The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1)

by Anna Jaquiery

  At first he was afraid of them. These kids who smoked in the snowbound courtyard before the bell rang, whose life experiences surpassed his in unimaginable ways. Some days he walked into the classroom with a strong sense of paranoia, imagining that behind his back they were sniggering at him, the provincial boy, the country bumpkin. Kids were good at digging out the very thing you wanted to keep buried. Just because he was older than them didn’t give him an advantage. It wasn’t even much of an age difference. Many of the kids were also taller than him. At one metre sixty-five, he was hardly imposing.

  But however hard he searched for evidence that they ridiculed him, he couldn’t find it. After a while he relaxed and began to look forward to the classes. It gave him a kick, to see how far he had come. If his mother could see him now! Commanding respect. When he spoke, they listened. When classes ended there were always a couple of them hanging back, waiting with a question. It wasn’t always about school work either. Often they just wanted to chat. For the first time in his life, he felt like someone.

  Other things were less gratifying. Even he was sheltered, of course, compared with the average Russian. Unlike them he was just passing through and whatever discomforts he experienced were temporary. But still, he struggled with the place where he lived. While his students went back to their sheltered surroundings, the embassy kids and the ones whose parents worked for corporations, every day he encountered squalor. The door to his building needed fixing and the entrance always smelled of piss and cabbage. You could never be sure whether the lift would make it to your floor. Armand would have taken the stairs but he was afraid of what he might find there. Sometimes his heart sank when he walked through the door to his flat and saw the brown carpet and cheap furniture, the kitchen with its peeling brown linoleum floor that was always sticky beneath his feet, so that he took to keeping his socks on all the time. In winter the flat was overheated and stuffy. Outside his window, a factory belched smoke and a thousand empty sockets stared back at him, rows of windows in grey concrete blocks just like the one he lived in.

  He became used to his new life. One of his colleagues put him in touch with a local, middle-aged woman who gave Russian lessons. He was a good student and learned quickly. In winter he found it was easy to lose all sense of perspective. Lines became blurred, then non-existent. He walked through the city like a blind man. But rather than mourn the loss of familiarity, he celebrated it, finding freedom in the absence of recognizable signposts.

  He was lonely, of course. He could have done what some of his younger colleagues did, those who like him were teaching overseas as an alternative to military service. Get himself a Russian girlfriend (or two at a time, like the maths teacher Gilles, who appeared at school the next day looking smug, dying to tell his story), or he could socialize with the teenagers, invite them to his home. Armand tried the former. He came home one night with a girl who moaned and writhed under him with such intensity, his longing evaporated. They drank vodka together until she pulled a syringe from her bag and asked him to inject it into her breasts. He found himself contemplating this obscene act for a moment, before shoving her out of the apartment. He spent the night tossing and turning in self-disgust, both excited and repelled by the memory.

  As for the parties with the kids he taught, Armand couldn’t bring himself to take part. He remained friendly with them at school but turned down the invitations from colleagues and pupils alike. It wasn’t that he cared whether it was appropriate or not. In that setting he worried that he might stand out.

  He didn’t go entirely unnoticed. That year, two students attached themselves to him. Like him, they were singular, quiet. The girl was taller than Armand, with lustrous black skin and long, muscled legs. Puberty had reached her long before the other girls in the class. Armand noticed that this seemed to give her a comfortable edge over them. Without trying, she summoned envy. The boys, too, were mesmerized. Because he didn’t desire her, Armand did not find her intimidating. He found it easy to talk to her. They became friends, in a sense. She was a natural at philosophy, her mind embraced the concept of an open-ended world where a single question might reveal a dozen different truths. In the mornings before school they sat sometimes in his box-shaped Lada and argued about Heidegger and Kierkegaard, the heater turned up high. Their intimacy was the closest he had come to anyone since Charles.

  Once he began to take Olivia out, he noticed how the Russians stared, what a novelty she was, because of her black skin but also her beauty, which was nothing like the anaemic, wilting-flower looks of the girls he saw here. Blonde and thin and forever pouting, as though surliness were somehow seductive. Olivia had a smile that was broad and unreservedly joyful, a panorama of dazzling teeth that lit up her face and made her eyes gleam.

  Then there was the boy. A quick-witted Moroccan adolescent, lithe and handsome, with dark hooded eyes and a way of snubbing the world with every gesture. When he had to address this student, Armand could not look him in the eye, though he knew the boy shared no such qualm about him. He watched Armand in class through lowered lashes, as though trying to provoke some sort of response.

  Armand, Amir. The words formed a sing-song in Armand’s mind. Soon, the boy’s name accompanied his every waking thought.

  Two syllables: that was all it took to undo him.

  NINETEEN

  ‘Le Bellec. Did you know the name is derived from beleg, a word that means priest in Celtic?’ Jean said.

  ‘Really? How the hell do you know that?’ Morel asked.

  The team were assembled around Lila and Marco’s desk. Jean had brought coffees for everyone. They were all feeling more cheerful, including Morel. Now they had Le Bellec’s name, they had something tangible to work with.

  ‘I knew a Le Bellec once,’ Jean said. ‘He was my brother-in-law for a while. My sister looked up the name and once she found out what the origin was she decided to keep her maiden name. She is, shall we say, a devout atheist.’

  ‘Seems an appropriate name for our evangelist,’ Morel said. He was feeling better than he’d felt for weeks. That morning he’d bought himself a new office chair and also invested in a heavy-duty upright fan for the office. Now it was blowing in their direction while Lila and Marco snatched at the papers on their desk before they were blown away.

  Like Marie Latour, Irina Volkoff had grown tired of having a permanent police presence in her home and decided to stay with a friend for a few days. Morel was glad he no longer had to rely on colleagues outside police headquarters to provide support.

  ‘Armand Le Bellec. Age thirty-four,’ Lila read from the folder before her. She was wearing a pair of black jeans and a tight red singlet. One of her bra straps, a bright orange, had come off her shoulder and she absent-mindedly returned it to its rightful place while Marco looked at her. Morel wondered whether he needed to talk to the young officer. Let him know he didn’t stand a chance with tall, spirited Lila and that, the way he mooned over his colleague, he was probably heading for a punch on the nose. But it wasn’t his business, after all.

  Before Lila could proceed, there was a knock at the door. Everyone turned to see who it was. The man with the cropped black hair and honey-coloured eyes was familiar to the team.

  ‘Akil Abdelkader, come and join us,’ Morel said. He turned to the others. ‘I’ve asked Akil to help us out. His boss has kindly agreed to spare him for a few days.’ He caught the look of dismay on Marco’s face. ‘With Vincent away and Jean still tied up with the warehouse killing, I think we could really use an extra pair of hands. I know Patrick’s team is helping out but I reckon it’ll be good to have someone sit here with us who had some involvement with this early on.

  ‘Akil has been reading up on the recent developments in the case. I value his input because he’s already shown us what he’s capable of. Without him we might never have had access to Dufour’s flat. Not until it was too late, at any rate.’

  Lila stood up and shook Akil’s hand, and Marco followed suit, though he looked
distinctly unhappy. Jean pulled a chair over but Akil shook his head.

  ‘I’m happy to stand.’ His voice was deep and his manner relaxed. Lila looked at him briefly so no one would notice her checking out the new guy.

  ‘Lila was just running us through what she knows about Armand Le Bellec. He is our number-one suspect at this stage, for the murders of Isabelle Dufour and Elisabeth Guillou. We don’t have the boy’s name yet but hopefully now we have Le Bellec’s we’ll be able to move much faster.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Akil said.

  ‘Carry on, Lila.’

  ‘Le Bellec is from Brittany. Not so much the picturesque part of the region, further inland. This is a tiny village about an hour’s drive from Rennes. The sort of place you can’t wait to get out of, I imagine.’

  ‘Spare us the commentary,’ Morel said.

  ‘I checked to see whether he has any priors and came up empty-handed,’ she said, giving Morel a dark look. ‘But I did find out quite a bit about him. Apparently he studied philosophy and theology at the University of Rennes and went on to obtain a PhD. Wrote his thesis titled “A new perspective on Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel”. Whatever that means. He taught philosophy to Year 11 students at the French Lycée in Moscow. As part of his military service.’

  ‘How old was he when he went over there?’ Morel asked.

  ‘Just twenty-four.’ Lila pulled her hair back and tied it into a ponytail. She caught Akil looking at her. She stood up and went to open the window. When she returned she picked up her coffee cup and sat on the edge of her desk. Suddenly she felt self-conscious. The way she was sitting was completely unnatural.

  ‘Then?’

  ‘He was sacked.’ Lila returned to her seat. ‘He was never charged with anything,’ she continued. ‘But there was talk that he had got involved with a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, the daughter of the Senegalese ambassador. The parents claimed he took advantage. It was all kept quiet, but the school told him to leave.’ She took a sip from her coffee and looked at Morel. ‘When he returned to France, he wasn’t alone. According to his passport, he had a Russian boy with him. At some point before he left the country, he adopted this kid.’

  ‘Do we know what Le Bellec’s been up to since he got back?’ Morel asked.

  ‘He taught at a school in Rennes for a while. Then he moved up to Paris.’

  ‘Is he teaching here?’ Morel asked, startled.

  ‘Not sure. I haven’t been able to track him down yet. There is no listing for him that I can find. But I have a contact at the Ministry of Education and he’s looking into it for me. Nice guy,’ Lila said. ‘I promised we could have dinner sometime.’

  ‘And the Senegalese girl? Have we got a name?’

  ‘She lives here in Paris,’ Lila said. ‘After her baccalaureate she moved here to take up medicine. She lives in Montmartre with her boyfriend. Also a medical student.’

  ‘Both students? How do they manage?’

  ‘The parents aren’t exactly destitute,’ Lila said.

  ‘So the parents are supporting the young lovebirds?’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  Morel looked at Lila and shook his head slowly. ‘How the hell did you find all this out?’

  ‘I have my ways,’ she said, clearly pleased with herself. ‘I spoke with someone who worked at the school in Moscow. And like I said, there’s my chum at the Ministry of Education.’

  Morel turned to the others. ‘The first thing we need to do is track down this Armand Le Bellec. The call from Amelia Berg tells us he was back in his village. It’s unlikely he’s still hanging around. I think, though, that we need to get down there and talk to people who knew him. It might help us find out where he is now. Lila, you and I will drive up there.’

  ‘What? How far is it?’

  ‘Three to four hours maybe? In the meantime we can’t wait for Lila’s friend to turn something up. Akil and Marco, I need you to run Le Bellec’s name past the schools. If he is still teaching, he’ll be in or close to Paris. We’ll start with Paris then move outwards if we don’t come up with anything. Akil, why don’t you take Lila’s desk while she and I are away. That way you and Marco will find it easier to share the workload and communicate what you find.’

  Akil nodded. His face didn’t betray anything but Marco’s was long-suffering.

  ‘Make sure you don’t touch my things and don’t mess anything up,’ Lila told Akil.

  He grinned. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘We’re getting close to him,’ Morel said. ‘I don’t want him to find out we’re on his trail and have him disappear.’

  ‘In other words, let’s make sure Perrin’s happy and doesn’t feel the need to splash the story across the papers again, just so he can get another profile shot of himself in Le Figaro,’ Lila said.

  There was laughter all around. Everyone remembered the news story. A five-year-old girl had been kidnapped and Morel and his team had tracked down her abductors within thirty-six hours. The article showed Perrin being interviewed in his office. They had taken a shot of him gazing out the window with a moody, introspective look on his face. The look of a man battling against the odds. He’d kept a copy of the article on his desk for weeks.

  ‘Lila, why don’t you give the medical student a call, the girl who had Le Bellec as a teacher,’ Morel said. ‘Let’s talk to her. Just tell her we want a simple chat, we can do it at her place or somewhere else if she prefers. I’d like to know a bit more about our friend Armand.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I want to see her today,’ Morel continued. ‘The more we know about Le Bellec before we talk to people in his village, the better.’

  Morel clapped his hands.

  ‘All right, back to work everyone. Let’s see whether we can locate our guy. The sooner the better, for everyone. And Marco,’ Morel said, turning to him. ‘Make sure Akil feels welcome.’

  ‘Sure,’ Marco replied without a smile.

  Morel and Lila recognized Olivia straight away. It was hard not to. In this predominantly white, middle-class neighbourhood you did not see many blacks. She was alone. Morel had thought she might bring the boyfriend and was glad she hadn’t. It would be easier to talk to her this way. Though she was sitting, Morel could see she was tall, possibly taller than him. Her dress was short and emphasized the length and shapeliness of her legs. He noted how people walking past looked her way. It was hard not to.

  ‘I wonder why she chose such a public place?’ Lila said.

  ‘Sometimes it’s easier to talk about difficult things in an open, public space like this one. If the story is true then she can’t be too happy about having to talk about it again.’

  Morel noticed that Lila had taken her hair down and put lipstick on since the team meeting. She was in a good mood, and Morel wondered whether maybe she had a date later on. It wasn’t the sort of question he’d think to ask her. But there was a definite glow about his young colleague.

  ‘Olivia?’ he said when they got close to the girl. She looked at them and nodded but didn’t get up. ‘Thanks for meeting us,’ Morel offered his hand. She extended hers but didn’t smile.

  ‘I didn’t want you in my house. I don’t want Diallo to know about all this. It’s in the past. My boyfriend is a jealous guy, the last thing I need is for him to hear about other men.’ Her voice was deep and measured, her gaze direct.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Morel said. It wasn’t the opening he’d expected.

  ‘There is no reason at all why he should know,’ Lila said, sitting next to Olivia.

  Olivia looked at Lila as if she hadn’t seen her there, which was possible, given how intently she’d been looking at Morel. She looked uneasy and Morel wondered about this Diallo character and his jealous nature.

  ‘We won’t keep you long at all but there is something we need to ask about.’

  ‘Armand.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Morel said. ‘About your relationship, I—’

  ‘What has he done
?’

  Lila started to say something but Morel shot her a warning look. ‘We don’t know yet that he has done anything particularly bad.’

  Olivia looked at him with a puzzled air. ‘Then why are you bugging me with your questions?’

  ‘Because we think he may be linked to something bad and that it might get worse. And I want to stop it if I can.’

  Olivia shook her head. ‘I wish I’d never met him,’ she said.

  She looked at Lila, as though seeking another woman’s understanding. Her next sentence surprised them both.

  ‘Though it’s long ago now, Armand broke my heart.’ She touched her chest, below her left breast. ‘It still hurts, right here.’

  ‘Can you please explain that? You were in a relationship with Armand and he left you? Is that it?’

  She surprised them by throwing her head back and laughing. They waited till she stopped. She looked at them both with eyes wet from laughter.

  ‘You don’t know the first thing about Armand, do you?’ She wiped her eyes and looked at Morel intensely again. He felt she was making her mind up about him and wondering how much to say.

  She stood up. Morel had been right. She was taller than him.

  ‘If you want to understand Armand, then it’s Amir you should be looking for,’ she said.

  ‘Amir?’ Morel said.

  TWENTY

  He always thought of Amir as a boy.

  Armand liked to get to school before his colleagues and often he arrived when it was still dark, to prepare for the morning classes. There’d be no one about but then he’d see the kid Amir slouching between the two sets of doors that led from the street into the school’s entrance hall, smoking filtered Camels and kicking the snow from his boots. In the overheated space the snow quickly formed dirty puddles beneath his feet.