They chose a new cafe, two steps away from the apartment where Nina’s favourite writer Mikhail Bulgakov once lived. Katya ordered soup but Nina, ever conscious of the money, stuck to a coffee.
‘You look wonderful,’ Nina told her old friend. And it was true. Katya had always been pretty but she was particularly radiant.
‘So do you,’ Katya responded. But Nina knew she was being kind. She knew she had aged a great deal over the past few years.
While they waited for their order to arrive, they chatted about their respective lives. Like Nina, Katya had gone on to qualify as a nurse and she was working in a hospital now. But where Nina worked five days a week, Katya worked two. She was married to a man who had an import-export business, she said, without giving any further details. And she was pregnant.
‘That’s wonderful! I’m happy for you,’ Nina said.
‘And you? No baby plans?’
Nina shook her head. ‘God, no.’ Seeing Katya’s face, she regretted the way she’d said it. ‘I mean, I don’t think I am cut out to have children. It is such a big responsibility. Volodya would like to, I think, but as for me—’
The coffee and the soup arrived. The two of them sat in silence for a while.
‘You know,’ Katya said, ‘you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nina asked. The coffee was strong and sweet. She took small sips, savouring it.
Katya seemed to hesitate. ‘I feel as though you are still dwelling on the time we spent, back at the orphanage. The conditions we saw . . . but we did our best for those kids.’
‘Maybe.’ All of a sudden the coffee tasted bitter. She put her cup down. ‘I had a letter from Dima,’ she said, and saw Katya’s eyes widen.
‘How did he find you?’
Nina shrugged her shoulders. She knew better than to tell Katya that the boy had always known where to find her.
‘I don’t know. Does it matter? I knew, somehow, that I would hear from him again.’
She looked at the table and at Katya’s hand, carrying the spoon from the bowl to her lips. The ring on her slender finger was studded with diamonds.
‘I think he may be in some sort of trouble,’ she said, lowering her voice though they were quite alone in their corner of the room.
‘Why are you whispering?’ Katya asked.
‘I’m not sure.’ Nina smiled. She looked at her friend, whose figure gave no indication yet of the new life she was carrying. At this stage the baby was probably little more than a tiny beating heart. Yet so much tenderness and hope had already been invested in this unborn child.
Nina pulled out the letter she’d received and handed it over to Katya.
‘I thought maybe you could help me translate it. He’s written in French.’
‘In French! You always said he was clever. I hope my French is good enough. You know I only studied it for a couple of years.’
‘Katya, did you ever – you know – tell anyone about what happened?’
Katya looked at her. ‘Never.’ Katya’s eyes clouded over. ‘You know I had mixed feelings about what you did. Interfering like that in the boy’s fate. What you did could have landed you in jail. But I never told a soul.’
‘Thank you.’
Nina waited in silence while Katya read the letter. When she’d finished she looked up at her friend with troubled eyes.
‘You’re right. He does seem to be in trouble.’ She slid the letter across the table to Nina. ‘He is asking for your help.’ She pointed to the words and read them out loud. ‘Aides-moi, it says. ‘Help me.’
THIRTY-TWO
It wasn’t seven yet and there was nowhere to park. Morel circled the block a couple of times. By the fourth time he entered the street, a car was pulling out. Morel took the empty parking space and waited.
Over the next twenty minutes, several men exited the building. There was no sign of Mathilde. Morel sat and thought about Marie Latour with a heavy heart. He rubbed his eyes. The case was threatening to overwhelm him.
If only Mathilde would appear. He had really tried to stay away since driving here last, by telling himself there was nothing to be gained by following her. But here he was again, watching her building. He could barely recognize himself.
Morel tried to guess which of the men exiting the building was Mathilde’s husband. Was it the bald one with the pinstriped suit? The good-looking one in jeans and a loose white cotton shirt which he wore untucked, whose hair was too long and definitely needed a trim? He hoped it wasn’t that one. Or the one with the violin case who finished his cigarette as he stepped onto the street and stubbed it out with his shoe.
It was 7.22 when Mathilde appeared with her son. He was wearing his school bag on his back and Mathilde was wearing a navy blue dress and the same sandals she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her. They walked quickly, as though they were running late. He knew the school wasn’t far and that she would walk back this way once she had dropped the boy off.
Morel looked at his watch. There wasn’t any time to linger. He couldn’t be late for Marie Latour’s friend. With one last look at the building and the floor he knew Mathilde lived on, he drove away.
‘How did she look? Did she look – did she seem . . .’
‘She looked peaceful. But we’re certain that she didn’t die of natural causes,’ Morel said.
There seemed little point in telling Guy Charon that his old friend’s wife whom he had been so fond of had been stripped naked and drowned in a bath, before being dressed and made to look like a geriatric hooker, with excessive make-up and a cheap red wig.
Charon had called the police after turning up at Marie Latour’s house for lunch on Sunday. She hadn’t come to the door.
It had been a long day for Morel’s team.
Thankfully, the details about the killings hadn’t made it into the papers. It was only a matter of time, though.
The man sitting before him looked so helpless that Morel almost felt like leaning over and giving him a hug.
‘I’m very sorry, Monsieur Charon,’ Morel said again. And he was. Angry and upset that another woman had been killed. He’d never felt as powerless as he did now.
‘I was Marie’s closest friend, you see,’ the man said. ‘Since her husband died. I knew Hector would want me to look out for her. She wasn’t used to doing anything on her own.’ The memory of the dead woman stopped him for a moment. He shook his head. ‘But the fact is, it wasn’t just me looking out for her. The fact is, we looked out for each other. I never thought . . .’ He paused and lowered his head.
‘No one ever thinks about these things until they happen. Why should you?’ Morel said.
‘But she was worried,’ the man said, looking up at him. ‘I should have listened.’
Morel leaned forward. ‘Worried about what?’ he said, though he suspected he knew.
‘That man and the boy. They’d made her uneasy.’
‘What did she say about them?’
‘She said the boy was strange.’
‘And the man?’
‘He was a con artist.’
‘Is that what Madame Latour said?’
‘No, that’s what I told her. That these sorts of people prey on people they think are gullible enough to believe them.’
‘But what did she say?’
‘That he seemed nice enough. But then she is a good woman. I’ve never heard her say an unkind thing about anyone.’ He seemed to realize that he was using the present tense and he swallowed, visibly shaken. ‘She was a good woman.’
For a moment it looked like he might cry and Morel felt a moment of panic. But then he seemed to pull himself together.
Morel picked up the picture of Armand that Amelia Berg had given him.
‘Take a look at this. Did you ever see this man, in any of your outings with Madame Latour? The one on the right?’
Guy looked carefully at the photograph. He shook his head. ‘No. Who is he? Is this the man who di
stributes those pamphlets? Is he the one who killed Marie?’
Morel took the photo from Guy’s hands.
‘We think he might be,’ he said carefully.
‘What are you doing to catch him?’ Guy asked.
‘Everything in our power.’ And yet we can’t seem to track him down, Morel thought.
‘Well I hope you find him in a hurry. Marie didn’t deserve to die,’ Guy said, his voice breaking.
Morel nodded.
As he walked the old man to the top of the stairs he felt the full weight of the investigation on his shoulders. Don’t blame yourself, a voice inside his head said. His old boss, who knew Morel better than anyone else he’d worked with, had told him you had to shoulder the blame as a team. It wasn’t healthy for a single person to carry the entire load. It was how some policemen ended up leaving the force, or leaving this world altogether. One day they just gave up. Their wives or children walked in on them hanging from a rope or sitting in their cars with the windows fogged up.
Morel told himself that he had tried to keep Marie Latour out of harm’s way. It wasn’t his fault that she had chosen to return to her house without alerting the police. By the time her daughter had checked her answering machine and heard her mother’s message, it had already been too late.
They had dozens of bodies out on the streets looking for Le Bellec. He wasn’t alone in this. He reminded himself that there were others who shared the burden of responsibility.
But it was a waste of time. As he headed back up the stairs he could not deny the tide of despair rising inside him. Isabelle Dufour. Elisabeth Guillou. Marie Latour. Their deaths were on his conscience.
The call from Ivan Golyubov came in the next day just after 2 p.m. Morel had been about to walk up to Perrin’s office. He was bracing himself for another bollocking. The papers had begun questioning the competence of the police force. Perrin took this sort of negative media personally.
Lila caught him just as he was heading out the door.
‘Morel. It’s for you.’
She looked worn out, like the rest of them. Yet she had a smile on her face. Despite the strain they were all under. Morel wondered whether it had anything to do with the Moroccan-born man who sat in Marco’s spot now with his head down, going through the case notes. Marco was back on duty at Irina Volkoff’s place. At least during the day. She had lasted one night with her friend before deciding she’d had enough and wanted to sleep in her own bed.
‘Monsieur Morel,’ came the Russian policeman’s drawling voice. ‘I believe I have some new and interesting information for you.’
‘Really? I could do with some of that,’ Morel said. He stood by Lila’s desk, where he’d picked up the phone, and rubbed his eyes.
‘I have been speaking to a woman who worked as a nursing aide at the orphanage where the boy was staying just before he was adopted. Dima was five when they moved him from the baby home to the internat, the older children’s ward. He was adopted a year later.’
‘Who adopted him?’
‘This was difficult to find out, believe me. I sense a great deal of reluctance on the part of the orphanage director. It was a French man. His name is Armand Le Bellec.’
So far, so good, Morel thought.
‘Was the adoption legal?’
‘The paperwork looks OK. But that doesn’t mean much. We’ve had a few issues with some of these adoptions. The government is trying to deal with this now. It’s a slow process but I think we’re getting there.’
‘Where did the boy come from? Can I talk to the woman? The nursing aide?’ Morel asked. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Akil lean towards Lila from his side of the desk to tell her something. She leaned back towards him with a smile. She seemed strangely pliant. Nothing like the standoffish Lila Morel knew.
‘I wouldn’t object to it but she says she doesn’t want to speak to any foreign police. She wasn’t that happy speaking to me either, believe me.’
‘OK.’
‘I can ask her, if there is anything else you want to know?’
At 4 p.m. Nina closed the door to the nursery and headed into the nurses’ station to make herself a cup of tea. As she put the kettle on, she ran through the conversation she had had earlier with the burly police officer. He’d shown up at her work. Luckily she had been due for a lunch break. They had sat in a coffee shop across the road, away from inquisitive eyes.
He had been nice enough. He’d asked lots of questions but he’d been polite and patient, waiting for her to finish her sentences before he moved on to the next one.
He had wanted so many details about Dima. She had tried her best to answer but really she knew so little about Dima’s past. Where he had come from and why he’d been delivered to the orphanage. And the stories were always the same, one way or another.
As she poured boiling water into a teapot, she thought how strange it was that the things that mattered most when it came to Dima were the things the police officer hadn’t asked. In any case she would have found it hard to be truthful. He was a total stranger. How could he possibly understand?
Still, part of her would have liked to unburden herself and to speak of her loss. To try to describe the intimacy she and Dima had shared.
She sat in the kitchen taking small sips of her tea. She imagined the questions she would have asked in his place and the answers he would have received:
HIM: Could you describe your relationship with the boy?
HER: He was like a son to me. Or maybe like a brother. A son, a brother, a friend. I know that seems vague but what I got from him was so intense and so complete. It was more than one thing.
HIM: Did you and Dima spend much time together?
HER: As much as was possible without attracting attention. Everyone did their job in such a businesslike way. There was no room for sentimentality.
HIM: Describe the time you spent together.
HER: I talked to him about anything and everything. I took him in my arms and rocked him gently at night. He had trouble sleeping. I didn’t dare walk with him down the hallways or take him outside, though I could see he pined for movement and for the sensations he was being deprived of. The feel of the wind against his cheek, the sound of his steps on the frosty ground, the night’s chill against his back. The smells of the forest. But I feared we would be caught and then we would not be allowed to spend that time together any more.
HIM: So what did you do instead?
HER: I did my best to keep him engaged. Even though I could see he was withdrawing further and further into himself. I read to him sometimes. I even let him listen to music, with the headphones on so no one would hear. But this happened rarely. It was too risky, for both of us.
HIM: You loved him, didn’t you?
HER: Yes. Yes, I did. I still do.
HIM: What about him? How do you think he feels about you?
HER: Now? (A lengthy pause, while she feels her heart break all over again.) Now I’m not sure.
She hesitates, but not for long. She knows the answer. Her heart tells her she’s right.
‘Yes. He loves me too,’ she whispers.
When Morel got home, he went upstairs to see his father but the old man was asleep. He seemed to sleep a great deal more these days. Maybe it was the pills he was taking.
In the kitchen, Morel found a note in Augustine’s hand, next to a bowl of pasta.
‘Don’t forget to eat.’
Morel set the bowl in the microwave and turned to the fridge to see whether it contained an open bottle of wine. The knock on the door startled him. Before opening it to see who it was, he looked at the time. 9.30 p.m.
Mathilde was standing there, looking at him angrily.
‘Jesus Christ,’ was all he could think to say. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I thought since you seem to enjoy stalking me I should return the favour.’
He couldn’t think of anything smart to say in return and instead just looked at her in silence.
Morel followed her into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine while she looked around, opening the cupboards and the fridge.
‘Do you find this problematic, when I walk into your life like this and examine your things?’
‘No,’ he said, watching her.
‘Well, I do,’ she said, turning to him. ‘I do mind having someone stalking me.’
‘I’m sorry. I know it was wrong and it was intrusive. I just wanted to see you.’
‘In that case, why not pick up the phone and call? Wouldn’t that be the normal thing to do?’
‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged his shoulders. All of a sudden he couldn’t be bothered explaining.
He watched her pour herself a glass of wine and take a long sip from it. She held the glass and stared at him.
‘Do you remember why we split up?’
‘Yes. No. I—’
‘You told me that you needed to experience other things, that it would be a mistake for us to stay together as we were so young. You wanted to meet other women and explore what life had to offer.’
‘I—’
‘It was perfectly natural, of course. I’m not blaming you. You were probably right. We were so young. I wasn’t too happy about it at the time but eventually I got over you. I imagine you’ve had plenty of women. I know you’ve done well professionally. So what I don’t get is why you’re following me around now. What is it you want from me?’
Morel kept silent. What was he supposed to say when he hardly knew himself what he wanted from her? He felt her eyes on him still. She took a step closer and touched his arm. In the ensuing silence he heard the ping of the microwave, reminding him that he had warmed something up and that the food was ready.
‘I need you to leave me alone, Serge. I have enough on my plate without you following me around like this. Either you stay away from me or I’ll have to report you to your bosses.’
The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) Page 24