Talking to Ghosts (19 page)

Victor sat up, his feet feeling for his espadrilles.

“You not going to tell me?”

He got to his feet. She stared up at him, waiting for his answer, then she stood up too, almost brushing against him.

“Is it a secret?” she whispered. “Seems like everyone's got secrets round here.”

He laid a hand against her cheek. She took it in hers, kissed it gently then ran to the door in three elegant strides.

Before his sleep-befuddled brain could understand what had happened, she had vanished and he was left staring at an empty doorway.

They were all already sitting around the table when he came into the dining room. He said hello to Denis who, for once, responded intelligibly rather than with his usual mumble. Nicole asked again if he was alright and he nodded as he served himself some
salade niçoise
and tucked in straight away, his stomach growling and his head spinning with hunger. When he looked at Julien, the boy gave him a wink, then buried his nose in his plate and went back to eating in his curious fashion, at once awkward and brilliant, using the back of his fork and the tip of his knife. Victor wondered what he had done with the lizards. He thought again about the snakes, feeling the same shudder, thought how he wished that, instead of stones, he had thrown a fistful of vipers in the man's face.

After dinner, Nicole and Denis took him aside and asked if he knew the man in the car, and Victor insisted that he did not know him, had
never seen him before, no need to worry. Denis said that was just the point, they were worried, they did not like seeing shady characters prowling around children like that. He told Victor to warn him next time he saw something strange, and said he had told Marilou and Julien the same thing.

Nicole, looking embarrassed, asked whether the man could be a friend of his mother's or something like that, and the boy bowed his head, hunched his thin shoulders and whispered, no, no, he couldn't be. He managed to look up, to look her in the eye without blinking for several seconds during which time he feared his tears would overflow and his heart would give out, unable to carry on. Standing next to him, Denis was leaning down as though to confide in him, breathing heavily through his nose, occasionally murmuring something in a voice that mingled worry with suppressed anger.

Nicole did not press the point. Denis went off with a sigh, to sit in front of the T.V., muttering vaguely about a gun and a bastard whose head he would blow off if ever he showed up round here again.

The following morning, no-one referred to it in front of Victor. They had breakfast in the shade of the terrace where something of the cool of the night still lingered. The sky was a harsh blue, criss-crossed by the chirp of swallows. Julien had brought out his box of lizards, and as he chewed on his bread, he lifted the lid from time to time to peer at the reptiles. When they left the table, Marilou asked Victor if he wanted to come to Rebecca's house to help them clean the windows.

“Why are you asking me?”

“Cos it'll be quicker with three of us. Besides, that way you'll see.”

“See what?”

Marilou shrugged.

“Well?”

It was a low house on the outskirts of the village, almost invisible between the lush foliage of two big oaks. As they arrived, a cat darted off and crouched under a plastic garden table plonked in the middle of a yellowing lawn, watching them from a safe distance. They leaned their bicycles against the metal frame of a swing, faded by the sun and
rusting in places, and walked towards the half-open front door from which Rebecca emerged, a cigarette in her hand, wearing a large T-shirt and cut-off jeans that came down to her knees. She did not seem surprised to see Victor and hugged him warmly. They followed her indoors.

“It's Marilou and Victor,” she said as she went into the living room. “They've come to help me with the windows.”

The room was in semi-darkness, the shutters barely open. Above the back of a brightly patterned sofa, Victor saw the top of a woman's head, her reddish-blonde hair piled up in a bun. She was staring at a widescreen T.V. on which sexy women were chattering beneath the blue Californian skies.

The smell of cigarette smoke was overpowering. Victor noticed that the windows were closed. The woman struggled to her feet. She was wearing red Bermuda shorts and an A.C. Milan shirt bearing the number “11” and the name “
GILARDINO
”. She stubbed out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray on the coffee table. The remains of breakfast were scattered about as were two empty beer bottles. She turned her lined and weary face towards them and looked at them with curiosity, or surprise. She looked a lot like Rebecca, Victor thought, and he did not like this image of her looking old and shrivelled. The woman shuffled over in her slippers to Marilou, put her arms around her and hugged her tight.

“Does your mother know you're here? What's got into her? Is she clearing out the house for a spring clean? Isn't she afraid you'll catch all our vices?”

She kissed the girl's face.

“It's so lovely to see you. One of these days, you'll be so tall I won't recognise you. And who's this boy?”

She stared at Victor, who murmured a greeting.

“That's Victor. He's been living with us for a fortnight.”

The woman proffered a limp hand and Victor shook it, repeating his greeting.

“I'm Christine. You'll need to keep an eye on these two. Don't let
them get up to any mischief, will you? And I don't want you taking advantage, being alone here with two girls.”

She gave a wheezy laugh that degenerated into a bout of coughing.

Rebecca led Marilou and Victor down a narrow hallway, climbing over cardboard boxes stuffed with clothes and old rags, and invited them into her bedroom. Victor stopped in the doorway, but Rebecca waved him in.

“Come in, we won't bite! Is it what my mother said? If you listen to her … Anyway, by ten in the morning she's always drunk, spouting gibberish or running around all over the place.”

Outside, a car honked its horn.

“There, that'll be Gaby, her best friend. They're off to the beach to show off their arses, and if they're really horny they'll end up in a club in Montalivet or Soulac getting shagged.”

“Why do you always say stuff like that?” Marilou said. “I mean she's still your mother … You talk about her like she was just a piece of shit.”

Victor looked at Rebecca; she had taken out a cigarette and lit it, her hand trembling. She was deathly pale, her eyes glistened with tears.

“Sometimes, I think I'd be better off not having a mother.”

From outside came the sound of doors slamming and a car driving off.

Victor felt as though he could hardly breathe. He put it down to the cigarette smoke, but felt a bitter lump form in his throat.

“What about your father?” he managed to say.

He asked the question without knowing why. Maybe to stop Rebecca talking about her mother like that.

The two girls glanced at each other and in that look there was something invisible and indestructible, something so solid you could walk on it.

“Give it a rest,” Marilou said.

Victor felt like running out of the room, like a character in a novel fleeing an accursed land, having come too close to uncovering its secret.

A little later, bored of the girls' chatter, he took his bike and rode
north along the estuary towards the waiting ocean. He passed some jetties, some with boats moored, that jutted out into the muddy, swirling waters. At some point he stopped, clambered down the embankment, waded cautiously into the mud and stood listening to the faint sounds that the river made as it lapped at the bank, and a little further out he spotted a leaping salmon, enormous to his eyes. A blue and red plastic dinghy bobbed on the waves. Powerful and swift, the current glided towards the sea, and he realised that if he took a boat and allowed himself to drift, before long he would soon reach the mouth of the river, the furious backwash where it met the ocean. He would do it someday, he thought. He felt a longing, a call, that hovered in the air like a vast intake of breath.

They had coffee in Daras' office, making the most of a break between meetings, telephone calls, emergency callouts. They were settled in a corner where the
capitaine
had created a miniature living room with three armchairs and a rattan table that had been found in the street years before during a night-time stakeout. Daras spoke in a low voice, her chest thrust forward, arms folded in her lap. Vilar and Pradeau sat close to her, and together they looked like three conspirators, an impression reinforced by the intensity of their expressions.

“Whoever this guy is, he knows a lot about you. Pablo's abduction, your relationship with Morvan, your telephone number – despite the fact it's ex-directory – your address, and I don't know what else. He's mobile, he keeps tabs on you, leaves no fingerprints – at least as far as we know, the forensics lab in Poitiers haven't been in touch, but it looks like Morvan's house is clean.”

“He might have a record, maybe that's why he's being careful,” Pradeau said.

“Possible,” Daras said. “We need a bit of luck: a print, a hair, anything. He must have spent hours at Morvan's place, there has to be some trace … I mean, he wasn't wearing latex gloves and a forensic suit, surely? Plus it's been sweltering recently, he must have been dripping sweat everywhere.”

Vilar said nothing, content just to watch her long hands gesticulating to underscore a point, or pushing behind her ear an unruly lock of blonde hair that kept falling over her face. He had always loved these
little gestures women made, these graceful details, the shimmering, pointillist beauty most women effortlessly exuded.

Pradeau lit a cigarette and got up to open the window. Immediately the morning heat spilled into the room.

“Who hates you enough to send you this sort of shit and then call you to gloat? It looks like this guy has some sort of plan, a strategy, don't you think?”

Vilar shrugged. “I don't even want to think about how many lowlifes there are out there who hate our guts. All the vicious fuckers we've banged up and who blame us and the judges for their ruined lives, their broken homes and God knows what else, I'm sure there's hundreds of them who would cheerfully skin us alive if they got the chance. We can't comb through every one of those we've ever pulled in or questioned in their homes. And how can we be sure it's not just some retard with a fixation for my ugly mug, like a limpet clinging to the nearest rock?”

He stopped and the other two burst out laughing, Daras shaking her head, muttering “Jesus, you're dumb!”, and then they were serious once more, visibly racking their memories for some man – or woman – who might have cause to nurture such a deep-rooted hatred.

“And if he's so clued up,” Vilar said, “we need to find out where he's getting his information.”

“Or from whom,” Pradeau said.

“Or from whom,” Daras echoed.

She seemed to mull over the implications of this question, then said, “Thing is, it's not like an address or a telephone number is classified information. We give them out to people all the time, they pass them on, it's …”

Vilar waved to interrupt her.

“No, not to that kind of guy. He's got nothing to do with me, with us and the people we mix with, and he's certainly got nothing to do with the people I hang out with off duty – he can't have got my details from some chance meeting or conversation. As I said: this bloke has inside information. In other words, someone is informing him.”

“In that case,” Daras said, “draw up a list of all the people who might know your number and your address – although I think he probably just followed you – and you'll find the answer to your question. But you know better than most that nothing is watertight. And what do you mean by ‘Someone is informing him'? Surely you don't think this is some sort of conspiracy? By who? For what?”

Vilar shrugged again. “To be the victim of a conspiracy, you have to hold a position of power, you have to have something to lose that the conspirators think is important: privileges, image, reputation, that sort of thing. What the fuck have I got to lose? No, I don't believe it's a conspiracy, but … It's just … Jesus, here I go again, I sound like I'm paranoid.”

“Stop it … You're overthinking this. No-one here is leaking information to that bastard. He overhead something, found out by word of mouth, maybe there was some sort of fuck-up, I don't know, but I do know it's not someone trying to hurt you. Because if that's what you think, it would mean the leak had to come from here, from the station – from a fellow officer if we're going to be specific. And that's something I cannot believe. Not with your history, which everyone knows, not with … not after everything you've gone through over the years. Who would … ?”

She had laid a hand on his arm, having spoken with that perfect blend of authority and gentleness that only she could use honestly, perhaps because it was something deeply rooted in her. Her lips were rarely graced with a smile, but her eyes could sparkle with wit, with joy or happiness. Vilar nodded and looked down at his shoes. It was not clear whether he was agreeing or merely masking his impatience, his anger.

“That's fine,” he said at length. “Let's drop it. I … Well, what do I know.”

“I'm not going to drop it. I'm going to go through all the cases you've worked on over the past ten years. We'll draw up a list of everyone you banged up, their sentences, what became of them. I'll put in a call to Toulouse for records of the two years you spent there. I think in
a few days we'll have a clearer picture. I'm also going to ask the big chief if he can free up an officer to keep a watch on your apartment. We'll put a tap on your line and try to trace any calls.”

Vilar nodded, in agreement or in gratitude, and got to his feet. Pradeau was already heading for the door when they heard Daras' voice.

“I had a call from the
procureur
. We need to make progress on the dead woman in Bacalan. It's been weeks and we've got nothing: noone knows anything, no-one knew the woman … it's like she was invisible. And the kid, anyone know where he is? Wasn't he meant to be fostered?”

Vilar said he didn't know, but that he would see the boy again and try to get him to talk.

“I'll go over it all again. I'll interview the neighbour again, the woman who used to look after the boy sometimes. She wasn't exactly forthcoming last time, but she has to know something. I'll go see her now, in fact. And there's the woman she worked with, Sandra de Melo. I'm sure they told each other everything. I'll go and threaten to take them both in for questioning, see if that loosens their tongues.”

Daras poured herself some more cold coffee. She could drink pints of coffee in a day, scalding hot or ice-cold.

“The girl worked as a prostitute. I can't believe she was a loner, that she didn't experience the pressure, the risks. There's something being covered up here. Something serious, something buried …”

Pradeau threw up his hands. “The formidable intuition of Capitaine Daras.”

“You got a better suggestion?” Daras snapped. “Plus, I've got another hunch: I think there were two guys. I'm not sure why or how, but there are two of them. It's not easy to make an ex-policeman like Morvan disappear. Even if he was wounded, even if it was some hulking single-minded thug. I'm telling you, there's two of them. And I don't give a flying fuck what you think.”

She smiled and Pradeau bowed his head slightly in surrender. She checked her watch, and got up to leave.

“Well, gentlemen,” she said over her shoulder. “I have a meeting at the court, where I have to discuss some more of my intuitions with Judge Savy. She's a woman herself, she's more likely to understand.”

Pradeau made no attempt at a comeback, and got up to follow her out. He waited in the hallway for Vilar.

“She really gets on my tits when she plays the great detective.”

Vilar said nothing. He simply smiled and they walked together until Garcia called out to Pradeau, beckoning him into an office and immediately shutting the door behind them. Vilar was convinced Daras was right. Two guys.

Pulling out of the car park, he was almost surprised to find himself behind the wheel of his car. He had been acting on autopilot for several minutes and could not even remember the thoughts that had so engrossed him. The sunlight sparked a blinding migraine in his skull making him grope for a pair of shades so he could keep his eyes open without screaming in pain.

The rue Arago was deserted and the shutters on the houses were closed against the dense heat that slunk along the street and quivered on the pavements like a blinding jelly. Vilar rang the doorbell and pressed himself into the doorway, into the narrow sliver of shadow. A spy-hole clicked open and through it he saw a pair of glasses and the worried gleam of a blue eye. When he was asked what it was about, he held up his warrant card.

“Commandant Vilar. Madame Huvenne?

“Yes, of course,” she said hurriedly and opened the door.

She was small and thin, with short grey hair, wearing a black blouse studded with little red flowers. She smiled pleasantly. Vilar tried to remember what Garcia, who had questioned her, had said about her age. Not far off eighty, most likely.

“Come in, it's too hot outside.”

She led him down a dark hallway that was so cool he wondered whether the house was air-conditioned. Cool air wormed its way under his shirt and he felt a shiver run across his shoulders. Madame Huvenne ushered him into a kitchen that smelled of melon and mint. She pulled
out a chair and gestured for him to sit at a large table covered with a wax tablecloth, sunflowers on a red background. There were some letters lying on it, open envelopes: some bills, a postcard.

“Would you like some lemonade? Or maybe a little aperitif?” the woman offered.

“Please, don't go to any trouble … whatever there is. A glass of water would be fine.”

The old woman opened the fridge and took out a bottle of Muscat and a jug filled with an orange-coloured concoction. She took two glasses from the cupboard and came and sat opposite him. Her movements were swift and precise. Vilar had been expecting a lonely, sad old lady, still traumatised by the murder; instead, he found a sprightly, resourceful woman who even managed to keep the heatwave at bay.

“Help yourself. I make the lemonade myself. I add a few drops of grenadine for colour. Personally, I prefer it with a dash of Beaumes de Venise.”

She poured a little wine, sniffed it, not taking her eyes off Vilar.

“One of your colleagues already questioned me,” she said as he was about to speak.

“I know. I read his notes. You were close friends with Nadia Fournier and her boy. That's why I'm here to ask you a few more questions, in case there was anything you might not have remembered.”

Madame Huvenne nodded. “I was fond of Nadia. She was a good girl. And I wasn't even there when … I was getting treatment for my legs. Maybe I could have … I don't know … Maybe it wouldn't have happened.”

With the back of her hand, she wiped away a tear trickling down her cheek, turning the glass in the hollow of her hands, her head bowed. From somewhere in the house came the regular ticking of a clock. Otherwise all was silence. Vilar waited for her to speak, because he realised she needed to. Because this silence broken only by the swinging pendulum of the clock spoke of an aching solitude.

“I was really fond of her,” she said quietly, turning her calm, clear eyes on the police officer. “She was like family. And Victor was like my
grandson. My children don't live around here, I don't see them much anymore, nor my grandchildren. And since my husband's death … Yes, she was a good girl and I loved her, can you understand that?”

“Of course, but there are some things I don't understand quite so well. That is, who Nadia really was, how she and Victor managed to get by. That's why I wanted to come and see you here rather than bringing you down to the station.”

“Bring me in?

She set down her glass. Vilar could hear the panic in her voice. No hostility, no suspicion.

“Oh, there's no need to worry. It's something we always do if we feel a witness hasn't told us the whole story. Normally they're released the same day.”

She took a sip of wine, he sipped the cold, sugary lemonade that brought back childhood memories. Madame Huvenne looked him straight in the eyes, her hands flat on the table.

“What makes you think I didn't tell the other officer the whole story?”

“There's something strange about this case. Nothing quite fits. Nadia Fournier's life finally seemed to have calmed down after all the upheavals in her childhood.” Madame Huvenne nodded, betraying no surprise, and Vilar was certain now that she knew more than she wanted to say. “Then suddenly she's butchered in her own bedroom. And there was nothing stolen – this wasn't a robbery that went wrong – there were no fingerprints, nothing. No D.N.A. we could use, she hadn't had sex with her killer. She was naked, her clothes neatly folded – indicating that she undressed voluntarily, without being forced. This tells us that she knew the man who killed her.”

Madame Huvenne looked down and seemed to be studying the patterns on the tablecloth.

“Do you know how she made a living?” Vilar said.

“She cleaned offices and shops, at night. She worked for a company called S.A.N.I.”

“Do you have any idea what she earned?”

“Not much, I'd guess. I never really asked her, but in that line of work, they treat their staff like dogs. Officious little bosses employing people cash-in-hand. Desperate women who have to take whatever they can get so they can feed their kids. Exploited, like serfs in the Middle Ages. Job insecurity, they call it nowadays. The only right they have is to remain silent. There's never any investigation into things like that. Think what Nadia and the other workers were earning, and then what their boss was pocketing. You should look into that, while you're at it.”