After the Crash (39 page)

But all that was over now. He had finally solved the mystery. All
he needed was to find his final witness.
Mélanie Belvoir.
The yellow van appeared around the corner and parked next
to the Xantia. The postman emerged from the vehicle. He was a
fit-looking young man with long hair in dreadlocks, tied up in a red
bandana. The kind of guy who would probably have been able to
do his rounds on a mountain bike, taking shortcuts across the trails.
Grand-Duc got out of the car and stood before him. ‘Excuse me,
I’d like to ask you a question. Could you tell me where Mélanie
Belvoir lives?’
The postman gave him a suspicious look.
‘Sorry. We’re not allowed to give out that kind of information.’
The detective smiled inwardly. He had seen the way the postman
reacted to the woman’s name. He knew her. Now all Grand-Duc
had to do was make him admit it. The postman slid three letters
into the nearest letterbox, then turned back towards his van.
‘Hang on a minute. I’m serious. Police!’
Grand-Duc held out his business card, which indicated he was
a certified private detective and was stamped with the flag of the
French Republic. Nine times out of ten, this did the trick.
‘So?’ said the postman, not even glancing at the card. ‘Send my
boss an official request, if you like. He deals with all the paperwork.’
Great – he was clearly dealing with a right pain in the neck. Still,
there was no point getting heavy with him. Not yet anyway.
Grand-Duc sighed. ‘Listen, this is urgent. It’s a matter of life and
death. I can’t tell you any more than that, but believe me, every
minute counts . . .’
The postman stared at Grand-Duc. ‘Sorry, I can’t tell you anything. It’s confidential. But all you need to do is call the office.’
‘That’s not true. Mélanie Belvoir isn’t listed anywhere. Not under
that name, anyway . . .’
‘Well, maybe that’s because she doesn’t want anyone bothering
her.’
This guy was a real prick.
‘You have a duty to help the police, young man.’
The postman waved his dreadlocks from side to side. ‘Sorry,
mate. I’m not the kind of guy who grasses up honest folks to the
police. Those days are over, you know?’
‘OK, how much?’
The postman sighed. ‘What?’
‘How much do you want for the address? Five thousand francs?
Ten thousand?’
‘And you claim you’re a cop?’ the postman laughed. ‘I don’t think
so.’
Grand-Duc had had enough of this bullshit. The postman had
already got back into his van when the barrel of the Mateba touched
his temple.
‘I don’t like your attitude, pal.’
All his bravado vanished immediately. The postman placed his
hands on the steering wheel. ‘All right, all right, take it easy.’
‘So, Mélanie Belvoir . . .’
‘Sorry, don’t know her.’
Grand-Duc pushed the barrel harder into the postman’s temple.
‘I told you, this is a matter of life or death. For you too, now. I’ll
let you in on a secret – I’m not a policeman. I’m a serial killer, and
I go after postmen who won’t co-operate. Anyone in a yellow van
who fucks with me gets their head blown off. All right? So, Mélanie
Belvoir . . .’
‘I swear to you, I . . .’
‘All right, I’m going to begin by shooting you in the kneecap.
No more trekking in the mountains for you. Cross-country skiing,
mountain biking, shagging hot chicks? Forget it!’
The detective lowered the gun towards the postman’s legs.
‘OK, OK!’ the postman yelled. ‘Enough. She took her husband’s
name, or the guy she lives with anyway. Luisans. Mélanie Luisans.
She lives in the next valley. Follow the D34 out of Montbéliard,
take the exit towards Dannemarie, and it’s the first chalet after the
village. Sky-blue shutters, if I remember correctly . . .’
‘How do you know?’
‘She still gets letters addressed to Mélanie Belvoir, three or four
times a year.’
‘There you go. Wasn’t so difficult, was it?’
Grand-Duc grinned openly now. He had flushed out the final
witness. And he was the first, the only one, to have done so. Even
if someone else were to guess, by looking at that old edition of
Est
Républicain
, how could they make the connection to Mélanie Belvoir? And how could they ever hope to find her, so quickly? No, he
was in the clear now. Well ahead of the field.
‘What . . . what do you want from her?’ the postman stammered.
‘There’s nothing to worry about. I just want to chat with her
about old times.’

Marc drove instinctively. The Citroën van was still managing, thank
God! This really wouldn’t be a good time for it to break down.
It did its best to climb at a decent speed the snaking bends that
led to the foot of Mont Terri. They passed through Indevillers,
then took a white gravel path, bordered on either side by stacks
of wood. Wooden signs pointed them towards the Nature Reserve
Office.

The building’s façade was decorated with a mural showing a map
of the Jura mountains, and indicating the various walking paths.
Next to the car park was a small rest area with an adventure playground, presumably intended for young, wannabe mountaineers
not yet exhausted by the hikes they had done with their parents.

‘It’s four o’clock,’ Marc said. ‘We should be able to reach the
summit well before nightfall.’
Malvina gave him a sarcastic look. ‘What do you expect to find
up there?’
‘Nothing. You don’t have to go up there with me, you know.’
‘God, you’re stupid. Why do you think I came all this way?’

Inside the office, Marc bought a map of the region and a guidebook. A tall, long-haired brunette was at the till, with a man
standing behind her, touching her hand as he showed her which
keys to press. With his other hand, he was brazenly caressing her
bottom.
That must be Grégory, Marc thought, remembering the description of the Nature Reserve’s resident Casanova in Grand-Duc’s
notebook.

Outside, Marc spread out the map on a table and showed Malvina the path they needed to take to reach the top of Mont Terri.
Then he folded the map and opened the back door of the van, took
out a backpack and filled it with a duvet, a torch, a bottle of water,
a saucisson and a few packets of biscuits.

‘Quite a supply of food you have in there,’ Malvina observed
wryly.
‘Yeah. There’s not much space in my grandmother’s house – no
cellar, no garage – so she stores things in the van.’
‘Can I take something?’
‘Help yourself,’ Marc said. ‘Just don’t pack too much. You don’t
want your bag to be heavier than you.’
‘Just you worry about yourself, Vitral. I’ll beat you to the top, no
problem!’
Marc forced himself to laugh. He knew that there was no rational
reason for the trip they were about to make: climbing Mont Terri,
witnessing the scene of the crash for themselves, seeking out GrandDuc’s cabin and the grave next to it . . . He might find the detective
anywhere, but certainly not up there. He was sinking into an obsessive spiral. The gold bracelet, the traces of human bone, the search
for a homeless man who had witnessed the crash . . . These clues
were like so many breadcrumbs scattered on the ground by a sadistic Hansel. So what did he hope to find? A miraculous light that
would show him the way?
Well, yes. In fact, that was exactly what he hoped to find.

They got on their way. As expected, the ascent took them a good
two hours. Marc climbed quickly, and Malvina followed without showing any signs of fatigue. It was not a difficult climb: the
slope was not too steep, and the path through the forest was clearly
marked. As they ascended, the view below them – of the Doubs, the
Swiss border, the fortified village of Saint-Ursanne – slowly revealed
itself. Halfway up, they stopped to drink some water. The air was
warm and slightly humid. Beneath his backpack, Marc’s shirt was
soaked with sweat.

They continued on the gently sloping path through the pine
trees towards the summit of Mont Terri. Marc increased his pace
and Malvina followed him, walking – even breathing – at the same
rhythm. The physical effort was bringing them closer together, Marc
thought, to his surprise, then decided that he was being ridiculous.

They came upon the scene of the tragedy with no warning.
The forest simply stopped, suddenly, as if a gang of wood-cutters
had cleared a narrow strip of land, about fifty yards wide and a few
thousand yards long. Young pine trees had been planted, but they
were no more than three feet high, and were surrounded by a multicoloured sea of wildflowers: yellow and blue gentians, lady’s-slipper
orchids, and orange-tinted arnica.
Marc and Malvina stood motionless, side by side.
No trace of the actual crash remained, apart from the absence of
tall trees. No monument, not even a marble plaque or a sign. It was
better this way, Marc thought. He liked the wildflowers. In twenty
years, the young pines would reach the height of the surrounding
trees, their branches would spread out, and gradually the wildflowers would die away, starved of sunlight, to be replaced by ferns and
moss, and perhaps a few daffodils.
Then everything that had occurred here would be forgotten.
Marc remained where he was, on the edge of the clearing, as if he
dared not profane the site of the tragedy. Malvina waded through
the thigh-high grass. Marc’s heartbeat accelerated, and he had trouble swallowing. He knew these symptoms all too well, even if they
were appearing more slowly than they normally would, perhaps
because of the altitude. His agoraphobia . . .
He said nothing. He did not move. He took deep breaths. Malvina must have heard him, or perhaps she heard nothing and was
surprised, or perhaps – why not? – she understood how he felt. In
any case, she turned around. She squinted in the sunlight, and it
looked almost as if she were smiling. A sad smile, a melancholic
truce, a peaceful despair. Marc coughed. He would never have
admitted this to Malvina, but the sight of her smile helped him
breathe more easily. Something about the presence of this crazy girl
reassured him, particularly here, in this secret place that meant so
much to both of them.
They must have stayed there for more than an hour. The sunlight
was almost level with the treetops.
‘Shall we go look for the cabin?’ Marc said quietly.
Malvina said nothing. She simply followed him.

Marc had to check the map several times. They spent nearly an hour
wandering through the forest, retracing their steps from clearings
that all looked the same. Marc began to wonder if Grand-Duc had
invented the whole thing. Malvina didn’t complain. In fact, she did
her best to help Marc as he attempted to decipher the guidebook.
Night was falling when they finally saw the shepherd’s hut, just as
Grand-Duc had described it. For one brief moment, Marc hoped
that the detective would be waiting for them inside. Instinctively,
he touched the Mauser in his pocket.

But the cabin was empty. It was cleaner than Grand-Duc had
suggested, but then he had picked up a good deal of litter, sending
it off to be analysed by his friend in the forensics laboratory. All in
the course of his search for Georges Pelletier.

Had that man really existed?
Marc came out of the cabin and inspected the grave. Everything
was exactly as the notebook had described it: the earth, the scattered stones, two broken bits of wood that might once have formed
a cross. So, Grand-Duc had not lied about this, at least. In all probability, this grave really had contained a link from a gold chain and
traces of human bone.
But what did that change, now?
Marc looked at his watch. It was 7.36 p.m.
He had not heard from Lylie since the text he had read in the
van. He sat on a tree stump, a few yards from the hut. The sun
was setting, on the roof of the world, and here he was, far from
everything. Alone with a crazy girl. Although it turned out that she
wasn’t as crazy as he had imagined. She wasn’t dangerous or spiteful
either.
The game was over and he had lost. Now he would allow the
painful memories to wash over him; he would wallow in morbid
nostalgia in order to avoid thinking about the fact that Lylie was,
at that moment, going to sleep in a hospital room. That she would
have an abortion a few hours from now, simply as a precaution,
because the fruit of their love might be nothing but poison.
He also wished to avoid thinking about the fact that the only
person who could help him – his grandfather’s murderer – was
roaming free somewhere, and that there was no chance of finding
him.

On one corner of a blanket Malvina had laid out the bottle of
water, the packets of biscuits and the saucisson.
‘Quite a feast, isn’t it?’
They ate in silence. The cabin was illuminated now only by
moonlight, so it looked like some kind of witch’s hovel. They both
knew it was too late to go back down, so they would have to sleep
here, together. Without ever saying a word about it, they were in
agreement: this was why they had come.
To spend a night on Mont Terri.
Two orphans lost in a cemetery without headstones.

Maybe you’ll find something in there that I couldn’t see.’
‘This is the dickhead’s journal?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Thanks.’
Malvina took the notebook, her duvet and a torch, and went

into the cabin. Marc walked off on his own, wandering through
the forest, finding his way by torchlight. When he returned, the
interior of the cabin was dimly illuminated by Malvina’s torch, but
the girl herself was asleep. Grand-Duc’s notebook was lying open,
next to her head.

Marc smiled. In spite of himself, he felt increasingly tender
towards this hate-filled young woman, as if – despite being four
years older than him – she were another little sister that he had to
protect. Quietly he picked up the green notebook and went outside
to sit on the tree stump. He turned the pages, until he reached the
last one. The final lines:

In this notebook, I have reviewed all the clues, all the leads, all the
theories I have found in eighteen years of investigation. It is all here, in
these hundred or so pages. If you have read them carefully, you will now
know as much as I do. Perhaps you will be more perceptive than me?
Perhaps you will find something I have missed? The key to the mystery,
if one exists. Perhaps . . .