Blood Wedding (16 page)

While
I was about it, I also bought some Rohypnol. They call it the “date-rape drug”. It leaves the subject confused, disorientated and passive, and causes anterograde amnesia. I don’t think I will need it anytime soon, but I need to be prepared. Lastly, for my first-aid kit, I found a powerful sleeping tablet with a hypnotic-anaesthetic effect. According to the patient information leaflet, it works in seconds.

November 13

At last I have come to a decision. For the past two weeks I have been hesitating, weighing the advantages and the risks, researching the various technical complexities. Fortunately, technology has advanced considerably in recent years, this was what finally decided me. I settled on three microphones, two in the living room and the third, obviously, in the bedroom. They are very inconspicuous, barely three millimetres in circumference, they are voice-activated and record onto high-capacity D.A.T. tapes. The only challenge is recovering the recordings. I hid the recorder in the cubby-hole that houses the water meter. I will have to watch out for the meter reader. Usually, the building supervisor posts a notice next to the mailboxes a few days beforehand.

November 16

The results are excellent: the recordings are crystal clear. It is like being in the room. And in a sense, I am. It is a pleasure to hear their voices.

As though Fate wanted to reward me for my initiative, on the very first night I was able to listen to them making love. It’s quite
strange. I know so much about her private life.

November 20

Sophie can’t work out what is going on with her e-mails. She has just created a new account. As usual, to avoid forgetting her password, she saves a link on her desktop. I have only to click on it to access her account. Thanks to her trusting nature, I have access to everything. If ever she should decide to change the process, it would not take me long to crack her password. In her e-mails to Valérie, she talks about being “tired”. She says that she doesn’t want to bother Vincent with such insignificant details, but she is suffering frequent memory lapses, and sometimes she does “crazy stuff”. Valérie suggests she see a professional. I have to say, I agree.

Especially since she hardly sleeps. She has opted for a different remedy, this one comes in blue caplets. This makes it much more practical for me; the caplets are easy to open and re-close and the drug itself is never in direct contact with the tongue, which is just as well since my sleeping tablets have a slightly bitter taste. I have learned to titrate the dose according to her sleeping and waking hours (thanks to the microphone, I know that the drug makes her snore a little). Through her, I am becoming something of a drug expert, a molecular artist. Sophie confides her problems to Valérie, complains that her sleep is like a coma and that when she wakes, she has trouble getting through the day. The pharmacist wants to refer her to a doctor, but Sophie refuses. She likes her little blue caplets. I’m quite fond of them myself.

November 23

Sophie
set a trap for me! She is doing some detective work. I’ve known for a while now that she has been trying to find out if she is being followed. Of course she has no idea she is also being recorded. But that doesn’t change the fact that her recent tactic worries me. If she is already starting to be suspicious, that must mean I have made some mistakes. And I don’t know where. Or when.

As I was leaving their apartment that morning, by sheer fluke I noticed a scrap of brown paper, the same colour as the door. Sophie must have slipped it between the door and the doorframe as she was leaving so that it fell when I opened the door. I could not hang around on the landing, so I went back inside to think, but I could not resolve what to do. If I took the scrap of paper away, it would simply confirm her suspicions. If I slipped it back in a different place, that would also prove that she was right. How many traps had she set that I had blithely walked into? I had absolutely no idea what to do. I settled on the radical solution: upstage her little trap with one of my own. I went and bought a short crowbar and went back up to her apartment. I forced the crowbar in at several points, I even opened the door to give the impression that I had used great force. I had to work quickly because the noise – though I muffled it as best I could – was easily audible, and even in the middle of the day the building is never completely deserted. I took just enough time to examine the result: it looked convincingly like an attempted break-in, and the door being forced with a crowbar would explain why the scrap of paper was on the floor.

I’m still a little worried, I have to say. In future, I will have to be extra vigilant.

November 25

At
Monoprix I buy the same groceries she does. Exactly the same. But just before I reach the checkout I add a bottle of expensive whisky. I am careful to choose Vincent’s favourite tipple, the one they have in their drinks cabinet. While Sophie is queuing at the bakery, I swap my bags for hers and as I am leaving I have a word with the security guard about the woman in the grey coat.

On the other side of the street, I go to the A.T.M. to withdraw money because it is the perfect observation point, and I see Sophie’s shock as she is stopped by the security guard. She laughs, but not for long. She has to go with him so he can check her purchases.

Sophie did not emerge from the supermarket for more than an hour. Two uniformed police officers turned up. I don’t know what happened. When she came out of Monoprix, she looked crushed. This time, she really will have to go and see a shrink. She has no choice.

December 5

Since September, there have been several auctions at Percy’s, but I can’t work out what determines whether or not Sophie goes. It seems completely unpredictable, because I don’t have the information that informs her decision. There was an auction last night at 9.00. I waited until 9.15 and, since Sophie seemed determined to spend the evening in front of the television, I decided to go myself.

There was a large crowd. The receptionist was greeting customers with a smile, distributing handsome glossy catalogues. She recognised me immediately and gave me a particularly
winning smile which I returned, without insisting unduly. The sale was a long-drawn-out affair. I waited for at least an hour before popping out to the lobby where the receptionist was counting the catalogues that remained and handing them to the few stragglers.

We talked for a bit. I played my cards well. Her name is Andrée – a name I despise. She looks fatter standing up than she does behind the desk. Her perfume is just as cloying, if anything it was even more nauseating at close range. I told her a few jokes and made her laugh. I pretended I had to get back for the rest of the auction, but at the last moment, having already taken a couple of steps, I turned and asked if she would allow me to buy her a drink when the auction was over. She simpered pathetically, I could tell she was thrilled. For form’s sake, she pretended she would have a lot to do after the sale, but she did little to put me off. As it turned out, I only had to wait fifteen minutes. I hailed a taxi and took her to the
grands boulevards
. I remembered a bar opposite l’Olympia that had muted lighting and served cocktails and English beers, and where you can also eat. It was a painfully dull evening, but one that I am sure will prove fruitful in the future.

I feel sorry for the girl.

Last night I watched my lovebirds romping in bed, though Sophie’s heart didn’t seem to be in it. She probably has other things on her mind. I slept like a stone.

December 8

Sophie is wondering whether her computer might be the problem. She suspects that someone might have remote access, but doesn’t know how to find out. She created yet another e-mail account and this time she did not store the password on her computer. It took
me six hours to hack in. The mailbox was empty. I changed the password. Now she is the one who cannot access it.

Vincent is visibly worried about her. Deep down, he’s a sensitive soul. He simply asked Sophie how things were going, but that was euphemistic. On the telephone to his mother, he raised the possibility that Sophie might be “depressive”. From what I could gather, his mother was sympathetic, which just goes to show what a hypocrite she is. She and Sophie cordially loathe each other.

December 9

Through a friend of her late mother she has vaguely kept in touch with, Sophie quickly managed to get an appointment to see a specialist. I don’t know what’s going on in that head of hers, but choosing a “behavioural therapist” seems dumb to me. Why didn’t she go for a decent psychiatrist? The sort of guy who’s bound to drive you insane. It’s as if she learned nothing from her mother. Instead, she visits a Doctor Brevet, a quack who, from what she has written to Valérie, offered her advice on how to “confirm the validity, the objective reality, of her fears”. So she has to keep lists of things, lists of dates, she has to note everything down. It promises to be exhausting.

That said, she is still keeping the whole thing secret from her husband, which is a good sign. For me. And what’s good for me is good for Sophie.

December 10

I’m really worried about something I heard them say last night: Vincent was talking about trying for a baby. Listening to them, it’s
not the first time they’ve had this conversation. Sophie is reluctant. But I can tell from her voice that she wants to be persuaded. I don’t think she particularly wants a kid, I think she just wants something normal to happen for a change. In fact, it’s hard to say whether Vincent is being honest about the whole thing. I’ve been wondering whether he thinks Sophie’s depressive behaviour has something to do with her longing for a child. Pure psychobabble. I could tell him a thing or two about his wife.

December 11

A few days ago, I found out that Sophie has to go to Neuilly-sur-Seine this morning for some public relations event. There is my Sophie looking for a parking spot, driving round and round and finally finding a place. An hour later, the car is gone. This time, she didn’t go rushing to the police station, she went round in circles – on foot this time – and eventually found the car parked several streets away. This is not like her own neighbourhood, she does not recognise the landmarks. A nice little story to start off her new notebook.

December 12

I am not about to set down in the diary the unspeakable horrors I have to put up with from that fat bitch Andrée. She is just about becoming useful to me, but there are times when I can hardly bear to be in her presence.

This is what I’ve found out so far.

As a press officer, Sophie is responsible for certain P.R. campaigns, those related to particularly high-profile auctions, for
example. The rest of the time, she works on “corporate communications”, ensuring the company’s “brand image” is “well positioned”.

Sophie has been working at Percy’s for two years. There are two of them in the department, Sophie and a man called Pencherat, who is Head of P.R. “pro tem”, according to Andrée. He’s a dipso. Andrée pulls comic faces when she describes him. Talks about the stink of wine on his breath. It’s a bit rich, coming from someone who uses perfume as a weapon, but never mind . . .

Sophie has a degree in economics. She got the job at Percy’s through a friend who has since left the company.

She and Vincent were married in 1999 at the town hall in the sixteenth arrondissement. May 13, to be precise. Andrée went to the reception. I was treated to a detailed description of the food I could well have done without, especially since she told me nothing about the other guests. All I can remember is that “the husband’s family are well off”. Not exactly helpful. And that Sophie hates her mother-in-law, and calls her a “poisonous bitch”.

Sophie is popular at Percy’s. Her superiors trust her. Although lately, rumour has it, her reliability has been called into question: she misses meetings, she lost a company chequebook, she damaged two company cars in recent weeks and she accidentally wiped a client file that was, so they said, critical. I can see what they mean.

Andrée describes her as friendly, approachable, very cheerful, and generally dependable. She is, it seems, something of an expert. Though recently she has not been very well (no shit . . .). She isn’t sleeping, she claims to have bouts of depression. She says she is seeing someone. To put it bluntly, she seems a little lost. And alone.

December 13

Everyone
is rushing around trying to get ready for Christmas, and Sophie is no exception. This evening, she did some late-night shopping at F.N.A.C. The place was heaving! People pushing and shoving at the checkouts. You put down your plastic bag, bicker with the customer behind you, stumble and . . . when you get home and look in the bag, you discover that instead of
Swordfishtrombones
, there is a different Tom Waits C.D.,
Blue Valentine
, and that you have a copy of Salman Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children
but you can’t remember who you bought it for. And you can’t find the till receipt to take it back. So you write it down in your little notebook.

Sophie and Andrée mostly confine themselves to small talk, they are not what you would really call friends. Is the information I’ve managed to gather about Sophie and Vincent really worth the excruciating time spent with this dumb bitch? Because it is pretty thin. Vincent is apparently working on a “major deal” at work, which is taking up most of his energy. Sophie is bored at Percy’s. Since her mother’s death, she increasingly misses her father, who lives in Seine-et-Marne. She wants to have children, but not yet. Vincent doesn’t like her friend Valérie. I think I’ll have to give up on the fat bitch and find myself a more useful source of information.

December 14

Sophie
writes everything down, or almost everything. She sometimes wonders whether she is even remembering to note things down. Then she realises that she has written the same thing twice. Her arrest for shoplifting at Monoprix a month ago has left her badly shaken. The security guards took her into a windowless room and took turns trying to get her to sign a confession. From what she wrote to Valérie, they are utter bastards, but they’re good at their job. At harassing people. She did not really understand what they wanted. Then the police arrived. They were in a hurry. They did not pull their punches. She had the choice of being taken down to the station and referred to the magistrate’s court, or to admit to shoplifting and sign a statement: she signed. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Vincent, she simply couldn’t. The problem is, it has just happened again. This time it will be more difficult to hide. A bottle of perfume and a manicure kit were found in her bag. But Sophie was lucky. She was taken to the commissariat – it was action stations out there in the street – but released two hours later. She had to make up an excuse for her husband, who was waiting for her.