by Michel Bussi
“Yes . . . that’s the girl who died after being raped.”
It was all I could do not to hug her. As I had anticipated, she had confused the photograph of Morgane Avril with the face of Magali Verron. I wasn’t going mad. I hadn’t invented that incredible resemblance! Might this old lady become my ally?
I unfolded the article.
“Look at the date, Denise.”
She adjusted her glasses as if the clarity of her vision needed adjusting to the nearest millimetre.
“Thursday, June 17th, 2004? My goodness . . . That terrible business seemed so recent . . .”
On the opposite wall, the Shinkansen was making its way between the skyscrapers of a Japanese city, perhaps Osaka.
“Two days?” I suggested.
Denise gave a tinkly laugh. She settled herself on a wooden chair with a wicker seat. Arnold took three leaps and landed on her knees. With a hint of irony in her voice, she told me:
“I know I’m losing my sense of time a little. But two days seems a bit much, doesn’t it? But now that I think about it, the newspaper’s right. Jacques was still alive when it all happened. He left me in 2005 . . .”
She raised a wrinkled hand, gesturing to me to take a seat. She still hadn’t asked who I was or why I was asking her these questions. I took a chair and sat down facing her. Arnold sniffed me as if he was seriously thinking of switching knees.
It was all I could do to hide my excitement.
Denise remembered the murder of Morgane Avril!
It made sense, because she had been living here when it happened. But she didn’t seem to have made the connection between the two girls who had died ten years apart.
“You’re right,” I said. “This is the photograph of Morgane Avril, the girl who was raped and murdered in Yport in 2004. But I came here to talk to you about the other girl, Magali—the one who killed herself the day before yesterday by jumping off the cliff.”
Her trembling hand ventured through Arnold’s long fur. She looked at me as if she hadn’t understood, as if she was about to ask me to repeat it, and then slowly uttered eight words:
“I was there when the corpse was found.”
Of course, Denise. So was I. We were both there. All three of us, if you count Le Medef.
She closed her eyes. I wondered if she had fallen asleep. She spoke slowly, as if describing a dream:
“I was walking on the beach. It was very early, I think, but it wasn’t all that cold.” Her hand rubbed the belly of the Shih Tzu, who groaned with pleasure. “Arnold was very young at the time . . .”
An alarm went off somewhere in my brain.
Arnold? Very young?
“It was quite a strange day in Yport,” Denise continued. “Young people were dancing all over the place outside the casino. There was music, all night, rock music. I used to dance to rock music when I was their age, although a different kind, not the sort they were playing that evening. And it’s strange, don’t you think, that young people have changed their music but given it the same name? They all looked very happy. Before the tragedy, of course. Before they found the body of that poor girl at the bottom of the cliff.”
I fought the urge to grab that hairy bundle off Denise’s lap and hurl it at the ceiling—anything to shock her brain into focusing on what happened two days ago, not ten years ago. I wanted to hear her confirm that I had never touched the corpse of Magali Verron.
Arnold pricked up his ears as I raised my voice:
“Madame Joubain, I didn’t come here for you to talk to me about Morgane Avril, but about what happened when we met on Wednesday, two days go. You remember, when you went for walkies with Arnold on the beach at Yport.”
A smile brightened Denise’s face. Arnold’s tail began wagging at the word “walkies.”
“My goodness, that’s true, I had gone for a walk . . . So had Arnold. But it was so long ago. I don’t go out very much these days, you know. And besides, Arnold’s feet . . .”
What was this mad old cow on about?
So long ago . . . She was walking on the beach at Yport with Arnold only the day before yesterday!
Denise went on, as if unable to stem the tide of nostalgia.
“I’m like those abandoned trains out there. Like this rusty railway line. I sit here waiting and remembering. Every now and again a taxi comes to take me to the doctor, or to take Arnold to the vet. The home care lady even brings me my shopping.”
I stared at the frames on the wall. The trains were spinning before my eyes now. Denise followed the direction of my gaze.
“Jacques and I used to travel the world. It didn’t cost us a penny. He was a brilliant engineer . . . In March 1962, the Baikal-Amur Magistral got stuck in snow just past Tayshet and—”
“I saw you at the police station, the day before yesterday,” I cut in. Arnold pricked his ears and bared his teeth, which were the size of melon pips. “You were coming out of Captain Piroz’s office.”
“Are you a police officer?” Denise stammered.
“No. No, quite the opposite.”
I immediately regretted saying “quite the opposite.” At the risk of being bitten by Arnold, I rested a hand on Denise’s knee.
“Are you frightened? Have you been asked to forget the incident the day before yesterday? Not to talk to anyone about it? Especially journalists?”
Denise leapt to her feet. Arnold squealed as he slipped down her legs.
“Are you a journalist? Is that it? You’ve come to dig up that old story?”
I got up too. Her wrinkled face was level with my neck. I was almost shouting:
“We spent over a quarter of an hour on the beach together, waiting for the police to arrive. You covered the body of that girl with my jacket. The girl had a red scarf around her neck . . .”
Denise took a few steps backwards. Hanging on a coat stand near the door I could see a grey raincoat, a straw hat and a beige silk scarf. Our eyes froze on that bit of fabric, then met.
I read the terror in Denise’s eyes.
My hands settled on her shoulders as my voice became more gentle.
“I don’t mean you any harm. I don’t want to alarm you. All I want . . .”
At first I didn’t understand what was going on. She rested her right hand on my left wrist, in a movement that seemed perfectly natural.
Then a loud beep exploded in the room as a red warning light blinked on her wrist, on her watch.
What I had assumed was a watch . . .
Denise, like a lot of old people who live alone, wore an alarm bracelet, presumably connected to her doctor’s phone or the emergency services.
Damn it . . .
The paramedics would be here in a few minutes if she didn’t deactivate that thing.
The phone rang a second later. She took a step to go and answer it, but I held her back by her sleeve. As soon as the answering machine clicked on, a worried voice rang out.
“Madame Joubain? Dr. Charrier here. Is something wrong? Please pick up, Madame Joubain, is something wrong?”
The doctor was going to raise the alarm.
I had to get out of there . . .
I tried my luck. One last time.
“Denise, I beg you, look at me. Surely you recognise me?”
Her eyes passed through me as if I were a ghost, and the only interesting thing about me was the door I was standing in front of. Then, reassured by the imminent arrival of an ambulance, she replied in a calmer voice:
“Yes, I recognise you. You were near me, on the beach . . .”
Before I had time to savour that last hope, the old woman took my hand.
“You were younger too. Unlike the other boys, you weren’t dancing. You could have done. You had both your legs in those days . . . You . . .”
I couldn’t hear another word. I dashe
d outside, leaving the door open. The last image I had of the old railway station was Arnold running three metres into the parking lot and then barking as if to tell me never to set foot here again.
I darted through the gap between two carriages on breeze blocks, and ran to the abandoned railway line that stretched into infinity like a huge zip fastener a giant had closed over secrets buried underground.
“Hello, Mona?”
For the first time, I had decided to lie to her. At least by omission. I wasn’t goiong to tell her that old Denise Joubain couldn’t remember the accident two days ago . . . but that she had a perfect memory of the murder of Morgane Avril ten years before.
That she muddled everything, including the day when she had met me.
That she thought I was someone else.
That she was, quite simply, mad.
The phone rang out. The sleepers passed beneath my feet like an endless ladder to hell. In a hundred metres or so I would have to leave the abandoned railway to venture among the sloping fields of the Pays de Caux. The drizzle had turned into a cold fog that froze my skin, but at least it meant that if there were any hikers about in this weather, all they would see of me was a vague silhouette.
I was alone.
Christian Le Medef had disappeared. Denise Joubain was mad.
I was the only witness to the death of Magali Verron.
I nervously gripped my phone in my hind.
The only witness, apart from the cops. Apart from Piroz, his deputy and all the officers from the Fécamp brigade who had bent over that corpse.
No reply. Try again.
I pressed the green button on my iPhone.
“Hello, Mona?”
She picked up.
“So? Did you find your old woman?”
“No. Or rather yes, but it’s complicated . . .”
“Tell me!”
“Later, Mona.
I stopped under a hazel tree. Thick cold drops fell from the branches and then exploded on the synthetic fabric of my jacket.
“Can I borrow your car?”
For a few moments all I could hear at the other end was the sound of pebbles rolled by the sea, then Mona’s playful voice asked,
“To hand yourself over to the cops?”
“No, Mona. To go to Neufchâtel.”
“What?”
“To Neufchâtel-en-Bray. Carmen Avril, Morgane’s mother, still runs her holiday home there, the Dos-d’ne. It’s less than an hour’s drive away. I need check all the details. Mona . . . I need proof, I need you to . . .”
“O.K., big man. Don’t get overheated. Take my car if you like. It isn’t going anywhere, it’s parked on the sea wall by the casino . . .”
I didn’t even try to put into words the gratitude that I felt for Mona.
“By the casino? Damn! There’s no way I can go anywhere near Yport beach in broad daylight, even in this weather. They’d nab me straight away . . .”
Mona sighed like a mother who has no choice but to yield to her little boy’s whim.
“You’re a pain, Jamal! I’ll leave my Fiat by the road out of Yport, past the campsite, near the tennis courts. I’ll leave the ignition key inside. The door and the trunk haven’t closed properly in years . . .”
“Thanks, Mona. I’ll prove to you that you’re backing the right . . .”
“Shut up! Hang up before I change my mind . . .”
Stuffing the phone into my pocket, I thought again of the postman, the brown envelope, my name on it, Martin Denain’s address. An address that only Mona knew, Mona, to whom I had neglected to confess that there wasn’t a single witness who could confirm my version of events . . .
Which of us was betraying the other?
I set off again along my icy path. The fog was getting thicker. I couldn’t distinguish between the rows of poplars dividing the fields and the electricity pylons leading to the nuclear plant.
My testimony against everyone else’s.
Who would believe me now?
Who would believe in my innocence?
No one . . .
No one but you?
At this point of no return into the depths of madness, are you still willing to believe what I’ve been telling you since the beginning?
I’m not making any of this up.
Are you still willing to back me?
I’m of sound mind. I haven’t raped or killed anyone.
And I’m going to prove it.
25
IS SOMETHING WRONG?
The Fiat 500 sped at 130 kilometres an hour along the A13. My foot had been pressing the pedal to the floor for twenty kilometres so that I wouldn’t lose speed as the road climbed gently towards the Pays de Bray.
I regularly checked that no one was following me, though there was really no need: the motorway was deserted apart from the occasional articulated lorry that appeared and then disappeared in my rear-view mirror. There was more traffic coming in the opposite direction. British drivers heading south, scrupulously respecting the speed limit, with skis and suitcases on the roof. Far from certain that they would get to the mountains before the snow had melted. Intermittent rain kept the wipers squeaking their complaints as they spread the scattered drops across the windshield rather than wiping them away.
The monotonous plateau of the Pays de Caux suddenly gave way to a landscape made up of a patchwork of hedges. The motorway, after the long climb, toppled abruptly into the void before climbing up the slope on the other side. It was the first time I’d set eyes on the Pays de Bray, a kind of broad clay valley dug into the chalky plateau. Almost immediately I turned left in the direction of Neufchâtel-en-Bray.
The new houses seemed to have sprouted up along the interchange like mushrooms on a log. There were no toll-booths on the motorway, and Rouen was fifteen kilometres away. The sprawl of suburban housing had devoured the countryside for miles around.
The Fiat’s thermometer indicated a temperature of 3 °C. In the middle of the afternoon, I had expected to enter a ghost town populated by a few old people braving the cold and the icy pavement between one shop and the next.
As soon as I’d crossed the bridge over the Arques, the anarchy of double-parked cars almost forced me to slam on the brakes.
What on earth were they all doing here?
A moment later, hordes of children in multicoloured caps began swarming through the maze of cars.
Four thirty. The end of the school day!
I turned at the first intersection to avoid the crowds. After weaving through a labyrinth of streets, between no-entry signs and dead ends, I parked in a deserted alleyway. I pulled my Nike cap low over my face, tugged my trousers down far enough to hide my prosthesis, then got out of the Fiat 500. The pavement was covered with revolting slush, in which my stiff leg drew a thin channel.
I plunged into the first available shop, its windows misted over.
I was betting that Piroz hadn’t alerted every station in the region, and that the police wouldn’t yet have managed to display my portrait in all the shop windows.
A greengrocer. The shopkeeper was busy building a pyramid of apples.
Organic fruit and vegetables, it said on a sign above the till.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a gîte—the Dos-d’ne. Is it still run by Carmen Avril?”
The shopkeeper straightened. He was almost bald, apart from a tuft of hair that stood up like the leaves on a pineapple.
“What do you want from her?”
I tried to allay his suspicion with a forced smile.
“I’m a journalist, researching an article about the murder of her daughter, Morgane.”
Pineapple Stalk looked me up and down, much the same way his customers would examine a piece of fruit to see if it was ripe. I’d be fine as long as h
e didn’t squeeze my leg.
“I don’t think she’ll be too happy about people troubling her with that kind of thing today. That’s all in the past.
“Ten years, to be precise,” I said. “They want to reopen the case, a few months before the statute of limitation runs out.”
Without bothering to reply, he turned towards a display of berries. In the middle of winter, this idiot was selling organic strawberries, organic raspberries, organic cherries . . .
The sound of footsteps behind me made me start. A red-faced girl was carrying three boxes of red, white and green cabbages. Panting, she pushed past me unceremoniously.
“Carmen won’t mind. She’s not crazy about journalists, but even after all this time she’ll talk to anyone who might help her catch the bastard who killed her daughter.”
Pineapple Stalk shrugged and grunted in his corner.
“They’ll make us look like a village of weirdos.
The girl arranged the three boxes on the floor in a staggered row.
“You’ll find the Dos-d’ne a kilometre beyond Neufchâtel, on the Foucarmont road. You can’t miss the Gîtes de France sign.”
Just as I was leaving the shop she added, like a threat, “Whatever you do, don’t try and sweet-talk the woman.”
Some children were walking ahead of me as I returned to my car. Three abreast on the road to avoid the potholes in the pavement, which had turned into icy puddles. I didn’t see a single parent accompanying them; perhaps they only picked up their children when the weather was fine.
That suited me. Fewer witnesses.
I blew on my cold fingers and opened the door of the Fiat.
My hand paused on the metal handle, as if frozen there.
There was a brown envelope on the passenger seat.
For Jamal Salaoui.
That handwriting, so familiar to me now.
Mona. She was the only one who knew I was going to Neufchâtel . . . but it was impossible for her to be here! How could she have got hold of another car? How could she have got to Bray before me, when I’d been driving with my foot down all the way? How could she have followed me when I’d spent half the journey staring into the rear-view mirror?