After the Crash (40 page)

It would be an exaggeration to say that I have no regrets, but I have
done my best.
‘I have done my best.’
Marc was not seized with any new inspiration. He tried calling
Lylie, but there was no signal here on this mountainside. He cursed
his own stupidity. Unable to talk to Lylie, he re-read her messages, from the first to the last, the one he had received earlier that
day:
The operation will take place tomorrow at 10 a.m. Don’t worry,
everything will be fine. I’ll call you afterwards.
Tomorrow at ten.
He felt so utterly useless.

An owl hooted. Marc pointed his torch in the direction of the
sound, but saw only branches and leaves.
‘Where are you hiding?’ he asked the darkness.
The owl did not respond.
‘I wonder how long you’ve been on this mountain, watching
over it every night. Were you here when the big metal bird crashed
into your kingdom, all those years ago? Did you see Georges
Pelletier sleeping here in this cabin? Did you see the grave he dug,
and the bracelet? And Grand-Duc – did you see him too?’
After a while, Marc went back into the cabin. He was cold. He
wrapped himself up in his duvet and lay down close to Malvina,
staring up at the night sky through the holes in the roof. He had to
keep thinking until his subconscious, his memory gave him a sign,
a light in the darkness. He had to use every minute of the hours
that remained.
Malvina tossed and turned in her sleep, emitting little noises
occasionally. As time passed, she inched closer to Marc, her body
instinctively seeking the warmth of his. Had she ever slept with a
man before? Even next to a man?
It must be long past midnight now. Marc had not slept a wink
the night before. Exhausted, he sank into sleep without even being
aware of it.

It was Malvina who woke him, crying out like a demented woman.
She was standing in the middle of the room, her whole body trembling. Two skinny legs emerged from the sweater she had worn to
bed, and she was hopping up and down on her feet as if the floor
were made of hot coals.

‘Are you OK?’ Marc asked huskily.
‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about me. I’m used to it.’
She lay down under her duvet again. Marc watched her,

worried.
‘I told you, I’m fine!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes! Stop bugging me and go back to sleep.’
Malvina turned her back on Marc. Her duvet was touching his in

Four in the morning. It was now or never. He had to do something, or it would be too late.
Malvina was already asleep again.
What could he do? He gazed up into the dark sky. Stars appeared
and vanished, presumably hidden by invisible clouds moving in
the wind. Like false shooting stars on which people would make
wishes that never came true. Like the flashing lights of an aeroplane, confused with the distant constellations beyond. Closer.
More ephemeral.
Marc kept thinking about the last lines in the green notebook:
Grand-Duc’s aborted suicide attempt.
Had he been bluffing? Or had he really discovered something
that night, after finishing his account of the eighteen-year investigation? Some new piece of evidence which he never wrote in the
notebook . . . Marc tried to remember Malvina’s exact words, when
she had spoken about this on the train. Before his eyes, the only two
constellations he was able to recognise – Ursa Major and Lyra – had
disappeared.
‘Grand-Duc called my grandmother, the day before yesterday. He
was still alive then. He told her he had found something. The solution
to the mystery, or so he claimed. Just like that, at five minutes to midnight on the last day of his contract! Just before he was about to shoot
himself in the head, with the edition of the
Est Républicain
from 23
December 1980 spread out on the desk beneath him. He said he needed
a day or two to gather evidence, but he was absolutely sure that he had
solved the mystery. Oh, and he needed an extra one hundred and fifty
thousand francs . . .’
Marc considered her words. If he had not been lying, then
Grand-Duc had discovered the solution to the mystery in his
office, next to the fireplace where his archives were burning, at
five minutes to midnight. The next morning, Marc had performed
a thorough search of that office, but he had not found anything
apart from a corpse. Nor had Malvina. What had they missed?
Marc tried to imagine the scene of the detective’s suicide. The pistol
pressed to his temple, the old newspaper laid out in front of him.
Why had Grand-Duc not pulled the trigger? What had he heard?
Or seen?
Or read?
The idea came suddenly. Of course – the newspaper! The edition
of the
Est Républicain
that had appeared on 23 December 1980. This
would have been the last thing the detective saw before squeezing
the trigger.
What if the solution to the mystery was printed in an eighteenyear-old newspaper?
*
Marc got up quietly, being careful not to wake Malvina. He threw
his belongings into his backpack, then pulled one of the pages from
his pocket and wrote on the back:
Gone to buy croissants.
Marc
He left the note on the floor, close to Malvina’s head. He left the
guidebook there too, but kept the map for himself. One last time,
Marc looked at the shape of Malvina’s small body, lost under the
oversized quilt. She would have no problem finding her way back
down the mountain.
Outside, the sun had not yet risen, but the sky was beginning to
lighten, the stars fading one by one. Dawn on the last day. Marc
thought of Lylie, in her white-walled room.
He set off.

Six in the morning. Grand-Duc stretched out inside the Xantia. He
was parked on a path where tufts of grass grew between wheel ruts,
near Dannemarie, about a hundred feet from the chalet in which
Mélanie Belvoir – or, rather, Mélanie Luisans as she called herself
now – lived.

From that position he could easily see any vehicles coming from
the village long before they could see him. See without being seen.
Rule 1 of being a private detective. It had been years since he had
spent a night doing a stake-out. The experience reminded him of
his younger days, before the de Carville contract: all those nights
he had spent watching people enter and exit casinos on the Basque
coast or the Côte d’Azur. Nazim’s Xantia was almost as uncomfortable as the old bangers he used to drive then.

The detective took a thermos flask from the glove compartment
and poured some coffee into a plastic cup. The liquid burned his
lips as he sipped it.

He had time. Mélanie Belvoir was not due to return until 9
a.m. She was a nurse in the Belfort-Montbéliard hospital, and she
worked the night shift. Yesterday, Grand-Duc had spent a long
time talking to her on the phone before she finally let down her
guard. He had recorded their conversation, naturally. Afterwards
he had spent several hours at Monique Genevez’s gîte, transcribing the interview on his laptop. He had printed out a copy, which
now lay in an envelope on the passenger seat next to him. All he
needed was Mélanie Belvoir’s signature on the document.

Grand-Duc drank more coffee. It tasted of plastic.
How much would Mathilde de Carville be willing to pay for that
envelope? A lot of money, undoubtedly. A fortune. At least as much
as he had earned during the last eighteen years . . .
Grand-Duc felt no qualms about screwing the de Carvilles for
all he could get. They could afford it, after all. And no amount of
money, he suspected, would ever compensate him for the burden
of his conscience.
He bit his lip as a wave of guilt swept over him. This reward
really ought to have been shared between him and Nazim. Not fifty-fifty, of course, but his friend would have had enough to buy a
villa in Turkey. However Nazim had refused to follow him on this.
He seemed to think the de Carvilles had paid enough already, and
that the case was over. Crédule Grand-Duc knew he shouldn’t have
raised his voice: Nazim was adorable, but he was also very nervous.
‘I’ll go to the police, Crédule,’ he had warned. ‘I will, I swear, if
you don’t leave me in peace. This whole business has been eating
away at me for so long . . .’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Grand-Duc had smelled a rat then. Nazim was not the type to
make idle threats. The detective had demanded explanations, guarantees, and then everything had spun out of control. Nazim had
pulled a gun on him, but Grand-Duc had been quicker to squeeze
the trigger. That was all. He had never wanted, nor intended, to kill
Nazim. But it had happened, and when Nazim’s head fell into the
fireplace, an idea had sparked in Grand-Duc’s mind. All he had to
do to make his friend’s face unrecognisable was to push it a little
further into the flames. He had pulled him out briefly, to shave
what remained of his moustache, and to dress him in Grand-Duc’s
own clothes, shoes and watch, just in case Lylie or Marc became
too curious.
He had not intended to kill Ayla either, but he’d had no choice.
Grand-Duc knew her; she would go straight to the police. Nazim
had not taken part in the murder of Pierre Vitral, but he knew
about it, and he had undoubtedly told his wife everything. It was
hardly Grand-Duc’s fault if Nazim wasn’t astute enough to keep
secrets from her. She had called him, the day before, and left several
panicky messages. He’d had no choice but to return to Paris, and to
tail her discreetly from her kebab shop to his house, and then to the
forest in Coupvray. Which was, as it happened, the perfect place to
kill her. After that, he had driven back to the Jura mountains, doing
110mph, in order to get there early enough to follow the postman
and finally put this case to rest.
Grand-Duc forced himself to finish the contents of the plastic
cup. The coffee was bitter, hard to swallow.
Nazim Ozan. Ayla Ozan.
For years they had been his best friends. His only friends. And
now he had murdered them.
What a farce life was!
Yes, the de Carvilles could pay for all of that.

Grand-Duc checked the time, displayed in retro green digits on the
Xantia’s clock.
6.15 a.m.

Marc parked the van in a car park in the centre of Montbéliard. It
had taken him about an hour and a half to come back down Mont
Terri, then three-quarters of an hour to drive here. He had gone
into the first café he could see that was open, and the waiter had
given him the address of the
Est Républicain
: 12 Place Jules-Viette.

The offices were closed, although that was hardly a surprise,
given the hour. But he couldn’t give up on his final hope: solving
the mystery of Lylie’s identity before their baby was aborted. In less
than four hours’ time . . .

A metal grille on the window made it impossible for him to see
inside the offices. Marc turned around and noticed three lorries
in the car park where he had left his van, all painted with the
Est
Républicain
logo. Clearly, the delivery of the morning newspapers
had not yet been completed. All was not lost.

Marc walked quickly to the back of the building, where three
workmen were standing in front of a warehouse entrance, loading a
van with piles of newspapers wrapped in cellophane. From a radio,
he heard the cheery voice of a DJ announcing the day’s horoscope.

‘Good morning,’ Marc said to one of them. ‘Are the offices
closed?’
He bit his lip. It was a stupid question, and he knew it. The
workman looked at him and replied without even bothering to
remove the cigarette from his mouth.
‘You’re in luck. I’ll be at my desk in five minutes . . .’
For one brief moment, Marc felt hope fluttering inside his chest.
‘Just give me time to put on my skirt and make-up, and I’m all
yours.’
The man’s colleagues sniggered. Marc swallowed his
embarrassment.
‘Come back in three hours, kid,’ one of the men told him. ‘We’re
kind of busy right now.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Marc said, ‘but this is urgent. Is there really no
one who could open the offices for me? I just need to check something . . .’
‘He could always ask Superbitch,’ one of the men suggested.
The other two laughed.
‘All right, if you insist,’ the first man sighed. He pressed an intercom in the doorway of the warehouse.
‘Mrs Montaigu? There’s someone here to see you, at the warehouse entrance.’

A few minutes later, Mrs Montaigu appeared. ‘Superbitch’ was
an elegantly dressed young woman with a small waist and nicely
tanned legs, but her face was pinched in an expression so severe that
it seemed almost comical. Clearly the years she had spent arduously
climbing the company ladder had taken their toll. A small pair of
spectacles was posed at the end of her nose. She held a stack of
papers in one hand and a pen in the other.

Marc tried to think quickly. What story could he invent that
would persuade this unsympathetic woman to open the offices
so early? Should he take out the Mauser and threaten her with it?
Probably not a good idea.

In a panic, he stammered: ‘Um, listen . . . I need to check an old
edition of your newspaper. Very old, in fact. The edition from 23
December, 1980 . . .’

The woman managed a small smile. ‘I assume it must be urgent,
given the look on your face?’
‘You have no idea.’
‘Maybe not, but I don’t see why it can’t wait until nine o’clock.’
The three workmen were following this conversation closely. Mrs
Montaigu had already turned on her high, thin heels when Marc
shouted: ‘Wait!’
She turned around, her face a mask of pure annoyance.
Without thinking, Marc told her the truth. ‘Please . . . my wife is
pregnant. And she is due to have an abortion in three hours because
she has doubts about the identity of her parents. I have good reason
to believe that the truth about her identity can be found in that
edition of your newspaper . . .’
Mrs Montaigu stared at him aghast. The three workmen had
stopped what they were doing to eavesdrop on the conversation.
Superbitch gave them a fierce look, and they got back to work. She
then turned her furious gaze on Marc.
‘So you think you have the right to prevent your wife having an
abortion, do you? And you really believe that . . .’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Marc yelled. ‘Don’t give me a stupid lecture! I just want to look at that newspaper. All I’m asking for is a
chance . . .’
The woman appeared to be too shocked to respond. Marc took
advantage of her silence to press his point: ‘You remember the aeroplane that crashed into Mont Terri?’
Mrs Montaigu shook her head. Not surprising, thought Marc;
she would probably only have been about ten years old at the time.
He had no choice but to keep going.
‘The
Est Républicain
scooped every other paper in the country
when it discovered there had been one survivor. A baby. They called
her ‘‘Dragonfly’’. The miracle child. That baby is my wife . . .’
Clearly, the woman had no idea what he was talking about. She
was out of her depth, and she didn’t like it.
‘Marcel,’ she said to the oldest of the three workmen, ‘do you
remember this crash on Mont Terri?’
Marcel, who had been waiting for this moment, discreetly
dropped his cigarette butt to the ground. ‘Absolutely,’ he replied.
‘It was the biggest event this region had ever seen. Christmas 1980.
Nearly two hundred people dead . . .’
‘And the newspaper was involved?’
‘We were ahead of everyone! None of the Paris papers had the
story, but we did. The child who survived. It was all over the telly
by the next day. The newspaper included an article about it every
day for months. I’ll spare you the details, but . . .’
‘Do you remember the name of the girl?’ the woman interrupted.
‘Of course. It was Emilie Vitral.’
Mrs Montaigu turned to Marc. ‘And you are?’
‘Marc Vitral.’
‘Her husband?’
Marc hesitated. ‘Yes . . . Well, actually . . . it’s a bit compli cated
. . .’
‘What time is your wife supposed to have the abortion?’
‘Ten o’clock.’
‘Here?’
‘No. In Paris.’
The woman sighed. ‘This is unbelievable . . .’
‘Please . . . all I want to do is look at that old newspaper. I swear,
if I save the life of my child, I’ll make you the godmother!’
Superbitch laughed coldly. ‘Whatever you do, don’t do that. I
can’t stand kids.’
Finally, after another sigh, she said, ‘All right, follow me.’