After the Crash (7 page)

The arguments and counter-arguments went on like this for hours,
and I could describe every detail. Not only do I have the films of
the meetings, I have also gone through almost three thousand pages
of notes accumulated by Judge Le Drian during the weeks that followed. And that’s without even mentioning my personal research.
Fear not, I will come back to these discussions in a moment, at
least for what seem to me to be the most important points. But
I think you must already be getting a sense of the investigators’
difficulties.

I am simply passing on all these clues to you. Now it’s your turn
to sift through them . . .
But I can hear you asking questions: What about scientific proof?
Their clothes? Blood type? Eye colour? And all the rest?
Don’t worry, I’m coming to that.
You won’t be disappointed.

Marc ate the rest of his croissant without even looking up at the
clock, or at the beautiful student, or at Mariam. Around him, the
Lenin was alive with noise and movement. And so too, visible
through the café’s windows, was the square outside the university.
Even if he had his doubts about Grand-Duc’s revelations, Marc had
to keep reading, storing away all the information he discovered.

Two weeks later, on 11 January 1980, Judge Le Drian convened a
new meeting. Same investigators, same office in the same building
on Avenue de Suffren . . . but this time, they met in the morning.
The Eiffel Tower seemed to shiver in the fog, its feet covered by
puddles that were slowly growing in the fine drizzle. Lines of tourists stood under umbrellas. This was the most visited monument in
the world, and yet there was no shelter of any kind where people
could wait, not even a simple glass roof.

Judge Le Drian was growing increasingly irritated. Influential
whispers had reached his ears, making it clear that everyone he
knew was strongly sympathetic towards the de Carvilles.

The judge was not stupid. He had got the message. But he could
only act according to the facts at his disposal and he was hardly
going to start fabricating false evidence.

Dr Morange was concluding his report on the child’s blood type.
He had passed around photocopies of the medical analyses.
‘So, to summarise, our miracle child has the most common blood
type, A+, along with forty per cent of the French population. We
have learned from the hospitals in Dieppe and Istanbul that both
Emilie Vitral and Lyse-Rose de Carville are also, without any doubt
whatsoever, A+.’
‘Is there no way of extracting any more information from these
tests?’ the judge asked.
The learned doctor explained: ‘You have to understand: blood
tests only allow us to eliminate the possibility of paternity, not to
confirm it. We would only be able to assert a family connection if
there was an unusual rhesus factor, or in the event of a rare genetic
illness. But that isn’t the case here. The science can’t tell us anything
about who this child’s family is.’
I can sense you wondering now, with all this talk of science: what
about DNA and all that jazz? But let us not forget, this was 1980.
Back then, DNA testing still seemed to be in the realms of science
fiction. The first legal case to have been decided on the basis of a
DNA test occurred in 1987. But don’t worry, we will return to this
issue; it was a question that had to be confronted eventually, but
by then, the miracle child was much older, and the situation had
changed completely.
Back in 1980, the experts on Avenue de Suffren managed as
best they could. Dr Morange showed his colleagues a series of
pictures.
‘These are models created by the lab in Meudon. We have applied
computer-generated ageing techniques to images of the miracle
child, to see who the baby might resemble in five years, ten years,
in twenty years . . .’
The judge glanced at the photographs and seemed irritated: ‘If
you think I’m going to base my decision on something as crazy as
that, you’re dreaming!’
On that point, he was right. Or partly, at least. Objectively, the artificially aged child looked more like a Vitral than
a de Carville, although it wasn’t obvious, and the de Carvilles’
lawyers had little trouble ridiculing the process. Eighteen years
later, having witnessed the miracle child grow up, year after year,
I can tell you that those ageing programs are complete and utter
crap.
‘There remains the question of eye colour,’ the doctor continued.
‘The only real distinguishing feature of this baby . . . Her eyes are
strikingly blue for her age. The colour can still change, darken, but
all the same, this appears to be a genetic characteristic.’
Vatelier took over: ‘Emilie Vitral had pale eyes that were already
turning blue. All the witnesses we approached – the grandparents, a
few friends, the nurses in the maternity hospital – confirmed that.
Pale blue eyes like those of both her parents, her grandparents, and
practically the entire Vitral family. The de Carvilles, on the other
hand, are mostly dark haired with dark brown eyes. The same goes
for the Berniers – I checked.’
Judge Le Drian appeared to be at the end of his tether. This was
not good – not good at all for the de Carvilles. Outside, the drizzle
had turned to a downpour, but the stoical tourists continued to
wait at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, hidden beneath a marquee of
umbrellas. The judge stood up and went to the light switch, bringing a little brightness to the room. His scarf slithered to the right.
He did not bother to readjust it.
‘Hmm, I see what you’re saying,’ he said, playing for time. ‘But
really that’s just one more presumption – there’s still no proof.
Everyone knows that two parents with brown eyes can have a child
with eyes of any colour whatsoever.’
‘That’s true,’ Dr Morange admitted. ‘It’s just a question of probability . . .’
And probability was not pointing towards the de Carvilles. I
remember a few weeks later,
Science and Life
magazine used the
example of the ‘miracle child of Mont Terrible’ to explain why the
science of genetics was incapable of systematically predicting an
individual’s physical characteristics based on their ancestry. I have
always suspected that Léonce de Carville must have commissioned
that article, directly or indirectly – the timing of it was just a little
too convenient.
Next, the judge interrogated Saint-Simon, the Turkish policeman, through the loudspeaker.
‘So what about the child’s clothing? Is it really so difficult to draw
any conclusions from the clothes she was wearing on the day of the
crash?’
Calmly, Saint-Simon replied. ‘Gentlemen, let me remind you of
the clothes the child was wearing when she was found. A cotton
vest, a white dress with orange flowers, and a beige wool sweater.
We can be fairly certain that the clothes were bought in Istanbul,
in the Grand Bazaar, the largest covered market in the world . . .’
Judge Le Drian did not let this opportunity slip: ‘The Vitrals were
only on holiday in Turkey for two weeks, and they spent only two
days in Istanbul. Logically, Emilie Vitral would have been wearing
the French clothes she had brought with her for the journey. It
seems highly improbable that her parents would have thought to
dress her, a few hours before they went back to France, in clothes
bought in Istanbul. If the child was wearing a vest, dress, and
sweater bought in Turkey, then it seems to me that this baby must
be Lyse-Rose de Carville. She was born in Istanbul, after all . . .’
Saint-Simon retorted: ‘Except, your honour, that the Turkish
clothes worn by the baby were relatively cheap. I checked – they
are completely different to the rest of the clothes I found in LyseRose’s wardrobe in the de Carvilles’ villa in Ceyhan. I will send you
a detailed description. Lyse-Rose’s clothes were all by well-known
brands, bought in the eastern district of Istanbul, in Galatasaray.
Not in the Grand Bazaar.’
Before he could launch into a sociological analysis of the various
districts of Istanbul, Le Drian interrupted him: ‘OK, I’ll look at the
list. Vatelier, could you tell us about the ballistics report?’
Rubbing his beard, Vatelier gave the judge a wary look.
‘The experts tried to reconstruct how and at what precise moment
the baby was ejected from the plane. We know where each passenger was sitting. The de Carvilles were in the tenth row, on one side,
towards the back of the cabin; the Vitrals were in the centre of the
Airbus, roughly level with the wings. So the two babies were more
or less equidistant from the door that broke open on impact – the
door through which the baby was ejected. All the experts agree on
that point. I’ve sent you the files. They were able to reconstruct the
point of impact in detail, the way the door twisted, and they all say
that only a human being weighing less than twenty pounds could
possibly have escaped alive.’
‘All right, Superintendent,’ interrupted the judge who, that day,
was sporting a mustard-yellow scarf that was not a particularly good
match for his bottle-green jacket. ‘But since then, there has been
the Le Tallandier theory. Unless I’m mistaken, the physics professor Serge Le Tallandier demonstrated the unlikelihood of a baby
being ejected laterally. Meaning, in other words, that it is less probable that Emilie Vitral should have been ejected, because she was
sitting in the centre of the cabin. What is your opinion on that,
Superintendent?’
‘To be completely honest, Le Tallandier’s calculations are so
complicated that a mere policeman – even one from the forensics
department – wouldn’t dare to contradict him. But I should point
out that Serge Le Tallandier was a classmate of Léonce de Carville
at military school, and that he was also the advisor on Alexandre de
Carville’s dissertation at Mines Paris-Tech . . .’
The judge looked at Superintendent Vatelier as if he had just
blasphemed.
‘Are you attempting to discredit the opinion of a renowned
expert who runs his own laboratory at the Polytechnique, the best
military school in France?’
Vatelier smiled and said: ‘I am not attempting to discredit
anyone, your honour. I have no competence in that field. But I can
tell you that, when I talked to Le Tallandier’s colleagues at the Polytechnique about his theory, they burst out laughing.’
The judge sighed. Outside, the Eiffel Tower had completely
disappeared in the fog. Hundreds of tourists had probably waited
hours in the rain for nothing.

The weeks passed and the case seemed to be heading into a legal
and scientific impasse that was of ever decreasing interest to anyone
except the two families involved.
The police persisted.
The journalists didn’t care.
The general public, which had been so fascinated by the case in

the days following the ‘miracle’, quickly wearied of it as the uncertainty dragged on. The mystery seemed insoluble and everyone was
bored by the experts’ squabbling. As the furore died down, the police
attempted to work discreetly, while de Carville’s lawyers did their
best to ensure that, as far as possible, the inquiry took place outside
the public eye. It was clear that, if the case was decided purely by
senior government officials, the judgement was likely to be in their
favour. Judge Le Drian was a reasonable man, after all . . .

The
Est Républicain
, which had carried the initial scoop, was the
last newspaper to continue providing a daily update on the case,
although the update became increasingly brief. The journalist who
was writing about the investigation, Lucile Moraud, had spent decades covering the sleaziest stories in eastern France; she did not miss
them. She soon found herself faced with a dilemma: what should
she call the miracle child? It was impossible to remain neutral if you
used either of the names, Emilie or Lyse-Rose, and circumlocutions
such as ‘the miracle child of Mont Terrible’ or ‘the orphan of the
snow’ or ‘the girl who lived’ tended to slow down her prose, which
she wanted to be simple and direct so she could appeal to her readership. Inspiration arrived in late January 1981. At that time, as I’m
sure you will remember, a song by Charlelie Couture was playing
constantly on the radio, a song that seemed eerily topical: ‘Like an
aeroplane without wings . . .’

Infuriated by the slowness of the inquiry and the timidity of
Judge Le Drian, Lucile Moraud convinced her editor to run, on
29 January, a full front-page photograph of the ‘miracle child’ in
her glass cage in the pediatrics wing of the hospital. Below it ran a
caption in bold lettering, consisting of three lines from the song:

Oh, dragonfly,
Your wings are so fragile,
As for me, my body is broken . . .

The journalist had hit the bull’s eye. Now, no one could hear
Charlelie Couture’s hit without thinking of the miracle child with
her fragile wings. For the French people, the orphan of the snow
became ‘Dragonfly’, and the nickname stuck. Even the families
began to call her that. And so did I.

What an ass! Dragonfly . . .
I even went so far as to become interested in the insects themselves, and spent a fortune collecting them. When I think about it
now . . . All of that, just because some shrewd journalist knew how
to manipulate the sentiments of the masses.
The police were less romantic. In order to refer to the baby without implicitly siding with either family, they invented a neutral
acronym that linked the beginning of one name to the end of the
other. By crossing Lyse-Rose with Emilie, they created Lylie . . .
Lylie.
Superintendent Vatelier was the first to use this name in front of
journalists.
And, let’s be honest, it isn’t bad. As with Dragonfly, the nickname Lylie stuck, a bit like an affectionate diminutive.
Not Lyse-Rose or Emilie, but Lylie.
A chimera. A strange being composed of two bodies. A monster.

Léonce de Carville was a strong-willed, determined man, used to
getting what he wanted in life. However, so far none of the evidence
in this case was working in his favour, and he became frustrated,
impatient. And so it was that he made two mistakes. Two very serious mistakes.