Blood Wedding (31 page)
Authors: Pierre Lemaitre
When she is done, she cleans the pot. She takes a shower and packs her travel bag. She is not going to take much. The bare minimum. She needs to leave everything behind her.
*
[. . .]
Prostration, fixity of gaze, expressions of grief, fear, sometimes terror, intricate fantasies, resignation in the face of death, overwhelming feelings of guilt, magical thinking, desire for punishment – these are just some of the symptoms that appear in the clinical assessment of Sarah in 1989, when once again she is hospitalised.
Thankfully, the trust established between Sarah and I during her previous stay here make it possible to instil a positive atmosphere designed to allay – this being our primary objective – the feelings of aversion, disgust and hatred she secretly nurtures for her son, emotions that must be all the more exhausting to sustain since she has successfully managed to hide them, at least until the most recent suicide attempt which led to her being committed. By this point, hiding behind her pretence of being a loving mother, she has spent fifteen years repressing her feelings, her visceral, almost murderous feelings towards her son. [. . .]
*
Sophie sets down her bag next to the front door. As though she is checking out of a hotel, she makes a last tour of the apartment, tidying things away, plumping the cushion on the sofa, running a cloth over the hideous tablecloth in the kitchen, putting away the dishes. Then she opens the cupboard, takes out a cardboard box and sets it on the table in the living room. From her travel bag, she takes a bottle of pale-blue gel capsules. From the box, she takes Sarah’s wedding dress, goes into the bedroom where Frantz is still sound asleep and begins to undress him. It is a difficult task, his body is heavy, almost a dead weight. She has to roll him this way and that. Eventually he is naked. One by one she lifts his legs and slips them into the dress, rolls him onto his side while she pulls it over his hips. After this, it is more difficult; Frantz is
too stocky for the dress to fit over his torso and shoulders.
“Never mind,” Sophie says, smiling. “Don’t worry.”
It takes twenty minutes before she is satisfied with the results. She has had to unpick the stitching on both sides.
“You see,” she whispers, “I told you not to worry.”
She steps back to gauge the effect. Frantz, draped rather than dressed in the faded wedding dress, is sitting up in bed, his back against the wall, his head lolling to one side, unconscious. His chest hair peeks out of the scooped neckline. The effect is arresting and utterly pathetic.
Sophie lights one last cigarette and leans against the doorframe.
It is time to finish this. She goes in search of a bottle of mineral water, shakes the barbiturates into her hand and in twos and threes, pushes them into Frantz’s mouth, making him swallow.
“‘Makes the medicine go down . . .’”
Frantz coughs, he retches, but in the end he always swallows. Sophie plans to give him twelve times the lethal dose.
“It may take a little time, but it will be worth the effort.”
By the time she has finished the bed has been splashed with water, but Frantz has swallowed all the pills. Sophie stands back. She gazes at this tableau which truly looks like something out of a Fellini movie.
“Just one little thing missing . . .”
She goes to her travel bag and rummages until she finds a lipstick.
“It’s not quite the right colour, but, well . . .”
She outlines his lips, drawing over the edges at the top, the bottom, the sides. She takes a step back to assess the result: a clown in a wedding dress.
“Perfect.”
Frantz
groans, struggles and manages to open his eyes. He tries to say something but gives up. He begins to gesture fretfully, then falls back.
Without another glance, Sophie fetches her bag and leaves the apartment.
*
[. . .] It is about her son that Sarah talks almost exclusively during the therapy sessions: the boy’s physical appearance, his intelligence, his manner, his language, his tastes. Everything is used to bolster the loathing that she feels for him. It has become necessary to take time to plan the boy’s visits to the clinic, with the help of his father, who has been scarred by the events of recent years.
Indeed,
it is a visit from her son that eventually triggers her suicide on June 4, 1989. In the days leading up to the visit, she vigorously expresses her desire not “to be forced to be in the same room as Frantz”. She claims that she is physically incapable of playing her role for even a second more. Only through a permanent separation, she claims, can she hope to survive. The unintentional pressures of being in an institution, her own feelings of guilt, and her husband’s insistence persuade her to agree to the visit, but, in the moments after her son has left the room, channelling her rage and aggression against herself, Sarah puts on her wedding dress (a symbolic tribute to the husband, and to his unstinting support) and throws herself from the fifth-floor window.
The police report issued on June 4, 1989 at 2.53 p.m. by Brigadier J. Bellerive of the Meudon
gendarmerie
is appended to Sarah Berg’s file, ref. JB-GM 1807.
Dr Catherine Auverney
*
Sophie
realises that she has not thought about the weather in a long time. It is a beautiful day. She pushes open the glass door of the building and pauses for a moment on the top step. Only five more steps before she begins a new life. This one will be her last. She sets her bag down at her feet, lights a cigarette, then changes her mind and immediately stubs it out. Before her are some thirty metres of tarmac and, beyond that, the car park. She looks at the sky, picks up her bag, walks down the steps and away from the building. Her heart is beating fast. She has trouble catching her breath, as though she has narrowly avoided an accident.
She has walked about ten metres when she hears her name being called from far above.
“Sophie!”
She turns.
Frantz calls to her from the balcony of the fifth-floor window; he is wearing the wedding dress. He has climbed over the parapet and, clutching the balustrade with his left hand, he is leaning into the void.
He sways uncertainly. He looks at her, and in a soft voice he calls:
“Sophie.”
Then, with a fierce determination, he leaps like a high-diver. He flings his arms wide, he does not scream, he comes to earth right beside Sophie. The sound is horrifying, ghastly.
*
NEWS ROUNDUP
A
31-year-old man leaped to his death from a fifth-floor balcony of the Résidence des Petits-Champs yesterday. Frantz Berg lived in the building. He died instantly.
He was wearing a wedding dress that had belonged to his mother who, by curious chance, met her death in similar circumstances in 1989.
The chronic depressive chose to end his life in full view of his wife, who was just setting off to spend the weekend with her father.
An autopsy revealed he had taken sleeping pills and a considerable quantity of barbiturates. How he acquired the drugs is not known.
His wife, thirty-year-old Marianne Berg, née Leblanc, is sole heir to the Berg family fortune, her late husband being the son of Jonas Berg, who founded the supermarket chain Pointe Fixe. The business was sold to an international consortium some years ago.
*
[email protected]
is now online
Papa?
[email protected]
is now online
Hello my little mouse . . . So, have you decided?
Yes, I didn’t have much time to make up my mind, but I’ve decided to stay as Marianne Berg. This way I avoid the paperwork, the explanations, the interviews with the media. And I get to keep the money. I’m planning a whole new life.
Well, it’s your decision.
Yes.
When will I see you?
I have to get the paperwork out of the way, which will take
a day or two. Shall we meet up in Normandy as planned?
OK. I’ll go via Bordeaux, it’s the safest route. Having a daughter who’s wanted by the police makes for a lot of complications that are beyond me at my age.
Your age! You say that as though you really are old.
Don’t try to flatter me.
It’s the best way of making money, flattering people.
That’s true.
Hey, Papa, one thing . . .
Yes?
Maman’s case files. You gave me everything there was, didn’t you?
Yes. I thought I already explained that.
Yes. And?
And . . . it’s just that there was nothing except for that form, the admissions slip. The one I gave you . . . To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know it was there.
Are you sure?
. . .
Papa?
Yes, I’m sure. In fact, it shouldn’t even have been there: your mother was working from home a few days before she went into hospital. She left behind a small box of index cards she always carried with her. I should have given it back to the clinic but I just didn’t think to at the time, and then I forgot all
about it. Until you brought it up . . .
But her files, the REAL files, the notes from her sessions, where did they all go?
. . .
Papa, where did they go?
Well, after your mother died I thought they’d been left with her colleagues. I don’t even know what these things look like. Why do you ask?
Because I found something weird among Frantz’s things. A report written by Maman.
About what?
It’s about Sarah Berg. It was pretty detailed. And strange. They weren’t the notes from her therapy session, it was a report to someone called Sylvain Lesgle. It’s dated late 1999. I don’t know where Frantz got hold of it, but for him it must have been a pretty devastating read. And that’s putting it mildly.
. . .
You sure you’ve never seen it, Papa?
Absolutely.
So why haven’t you asked me what was in it?
You said it was about Sarah Berg, didn’t you?
I get it. I have to say, it was very unlike anything Maman would have written.
??
I
read it VERY carefully and I can tell you it was anything but professional. It was headed “Clinical Assessment” (have you ever heard of one?). Sounds professional if you skim through it quickly, in fact it’s not badly written, but when you read it carefully, it’s complete bullshit.
. . .?
It’s supposed to be an account of Sarah Berg, but it’s full of meaningless gibberish, psychiatric words and phrases lifted straight from an encyclopaedia or some popular science book. The patient’s biographical notes, aside from the stuff you can find online about her husband, are so sketchy that they could have been written by someone who’d never met her. All you’d need is a couple of facts about her to throw together that pseudo-psychobabble shit.
Oh?
It’s UTTER tosh, but if you don’t know much about the subject, it’s convincing enough . . .
. . .
If you want my opinion (and I could be wrong) the whole thing was made up by someone.
. . .
What do you think, Papa dear?
. . .
Cat got your tongue?
Look, the thing is, I’ve never really understood the way shrinks talk . . . Architecture and public works, that’s more my thing.
Meaning?
. . .
HELLO?
Well, look, my little mouse, I did my best . . .
Oh, Papa!
OK, OK, I admit it was all a bit cobbled together.
Tell me more!
The few details we got from the admission slip told us most of the story: Frantz had obviously spent years planning to avenge his mother’s death by murdering yours. And since he couldn’t do that, he transferred his hatred to you.
Obviously.
I reckoned we could use that as leverage. Hence the idea of the Clinical Assessment. I thought it might be a chink in his armour. And you needed help . . .
But how did Frantz find it?
You were the one who told me he was watching us the whole time. I stacked up a load of boxes supposedly containing your mother’s files. Then I left the door to the hangar open just long enough. . . It took a bit of time to create a bunch of other files for patients with names beginning with B, then I slipped this one in especially for him. I admit that the report itself was a bit, well, rudimentary.
Rudimentary, maybe . . . but VERY effective. The sort of report that would break the spirit of any son, especially one who adored his mother.
Let’s just say it was logical.
I
can’t believe it . . . You wrote that?!
I know, it was wrong of me.
Papa . . .
So, what did you do with the thing? You didn’t give it to the police?
No, Papa. I didn’t even keep it. What do you think I am, crazy?
ALSO AVAILABLE
Pierre
Lemaitre
IRÈNE
Translated from the French by Frank Wynne
THE NOVELIST KILLS BY THE BOOK
For Commandant Camille Verhœven life is beautiful: he is happily married and soon to become a father
HE’S ALWAYS ONE CHAPTER AHEAD
But his blissful existence is punctured by a murder of unprecedented savagery. When he discovers the killer has form – and each murder is a homage to a classic crime novel – the Parisian press are quick to coin a nickname . . .
AND HE HATES HAPPY ENDINGS
With the public eye fixed on both hunter and hunted, the case develops into a personal duel, each hell-bent on outsmarting the other. There can only be one winner – whoever has the least to lose . . .
BOOK ONE OF THE BRIGADE CRIMINELLE TRILOGY
