After the Crash: A Novel

by Michel Bussi

  He picked up the envelope that Mathilde de Carville had given to him and passed it to Nicole. Then he opened the other envelope.

  He read the letter inside.

  The room began to spin around him: piano, photographs, tablecloth, sofa, television, all blurred.

  The sheet of paper fell from his hands.

  The DNA test result made no sense at all.

  49

  October 2, 1998, 11:37 p.m.

  Malvina shifted uncomfortably on the hard, cold pebbles. The beach was dimly lit by the half-moon. This was the only place Malvina could find to spend the night. The young female ticket inspector had discovered her a long time after the train had arrived at its destination in Dieppe. The woman had been quite polite and understanding as she asked Malvina to leave the train, but her attitude had changed when Malvina had called her a “stupid whore.” Two other ticket inspectors had helped her to forcibly evict Malvina from the station.

  Now Malvina was having to sleep outside. Thanks to that idiotic kite festival, there wasn’t a single vacant room to be had in the entire town.

  Malvina had spent the evening wandering around. She hadn’t even eaten, but then she wasn’t hungry. She had roamed the streets for a long time, before returning to the beach. She had been waiting for the festivalgoers to disappear, along with their stupid kites and their music and their balloons and the waffles, fries, and other inedible substances sold by the Vitrals’ successors along the seafront.

  Finally, close to midnight, it was all over. Only a few shapes remained hovering in the sky, tethered by long strings to stakes hammered into the ground. Malvina did not like kites. She wanted to cut all those strings so that the floating objects would come crashing down into the sea.

  Cut the strings, and cut the cord that connected her to her horrible, lying grandmother.

  Malvina lay on the uncomfortable, cold pebbles and tried to fall asleep.

  “Hello, sweetheart! Shouldn’t you be at home with your mommy and daddy? It’s very late, you know…”

  Malvina turned her head toward the voice. Three men were standing on the beach, about thirty feet from where she lay. Each of them was holding a mineral-water bottle containing an orange liquid that was, almost certainly, neither water nor juice.

  “It’s dangerous for you to be out here all alone, sweetie. What if some bad men were to find you?”

  The tallest of the three was speaking. There was a ring through his right eyebrow. A smaller one, bald, and wearing cowboy boots, was having trouble keeping his balance. The third man reminded her of the bear Banjo.

  The one wearing the eyebrow ring came closer, and the others followed. Malvina sat up.

  “Fucking hell, she’s not a kid, she’s an old woman!” said the one with the cowboy boots. “I thought we might have found a virgin…”

  “Well, we might have,” said Eyebrow Ring. “She’s not exactly Sophie Marceau.”

  Banjo and Cowboy Boots burst out laughing. Malvina rummaged through her handbag, then remembered with a surge of anger that Marc Vitral had taken her Mauser.

  Eyebrow Ring took another two steps closer.

  “Are you looking for an adventure, sweetheart? Well, it’s your lucky day. Three handsome men, all for you…”

  “Fuck off, you prick!”

  The men froze for a moment. Then Eyebrow Ring moved forward again.

  “Listen to that, guys! This one’s a real little whore!”

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Banjo reassured her. “We just want to have some fun.”

  “Yeah, you’re just my type,” said Eyebrow Ring. “I love your look. It’s fifties, right? I’ve always wanted to get sucked off by a grandmother.” He moved closer and added: “Then again, my grandmother doesn’t have any teeth now…”

  Banjo and Cowboy Boots laughed loudly again. They were easily amused. They walked behind their leader, closing in on their prey.

  Crawling backward, Malvina attempted to get away from them. “Come any closer and I’ll kill you!” she screamed.

  The three men watched with amusement as the skinny little girl crouched down on the pebbles.

  “Come on, don’t be shy,” said Eyebrow Ring. “You know you want it…”

  A second later, he heard a whistling noise and saw a shadow. The next moment, he couldn’t see anything. The silver ring hung there, held in place by a scrap of shredded, bloody eyelid. A few seconds later, another stone flew through the air and hit him on the nose.

  “Fuck!”

  The third stone missed his mouth but crashed into his jaw.

  You can kill a man with a stone, if you throw it from the right range. Malvina probably didn’t realize that, but the three men did. Under certain circumstances, even the most stupid people learn quickly. It’s a question of survival. They fled as a storm of stones rained down on them. Cowboy Boots slipped on the pebbles, and a stone smashed into his collarbone. Banjo was hit on the back and the neck. Malvina was throwing blindly now, rage lending strength to her skinny arm.

  “You’d better watch out, you little bitch!” Eyebrow Ring yelled at her, when he was beyond range of her throws. “You haven’t seen the last of us!”

  “Yeah, right!” Malvina said. “I don’t think the police will have too much trouble finding the guy who tried to rape me. I’ll just tell them to look for an ugly, one-eyed twat.”

  An hour later, the wind began to blow. Malvina was cold. She stood up and rubbed her arms and legs, then walked slowly through town until she reached the train station. It was closed, of course. Finally she fell asleep on a bench overlooking the parking lot.

  50

  October 2, 1998, 11:51 p.m.

  The Vitrals’ living room was frozen in time. For an eternity.

  Marc bent down, his hand trembling, and picked up the fallen sheet of paper. It looked identical to the one he had read on the train: same letterhead, same typeface. It differed by only a few words.

  ANALYSIS OF BLOOD SAMPLE COMPARISONS

  between Emilie VITRAL (sample 1, batch 95-233)

  and Nicole VITRAL (sample 2, batch 95-237)

  Results negative.

  No family relationship possible.

  Results 99.94513% reliable.

  Marc dropped the letter on the table. Nicole did the same thing, then collapsed on the sofa.

  Both families’ tests had come out negative…

  “What… what does this mean?” Marc stammered.

  Nicole wiped a tear from her cheek, then smiled strangely.

  “What a joker he is, that Crédule Grand-Duc!”

  “Did you know?” Marc asked.

  “No. Honestly, Marc, I had no idea. Nobody knew, apart from Crédule, of course. For three years I’ve been so certain that the girl I raised as a granddaughter was Lyse-Rose de Carville. I had come to accept the idea. I gave her that ring, for her eighteenth birthday. In fact, I was even glad…”

  Nicole went silent for a second. She pulled at the woolen shawl she wore around her shoulders, rearranging it over her blouse. She looked tenderly at Marc.

  “For you, I mean. For you and Emilie. It was so much simpler that way.”

  Marc said nothing. He stood up and placed the two letters next to each other, to compare them. They looked completely genuine.

  “Grand-Duc must have made a mistake!” he said, his voice unnaturally loud. “Maybe he got the samples mixed up… or maybe the lab made a mistake. There has to be an explanation!”

  “Maybe Crédule just gave us the results we were expecting,” Nicole said quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Only he knows which blood samples he gave to the lab. Maybe these were the results he wanted. I mean, he’d spent fifteen years investigating the case… maybe he wanted to write the end of the story himself.”

  Nicole thought for a moment, then continued: “Two negative tests… maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. It worked perfectly, if you think about it. Mathilde de Carville was finally convinced that h
er granddaughter was dead. She would never have left us alone otherwise. And I don’t think Grand-Duc ever liked her. As for me, he knew I would get over the pain. When I first read that result, three years ago, I cried myself to sleep, for several nights running, but in the long term it made me feel so much better: it relieved the terrible tension I felt whenever I saw the way you and Emilie looked at each other.”

  Marc sat down next to Nicole and rested his head on her shoulder. He put one arm around his grandmother’s thick waist and his fingers played with the ends of the woolen shawl.

  “You understand, don’t you, Marc? Of course you do. This meant that you weren’t brother and sister. You were free. Crédule had seen the two of you together, and he loved you, in his way. He was perfectly capable of coming up with such a strategy.”

  She looked at the blue envelopes on the table.

  “As long as the two results were never read together, his plan worked perfectly…”

  Marc stood up again and paced around the room. No matter what Nicole said, he could not bring himself to believe this theory. In his notebook, the detective seemed just as dismayed by the DNA test results as they were. Although it was possible that he was lying about that. It was possible he was lying about everything.

  “I’m going out for a walk, Nicole. I’ll be back later.”

  Nicole said nothing. She wiped her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief. Marc put his hand on the doorknob. When Nicole spoke again, her voice was even shakier than before:

  “You haven’t asked me where Emilie is.”

  Marc froze.

  “Do you know?”

  “Not exactly. I don’t know where she is geographically. But I do understand what she meant by the ‘one-way trip,’ by the crime she kept talking about. My God, how could she call that a crime?”

  Marc felt his heart pounding again. His world had been turned upside down so many times today. Yet all the symptoms of his agoraphobia seemed to have vanished, like hiccups cured by a sudden fright.

  “Call what a crime?”

  In a very quiet voice, Nicole replied: “Emilie is pregnant, Marc. She is pregnant with your child.”

  Marc’s hand lost its grip on the doorknob.

  “She’s going to have an abortion, Marc. That’s why she’s in the hospital.”

  Marc found himself leaning against a Dumpster in Rue Pocholle. At the end of the street, illuminated by the weak moonlight, he saw two cats facing each other, their fur on end. He wondered if they were the same cats that Lylie had chased when she was seven years old. It was possible. The same cats, but eleven years older.

  Marc felt strangely calm: much calmer than he had felt a few minutes, or even a few hours, earlier. Suddenly, he could see what he had to do next. The news of Lylie’s pregnancy had forced him to jettison all superfluous thoughts. The mystery of the two DNA tests could wait, and so could the murder of his grandfather. Right now, Marc cared only about one thing: Lylie, lying alone in a hospital room in Paris, pregnant, a child in her womb.

  Their child.

  Marc walked toward the only working streetlamp in Rue Pocholle. He had tried to call Lylie five times, but there was still no answer. He knew that calling any more hospitals would be pointless. They had to respect their clients’ desire for anonymity. And Lylie would have asked for anonymity, of course.

  Once again, Marc resigned himself to leaving a message on Lylie’s phone, leaning against a lamppost like a drunkard serenading the moon.

  “Lylie, I know. Nicole told me everything. I’m so sorry I didn’t realize. Where are you? I have to be there, with you. I promise I won’t try to change your mind. I’m not going to lie to you—I haven’t found out anything more in the investigation. All I have is my intuition, and you already know what I believe. I know that’s not enough for you but wait for me, Lylie, please. Ask me to come and I’ll be there. Ask me, I’m begging you. I love you so much.”

  The phone message flew off into the cloudless night.

  The two cats were squaring up to each other now, both hissing, as if they were about to fight to the death. And yet this was just a game: the same game they played every night over so many years.

  Marc sat down on the pavement. He knew this street like the back of his hand. One day, Lylie had fallen off her tricycle here, at the very spot where he was sitting. It wasn’t serious, just a graze. She’d bled a little, over the pavement, but the blood had been washed away years ago by the rain.

  Marc closed his eyes.

  A child. Their child.

  He felt angry. Not with Lylie, but with life. With the way things were. He hated feeling so powerless, so useless.

  One of the first-floor windows opened, and someone yelled out at the cats. Marc didn’t know who it was; that person must have moved here recently. One of the cats ran off. The other one stood there for a few seconds, then trotted toward Marc. Marc held out his hand and the cat rubbed against it. He wondered how many times this old tomcat had been stroked by Lylie.

  Of course, Marc understood why Lylie felt an abortion was necessary. It had nothing to do with her age, or worries about money, or how a baby would affect her career. It was simply that Lylie did not want to give birth to a child born of an incestuous union. Unless her identity could be proved, definitively, Lylie would never risk bringing a monster into the world.

  Marc looked up at the sky. What if he could find that definitive proof? He might still be able to stop this thing from happening.

  Lylie smoked a cigarette on the balcony. She knew it was wrong, but she didn’t care. Just one cigarette. Well, three, in fact. The girl with the red hair and yellow teeth was not stingy with her cigarettes. She’d given Lylie the whole pack.

  Lylie listened to Marc’s message. She replied with a text. There was no possibility that Marc would find her. It was better like this. She had to do this alone.

  It would be madness to keep this child. Lylie knew, more than anyone, how hard it was to live without an identity. How could she possibly inflict such a punishment on her own baby?

  In the palm of her left hand, she held the Tuareg cross Marc had given her. The fingers of her right hand typed out the long message she sent in four parts:

  Marc, this will soon be all over. Don’t worry, it’s a simple operation. It only takes a few minutes.

  I will have to stay here all day tomorrow. The doctors say they need to run some more tests for the anesthetic. Maybe it’s just a ruse to give me more time to think about it…

  Anyway, the operation will not take place until the day after tomorrow. But please don’t worry about me. I have made the right decision. Everything will be all right.

  Take care of yourself.

  In his bedroom, lying on his childhood bed, Marc read the message. Right away, he tried to call her back. She wasn’t answering.

  He read through the message again and again. Only one sentence seemed to matter: “The operation will not take place until the day after tomorrow.”

  So he had one more day to discover the truth. Marc took this as a sign. All was not yet lost.

  He stared at the bunk bed above his. As he lay there, an idea germinated in his mind. Only one thing was certain: all of the elements in this case were somehow connected. The murder of his grandfather, the murder of Grand-Duc, perhaps other murders that he didn’t yet know about… and Lylie’s true identity.

  Crédule Grand-Duc had found the solution. He had discovered it just before he was murdered. He had been planning to go to the Jura Mountains, to Mont Terri. That made sense. After all, that was where everything had begun. Perhaps it was fated to end there, too.

  At 4:00 a.m., Marc got up and put on a sweater. What did he have to lose? He had no other leads. He walked carefully through the darkness, toward his grandmother’s bedroom.

  “Marc?” Nicole said sleepily.

  “Does the van still work, Nicole?”

  Nicole rubbed her eyes and glanced at the alarm clock on her bedside table. “Umm… yes… I
think so. I don’t use it much anymore. And the last time I drove it, there was…”

  “Are the keys still in the middle drawer in the living room?”

  “Yes. But…”

  “Thanks. Don’t worry…”

  “Be careful,” Nicole wanted to say, but her words were lost in a coughing fit. She held a handkerchief to her mouth. She knew she would not get any more sleep that night.

  51

  October 3, 1998, 4:12 a.m.

  The van started at the first attempt. Marc had driven it several times, but only for short distances. He was usually the one who had moved it out of the garden. Nicole had taught him exactly how to maneuver it out of this tiny, confined space, navigating by means of the mailbox and the neighbors’ left-hand shutter. There were only inches to spare on either side.

  The Vitrals’ Type H Citroën van was one of the last of its kind to be made in France. Pierre Vitral had bought it in 1979, and Citroën had stopped production two years later. Pierre had chosen the longest model, very similar to the type of van bought by butchers in the 1970s; orange with a red, flattened nose that made it look like a big dog, two round headlights for eyes, and side mirrors on metal stalks for ears. Her big bow-wow, Lylie called it. The big, lazy bow-wow that slept outside and filled the entire garden.

  Pierre had converted it himself with the help of his cousin, who was a car mechanic in Neuville. This same cousin still carried out repairs on it occasionally, so it was in good condition, considering its age and the two hundred thousand miles on its odometer. And besides, Marc had no choice: he had to believe the van would hold together, in spite of its dented bodywork, the broken windshield wipers, and the hood that did not close properly.

  He checked his watch: just after four. Dieppe was sleeping. He drove through a ghost town, watched over by the kites that moved in the wind high above. The Citroën was noisy, but at least it worked. Marc didn’t want to count his chickens, though: there were still nearly four hundred miles to go. Marc had consulted the map before he started, and decided to avoid Paris. He had written his route down on a piece of paper: Neufchâtel-en-Bray, Beauvais, Compiègne, Soissons, Reims, Châlons-en-Champagne, Saint-Dizier, Langres, Vesoul, Montbéliard, Mont Terri. He reckoned it would take him about ten hours to reach his destination. If all went well.