Solea (6 page)

“Yes, they showed me their badges.”

She was lying.

“And they asked you questions. Where's Babette? Have you seen her lately? Do you know if she has any friends in Marseilles? That kind of thing.”

“That kind of thing, yes.”

“And you gave them my name and phone number.”

“You know how it is with the police.”

Now she really wanted me to go. To close the door and leave her alone. There was sweat on her forehead. Cold sweat.

“The police, huh?”

“I don't like to get involved with that kind of thing, you know. I'm not the concierge. I only do it to help Babette out. It's not as if she pays me a lot.”

“Did they threaten you?”

This time she looked at me. Startled by my question, and scared by its implications. They had threatened her.

“Yes.”

“Did they ask you for my name?”

“They want me to keep an eye on the apartment . . . Let them know if anyone comes, and who. And they told me not to forward the mail. They're going to call me every day, they said. And I'd be well advised to answer.”

The phone rang. It was right next to us, on a small table, with a little lace doily under it. Madame Orsini lifted the receiver. I saw her face turn white. She looked at me in panic.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

She placed her trembling hand over the receiver. “It's them. It's . . . it's for you.”

She handed me the phone.

“Yes?”

“So you got straight down to work, Montale. That's good. But you're wasting your time there. We're in a hurry, you see?”

“Fuck you.”

“No, it's you who's going to get fucked. And soon, asshole!”

He hung up.

Madame Orsini was looking at me. She was terrified now.

“Do what they asked you,” I said.

I wanted Sonia. Sonia's smile. Her eyes. Her body, which I still didn't know. I was desperate for her. I wanted to lose myself in her. To forget all the corruption that was blighting our lives.

I still had a few illusions left.

I
had a beer, then another, and another. I was sitting in the shade on the terrace of La Samaritaine, down by the harbor. At least here there was a little breeze from the sea. It wasn't exactly cool, but it kept me from dripping with sweat every time I took a swig of beer. It felt good to be here. On the finest terrace in the Vieux-Port. The only one that lets you enjoy the light of the city all day long. Nobody who's indifferent to its light will ever understand Marseilles. Down here, you can almost touch it. Even at the hottest times. Even when it forces you to keep your eyes down. Like today.

I ordered another beer, then went off to phone Sonia again. It was nearly eight o'clock, and I'd been calling her every half hour without getting any answer.

The more time passed, the more I wanted to see her. I didn't even know her, but I already missed her. What could she have told Honorine and Fonfon to win them over the way she had? What could she have told me to get me in such a state? How could a woman get inside a man's heart so easily, just with looks and smiles? Was it possible to touch the heart without even touching the skin? That must have been what seduction meant. To affect another person's heart, make it quiver, become attached to it. Sonia.

Her phone was ringing, and still nobody was answering. I was getting desperate. I felt like a teenager in love, who can't wait to hear his girlfriend's voice. I supposed that was one of the reasons cell phones were so popular. Being connected to the person you love, anywhere, at any time. Being able to say to her, yes, I love you, yes, I miss you, yes, see you tonight. But I couldn't see myself getting a cell phone, and I couldn't understand the way I was feeling about Sonia. The truth was, I couldn't even remember the sound of her voice.

I walked back to my table, and started in on Babette's articles again. I'd already read six of them. They were all about law and order, the projects, the police. And the Mafia. Especially the most recent ones. For the newspaper
Aujourd'hui
, Babette had written an account of the press conference given in Geneva by seven European judges: Renaud Van Ruymbecke from France, Bernard Bertossa from Switzerland, Gherardo Colombo and Edmondo Bruti Liberati from Italy, Baltazar Garzon Real and Carlos Jimenez Villarejo from Spain and Benoît Dejemeppe from Belgium. The title of the article, which had appeared in October 1996, was “Seven Judges Speak Out Against Corruption.”

The judges, Babette wrote, expressed their anger at the fact that legal cooperation is either non-existent or is hampered by politicians, that it costs a criminal organization only 200,000 dollars to launder 20 million, and that drug money (1,500 billion francs every year) circulates freely around the world, with 90% of it being reinvested in the Western economies.

Babette reported Bernard Bertossa, public prosecutor of Geneva, as saying,
“It is time to create a Europe governed by the rule of law, in which we have not only the free circulation of criminals and their funds but also the free circulation of evidence.”

But the judges know that, however much they raise the alarm, their efforts are stymied by the schizophrenic attitudes of European governments. “We have to do away with tax havens, which only exist to launder dirty money! We cannot make rules and at the same time provide the means for criminals to get around them!” That is the opinion of Judge Baltazar Garzon Real, who knows that every time a trail leads him to Gibraltar, Andorra, or Monaco, it hits a dead end. “All they have to do these days is set up fake Panamanian companies,” says Renaud van Ruymbecke. “The more of these buffer companies there are, the less we can do, even though we know full well that drug money is involved.”

Night was falling, but it wasn't getting any cooler. I was sick to the teeth of reading and waiting. At this rate, I'd be plastered again by the time I saw Sonia. If she finally deigned to answer.

Fifteen minutes later, I tried again. Still nothing.

I called Hassan.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

In the background, Léo Ferré was singing:

 

When the machine has started to hum

When you don't really know where you are

And you wait for whatever will come . . .

 

“Feeling fine. Why shouldn't I be?”

“Seeing the state you were in last night.”

“Did I make a fool of myself?”

“Never seen anyone who could knock them back and stay calm the way you can.”

“You're a good man, Hassan!”

 

And you wait for whatever will come . . .

 

“Nice girl, that Sonia.”

Even Hassan was getting in on the act.

“Right,” I said. “Talking of Sonia, any idea where she lives?”

“Let me see . . .” he said, taking a swig of something. “Rue Consolat. 24 or 26, I'm not sure. But it's an even number, that I can tell you. I can never remember odd numbers.” He laughed, and took another swig.

“What are you on right now?” I asked, out of curiosity.

“Beer.”

“Me, too. What's her surname?”

“De Luca.”

An Italian. Shit. It had been ages. Since Babette, I'd avoided Italian women.

“You met her father here a couple of times. Used to be a longshoreman. Attilio. Know the one I mean? Not very tall. Bald.”

“Yes, of course. He's her father?”

“Yup.” Another swig. “So if I see this Sonia, I'll tell her you're making inquiries about her, shall I?”

He laughed again. I didn't know what time he'd started, but he was on good form.

“Sure. See you one of these nights. Ciao.”

 

Sonia lived at No. 28.

I rang the bell at the entrance. The door opened. My heart started pounding. On the letter box, it said
1st floor
. I climbed the stairs, four steps at a time. I knocked a couple of times. The door opened. And closed behind me.

Two men stood there looking at me. One of them showed me his badge.

“Police. Who are you?”

“What are you doing here?”

My heart was pounding again. For a different reason this time. I imagined the worst. Of course, I thought, as soon as you turn your head away, even if it's only for a moment, life gets ready to play its dirty tricks on you. Layer upon layer. Like a napoleon. A layer of cream, a layer of broken pastry. Broken life. Fuck. No, I couldn't imagine the worst. But I could guess what it was. My heart stopped beating. The smell of death had come back. Not the one that had been floating around in my head, that I'd thought I could feel on me. No, the real smell of death. The smell of blood, too. They often go together.

“I asked you a question.”

“Montale. Fabio Montale. I was supposed to meeting Sonia.” It was only half a lie.

“I'm going downstairs, Alain,” the other cop said. He looked white.

“O.K., Bernard. They'll be here soon.”

“What's going on?” I said, to put my mind at rest.

“You're her . . .” He looked me up and down. Trying to guess my age, and Sonia's. A good twenty years' difference, he must have concluded. “Her friend?”

“Yes. A friend.”

“Montale, you said?” He seemed to be thinking about something. Then he looked at me again.

“Yes. Fabio Montale.”

“She's dead. Murdered.”

I felt a knot in my stomach, a hard, heavy lump forming in the pit of my stomach and starting to move up and down my body. Moving all the way up to my throat. Choking me. Leaving me speechless. Without anything to say. As if all words had gone back to prehistory. Back to the caves, from which mankind should never have emerged. In the beginning was the worst. The primal scream of the first man. A scream of despair, beneath the starry vault. Despair at realizing that one day, in spite of all that beauty, one day, he would kill his brother. In the beginning were all the reasons to kill. Even before there were names for them. Envy, jealousy. Desire, fear. Money. Power. Hate. Hate toward others. Hate toward the world.

Hate.

I wanted to cry out. To scream.

Sonia.

Hate. The lump stopped rising and falling. The blood drained from my veins and gathered in that lump, heavy now in my stomach. An icy cold overcame me. Hate. I'd have to live with the cold, and the hate. Sonia.

“Sonia,” I murmured.

“Are you all right?” the cop asked.

“No.”

“Sit down.”

I sat down. In an armchair I didn't know. In an apartment I didn't know. The apartment of a woman I didn't know. A woman who was dead. Murdered. Sonia.

“How?” I asked.

The cop offered me a cigarette.

“Thanks,” I said, and lit it.

“Her throat was cut. In the shower.”

“A sex maniac?”

He shrugged. That meant no. Or at least maybe not. If she'd been raped, he'd have said raped and murdered. He'd only said murdered.

“I used to be a cop, too. A long time ago.”

“Montale . . . I thought so . . . North Marseilles, right?” He held out his hand. “I'm Béraud. Alain Béraud. You didn't have many friends . . .”

“I know. Only one. Loubet.”

“Loubet. Yeah . . . He was transferred. Six months ago.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Saint-Brieuc, in Brittany. Not exactly a promotion.”

“I can imagine.”

“He didn't have many friends, either.”

We heard a police siren. The team was arriving. They'd be searching for fingerprints. Photographing the crime scene. The body. Analyzing. Questioning. Taking statements. All routine. Just one more crime.

“How about you?”

“I worked for him. For six months. It was O.K. He was a straight guy.”

Outside, the siren was still screaming. The police van probably couldn't find a parking space. Rue Consolat was a narrow street, and everyone parked wherever they liked, however they liked.

It was doing me good to talk. It was a way of keeping at bay the images of Sonia with her throat cut that were starting to flood into my head. A flood I couldn't control. Like those sleepless nights, when you keep playing over and over, like a movie in your head, images of the woman you love in another man's arms, kissing him, smiling at him, reaching orgasm, whispering, it's good, yes, it's so good. It's the same face. The same spasms of pleasure. The same sighs. The same words. Only another man's lips. Another man's hands. Another man's cock.

Lola was gone.

And Sonia was dead. Murdered.

The gaping wound, with thick, clotted blood oozing out over her breast, her stomach, forming a little pool in her navel, then oozing down between her thighs and over her cunt. The images were there, as horrible as they always were. And the water from the shower washing the blood into the city's sewers . . .

Sonia. Why?

Why was I always on the side of life where everything was cold and tragic? Was there a reason for it? Or was it just chance? Was it because I didn't love life enough?

“Montale?”

The questions were mounting up. And with them, all the images of corpses I'd stored in my head since the days when I was a cop. Hundreds of corpses of strangers. And the others. The people I loved. Manu, Ugo. Guitou, so young. And Leila. Leila, so wonderfully beautiful. I'd never been there to prevent their deaths.

Always too late, Montale. Late for death. Late for life, too. For friendship. For love.

Out of sync, lost. Always.

And now Sonia.

“Montale?”

And hate.

“Yes,” I said.

I'd take the boat out. I'd head for the open sea. In the darkness. To ask questions of the silence. And spit at the stars, as the first man must have done, coming home one night after a day's hunting to find his wife with her throat cut.