After the Crash

by Michel Bussi

  The same as before: Lylie. Call me back FFS!

  Afterwards, he checked his messages. Nothing.

  There weren’t many people around on Rue de la Butte-auxCailles, with the exception of customers at the bakery, which was apparently the only place open on the street. The restaurants still appeared to be empty. Marc walked past the houses until he reached number 21. There, he found a small, one-storey building, set in the middle of a pretty little garden, about sixty square feet in area. It was the kind of tiny house that would have looked ridiculous in the French countryside, but here, in the centre of Paris, it was the pinnacle of luxury. A detached house, a bungalow, with a little garden of its own. Even bearing in mind the one hundred thousand francs per year he had been paid by Mathilde de Carville, such a house seemed beyond Grand-Duc’s means.

  The pale green shutters were closed. Just in case, Marc rang the bell, situated between the slightly rusted yellow letterbox and the security gate that needed a new coat of paint.

  No reply.

  He waited a minute, and rang again. Still nothing. Puzzled, he ran his hand through his hair. Grand-Duc was not at home. He took a closer look at the house, and the garden, searching for inspiration. He walked back to the street.

  And then he found it.

  On the right-hand side of the house, the corner of one of the window panes was broken. With a bit of luck, he might be able to get his hand through, grab the handle and open the window. Marc looked around: no one in the street was paying him any attention. He jumped over the low stone wall and went over to the window. He put his hand on the frame and, to his great surprise, it opened. The window had been merely pushed shut.

  For a moment, Marc was taken aback by this strange confluence of circumstances, this curious lack of security in a private detective’s home. But only for a moment. A second later, he was inside GrandDuc’s house.

  The bastard’s in, thought Malvina. She had watched Marc Vitral as he walked towards the house and climbed over the wall. Now I’ve got him, she thought, and he’s carrying a backpack. Surely GrandDuc’s notebook must be inside. It was all working out. Malvina attempted to move a little. Her neck, which she had twisted below the steering wheel, was hurting, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t mind staying in this position for hours and wearing a neck brace for the rest of her life if it meant she could catch Vitral on his way out, take that damn notebook off him and rip out its lie-filled pages one by one. She wanted to point her gun at Vitral and make him talk, too. She would find a way. When the time came, she would make the rules.

  The smell of smoke and ashes hit Marc instantly, catching in his throat. Marc coughed. He found himself in a little outhouse, a sort of storeroom containing various gardening and DIY tools. He pushed the door open, climbed up three concrete steps, and opened another door. This took him directly into what must be GrandDuc’s living room.

  The stench of smoke was much stronger here. Marc coughed again. His eyes were drawn towards the large fireplace just in front of him. One thing was obvious: an enormous quantity of paper had been burned in that hearth. He noted the empty archive boxes on the floor. Clearly, Grand-Duc had been tidying up some loose ends.

  Before Marc had time to analyse the situation, a strange noise made him freeze. Behind him, to his right, there was a sort of muffled rattling, a succession of short jolts, like the jammed mechanism of a mechanical toy. Marc turned around. To his shock, he discovered a huge vivarium filled with dragonflies, most of them lying inert on the damp floor. He moved closer. The only one still able to fly was the largest, with a red and gold thorax, and even it was struggling. As if it had noticed this new presence in the room, the insect was weakly flapping its wings. The sound Marc had heard was its wings hitting the glass wall. For a few moments, fascinated by the dragonfly’s desperate movements, Marc did not react. And then he thought: a dragonfly. A prisoner. Almost dead, like all the others in the glass cage. Without any further thought, Marc removed the glass lid that covered the vivarium and leaned it against the nearest wall. Instantly refreshed by the influx of oxygen, the Harlequin dragonfly took only a few wingbeats to escape from its prison. Marc watched it fly, hesitantly at first and then majestically. The dragonfly flew higher and higher, before coming to rest on the ceiling light.

  Marc’s heart raced. He felt the most intense, almost childish, joy at having saved the insect.

  His dragonfly.

  He would never have guessed that Grand-Duc collected them.

  But why would he let them suffer like that? Marc made a more detailed examination of Grand-Duc’s office. Everything was perfectly neat and tidy: pencils, notepaper, the strange little wine bottle (empty), the glass. There was something odd about this orderliness: as if Grand-Duc had wanted to tie up everything relating to the case. The burned archives. The sacrificed insects. And his testament, of course: the pale green notebook, which Grand-Duc must have finished writing the night of Lylie’s eighteenth birthday.

  So, what had happened? Why was the detective not here? Marc could sense an odd feeling of urgency in this house, as if someone had left in a hurry; the bottle that had not been put away, for instance; that broken window which had been pushed shut. And that smell, too. Not the smell of smoke from the fireplace, but another one, insidiously concealed by the first.

  Something was not quite right here . . .

  Suddenly, Marc’s face lit up. For there was no mystery about Grand-Duc’s last thoughts: all Marc had to do was turn to the last page of the notebook and read the final lines of his confession.

  Marc concentrated on the words. The last page of Grand-Duc’s notebook contained only about twenty lines. As always, the detective’s handwriting was small and regular.

  Now you know everything. Today is 29 September, 1998. It is twenty minutes to midnight. Everything is ready. Lylie is about to turn eighteen. I will put my pen back in the pot on my desk. I will sit at this desk, unfold the 23 December 1980 edition of the Est Républicain, and I will calmly shoot myself in the head. My blood will stain this yellowed newspaper. I have failed.

  All I leave behind me is this notebook. For Lylie. For whoever wishes to read it.

  In this notebook, I have reviewed all the clues, all the leads, all the theories I have found in eighteen years of investigation. It is all here, in these hundred or so pages. If you have read them carefully, you will now know as much as I do. Perhaps you will be more perceptive than me? Perhaps you will find something I have missed? The key to the mystery, if one exists. Perhaps . . .

  For me, it’s over.

  It would be an exaggeration to say that I have no regrets, but I have done my best.

  Slowly, Marc re-read the last line: I have done my best. For a while he was paralysed, attempting to suppress the feeling of intense unease that was rising within him. He went back a few lines and read again:

  I will calmly shoot myself in the head. My blood will stain this yellowed newspaper. I have failed.

  Marc looked up.

  Grand-Duc had planned to commit suicide.

  So why was there no trace of his blood on the desk? No newspaper. No gun. Clearly two days earlier, between 11.40 p.m. and midnight, Grand-Duc had decided not to kill himself after all . . . But why? Why undertake so much rigorous preparation, only to give up on the idea at the last minute?

  Had he lost his nerve? Had he decided to carry out the act somewhere else, at a later time? Or had he lied in this journal . . . about his sacrifice? And what about the rest? Or had he discovered something, at the last minute? A glimmer, a clue, one last lead . . .

  Marc read the final lines of the notebook again.

  Grand-Duc had left no clue behind. Only one thing was sure: he was not sitting dead at his desk with a bullet in his head.

  Marc closed the notebook and coughed again. The smell was getting worse. Another mechanical whirring made him turn his head. A dozen or so dragonflies were now flying through the air; the removal of the vivarium lid must have saved their lives. Those i
nsects were tougher than they looked. Marc smiled, and thought of Lylie, his dragonfly, the only one he truly wanted to save. And he would, even if it meant trapping her with a glass lid. Marc could feel his mind becoming muddled, the insects fluttering before his eyes like the imaginary flies that precede a dizzy spell.

  He stood up. He needed to move about.

  Jesus Christ, what was that smell?

  He took a few steps forward. The closer he got to the kitchen, the

  stronger the smell became. The kitchen was clean, tidy . . . even the bins had been emptied. But the stench seemed to be coming from that tall, narrow cupboard next to the sink.

  Slowly, cautiously, Marc opened the door. Almost immediately, the corpse fell to the floor next to his feet with a muffled thud.

  It was stiff. Like a wax model.

  Marc recoiled, pale with horror.

  The body lay on the floor in front of him. There was a dark red stain on the shirt.

  Crédule Grand-Duc.

  Dead. Just as he had said he would be in the notebook.

  Except that it would be fairly unusual for someone to shoot themselves in the chest, then hide their gun, clean up their blood and lock themselves in a cupboard.

  Marc took a step backward.

  The detective had not committed suicide. He had been murdered.

  18

  2 October, 1998, 11.27 a.m. Keeping her head down low inside the Rover Mini, Malvina de Carville picked up her telephone.

  Her call was answered immediately.

  ‘He’s here,’ Malvina whispered. ‘Vitral is in Grand-Duc’s house.’ ‘That’s to be expected. You didn’t leave any trace?’

  ‘No, Grandma. Don’t worry. I even cleaned up Grand-Duc’s hair

  and bits of skin from the fireplace.’

  She gave a high-pitched laugh. Her grandmother always treated

  her as if she were an idiot.

  ‘Grandma?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He might find Grand-Duc’s body. I hid it, but it . . . it smells

  really bad . . .’

  She sensed her grandmother thinking at the other end of the line. ‘Grandma?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mathilde de Carville replied finally. ‘Well, if he finds it, too

  bad. In fact, it might be for the best. He broke into the house; he

  will have been seen by witnesses. He’ll leave fingerprints all over the

  house. Perhaps it’s the best thing that could have happened.’ Malvina shivered with pleasure. Her grandmother was right, as

  always. Marc Vitral was going to regret entering that house. ‘Grandma? He’s carrying a backpack. I think Grand-Duc’s notebook must be inside. Do you think I . . .’

  Mathilde’s voice was cold. ‘No, Malvina, don’t do anything. Just follow him, that’s all. You must not do anything, especially in broad

  daylight. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Grandma. I understand. I’ll call you back.’

  Under the passenger seat, Malvina weighed the Mauser in her

  hand. Yes, her grandmother was almost always right. But not this

  time . . .

  A few dragonflies buzzed around Grand-Duc’s corpse. Marc retched. He could feel himself panicking, but he had to get a grip on it: he could not afford to have an agoraphobic fit now, in this house.

  Should he call the police?

  Marc thought quickly. He had entered Grand-Duc’s house through a broken window. He had left his fingerprints everywhere. It was not a good idea. Most importantly, the police would spend hours questioning him in the local station, and he couldn’t allow that to happen. Not now. Lylie needed him.

  He looked down at the corpse. He was no pathologist, but it seemed clear that the murder had occurred recently. The rigidity, the smell . . . it all led him to believe that the body had been here for only a few hours. Marc thought again about Grand-Duc’s last words in his notebook. His planned suicide. How was that connected to this crime? What had he discovered that had made someone want to seal his lips forever?

  A dragonfly flew down and buzzed under his nose. He waved it away irritably.

  The timing did not fit. Grand-Duc had been killed a few hours ago, not two days ago, on Lylie’s birthday. Marc looked around the living room again, at the desk, the fireplace, the vivarium.

  The whole thing was surreal. The dragonflies were waking from their apparent death one by one and flying around the room. They kept colliding with windows, drawn to the flashes of daylight that pierced the closed shutters.

  Marc decided to check the other rooms in the house. He found nothing suspicious, but at least the methodical search enabled him to calm down, to breathe almost normally. He went into the hallway, and immediately the blood began to thunder through his veins again. The wall of the hallway was covered with photographs. Nazim Ozan, Lylie, views of Mont Terri . . .

  Suddenly he froze, his eyes glued to one particular picture: his grandmother. For some reason, Grand Duc had kept a photo of Nicole in the hallway of his house. In the photograph, she looked much younger – not even fifty. She was standing on the beach, in Dieppe. Marc’s heart was beating hard, half in anger, half in shock. In his mind, his grandmother had always looked the way she looked now: a woman of sixty-five, faded by years of sacrifice. He had practically no memory at all of this smiling, ample-breasted woman with an almost seductive gleam in her eyes.

  He turned away. He had to get out, quickly. Agoraphobia . . . he could feel an attack coming. He thought confusedly that before leaving Grand-Duc’s house, he should get a cloth and wipe everything he had touched: the vivarium lid, the desk and chair, the door handles, the window . . . But he didn’t want to, didn’t have the time.

  He just had to get out of there. Escape the putrefied air of this house and breathe fresh air again.

  What did he have to fear, after all? He hadn’t killed Grand-Duc. The detective had been dead for several hours. He had been a long way from Butte-aux-Cailles at the time of the murder.

  Marc climbed through the open window, taking deep breaths.

  Yes, he could forget about cleaning the house. There were more urgent things to consider.

  Finding Lylie, first and foremost.

  He also had to call his grandmother, in Dieppe. To try to understand. To discover why Grand-Duc had been murdered.

  He did have an idea, as far as the last question was concerned. An idea that was directly related to his next destination.

  As Marc left, he did not notice the dragonflies escaping through the open window behind him, flying away towards the horizon.

  Malvina watched Marc Vitral approaching in the wing mirror of her Rover Mini. He didn’t have a clue, the dickhead. Malvina’s hand slid under the seat, fumbled around, then found the Mauser L110. A few feet more, and he would be within range. She would shove the gun barrel into his gut, and he would have no choice but to hand over his stupid backpack, with that shit-for-brains detective’s notebook stashed inside.

  After that, she would see. Maybe she would let him off lightly: just shoot off one of his balls. Or both . . . She hadn’t decided yet.

  He was only about thirty feet away.

  Malvina lifted her head and tightened her grip on the revolver. A few old people were chatting outside the bakery at the end of the street. She didn’t care. Those senile bastards were too far away

  – they wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. She turned towards the pavement, just to make sure.

  One second later, she froze.

  Three kids were sticking their tongues out at her. They could only have been three or four years old. Their fat, snotty-nosed faces were watching her through the window, as if she were playing hide-andseek, crouched down between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat. Peek-a-boo, we see you!

  A primary school teacher came along and grabbed the three jokers. Malvina sat up straight. Stupid little brats!

  She realised a whole kindergarten class was walking past her car, at least thir
ty kids, on their way to the cafeteria or the playground.

  Marc Vitral smiled politely at the children and their teacher as he passed them in the street, then walked quickly away, lost in his thoughts, without even a second glance at the Rover Mini parked by the side of the road.

  ‘Hello, Grandma? It’s Malvina. I missed him, Grandma . . .’ ‘What do you mean, you missed him? Marc Vitral? You mean

  you shot at him and . . .’

  ‘No, I didn’t even do that. I didn’t have time.’

  Malvina de Carville heard her grandmother give a sigh of relief. ‘All right, Malvina. What is he doing now?’

  ‘He’s walking to the metro. Shall I follow him?’

  ‘Don’t move a muscle, Malvina.’

  ‘But . . .’

  Was her grandmother crazy?

  ‘But Grandma . . . what about Grand-Duc’s notebook?’ ‘I told you: don’t move!’

  Malvina knew she could still follow Marc, Mauser in hand, trap

  him in one of the metro’s passages, take the backpack from him,

  throw him onto the tracks . . .

  ‘Come home, Malvina. Come back to the Roseraie. It’s better

  this way.’

  ‘But I can still get him, Grandma. Believe me, I can . . .’ Her grandmother’s voice was both gentle and firm, as it was

  when she would read the Bible to Malvina before bedtime. ‘Malvina, listen to me. Vitral has undoubtedly read Grand-Duc’s

  notebook. His first reaction was perfectly logical: he went to GrandDuc’s house. He must have found the detective’s corpse there, so his

  second reaction will be equally predictable.’

  Malvina did not understand. What point was her grandmother

  trying to make?

  ‘Come home, Malvina. Marc Vitral will come to us, here in

  Coupvray. He will come to the Roseraie.’

  Malvina cursed her own stupidity.

  A little black dot grew larger in her rear-view mirror, moving in

  and out of sight. After performing a few loop-the-loops, the handsome red-and-gold dragonfly landed on the bonnet of the blue

  Rover Mini.