Never Forget

by Michel Bussi

  I wasn’t about to tell her I didn’t share her opinion. She led me into an office, then commanded,

  “Wait for me here.”

  Madame Avril disappeared into an adjoining room, presumably the one where she archived all her information about the Avril–Camus case. During her absence I took a good around me. It seemed to be a nursery that Carmen had converted into an office. The wallpaper pattern was made up of aeroplanes and balloons. Everywhere I looked there were pictures of Morgane as a child. Morgane playing at being a doctor. Morgane playing at being a cowboy. Morgane playing at being a fireman.

  Strangely, I didn’t see a single photograph of her sister Océane.

  Carmen returned with a box that she set down on a table balanced on a pair of trestles.

  “I will leave that here for you to consult, Captain, and I’ll be back with you in a minute.”

  She disappeared into the adjacent room again while I pounced on the box. After feverishly flicking through some loose pages, I stopped on the photocopy of a document from Fécamp police station.

  DNA results—Morgane Avril—Monday, June 7th, 2004—Regional Forensic Service, Rouen

  I set the other page down alongside it. The presentation and the font used by the regional crime squad had changed since 2014, but the logos, the headed paper, and the stamps were the same.

  DNA results—Magali Verron—Thursday, February 20th, 2014—Regional Forensic Service, Rouen

  The first column indicated blood group. Both Morgane and Magali were group B+. Not the most common group, from what I remembered of the biology course I had taken at the Saint Antoine Institute. Less than ten percent of the French population.

  Another coincidence.

  Shivers ran down the back of my neck. My eyes fell to the figures that made up the genetic code of the two girls.

  I stopped on two graphics, annotated with long series of letters and numbers.

  TH01 chr 11 6/9. D2 25/29. D 18 16/18

  TH01 chr 11 6/9. D2 25/29. D 18 16/18

  I ignored the details. Something to do with monozygotic and heterozygotic genotypes that I’d never understood, but I remembered that it was scientifically impossible for two different individuals to have the same markers and frequencies of occurrence. The figures danced in front of my eyes.

  VWA chr 12 14/17 TPOX chr 15 9/12 FGA 21/23

  VWA chr 12 14/17 TPOX chr 15 9/12 FGA 21/23

  The green and blue curves looked like encephalograms, with an accuracy of a tenth of a millimetre. I could have gone on trying to find the slightest difference between the two histograms, but I had already understood . . .

  Magali and Morgane’s genetic profiles were identical!

  I went on mechanically following the lines with the tip of my index finger, like a mad scientist endlessly rereading a formula that defied the laws of the universe.

  D7 9/10. D16, 11/13, CSF1PO chr, 14/17

  D7 9/10. D16, 11/13, CSF1PO chr, 14/17

  What I was looking at was impossible.

  Two individuals, born ten years apart, could not have the same genetic code!

  Magali.

  Morgane.

  Were the two women one and the same?

  As insane as the evidence appeared, that had been my conviction since the outset. Morgane Avril hadn’t died ten years ago. She was the one who had spoken to me on Wednesday morning, near the blockhouse, before throwing herself off the cliff. Moreoever, as I considered the startling resemblance between Morgane Avril and the girl who had killed herself in front of my eyes, Magali Verron, it occurred to me that she had seemed a little older than the Morgane in the photographs from 2004. The same face, feature for feature, but a few years older, perhaps as many as ten.

  Which brought me back to the same conclusion, even more obvious now: Morgane Avril was alive until two days ago!

  Allele frequency D3, 0.0789. Genotype frequency D3, 0.013

  Allele frequency D3, 0.0789. Genotype frequency D3, 0.013

  I thought again of the huge legal machinery that had been put in place to solve the Avril case. The police, the judges, the witnesses, the journalists, the hundreds of newspaper articles. How had Morgane been able to deceive everyone? To survive? None of it made sense . . .

  I went into the adjoining room to tell Carmen.

  Her daughter Morgane, alive.

  Only two days ago.

  Before dying a second . . .

  The proprietor of Dos-d’ne hadn’t heard me come in. She had her back towards me and was talking on the phone, covering her mouth and the receiver with her left hand.

  “I’m telling you, I’ve got a colleague of yours here,” she whispered. “For God’s sake, Piroz, what is this nonsense about a lookalike of my daughter committing suicide in Yport the day before yesterday?”

  My muscles tensed.

  Carmen Avril was talking to the police!

  The old bag had wanted to check up on me. She’d told me there was only one cop she trusted: Piroz.

  Fuck!

  I cursed myself for not being more vigilant. I took a step forward and pressed the speaker button on the base of the cordless phone.

  Captain Piroz’s hysterical voice exploded in the room.

  “Keep him there, Madame Avril. Keep him there, damn it, we’re on our way!”

  Click.

  My thumb ended the call. At that moment, almost without thinking, I took from my pocket the King Cobra I had borrowed from Mona’s thesis supervisor and aimed it at Carmen.

  “Who are you?” she yelled.

  What was I supposed to do now?

  Hold those DNA results in front of her until she believed me?

  Leave her there and run, outside. And then run some more.

  Where to?

  Was there any escape from this spider’s web? Wouldn’t it be easier to set the revolver down and wait for Piroz on the living-room sofa?

  Carmen leaned forward slightly, muscles taut, like a she-bear ready to leap out of her cave. The walls trembled around me, I struggled to keep the barrel of the King Cobra steady. The room we were standing in was a second nursery, which had been turned into a box room. Photographs of Morgane hung on the walls.

  Morgane, three years old, draping Christmas garlands over her mother’s shoulders.

  Morgane, six years old, on a tractor.

  Morgane, seven years old, climbing in the apple tree in the garden.

  Carmen moved forward slightly. The barrel of the King Cobra lowered by a few millimetres, while my eye, on the photograph, moved down to another branch of the apple tree.

  It was as if all my thoughts and suspicions had suddenly accelerated, bringing them into a headlong collision my certainties. Then everything exploded in a thousand fragments of shrapnel.

  I understood. Everything.

  I knew who Magali Verron was . . .

  Still clutching the butt of the King Cobra, I couldn’t help letting out a long laugh, the laugh of a madman.

  27

  WHO ARE YOU?

  Two seven-year-old girls were balancing in the branches of the apple tree.

  Morgane and her sister, Océane.

  The same red caps, the same green coats with fur hoods, the same lined boots, the same woollen scarves around their necks.

  The same age. The same face.

  Twins!

  As I wiped the corners of my eyes, wet with the tears of my nervous laugh, I raised the barrel of the King Cobra towards Carmen, gesturing to her not to try anything.

  Morgane had a twin sister!

  There had been no mention of that detail in the brown envelopes. Océane, the victim’s sister, had given a statement after the Riff on the Cliff festival, but her age was never mentioned. I hadn’t given it a second thought.

  Now it was all clear.

  Th
ey had omitted that information so that they could trap me more easily.

  With the end of the revolver I beckoned to Carmen to leave the room.

  In my head, several pieces of the puzzle were fitting together. Morgane had died, having been raped and murdered, on 5 June 2004. Ten years later it was Océane, her twin sister, who had thrown herself from the top of Yport cliff. It was her desperate expression that I had seen near the blockhouse. Océane probably couldn’t cope with the death of her sister. So she had devised and acted the character of Magali Verron. The same birthday, the same tastes, the same education . . . And the same DNA!

  I pushed Carmen towards the office. With my left hand I picked up the two sets of DNA results.

  How had Océane been able to deceive the police? How had she managed to make everyone think that her virtual double, Magali Verron, was born ten years later, in Canada, and that she had lived there until the age of seven?

  My eyes glided to the official stamp of the national police service.

  Unless Piroz had deliberately fed me false information.

  With the end of the revolver, I pointed to one of the photographs on the wall. The one in which a six-year-old girl was disguised as a cowboy.

  “Is that her?” I asked Carmen. “Is that Océane, your other daughter?”

  “Yes. They were inseparable. Océane was a tomboy, Morgane a little princess, but no one could come between them, not even me. When Morgane was murdered, I didn’t think Océane would survive her.”

  “For ten years, at least,” I said. “It was Océane, wasn’t it—she was the one who threw herself off the cliff two days ago?”

  As I said those words, I realised that something didn’t add up. Carmen Avril was watching me suspiciously, but I saw no sadness or anger in her attitude. Nothing to suggest that she had just lost her second daughter in a tragedy very like the one that had occurred ten years ago.

  She turned her head towards the clock hanging over the door.

  “Do I look like a grieving mother?”

  I thought of the words that Piroz had yelled down the telephone.

  Keep him there, for God’s sake, we’re on our way.

  I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. But I heard myself answering calmly, separating the words to give them equal importance.

  “It was your daughter, Madame Avril. It was Océane. I saw her jumping. I . . . I saw her corpse.”

  The proprietor of the Dos-d’ne smiled at me. Far from shocked.

  “When was that?”

  “Wednesday. Two days ago. Early in the morning . . .”

  “I find that hard to believe, Monsieur . . . Lopez.”

  She stepped forward, and my revolver came level with her belly.

  “I spoke to Océane on the phone, less than five hours ago.”

  She had to be bluffing.

  Carmen Avril was lying. To give Piroz time to get there. They all wanted to pin the three deaths of the three girls on me.

  “O.K., I believe you,” I said at last. “Your daughter Océane is alive, she didn’t throw herself off the cliff at Yport the day before yesterday. But in that case, I want to talk to her.”

  “Out of the question!”

  “Does she live far from here?”

  Carmen gave me a contemptuous look. “You’re a dangerous mental patient who needs to be locked up.”

  I was running out of time. Piroz, or the police from Neufchâtel, would be here any minute.

  “You have no idea how dangerous, Madame Avril. Right now I need to get out of here, and you’re coming with me.”

  Seeing my determination, she obeyed without protest. She walked into the garden, the gravel crunching under her feet. The apple tree cast its shadow over the frosty grass. At every moment, I imagined I could hear the police siren ripping through the silence, or squad cars speeding down the drive.

  But the Foucarmont road was deserted. Carmen Avril got into the passenger seat of the Fiat 500. I was still holding the revolver, but even so I found her astonishingly cooperative.

  “Don’t try to get away,” I warned her, as I put the key in the ignition.

  “You needn’t worry about that. I don’t know who you are, but you’re somehow connected to Morgane’s death. And the death of the girl who was raped and strangled the day before yesterday.”

  “Raped perhaps. But not strangled.”

  She looked at me as if I were a child she had caught in a lie.

  “Strangled! Piroz told me a moment ago. This girl Magali Verron didn’t kill herself as you told me, she was murdered. I’m not about to let you go, Lopez—I’ve been waiting ten years for this moment . . .”

  What moment?

  Before I could put the question, Carmen delivered the answer.

  “For the murderer of my daughter and little Myrtille Camus to strike again.”

  I held her gaze.

  “Piroz is playing a dirty game. I don’t know what he’s told you, but he’s looking for a scapegoat. Well, he’s out of luck, because he’s not going to pin any of this on me.”

  Carmen shrugged as if my words carried no weight. It didn’t matter, she was prepared to go along with me. Her quest for the truth was more important to her than her own safety.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  I started the car without replying. We drove two kilometres to get out of Neufchâtel, then I turned onto a dirt road. “Green Avenue, access no. 11,” according to the wooden sign. I parked under a lime tree after the first turning. I switched off the engine and aimed the King Cobra at my passenger again.

  “Give me your phone. Now.”

  “What for?”

  Carmen didn’t move either to help me or to protest when I leaned over to grab her handbag and take out a Samsung Galaxy.

  My thumb slid over the touch screen.

  List of contacts.

  OCÉANE.

  I double-clicked to call her.

  Océane’s photograph appeared. Full screen. An electric shock!

  It was her, no question about it.

  Magali Verron and Océane Avril were one and the same.

  In the picture on the phone she was smiling under a cotton wool sky, in a pose almost identical to the one she had adopted a second before jumping off the cliff, her tousled hair blowing in the wind, her eyes narrowed to an almond shape, staring into the sun as if defying the light.

  Just before she crashed on to the pebbles. The girl whose telephone number I was dialling had died, two days ago.

  A voice answered at the first ring. A distant whisper, almost inaudible.

  “Mom? I’m in the middle of a consultation. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”

  I waited in silence for a few moments before working out that she had already hung up.

  On the passenger seat, Carmen was looking triumphant.

  “Happy now, Lopez? You’ve heard Océane’s voice. You didn’t find yourself talking to a ghost’s answering machine? You didn’t dial the number of heaven?”

  The Samsung slipped between my sweating hands. I had stopped thinking. My brain was ready to implode. Then it hit me: I had no proof that the girl who’d answered the phone was Océane Avril! The list of contacts ran past under my fingers. I stopped a few letters further down.

  WORK OCÉANE

  Double click.

  Three rings this time before anyone picked up: a cheerful woman’s voice, talking loudly and articulating each word.

  “Marquis Medical Centre, hello.”

  I breathed for a few seconds, then improvised.

  “Hello! I’ve been trying to get hold of you for ages. I have an appointment at the hospital in a quarter of an hour. Can you tell me how to get there?”

  “No problem, sir, are you in Neufchâtel?”

  “Almost . . .”<
br />
  Carmen rolled panicked eyes as the secretary told me the way.

  Turn towards the centre of town, right towards the main street, right again before you get to the church. After waking up briefly while the children got out of school, Neufchâtel seemed to have fallen back into a cold and dusty damp.

  No trace of the police.

  The Place du Marquis was almost empty. I parked right outside the surgery.

  In spite of the revolver pointed at her, Carmen was reluctant to get out of the Fiat. For the first time I read something like fear on her face. I gripped the King Cobra, stammering some words that sounded like an apology.

  “I haven’t killed anyone, Carmen. I just want to know the truth. Like you.

  She spat her reply: “She won’t be the one you’re expecting, Lopez. Océane works on the other side of this door. She isn’t the girl you’re looking for, this Magali Verron that you couldn’t save.”

  Resigned, she unfastened her seat belt, then added: “Not her, and no other daughter of mine. I assure you, I didn’t have triplets . . .”

  I had thought of that possibility for a moment.

  Triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets.

  Identical clones, jumping off the cliff one after another. One every ten years. Ridiculous! A plot from a cheap thriller.

  I checked that the parking lot was deserted, then got out of the Fiat, being careful to hide my wrist and the revolver under a dirty rag that I had dug out of the glove compartment. To a passer-by in a hurry it might have looked like a makeshift bandage.

  I pushed the polished glass door and let Carmen walk in ahead of me. I took in the four gilded plaques engraved with the names and titles of the doctors who worked at the surgery. I stopped at the third.

  Océane Avril

  Gynaecologist obstetrician.

  My prosthesis slipped on the step. I regained my balance by leaning against the wall, without letting go of the gun hidden under the rag in my hand.