After the Crash (23 page)
Authors: Michel Bussi
MY FIRST NAME: Lyse-Rose
MY OTHER NAMES: Véronique, Mathilde, Malvina
MY DADDY: Alexandre
MY MUMMY: Véronique
I WAS BORN ON: 27 September, 1980, in Istanbul, Turkey
MY HOME:
A photograph of the Roseraie
MY BEDROOM:
A drawing of the room in which Marc stood – a child’s
drawing, probably done by Malvina when she was younger
MY FAVOURITE CUDDLY TOY IS CALLED: Banjo
MY BEST FRIEND IS: My sister, Malvina
phantom of an imagined life.
MY HAND:
A painted imprint of a baby’s hand. But whose?
MY FAVOURITE COLOUR: Blue
MY FAVOURITE ACTIVITY: Listening to music
MY FIRST BIRTHDAY:
A photograph of Lylie cut from a magazine –
Paris Match
or something similar – had been clumsily glued in the
middle of a de Carville family photograph. They were eating at a
table on which sat a picture of a cake covered in candles, also taken
from a magazine.
MY FIRST HOLIDAY:
The same photograph of Lylie had been stuck
in a field filled with gentians, with mountains in the background.
Malvina was posing next to her sister, looking radiant. She was eight
years old, and the flower stems came up to her waist.
Marc closed the pages. He couldn’t take anymore. Malvina
grabbed the book from his hands.
‘Seen enough, have you? I’m going to put this away.’
stride down the driveway. He was practically running away.
Malvina could not resist, of course: she had to show him the bedroom. She had forgotten about her grandfather, abandoned him in
the middle of the lawn as if he were a cheap toy. Serves him right,
thought Mathilde.
He was going to his grandmother’s house, in Dieppe, in too
much of a hurry to open the envelope, too frightened to disobey
her orders. Poor little Marc . . . he wouldn’t be disappointed when
he read the DNA test results.
by the trees of Coupvray Forest.
told Marc Vitral everything. She had not told him about GrandDuc’s phone call, the night of Lylie’s birthday – his final discovery,
the one that would change everything. Grand-Duc claimed to have
finally uncovered the truth. A different truth. And all he had done
was look at an old newspaper.
Mathilde de Carville’s fingers brushed against the white keys of
the piano.
Had Grand-Duc been bluffing?
She would soon find out. She had asked one of the secretaries
at the company’s headquarters to send her a photocopy of the
Est
Républicain
dated 23 December, 1980. She would receive it that
evening, in all likelihood, unless the secretary was an imbecile. She
had asked for it to be hand-delivered. All she had to do now was
wait a few hours, and then she would know if Grand-Duc had lied,
or if the mystery was solved at last.
Mathilde de Carville sat down on the piano stool, her hands flat
in front of her. She had not played for years. The piano had grown
mute, useless, like everything else in this house.
Yes, it would all be over in a few hours.
The silence was broken by three sharp notes.
Do. Fa. Sol.
It would all be over, except for Malvina.
No matter what that notebook contained, no matter what
Grand-Duc had discovered, no matter what Marc Vitral read in
that blue envelope, Lyse-Rose would continue to live forever, in the
sick imagination of her sister. She would live like a doll lives in the
mind of a little girl. Except that this particular little girl was carrying a Mauser L110, and she was capable of killing anyone who told
her that the baby in her pushchair was merely a lifeless toy, a corpse.
2 October, 1998, 1.29 p.m.
Marc walked quickly down Chemin des Chauds-Soleils. It crossed
his mind that the path must have been named before the trees
in Coupvray Forest grew so high that they cut out the sunlight.
The ‘Path of Hot Sunlight’ might have been better renamed as
‘The Path of Cold Shadows’. It was with relief that Marc left the
forest and entered the village of Coupvray, with its grey church
tower, its triangular sign warning drivers to slow down for schoolchildren, and the shy ray of sunlight that pierced the cloudy sky
above.
He slowed down and checked his mobile phone. Still no messages. Without breaking stride, he called Lylie. He cursed as the
answering machine clicked into life.
‘Lylie, it’s Marc. We have to talk. As soon as possible. Call me
back. I’ve just left the de Carvilles’ house. That’s right, you heard
me. This is important, Lylie. Don’t do anything rash until you’ve
talked to me. I love you.’
Marc arrived at the canal. The fishermen were still there. The
river flowed idly by. Marc scrolled down the list of numbers on his
phone.
.
‘Hello?’
message?’
‘Yes, I did. I’ve just got back from the cemetery. I was going
to call you, and answer your questions, although I don’t think I
can tell you anything you don’t already know. You must have seen
Emilie more recently than I have. You see, I . . .’
Silence. Orpheus returning from the underworld. Without
Eurydice.
‘Nicole . . . Mathilde de Carville gave me an envelope for you.
It’s a DNA test, done in 1995. Grand-Duc stole Lylie’s blood.’
Nicole’s broken voice echoed in his ears, imploringly: ‘Marc, you
can’t believe a word they say. Not after . . .’
Marc interrupted her: ‘It’s for you to open, Nicole. That’s what
she told me.’
Another long silence. All Marc could hear was Nicole’s husky
breathing.
‘Marc, do you have the envelope on you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Describe it to me.’
Though he had no idea why his grandmother was asking this,
Marc obeyed: ‘It’s a normal-sized envelope. Pale blue. Like the kind
of letter you’d get from a hospital, or laboratory . . .’
‘Have you opened it?’
‘No. I promise, I haven’t . . .’
‘Don’t open it, Marc, whatever you do. Mathilde de Carville was
right about that, at least. You must come straight to Dieppe. It was
crazy of you to go and see the de Carvilles. Come to Dieppe now,
as soon as you can.’
Nicole coughed. She seemed to be finding it difficult to talk.
She cleared her throat, then continued: ‘Marc, things are never as
simple as they appear. Don’t believe anything the de Carvilles might
have told you. They don’t know everything. Far from it. Get here
quickly. I just hope it won’t be too late.’
Marc felt as if he were drowning in icy water, being dragged irresistibly to the bottom of the canal.
‘Too late for what, Nicole? Too late for who?’
‘Don’t waste any more time, Marc. I’m waiting for you.’
‘Nicole . . .’
But she had hung up.
Standing behind a concrete pillar, away from the crowds in the
Gare de Lyon, Marc checked the paper timetable that he always
kept in his wallet.
Rouen–Dieppe: 17.38 – 18.24
He had more than an hour before he needed to catch his train to
Saint-Lazare. That gave him enough time to finish reading GrandDuc’s notebook before he arrived in Dieppe. While he walked
towards the metro, Marc attempted to remember the final words he
had read on the torn-out pages. The detective was on Mont Terri,
where he went every year. There had been a storm, and he was looking for shelter. And then . . .
The train appeared. A young woman carrying a guitar on her
back got on before Marc, smiling radiantly at him as he let her
pass. The top of the case rose up above her head like some kind of
Bigouden headdress. Marc affected a blasé indifference, like that
transmitted by most underground travellers in the world’s big cities.
He stood at the end of the carriage, leaned against the window and
concentrated on Grand-Duc’s story.
. . .I no longer noticed the driving rain. My heart was pounding. I
kept going until I reached the hut in front of me. It was a simple
shepherd’s cabin, and even though the roof was full of holes, it
would offer me some protection. But it was not the cabin that had
caught my eye – it was the little mound of stones next to it, about
one foot high and two feet wide. A small wooden cross had been
planted in the earth in front of it. At the base of the cross, in an
earthenware pot, there was a plant, a yellow winter jasmine that had
not even withered.
You can imagine why this disturbed me. I was looking at a grave.
I tried to rationalise my discovery. It was probably just a dog
that the shepherd had buried. Or a sheep, or a goat, or some other
animal.
The rain kept falling. I took refuge in the hut, but the rain came
through the gaps in the roof so I had to lie pressed against the
wooden wall to keep dry. I could not help thinking that the grave
next to the hut, while it was undoubtedly the right size for a small
animal, was also the right size for a human baby.
As I waited for the storm to pass, I examined the cabin. It was
unfurnished, but there was a long flat tree trunk that could be used
as a bed in an emergency. A grey blanket, covered in holes and
rolled into a ball, lay on the ground next to it. A pile of grey ashes,
in a sort of cavity dug into the earth, suggested that someone had
made a fire here, a few days or possibly a few weeks earlier. Further
evidence that the cabin had been used as a squat by local adolescents
was provided by the empty beer cans and cigarette butts scattered
over the floor. The smell, a mixture of earth and piss, was only just
bearable.
It was over an hour before the storm died down. By then, night
had fallen, but my years of mountain pilgrimages had taught me
to expect the worst, so I always carried a torch with me. I left the
hut and shone the beam directly on the grave. It was drizzling. I
advanced cautiously: were these just the final few drops before the
rain stopped completely, or was it the beginning of another storm?
The halo of light broke through the darkness. The cross was made
from two twigs tied together with string – and the string, I noticed,
did not look very old. A year or two at the most.
I directed the torchlight at the plant. I was no expert, but it
seemed unlikely to me that winter jasmine would be a perennial,
particularly in these temperatures. Which meant that someone had
placed the pot in front of the grave not so long ago. No more than
a few months.
It was difficult for me to find out anything more that night. The
temperature was dropping rapidly and I knew it would take me
at least two hours to descend Mont Terri by torchlight. Nevertheless, I stayed where I was. I moved a few of the stones, attempting
to see what they were concealing. But the answer, apparently, was
nothing. Just earth. Either that, or I would have to come back with
a spade and start digging. I wasn’t about to do that with my bare
hands.
But you know me by now . . . you know I was never going to give
up that easily. I removed the stones, one by one, with one hand,
while the other held the torch. After ten minutes, I switched hands.
I felt like a grave-robber. A sort of zombie, out to recruit a corpse,
preferably on a dark and stormy night. Any dead body would do: a
dog, a goat, a baby . . .
the stones up in a mound again.
It was gone midnight by the time I reached my BMW, and it took
me another hour, driving at 15mph, before I arrived at Monique
Genevez’s gîte, on the banks of the Doubs. The storm had returned,
even stronger than before, and what was falling from the sky now
was sleet rather than rain. I was soaked, muddy, numb with cold.
My fingers were bleeding. It took me ten days to get over the cold I
caught that night . . . And all that for a few stones. A dog’s grave. A
dog that I had not even managed to exhume. This case was driving
me crazy. To calm myself before I went to bed, I drank three glasses
of Mrs Genevez’s Vin Jaune.
The next day, I went to see Grégory Morez, the nature reserve
employee with lumberjack shoulders and the face of a Hollywood
idol. He had spent years driving all over Mont Terri and its environs
in his Jeep, so presumably he would know about the cabin and the
grave.
Morez seemed surprised by my question and was disappointed
not to be able to give me a satisfactory response. Yes, he knew
about the cabin: local teenagers would go there occasionally, and
he would do his best to chase them away. He had never paid any
attention to the grave, but he thought it was probably that of a dog.
It was common, in the Jura mountains, to bury dogs under a pile
of stones.
I thought about going back up Mont Terri with a spade, so I could
dig up the grave. But the weather that day was even worse than the
night before: the air was colder and sleet was still falling heavily
from the sky. Was it really worth the two- or three-hour walk? I had
already spent quite a long time scratching at the earth beneath the
grave, and found nothing. Could there really be any connection
between that hut, that pile of stones and my investigation?
No, of course not.
In the end, I drank a coffee in Indevillers, the closest village to
the mountain, and waited half an hour – in vain – for the weather
to clear up. By the end of the morning, it was snowing. I went
straight back to Paris.
Yet another dead end in my investigation, I thought. Another
theory that would have made Nazim howl with laughter if I had
told him about it.
Can you imagine? Climbing a mountain to dig up a dead dog?
I didn’t yet know it, but that day – 23 December, 1986 – I had
made a mistake. It might have been the only mistake I made during
the entire investigation, but my God, it was a big one! I can find
plenty of excuses for myself – the snow, the cold, my tiredness,
bad luck, the prospect of Nazim’s sarcasm – but what would be
the point in that. I, the stubborn and meticulous Crédule GrandDuc, gave up that morning. I lacked the requisite courage; I did
not keep going until the end. It was the only time that happened,
believe me. But it was also the only time I could not afford to let it
happen.