After the Crash (28 page)

Marc walked through the fifth carriage. He still had not found a
free seat. He hated the Paris–Rouen train, particularly on a Friday
evening. It seemed as if the train company sold twice as many tickets as there were seats.

His balls still ached, although the pain had dulled now. He had
stayed on his knees for almost ten minutes in the station concourse,
surrounded by concerned faces.

‘Are you all right? Looks like she got you right where it hurts . . .’
Their tone was half-worried, half-amused. How were people supposed to react when faced with a guy bent double because the girl
he had been embracing had just crushed his bollocks?

Marc had collected his backpack from the waiter and limped as
quickly as he could to the platform for his train, which had finally
been announced.

In the seventh carriage, Marc gave up looking for a seat. The
train was a double-decker, so he sat on a stairway between the two
floors. He was not the only one: other steps were already occupied by a mother with three children, a businessman going through
some reports, and a dozing teenager. It was an uncomfortable place
to sit, but it was better than standing up.

Marc wedged his backpack between his knees and checked his
phone again. Still no message.
He called Lylie’s number. Straight to voicemail.
‘Lylie, this is Marc. Please answer me! Where are you? I listened
to your last message, and I could hear ambulance sirens in the background. It’s driving me crazy. I’ve been calling all the hospitals in
Paris, trying to find you. Please call me back.’

So far Marc had contacted about twenty hospitals – the largest ones.
He had to keep going. He decided to do this for half an hour, then
read some more of Grand-Duc’s notebook.

It was the same story, over and over again: ‘Hello, madame. Has
a young woman by the name of Emilie Vitral been admitted to your
hospital today? No, I don’t know which department . . . Accident
and Emergency, perhaps?’

The train was so noisy that Marc could hardly hear what the
receptionists were saying. Not that it varied very much.
There was no Emilie Vitral listed in their registers.
After thirty minutes, he had contacted another twenty-two hospitals. They were mostly private clinics and specialised medical
centres now. He began to despair. There was no way he was going
to find Lylie this way. Not before tomorrow anyway . . .
He had to think. He had to find a way to make all of the pieces of
the puzzle fit together. First of all, he had to finish reading GrandDuc’s notebook. He should have time for that before his train
reached Dieppe. There were only about thirty pages left.
Marc put away his mobile phone then took out the pages that
he had previously torn from Grand-Duc’s notebook. The back of
the last page was blank. Marc grabbed a biro from his bag and
scribbled:
WHERE IS LYLIE?
Then, below this, in a small, cramped hand, he added:
In a hospital? One-way trip?
He underlined the last phrase and added three exclamation
marks.
Suicide?
Murder?
Revenge?
Without thinking about why he did it, Marc underlined the
word ‘Revenge’. Then he wrote:

WHO KILLED GRAND-DUC?
Malvina de Carville
For a few seconds, Marc sucked on his biro, then added a question mark after her name. The train was shaking, so his handwriting
was far from neat, but at least he could read it. That was all that
mattered.

Then, feverishly, he wrote:
Why didn’t Grand-Duc kill himself three days ago?
What did he discover that night, just before midnight?
What could he have discovered that would make someone want to

kill him?
MY GRANDFATHER’S ACCIDENT – WHAT IS WRONG
WITH GRAND-DUC’S ACCOUNT?
Search your old bedroom in Dieppe. Take your time. It will come to
you.
Marc read through what he had written. The number of question
marks made him give a wry smile. And he hadn’t finished yet. He
touched the blue envelope in his jacket pocket.
DNA TEST. MYSTERY SOLVED?
Open the envelope?
Should he betray his promise to Nicole in order to find the
solution?
No. That would not get him anywhere. Marc already knew what
the envelope contained. Lylie was not his sister. Lylie was Mathilde
de Carville’s granddaughter. Malvina’s sister. Everything pointed to
this: from Grand-Duc’s investigation to the ring that Lylie had been
wearing that morning. And his feelings for her, of course . . .
TALK TO NICOLE
Marc added a final question mark, for good measure.

When it stopped at Mantes-la-Jolie, nearly half of the passengers
got off, freeing up seats. Marc got up and sat near the window in
the lower part of the train. He was still in some pain, but the extra
leg space helped to ease his discomfort. Malvina was nowhere to be
seen, and he was grateful for that small mercy, although there was
no way of knowing if she might be on board. Marc sighed and took
out Grand-Duc’s notebook.

The tiny gold link was sent, carefully wrapped in a plastic packet,
to the best forensics laboratory in France, at Rosny-sous-Bois. The
cigarette butts and beer cans were sent there too. I still had friends
in the police, and I had Mathilde de Carville’s money. There was
nothing illegal about it. Not very illegal, anyway. It was just a parallel investigation.

I got the results eight days later. The link I had found in the grave
was definitely made of gold. That was the only certainty, however.
The smallness of the sample made it impossible to tell whether the
link had come from a baby’s bracelet or any other kind of jewellery.
It might even have come from a dog’s name tag! There was also no
way of knowing when or where it had been manufactured.

But still, a gold link from a piece of jewellery . . . it deepened the
mystery. Why would that link have been buried in a grave marked
by a pile of stones? Who could have buried it there?

The reward for information leading to the discovery of LyseRose’s bracelet, meanwhile, had risen to seventy-five thousand
francs. It was a ludicrous sum, particularly for a bracelet that would,
I very much hoped, be missing a link from its chain. But by that
point, the prize seemed entirely theoretical. I had long ago given up
hope that anyone would claim it.

I was wrong. The line would dangle in the water for another two
years, but a fish would finally bite. A big fish. But be patient for a
while longer, and I will tell you all about that. In terms of suspense,
I don’t think you really have anything to complain about: an interminable year for me is summarised for you in a few pages.

The cigarette butts and other debris found in the hut on Mont
Terri were not particularly useful. After seven years, that was to
be expected. Dozens of teenage drinkers and lovers must have
spent nights in that cabin since Georges Pelletier stayed there
in 1980.

So we were back to square one: I had to find Georges Pelletier.
I spent many nights in Besançon, talking to homeless people and
winning their trust. I realise this might seem quaint: a few drunks
and tramps, sleeping on the streets of a small provincial town, sharing their stories around the campfire. Believe me, it was nothing like
that! Living on the streets of Besançon is extremely tough. Imagine
sleeping on a mattress made of damp cardboard during winter in
the coldest town in France. There is no underground there. And the
train station is closed at night.

I only spent about ten nights with them, between January and
March 1988, and I thought I was going to die of the cold. I would
go back to my hotel room in the early morning and had to spend
three hours in a hot bath before I could feel normal again. Now do
you believe me when I say that I was still earning that money the de
Carville woman gave me after seven years of the investigation? As
to whether my hard work was worth it . . . I’ll let you be the judge
of that.

Georges Pelletier’s former neighbours and fellow junkies told
me that he had reappeared after 23 December, 1980. He was alive
and well when he came down from the mountain, so clearly the
Airbus had not crashed into him. He had not been wearing a bracelet around his wrist, and he was no more talkative than he had been
before he went to Mont Terri. He had stayed in Besançon for six
months, doing the usual things – drug-dealing, shoplifting – then
had fled to Paris before the police could nail him for anything.
Or before his brother found him. According to his street friends,
Georges was more wary of his brother’s charity than he was of going
to prison.

I will add just one more detail. Georges Pelletier’s dog did not
come back from the mountain with him. But Augustin was wrong
about the size of his brother’s mutt: it was not a little mongrel, but
a very large Belgian Shepherd. Certainly too big to fit in the tiny
grave next to the cabin. Unless he chopped it up into pieces. But
why would he do that? Why not simply dig a bigger hole?
*

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I did not give up. All I had to do now was
pick up Georges’s scent in that concrete jungle of lunatics and lost
souls that people call Paris. Nazim and I spent three months there,
working full-time on the investigation. Small ads in the papers;
talking endlessly to the police and social services; more nights
spent on the streets, with a torch and a photograph of Georges;
an evening in Augustin’s living room, everyone smiling politely
around the Christmas tree, just so that we could ask him to provide us with the most recent photograph of Georges that he could
find.

It was good, methodical work. I am a pro, after all.
Nazim and I managed to follow Georges Pelletier’s tracks as far
as a man called Pedro Ramos. I met this man in June 1989 at a fairground in Trone, standing in front of the Tagada ride.
‘Georges worked for me for two seasons,’ Pedro told me, while
keeping an eye on his ride. Hysterical teenage girls and boys paid
five francs each to have their bottoms bruised for two minutes on a
whirling bench.
‘I didn’t ask him for his CV. I knew he’d be off when the season
was over. He wasn’t lazy, and he was clean when he came to work. I
couldn’t have cared less what he did with his time off.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’ I asked.
Pedro did not even have to think about it. He just waved his
hand commandingly at a girl in a pink dress who was working the
till. Her head changed colour in time with the neon lights.
‘Autumn 1983. Mid-November, to be exact. After the SaintRomain fair, the last fair of the season. In the train station at Rouen.
We had all packed up for the winter and everyone was going their
separate ways. Pelletier knew where to find me if he wanted to work
the following season, but he never turned up. That’s pretty normal
in this line of work. Two seasons is not bad at all, really. I never saw
him again.’
Another dead end.
I asked Pedro Ramos a few more questions, but I didn’t learn anything of substance. The track ended in the train station at Rouen.
Not very far from Dieppe, when you think about it. Not far from
the Vitrals . . .
A coincidence? Probably.
I hung around the fairs during the months that followed. Nazim
enjoyed that. Some weekends, Ayla came with him. After all,
Mathilde de Carville was paying for the rides: the ghost trains and
the tunnels of love. It would be a long, long time before we learned
anything new. Years.

Judith’s little hands gripped the iron bars of the fence that surrounded the playground.
‘No, silly, that’s not a wedding! Look, they’re all dressed in black.
That means somebody’s died . . .’
The procession moved slowly away. Judith was not convinced
by what her friend Sarah was telling her. Sarah was always making
stuff up. And Judith knew that when people wore nice clothes and
walked in neat lines down the street, when the bells rang as they
came out of church . . . that meant a man and a lady had just got
married. She’d been to lots of weddings – at least two – so she knew
all about them.
‘It’s a wedding, Sarah!’
Sarah, annoyed, shook the iron bars. ‘No it’s not, it’s a dead
person! They’re going to put him in a hole in the ground. They did
the same thing to my grandmother.’
‘I don’t believe you!’
‘So where’s the bride then?’
‘We missed her. She must have gone past already.’
‘Don’t be silly! Today is Friday. Nobody gets married on a school
day. But when you die, it doesn’t matter what day they bury you.’
Judith had to admit that this made sense.
‘And people at weddings aren’t that old,’ Sarah went on. ‘Can’t
you see how old they all are?’
‘Not all of them!’
‘Yes they are.’
‘No! Look. She’s not old. Miss! Miss!’

Lylie was startled from her daydream. She saw two very cute girls,
about five years old, standing behind an iron fence, wrapped up in
hats, coats, gloves and scarves.

Lylie smiled. It was striking, the contrast between the happy
shouts coming from the playground and the funereal silence of the
procession. She crouched down so that her face was level with the
girls’.

‘It’s a funeral,’ she told them.
‘Told you!’ Sarah gloated.
Judith pulled a face. Three other kids came over to see what all

the fuss was about.
‘Who was the dead person?’ Sarah asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Lylie said. ‘I just happened to be passing. I came

from that big white building over there. I have to go back there,
actually.’
‘But why are you sad if you didn’t know them?’ Judith asked.
‘What makes you think I’m sad?’
‘Your eyes are all red. And why else would you follow a dead
person when you could go to the park or go shopping?’
There was now a whole crowd of children watching Lylie from
behind the fence.
‘You’re right, I am sad,’ Lylie whispered into Judith’s ear. ‘But
don’t tell anyone, will you? What’s your name?’
‘Judith. Judith Potier. What’s your name?’
‘I don’t know.’
Judith bit her lip, as if worried she had said the wrong thing. She
looked thoughtful for a moment. This was almost certainly the first
time she had met someone who didn’t have a name.
‘Is that why you’re sad?’