Authors: Pierre Lemaitre
“I’m
not going to ask you how you are. I can guess. You’ll need to see someone, and that’s all there is to it.”
He says it in a single breath, the sort of straight-talking doctor who cuts to the chase.
“We have very good people here. You’ll be able to talk.”
Sophie looks at him. He must know that her mind is elsewhere, so he drives home the point.
“As for the rest, it was spectacular, but it didn’t quite do the trick . . .”
He immediately corrects himself.
“Obviously, if your husband had not been there at the time, you’d be dead.”
He has chosen the harshest, bluntest terms to test her reactions. The doctor slaps his knees and gets to his feet. Before he leaves, he nods towards the door and says:
“Do you want me to have a word with him?”
Sophie shakes her head, but her response is not sufficiently clear. She says:
“No. I’ll talk to him.”
*
“You gave me a fright.”
Frantz smiles awkwardly. It is time for explanations. Sophie has none. What can she tell him? She forces herself to smile.
“I’ll explain everything when I get home. But not here.”
Frantz nods as though he understands.
“It’s to do with a part of my life I’ve never talked about. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Is there really that much to tell?”
“There’s a lot, yes. Afterwards, it’s up to you.”
He shakes his head in a way that is difficult to interpret. Sophie
closes her eyes. She is not tired, she simply wants to be alone. She needs information.
“Did I sleep for long?”
“Almost thirty-six hours.”
“Where are we, exactly?”
“The Anciennes Ursulines. The best clinic in the area.”
“What time is it? Is it still visiting hours?”
“It’s almost noon. Usually visiting doesn’t start until 2.00 but they let me stay.”
Ordinarily he would have added “given the circumstances”, but today he is terse. She can tell he is working himself up to say something. She waits.
“All this . . .” He gestures vaguely to the bandages on her wrists. “Is it about us? Because things aren’t working out, is that it?”
If she could, she would smile. But she cannot, she does not want to. She needs to stick to her limits. She curls her three free fingers around his.
“It has nothing to do with us, I promise you. You’re so sweet.”
He does not like the word, but accepts it. He is a sweet husband. What more could he hope for? Sophie wants to ask where her things are, but instead she closes her eyes. There is nothing that she needs now.
*
The clock in the hallways reads 7.44. Visiting time has been over for almost half an hour, but the clinic is not strict about the rules, and a chatter of visitors can be heard from several rooms. The smell of hospital food still lingers from the last meal of the day: clear soup and cabbage. How is it that clinics and hospitals all smell exactly the same? At the far end of the corridor, a large window lets in a faint, grey light. A few minutes earlier, Sophie
managed to get lost. A nurse on the ground floor helped her to find her room. Now she knows the layout. She has seen the exit to the car park. She has only to make it past the nurses’ station on her floor and she can get outside. In the wardrobe, she found some clothes that Frantz must have brought for her to wear when she is discharged. Nothing goes with anything. She waits, one eye pressed to the narrow gap of the door she has left slightly ajar. The nurse’s name is Jennie. She is a slim, graceful woman with blonde highlights in her dark hair. She smells of camphor. She moves calmly, confidently. She has just walked away from the nurses’ station, hands in the pockets of her white coat. She does this when she wants to go for a quick cigarette outside. She pushes the swing doors that lead to the lifts. Sophie counts to five, opens the door of her room and creeps down the hallway past Jennie’s desk, but before she reaches the double doors, she turns right and takes the stairs. In a few minutes she will be in the car park. She clutches her handbag to her. She begins to recite: 6-7-5-3.
*
Jondrette the
gendarme
, his face sallow, his moustache grey. He is accompanied by another officer who does not say anything, but stares at his feet looking attentive and concerned. Frantz has offered them coffee. They said, sure, coffee, why not, but they remained standing. Jondrette is sympathetic, when he talks about Sophie he refers to her as “your lady wife”, but he says nothing that Frantz does not already know. He stares back at the officers, playing his own role. His role is to look worried, which is not difficult because he
is
worried. He remembers sitting in front of the television; he enjoys general knowledge quiz shows because he can answer all the questions, although he always cheats a little. The applause, the patter of the game-show host, the asinine jokes, the canned laughter, the
cheers that greet the results – television can be very noisy. Not that it mattered, Sophie did what she did in complete silence. Even if he had been doing something else at the time . . . Next category: Sport. Not really his specialised subject. But he gave it a go. He was never very good when it came to sport. Questions about the Olympic Games, the sort of trivia only a few obsessive nerds would know. He turned around. Sophie’s head was tilted back, resting on the edge of the bath, foam rising to her chin. She was beautiful in profile. Even in her emaciated state, Sophie has always been pretty. Really pretty. He has often thought so. He turned back to the television, wondering whether he should check on her anyway: the last time she fell asleep in the bath and by the time he lifted her out she was frozen, he had to rub her with eau de cologne for several minutes before she got her colour back. It is no way to die. By some miracle, he came up with the answer, the name of a Bulgarian pole vaulter and . . . in a flash his internal alarm went off. He turned. Sophie’s head had disappeared, he ran into the bathroom. The bubbles were crimson and Sophie’s body had slid to the bottom of the bath. He screamed “Sophie!”, plunged his hands into the water, gripped her shoulders and dragged her out. She did not cough, but she was breathing. Her whole body was deathly pale, blood still trickling from her wrists. Not much. It came out in little spurts to the pulse of her heart, the gashes in her arm swollen shut from being so long underwater. For a split second he panicked. He did not want her to die. “Not like this,” he thought. He did not want Sophie to escape. This was the death
she
wanted. And this act of free will was like an affront to his carefully wrought plan, an insult to his intelligence. If Sophie were to die like this, he would never be able to avenge his mother’s death. And so he dragged her from the bath, laid her on the floor, wound towels tightly around her wrists, talking to her all the
while, then he stumbled to the telephone and called an ambulance. It arrived in less than three minutes, the station is nearby. While he waited for the paramedics, he worried about many things. How much might the bureaucrats and the pen-pushers find out? Would they discover Sophie’s identity? Worse, would they tell her the truth about
sergent-chef
Frantz Berg who has never been in the army.
By the time he visited her in hospital, he was in full possession of his faculties, once again perfectly in character. He knew exactly what to do, what to say, how to respond, how to behave.
Now, he is furious again: Sophie has run away and it took six hours before the hospital even noticed! The nurse who called him did not know what to say. “Monsieur Berg, is your wife at home by any chance?” When Frantz said no, she beat a hasty retreat and handed the telephone to the doctor.
Since being informed of her disappearance, he has had time to think. The
gendarmes
can take their own set time over their coffee. No-one but Frantz could ever find Sophie. For three years he has been tracking the multiple killer that every police officer in France has been unable to find. He has rebuilt this woman with his own hands. Sophie has no secrets from him, and even he does not know where she might be right now, so the police . . . But Frantz needs to move quickly, he wants to tell the
gendarmes
to fuck off. Instead, his voice strained, he simply says:
“Do you think you’ll find her soon?”
This is the sort of thing a husband would ask, surely? Jondrette raises an eyebrow. Not as dumb as he looks.
“We’ll find her, monsieur, don’t you worry.”
Peering over the rim of the scalding coffee, taking small sips, the
gendarme
gives Frantz a probing look. He sets down his cup.
“She will have gone to stay with someone, she will call tonight
or tomorrow. The best thing you can do is be patient, you understand?”
Then, without waiting for a response:
“Has she done it before? Run away like this?”
No, Frantz says, but she has been more or less suffering from depression.
“‘More or less . . .’” Jondrette echoes. “And do you have any family, monsieur? I mean your lady wife, does she have any family? Have you called them?”
He has not had time to think things through and now everything is moving very fast. Marianne Berg, née Leblanc, what family does she have? When he questioned her over the past months, Sophie invented a family that the police would have great trouble tracking down. But that is dangerous ground. Frantz pours more coffee. To give himself time to think. He decides to change tactics. He puts on a scowl.
“So what you’re saying is, you’re not going to do anything? Is that it?” he says nervously.
Jondrette does not reply. He stares at his empty cup.
“If she doesn’t come back in, say, three or four days, we’ll launch an investigation. If it’s any comfort, monsieur, in this sort of situation people generally come home after a few days of their own accord. They usually go to family or friends. Sometimes all it takes is a few phone calls.”
Frantz says that he understands. If he hears anything, he will be sure to . . . Jondrette says that is for the best. Thanks him for the coffee. His lackey nods and stares at the doormat.
*
Frantz waited for three hours, this seemed to him a reasonable period.
He
spent this time on his laptop, staring at a map of the area, watching the blinking pink dot that marked the location of Sophie’s mobile. According to the map it was still in the apartment. He found it in the desk drawer. This is the first time in four years he has not been able to tell precisely where Sophie is, to within a second. He has to work fast. To find her. He thinks for a moment about her medication, but reassures himself: he has engineered a depressive state that is not likely to wear off too quickly. Even so, he needs to get her back. It is imperative. He needs to end this. To be done with it. He feels anger welling in him, but manages to control it with breathing exercises. He has been over and over the question in his mind. First stop, Lyon.
He checks his watch, then finally he picks up the telephone.
He is put through to Jondrette.
“My wife is staying with a relative,” Frantz says rapidly, as though both happy and relieved. “Near Besançon.”
He waits for the reaction. Double or quits. If the
gendarme
asks the name of this relative . . .
“Good.” Jondrette sounds satisfied. “Is she alright?”
“Yes . . . well, from what I can tell. I think she’s feeling a little lost.”
“Good,” Jondrette says again. “Is she coming back? Has she told you she wants to come back?”
“Yes, that’s what she said. She wants to come home.”
A brief silence.
“When, exactly?”
Frantz’s brain is in overdrive.
“I think it might do her good to have a little break. I’ll go and pick her up in a couple of days, I think that would be best all round.”
“Good.
When she gets back, she’ll have to come to the
gendarmerie
. To sign a few forms. Tell her there’s no hurry. It’s more important that she gets some rest.”
Then, just before Jondrette hangs up:
“One last little thing . . . You haven’t been married long . . .”
“Six months . . . almost . . .”
Jondrette is silent. On the other end of the line, he probably has his probing look.
“And this . . . thing she’s done, do you think . . . do you think it’s related to your marriage in some way?”
Frantz responds instinctively.
“She suffered bouts of depression before we got married . . . But yes, obviously it could have something to do with it. I’ll talk to her.”
“That would be for the best, Monsieur Berg, believe me. Thank you for letting us know so promptly. Talk about it with your good lady wife when you go to collect her.”
*
Rue Courfeyrac comes out more or less by place Bellecour. Frantz drives around the well-kept neighbourhood but he learns little that he did not know two years ago.
It was difficult for him to find a vantage point. Yesterday, he had to be careful to move frequently from café to café. This morning he rented a car from which it is easier to keep an eye on Valérie’s building, and follow her if necessary. Back when she knew Sophie, she was working for a haulage company; now she seems to work for some boy as rich and feckless as she is, who has convinced himself he is a designer. The sort of company where you can work relentlessly for two years before realising that it is not bringing in a cent. Which, of course, would make little difference to Valérie
or her friend. In the morning she leaves home, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and catches a taxi to work from place Bellecour.
As soon as he spotted her in the street, he knew that Sophie was not here. Valérie is a WYSIWYG girl – what you see is what you get. From her manner, from the ways she walks, Frantz can tell that she has no worries, no concerns, her bearing oozes self-assurance and an utter lack of care. He is virtually certain that Sophie has not come to find refuge here. Besides, Valérie Jourdain is much too selfish to take in Sophie Duguet – multiple murderer, wanted by the police – even if she is a childhood friend. Valérie has her limits. And they are narrow.