After the Crash (16 page)
Authors: Michel Bussi
I quickly became disillusioned.
Apparently, Alexandre and Véronique de Carville were not very
sociable, and tended to avoid contact with the indigenous population. They were the kind of people who remain cloistered in their
white villa with its view of the Mediterranean. They even had their
own private beach.
To be more honest, it was Véronique who really lived like a nun –
Alexandre worked in Istanbul most of the week. They occasionally
had friends round – colleagues, French people – but only before
Lyse-Rose was born. Once Véronique had given birth, she became a
lot less interested in social gatherings. I was only able to find seven
people – two couples who were friends with the de Carvilles, plus
three business clients – who had been invited to the Ceyhan villa
after Lyse-Rose’s birth. Each time, Lyse-Rose had been asleep, and
all the guests could remember was a tiny baby covered in sheets that
woke at regular intervals. Only one client, a Dutchman, had seen
Lyse-Rose awake, and then only for a few seconds. Véronique had
retired from the party to breastfeed her daughter and she could not
do that in front of the Dutch industrialist. I did manage to find the
man in question – a Sales Manager for the Turkish subsidiary of
Shell – and he told me that he would be as incapable of recognising
Lyse-Rose’s face as he would her mother’s tits.
At the Bakirkoy maternity hospital in Istanbul, where Véronique
de Carville gave birth, more than thirty babies are born each week.
It is a very chic private clinic, and I was welcomed with astonishing obsequiousness. The pediatrician, the only doctor to have
looked after Lyse-Rose, had examined her about three times and
pointed out to me that he saw more than twenty newborn babies
every day. From a notebook, he provided me with Lyse-Rose’s birth
information. Weight: seven pounds, two ounces; length: nineteen
inches.
Did the child cry? Yes.
Were the eyes open? Yes.
Other remarks: None.
Distinguishing features: None.
Another dead end.
Véronique de Carville must have been bored out of her mind in her
villa. There were a few staff at her disposal. I managed to find a gardener – rather old, and a bit too short-sighted for my liking – who
had seen Lyse-Rose lying in the shade of a palm tree one afternoon
. . . covered by mosquito netting. His description of her was consequently vague.
I am not going to give you a detailed list of all the hazy, half-arsed,
or completely useless witness statements that I accumulated during
those months. Leave no stone unturned, Mathilde de Carville had
told me. Obediently, I did exactly that. After all, one coherent witness was all I needed.
At the Ataturk airport in Istanbul, an air stewardess remembered
tickling a baby under the chin on 22 December, just before the
Airbus departed for Paris.
‘One baby, or two?’
‘Just one.’
At least, that was what she thought; she wasn’t sure about either
baby.
brain. What if there had been only one baby on board the plane?
After all, how could anyone be certain about who was actually
sitting in the Airbus that night? The passenger list was known, but
what if one of them had failed to board? A baby, for example? Maybe
even Lyse-Rose? A delay, a last-minute hold-up, a kidnapping . . .
I invented various scenarios in which Lyse-Rose might never have
boarded that Airbus, in which she might still be alive now.
The theory was utterly insane.
But it wasn’t the only one. For instance, wasn’t it rather strange
that there was so little tangible proof of this three-month-old’s existence? So few witnesses, no friends to cuddle her, no childminder to
look after her, no photographs. Practically nothing. It was as if that
baby had never existed. Or, to be more precise, as if someone had
wanted to hide her . . .
The longer I worked on the case, the more paranoid I became.
What if Lyse-Rose had not caught the flight because she was already
dead? An accident at home? An incurable illness? A crime? But if
that were true, then Alexandre and Véronique de Carville had taken
their secret to the grave with them.
Perhaps only Malvina knew. And she had lost her mind.
My theories made Nazim laugh when I recounted them to him at
the Dez Anj café. He soaked his moustache in his raki.
‘A crime? You’re losing it, Crédule!’
Between puffs on his hookah, he brought me down to earth.
‘Listen, this kid didn’t live in a dungeon for three months. She
must have gone out occasionally. So maybe some passer-by, some
tourist saw her. Maybe they accidentally filmed her . . . You never
know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’ve got money. Why don’t you run some ads in the
Turkish newspapers, with the photograph of the miracle child – the
one taken by the
Est Républicain
. . .’
Nazim was right! His idea was genius. We bombarded the Turkish press, explaining what we were looking for and what we were
offering in exchange: a fortune in Turkish currency.
Early on the morning of 27 March, 1982 – I will always remember
that date – I found a letter waiting for me in my pigeonhole at the
Hotel Askoc reception. It had been hand-delivered. The letter was
brief. It contained a name – Unal Serkan – and a phone number.
But, most importantly, it contained the photocopy of a photograph.
I ran across Ayhan Isik Sokak like a madman, almost getting
myself crushed by the flow of vehicles. Nazim was waiting for me
at Dez Anj.
‘What’s up, Crédule?’
I shoved the photo into his big, hairy hands. His eyes widened.
He stared at the picture in shock, just as I had a few minutes earlier.
The picture had been taken at a beach.
In the foreground was a dark-haired woman, clearly Turkish,
suntanned and perfectly proportioned, posing in a bikini. In the
background, you could make out the hills of Ceyhan and, surrounded by greenery, the walls of the de Carvilles’ villa. About ten
feet behind the woman in the swimsuit, next to the legs of another
woman, was a baby lying on a blanket. A tiny baby, only a few
weeks old. Nazim stared speechlessly.
The baby was Lylie – our Dragonfly, the miracle child of Mont
Terrible – without any doubt whatsoever. Same eyes, same face . . .
Pascal and Stéphanie Vitral had never gone to Ceyhan during
their holiday in Turkey. They had never even been within a hundred
miles of the town. There could be no doubt – finally we had the
proof we were looking for.
The miracle child found in the snow on Mont Terri was LyseRose de Carville.
The phone beeped, just once, almost inaudible amid the din from
the underground train.
It was not a call to his mobile, but a ringtone informing him that
he had a message in his voicemail. A missed call.
Marc’s trembling hand reached into his pocket.
2 October, 1998, 11.42 a.m.
As Ayla Ozan sliced the grilled mutton meat it fell in thin slivers
onto the stainless steel countertop. Her mind was elsewhere. This
did not make her any less competent at her job; in fact, if anything,
she was better at making kebabs when lost in her thoughts than
when she wasted her time chatting and joking with customers.
The queue was beginning to lengthen, as it always did just before
lunch. Her little takeaway on Boulevard Raspail had plenty of
regulars.
Although Ayla’s face did not show it, she was worried. Deeply
worried. She had not heard a word from Nazim in two days now.
This was not like him at all. The meat continued to rain down
under the blade of the carving knife. Ayla imagined stroking the
blade over the back of Nazim’s neck, his temples. She loved cutting
her giant’s hair. Her hand was trembling slightly; she never trembled when she shaved Nazim.
Ayla was not the type to be easily scared. She had seen other
people full of fear when she fled Turkey for Paris with her father
after the coup d’état of 12 September, 1982. At the time, her father
had been one of the central figures in the Demokratik Sol Parti,
and they had only just managed to escape the clutches of the army.
Thirty thousand arrests in only a few days. Almost her entire family
had ended up behind bars.
without anything at all. She had been thirty-eight years old, spoke
practically no French, and had no qualifications.
Yet she had survived. You can always survive, if you really want
to.
She had opened one of the first kebab shops in Paris, on
Boulevard Raspail. Back then, French people had no desire to
eat grilled meat in that way, outside, in front of other people,
surrounded by flies and the city’s pollution. Her customers were
Turks, Greeks, Lebanese and Yugoslavs. That was how she had met
Nazim.
He came in every lunchtime. She couldn’t miss him with his
big moustache. It took him almost a year – three hundred and six
lunchtimes exactly, Ayla had counted – to ask her out for dinner.
They went to a Turkish restaurant (but a chic one) on Rue d’Alésia.
Since then, they had never been apart, or hardly ever.
Married, for life.
Ayla shivered, in spite of herself.
Always together, or nearly always.
The only thing that ever took Nazim away from her were
those damn trips to Turkey with Grand-Duc, for that stupid case
involving the rich kid who had died in a plane crash. A private
investigation funded by billionaires. Ayla picked up three hot aluminium envelopes stuffed with kebabs and yelled: ‘Number eleven!
Number twelve! Number thirteen!’
The customers raised their hands, like schoolchildren or people
queueing at the welfare office, holding up their tickets. Ayla only
had one pair of hands: she couldn’t go any quicker. She threw a
packet of frozen chips into boiling oil.
She had thought all that shit was over and done with. Thanks to
her restaurant – if you could really call it that – she had managed to
put aside a bit of cash, day after day. She had built up a nice little
nest egg now.
She was too old to be carrying bags of meat, burning her fingers
on the fryer. She dreamed of returning to Turkey with Nazim, being
with her family once more. She had almost enough money now.
She had done the calculations over and over again. She had spotted
a little house on the coast, near Antakya – a bargain. The weather
was always good down there. She and Nazim still had plenty of
years ahead of them; their best years.
So what the hell could that jackass be up to now? What stupid
plan had Grand-Duc got him mixed up in?
Three more aluminium sheets. She wrapped the kebabs like
presents.
Number fourteen. Number fifteen. Number sixteen.
‘Just one last time, I promise,’ Nazim had told her. He had got all
excited again, when Crédule called him two days ago. His eyes had
sparkled like a child’s and he had taken her in his arms, lifted her up
like a feather. Nazim was the only one who could do that.
‘We’re going to be rich, Ayla. We only need to sort out one last
thing, and we’ll be rich!’
Rich? Who cared about that? They already were rich: had almost
enough to buy the house in Antakya.
‘Is this really the last time? You promise?’
Ayla’s hands were trembling. The carving knife deviated from its
usual straight line, mangling the meat into an inedible mush.
The more she thought about it, the more frightened she became.
This silence. This sudden absence of news. Even when he went to
Turkey, Nazim called her every day. And Crédule wasn’t answering
his phone either. She had been calling for the past two days. Yes,
the more she thought about it, the harder it was to bear the passing
minutes. She had a bad feeling about this. Were it not for these last
customers, she would have run up to Butte-aux-Cailles like a madwoman and banged on Grand-Duc’s door. In fact, that was exactly
what she was planning to do, once she had closed the shop.
Number seventeen. Number eighteen.
She was well aware that Nazim was no angel. He had even confessed to her some of the terrible things he had done over the years.
He had told her when they made love, when she let him rub his
moustache all over her body, when she laughed, shivering, as he
tickled her breasts, her thighs, her pussy, with his bristly upper lip
. . . Afterwards, when he had come, he told her everything. He
couldn’t help himself. He had never hidden anything from her. She
knew the names and the places; she knew where Nazim had hidden
the evidence. She was his life insurance. An investigation funded by
billionaires . . . It was better to take precautions when the money
was flowing too easily, because there would always come a time
when you had to be accountable for what you had done.
That was another reason she wanted to leave, to go to Antakya.
So that Nazim could leave all this shit behind.
Number nineteen.
She sighed. No, Nazim was no choirboy. Without her, he would
be incapable of making the right choice, of distinguishing between
good and evil.
2 October, 1998, 11.45 a.m.
The train slowed down as it came into Place-d’Italie, shattering the
darkness with a thousand sparks. Marc grabbed his mobile phone
and put it to his ear.
‘Marc, you are incorrigible! I asked you not to call me, not to try
to get hold of me or to look for me. I told you: I made an important
decision the day before yesterday. It was very difficult and painful,
and it took me a while, but in the end I made it all by myself. You
won’t understand what I’m going to do. Or you won’t agree with it.
I know how you feel, Marc. I know you mean well. Don’t take that
the wrong way – it’s meant as a compliment. I admire your moral
sense and your devotion. I know you would accept anything, forgive anything, if I asked you to. But I don’t want to ask this of you.
I wasn’t lying when I talked about a journey in my letter. Departure
is set for tomorrow, and it’s a one-way trip. Nothing can stop this
now. That’s just how it is. Take care of yourself.’
Marc had to fight the urge to hurl the phone at the door of the
train. The network functioned only intermittently on the metro.
Lylie had called him . . . and his phone had not rung. She had got
his voicemail . . .