enough space for a piano: there were some excellent models available, designed specifically for small apartments. And then there was the question of cost. A decent piano, even a secondhand one, would have cost Nicole several months of her salary. It was unthinkable. Lylie had not protested when Nicole explained to her that it was beyond their means…

  A squeaking noise made Marc jump. Behind him, Malvina was sliding the Mauser across the lacquered wood of the Petrof.

  “Leave that gun where it is, please, Malvina,” Mathilde de Carville commanded calmly. “I played, too, Marc, when I was younger. Not well, however. My son, Alexandre, was much more talented than I. But I don’t suppose you came here to talk about music…”

  “You’re right,” Marc said. “I’ll get to the point. I came here to talk to you about Grand-Duc’s investigation. I am not going to hide anything from you. He gave me his notebook. Well, in fact, he gave it to…” He hesitated, then went on: “He gave it to Lylie, who gave it to me this morning and insisted I read it.”

  “But you came here without it?” Mathilde de Carville interrupted. “Very prudent, Marc. You do not trust us. But you need not have worried. As far as the notebook is concerned, I never asked Crédule Grand-Duc for any sort of exclusivity. It is a good thing that Lylie now knows the truth. Doubt is better than false certainty. Anyway, I think I have a good idea what that notebook contains. Grand-Duc was a faithful employee.”

  Marc watched Malvina’s distorted reflection in the polished wood of the Petrof, then feigned surprise: “Was?”

  Mathilde did not hide the irony in her reply: “Yes, was. Grand-Duc was under contract to me for eighteen years. But that contract ended two days ago.”

  Marc cursed inwardly. Mathilde de Carville was trying to manipulate him. Of course she knew about Grand-Duc’s death. He had been killed by her granddaughter. Possibly on her orders… Marc’s hands were shaking. What was he doing here, with this bitter old witch and her mad, murderous offspring? Not to mention the ancient vegetable in his wheelchair. What good could possibly come from this situation?

  Marc stepped forward, to give himself confidence. He had nothing to lose… he may as well say what he had come here to say.

  “All right, I’m going to be honest with you. For eighteen years, our families have held tightly to their convictions. The de Carvilles claim that Lyse-Rose survived; the Vitrals say it was Emilie. And the judge said that, too.”

  Marc exhaled, searching for the right words.

  “Mrs. de Carville, I have grown up with Lylie over the past eighteen years, and I have become certain of one thing.” Marc hesitated again, then went on: “Mrs. de Carville, Lylie is not my sister! Do you understand? We do not share the same blood. I believe it is Lyse-Rose who survived the crash.”

  The Mauser made a sharp snapping noise as it fell onto the piano. Malvina’s eyes shone with surprise and happiness, as if Marc had suddenly become their ally. A spy who had taken off his mask and revealed his true identity.

  He was one of them!

  Mathilde de Carville, on the other hand, did not move a muscle. For a long time she was silent, then she said simply: “Malvina, take Grandpa outside.”

  “But Grandma…”

  There were tears in her eyes.

  “Do as I tell you, Malvina. Take Léonce for a walk in the park.”

  “But…”

  This time, Malvina could not hold back her tears. She left, pushing the wheelchair in front of her, while her grandfather continued his long sleep.

  27

  October 2, 1998, 12:55 p.m.

  Lylie reeled dangerously. This bar stool, with its narrow legs, seemed to have been designed specifically to tip over whenever the person sitting on it had had a little too much to drink.

  It won’t be long, thought Lylie.

  She brought the tumbler of gin to her lips. It didn’t burn so much now. She no longer felt anything but the swaying of the stool.

  She was the only woman in the bar—Barramundi, on Rue de Lappe. It was the kind of bar you did not enter alone, even during the day, unless you had something very specific in mind. While the guys in the bar pretended not to be interested in her—continuing to drink their beers and their glasses of wine, scratching at their lottery cards, and watching sports endlessly on the television—she could feel their eyes on her bare thighs, creeping up her back, toward the nape of her neck…

  To forget.

  Lylie downed the rest of her gin and turned to the barman, a placid man with a single tuft of gray curly hair on top of his head.

  “What else do you have?”

  She had already tried vodka and tequila. For the moment, her favorite by far was vodka. But she was still at the beginning of her learning curve; she had never touched a drop of alcohol before her eighteenth birthday. And even on her birthday, she had drunk only one glass of champagne. Now she was making up for lost time.

  “Perhaps you should quit while you’re ahead, miss. Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?”

  What was he
talking about, this baldie with his stupid lock of hair? Didn’t he realize she was eighteen now? Lylie was about to shove her ID card under his nose, but the bastard had already turned his back on her.

  A man wearing a gray suit and a floppy tie was standing by the bar about thirty feet away from her, staring into a glass containing some brownish liquid. He was the only man in the bar not to have undressed her with his eyes. Lylie leaned toward him, gripping the counter as she balanced precariously on her stool.

  “Hey, you! What are you drinking?”

  Floppy Tie sat up a little bit.

  “Just a scotch…”

  “I want that, too! Hey, garçon, that’s what I want.”

  The bartender, unruffled, frowned with his right eyebrow. “Are you sure, miss?”

  “It’s all right, Jean-Charles,” said Floppy Tie. “This one’s on me.”

  Jean-Charles frowned again, this time with his left eyebrow. The man must have trained for years to attain such mastery of his eyebrows, Lylie thought.

  “Let’s make this the last one, then. I don’t want any trouble.”

  The scotch drinker, whose stool-balancing technique was far better than Lylie’s, somehow managed to sidle up alongside her without leaving his seat. He was not there to console her, not at all. To him, the bar was an island, and he had been here since his ship sank, surviving on liquor and conversations with other shipwreck victims: swapping tales of storms and messages in bottles.

  “So what is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this, Miss…?”

  “Dragonfly. Miss Dragonfly.”

  The man seemed to have only just noticed that the girl he was chatting up possessed the beautiful, slender body of a model, and that the entire bar was watching their little mating ritual.

  “Nice name, that… Dragonfly. I’m Richard… I’m a college professor, in Boieldieu, in the twentieth arrondissement, so as you can probably guess, I’m…”

  Lylie reached out to pick up her glass of scotch. She sipped it and pulled a face. Clearly, nothing was going to taste as good as vodka. Realizing that she was completely uninterested in his tales of academia, Richard changed the subject.