After the War

by Hervé Le Corre

  “Well, you may as well come in.”

  Huge living room, chairs and sofa upholstered in midnight blue velvet. Inlaid coffee table. Rugs—Persian probably—stretched out over waxed dark oak floorboards that creaking softly with every footstep. An immense fireplace, with enough space to roast a sheep and to seat the shepherd and his dog. The smell of polish and cold ashes.

  Darlac stands motionless for a few seconds, contemplating this opulent interior and trying to work out where the pathetic breathless guy who is closing the French window fits into it.

  “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  “I’ll ask Mariette to bring us some coffee.”

  Mazeau opens a glass door and asks for coffee, explaining that he has a visitor. A high-pitched, surprised voice replies enthusiastically.

  Darlac feels oppressed by the peacefulness of the place. By the silence, barely broken by the swing of an unseen pendulum. But he is pleased to have brought trouble and disturbance to this affluent calm.

  “Sit down,” says Mazeau. “I’ve got an appointment at the hospital, so I don’t have much time. So . . . what do you want?”

  Darlac sits facing the windows, through which he can see a clump of daffodils swaying in the wind. He observes Mazeau’s battered head against the light, seeing only his pupils sparkling below the swollen, bluish arch of his eyebrows, amid a setting of bandages and sticking plasters.

  “The guy you know. The one you told Le Veau about. The one you tried to nick the other night and who smashed your face up the other morning when you went to see him on your own.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Me? Never. You can’t even imagine how serious I am. That guy cut Penot’s throat. He attacked my daughter. He burned down the bar belonging to Couchot, a cousin of mine, along with that kid who was staying there. Three dead, as you know. He’s got something against me, he beat the shit out of you, he took your gun . . . that’s enough, don’t you think? You know him; I want him. I talked to Laborde about this yesterday. I’m putting my cards on the table here. We can work together on this case, like we used to in the good old days.”

  “Laborde called me. He had a feeling you’d come, but he didn’t think it’d be this soon. As for the good old days, as you call them, I thought you wanted to forget them?”

  “We haven’t got all day to rake over the past. And you’re not in a fit state to argue with me anyway. Look at you . . .”

  The door opens to reveal a tray carried by a rather tall and pretty brunette. She reminds Darlac a little bit of Martine Carol.29 She says hello, eyes lowered, then places a silver coffee pot and two porcelain cups in front of her husband. Slender figure, nice legs. She fills the cups, and asks Darlac if he’s a colleague of Eugène’s.

  “Yes,” Darlac replies. “I came to ask him for a few tips on an important case. That’s why I’m disturbing you so early this morning.”

  “You should have called. You could have eaten breakfast with us!”

  Mazeau shifts uneasily in his chair. He has tensed up, stiffened, but soon the pain forces him to relax, and he softly massages his ribs through his wool dressing gown.

  “No. I would have disturbed you even more if I’d done that. It’s very kind of you though. I’m just dropping by quickly cos some things need to be talked about discreetly, man to man.”

  Darlac smiles as he picks up the cup by its handle, holding it with his thumb and index finger, pinkie in the air. The woman has nice teeth, and very sweet eyes. Confusedly, he hates Mazeau even more. This house, this wife. All this charm and harmony.

  Then his heart speeds up. He’s the only one who’s seen the two men running outside on the soaked driveway. He swallows a hot mouthful of coffee while Mazeau stirs his sugar. No sound but the light clinking of spoon against china. He jumps at the ring of the doorbell. The coffee trembles in his cup, and he drains it, scalding his esophagus. The Mazeaus glance at each other, surprised. Madame goes out to answer the door. The two men watch her exit the living room, hear her footsteps in the hallway, jump up in unison as they hear her scream. She walks backwards into the room, banging into the glass door. The panes shake. A man in a balaclava is lifting the woman’s chin with the double barrel of his shotgun. He continues moving forward, driving her towards the fireplace. She moans and pants, her huge eyes expressing pure terror. The man exhales noisily. A heavy build, back curved around his gun. Jeff. They had agreed it would be someone else. A certain Gunther, a former legionnaire, tough and reliable, with ice in his veins. Jeff has his finger on the trigger. Darlac has always told him to prop his finger against the trigger guard. But that nutcase never listens. He does whatever pops into his moronic head. He has always enjoyed caressing imminent death with his finger, feeling the resistance of the springs in the mechanism.

  Another man enters, just behind. Also in a balaclava. Revolver in hand. Large calibre. A .45. Darlac sees the round heads of the bullets in the chambers aimed at them. Hammer cocked.

  “Calm down,” he says. “What do you want?”

  Francis’ eyes meet his for a second then gaze vacantly towards the back of the room.

  Mazeau takes a step towards his wife. The man intercepts, holding his weapon about thirty centimeters from the detective’s head.

  “Move another fucking inch and you’re dead, asshole.”

  “Let her go. She has nothing to do with all this.”

  “All this what? Do you know why we’re here?”

  “No. But I know it has nothing to do with my wife. Leave her in peace.”

  Francis nods at Jeff.

  “Strip off!” the fat man orders the woman. “Now!”

  Mazeau starts shouting. He’ll get them for this, he’ll track them down. They’ll have every cop in the country on their trail. He tells them again to leave his wife alone. He groans with pain and holds his jaw and bends forward over his aching ribs. He asks them what they want.

  “Same thing as you, dickhead. The man who burned Couchot. That kid was ours and now she’s dead. The culprit will have to pay for that.”

  Mazeau turns to Darlac. He shakes his head. His bandages have come undone, exposing his black, swollen forehead.

  “What is this shit? Did they follow you?”

  Darlac pulls a face that says he hasn’t a clue.

  “I’m an inspecteur principal and this is Commissaire Darlac,” says Mazeau. “You’re making a very big mistake by attacking us. But, please, leave my wife out of this.”

  “You’re the one making a mistake by not answering. Tell us what we want to know and we’ll get out of here without touching your missus.”

  Mazeau looks questioningly at Darlac. The commissaire nods and blinks, encouraging him to talk.

  Mariette Mazeau starts screaming again because Jeff has grabbed the collar of her dress and is yanking it, tearing the poppers open so that her bare shoulder and bra strap are already visible. And his shotgun is still trained on her, his finger on the trigger.

  “Calm down!” Darlac shouts. “She’s going to do it right now. Fucking hell, Mazeau, just tell them so we can get this over with!”

  The shot makes them all duck. Shards of stone fly across the room and fall spattering onto the floorboards. The air is thick with plaster dust and for a few seconds nothing can be seen but their frozen silhouettes. The woman has collapsed on the floor and is screaming, holding her arm as blood pours from it, forming a long puddle next to her. Below her elbow, there is nothing but scraps of cloth and flesh.

  Jeff has taken a step back without letting go of his rifle, as if to get a better view, and he’s repeating “Fuck, fuck, what is this shit?” as he watches the woman, who gradually sinks down and turns onto her side, moaning and mumbling incoherently, choked by pain or shock.

  To start with, Francis lowered his gun, but when Mazeau starts towards his wife, he shoves the revolver’s barrel agai
nst his temple, his hand trembling and his eyes distraught as he keeps staring over at the woman stretched out on the floor. He does not see Darlac take his out his pistol and casually shoot a bullet into Jeff’s chest. The fat man recoils with the impact, his back hitting the wall where he remains standing for two or three seconds, shotgun in hand, his eyes rolling in disbelief, then collapses, knocking over a pedestal table as he falls.

  Mazeau touches his crotch. Then lifts his hand to his face and looks at it and sniffs it. He tenses, hopping from one foot to the other. The smell of shit hits his nostrils instantly and the detective falls to his knees and then flat on his belly. Darlac goes over to the woman, who is inanimate, soaked with blood. Breathing weakly. Almost no pulse. Her torn-off arm is still bleeding so he pulls off his tie and knots it around the end of the stump and under her shoulder, then wipes his blood-covered hands on her dress. He stands up, in a daze. He sees the telephone at the other end of the room and walks hesitantly towards it, his head numb and spinning, as if he was drunk.

  “I’m going to call for an ambulance. Take care of him.”

  “What? What did you say? ” Mazeau groans.

  Darlac notices that he is half deaf, as they all must be after those two detonations in an enclosed space. Francis does not move. He has uncocked the hammer of his revolver and holds the gun with his arm dangling, staring down at Mazeau who moves slowly in his shit, moaning softly. Darlac repeats his order, this time with an added gesture. Francis sighs, then hits Mazeau on the back of his head with the butt of his gun and the detective falls back heavily onto the carpet and stops moving.

  Darlac explains to the man on the switchboard that there’s been a serious accident: severed arm, massive bleeding, weak pulse. Tourniquet in place. He tells him to fucking hurry up, yelling into the receiver, and the switchboard operator tells him to calm down, assures him that a vehicle will be sent immediately.

  Darlac returns to the carnage. Feels a stab to the heart when he sees the massive body of Jeff slumped at the foot of the wall beneath a streak of blood that still glistens in the golden light of the lamps.

  “Go get your car,” he tells Francis, who remains motionless. “Move, for fuck’s sake. Not your first, is it?”

  Francis too stares at the fat man’s corpse.

  “Jesus, why did you . . . ?”

  “Because he was dangerous. Uncontrollable. He was a shit magnet.”

  “You had no right. All that cos he went for that bitch?”

  “Shut your mouth, Francis. Go get the car. We have to get out of here before the ambulance and the gendarmes arrive.”

  Francis decides to holster his gun and leave, slamming the door behind him.

  Darlac approaches the woman, who is lying on her side, and pushes aside her hair, which is stuck to her face, to get a better look.

  “It’ll be O.K.,” he says softly. “The ambulance is on its way.”

  He takes a cushion from the sofa and slides it under her head. She moans and her panicked eyes open wide, just off the floor, trying to see something, to work out where she is perhaps, then they close again as she breathes a plaintive sigh. At the sound of the car engine, Darlac stands up and forces himself to shake off the feeling of numbness that has overcome him. Francis enters and stands immobile, nodding mechanically.

  “Take Jeff,” says Darlac. “We can’t leave him behind.”

  “Shouldn’t have shot him then, should you? Why did you do that?”

  Darlac sighs then bends down and tries lifting the body up by the armpits. He barely manages to raise the torso from the floor.

  “Why are you just fucking standing there?”

  Francis grabs the legs. They drag the corpse, banging into furniture, its dead weight tugging at the rugs, which buckle into waves and folds that trip them up. The dead man’s head falls against Darlac’s forearm and his half-closed eyes make him look like a fat, lazy king nodding off. In the doorway they put him down for a few seconds to catch their breath and calm the crazed pounding of their hearts, then they start again towards the car, groaning with the effort.

  It takes them several long minutes to hoist the stiff into the boot of the car. They hear a siren in the distance, getting closer then further away, so they jog back into the house, each grab Mazeau by one of his arms and take him outside and shove him on the back seat.

  “Start the engine. I’ll be back in a minute,” says Darlac.

  He goes back into the house and uses his handkerchief to wipe the telephone receiver and the cup from which he drank, then decides to throw it against the wall, where it smashes. He glances at the woman. She doesn’t look like she’s bleeding anymore, so he moves over to see if, by any chance . . . No, she’s still breathing, feebly, face pale and skin shining with sweat.

  Back by the cars, he decides they should go to that cabin in Biscarosse where they’ve already taken care of Le Veau. Francis goes first. Darlac, driving away from the house, stares into the rearview mirror, on the lookout for the arriving ambulance. He thinks again about Martine Carol and that woman lying almost dead by to the fireplace. He doesn’t know why, but this vision haunts him as he drives down a straight, dismal road, bordered with green pines under a grey sky.

  It’s a rubber-tappers’ cabin at the end of a sand path packed down by rain and the passage of tractors. The smell of pine resin and mushrooms. The westerly wind blows humid through the treetops, making the trunks bend and sway slightly. Darlac and Francis barely even glance at this vertical melancholy, their eyes blank through the holes in their grey wool balaclavas. They take Mazeau out of the car and have to carry him inside the shack because he is now nothing more than an inert body, moaning and stinking. They put him on a chair but he collapses and falls and lies on the floor weeping softly.

  “Just tell me who set fire to Couchot’s place,” says Francis. “We’ll let you live. You can look after your wife. Think about her.”

  The cop lifts himself up on his elbows, trying to meet the eyes of the two men standing above him. His eyes are full of tears, his broken nose full of snot.

  “Why do you want to know that? What are you playing at, Darlac? You’re with them, aren’t you, you bastard?”

  “No, they’re with me. Now answer the question.”

  Francis takes out his revolver and presses it against Mazeau’s right knee.

  “Answer, or I’ll blow your kneecap off. After that, I’ll do the other one. You won’t be able to get upstairs any more, in your wheelchair.”

  He cocks the revolver. Mazeau coughs, chokes. “You’re going to shoot me anyway.”

  “No, we’re not. You talk and afterwards you keep your mouth shut and everything will be fine.”

  “And my wife? She—”

  Francis pulls the trigger. Mazeau screams and grabs his knee with both hands, rolling on the ground.

  Darlac shakes his head to soothe his throbbing eardrums. He sighs. He looks through the open door at the pine trees that surround them, straight and dark, and briefly imagines a host of dead sentries. He can no longer hear the wind in the treetops. Only Mazeau’s plaintive voice, saying something that hits him between the eyes with the weight of an iron bar.

  “He’s called Jean Delbos.”

  Darlac crouches down behind the cop, who is lying on his side.

  “Delbos?”

  “Yes. He wants you dead—you and everyone close to you. It was him who got Penot.”

  “That pathetic little . . . I thought he died in the camps. Apparently, he’s back.”

  Darlac stands up, staggering slightly, his vision blurred by dizziness. He signals to Francis that the interview is over, then goes to the doorway.

  “What do we do with him?” Francis asks. “Shall I finish him off?”

  Darlac meets his wide-eyed stare. He smells the mixture of sweat and gunpowder on his skin.

  “Given the situ
ation . . .” Francis adds.

  Mazeau is crying, curled up on the ground. Francis presses the barrel of his gun under the man’s left shoulder blade and fires. The cop’s body seems to unfold upon impact, and then go slack. They stare at him in silence for a moment in the smell of gunpowder and wet earth.

  “We can’t leave him here,” Darlac mutters. “And we need to get rid of the fat guy. I don’t want their bodies to be found.”

  Francis sighs and shakes his head.

  “Shit, do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Of course I realize. I told you not to bring Jeff. Not for this kind of work. His nerves weren’t up to it. All you had to do was scare them, and it ends up as a fucking massacre. So now we clean up, and cover ourselves.”

  “Alright . . . What’s done is done, anyway. I know a place, not far from here. A sort of ditch. I’ll throw some quicklime in. I’ve got everything I need in the cabin.”

  Darlac leans against the wall and slaps himself two or three times, bringing a bit of color back to his cheeks. He tries to smile at Francis, but can’t. His face contorts, almost as if some searing pain were twisting his innards.

  “Who’s this Delbos?”

  “A bunch of memories. And a ton of shit to come if we don’t find the fucker immediately.”

  They leave again, both driving at fifty kilometers per hour on the empty road. Two kilometers down the road, they find a more or less passable path where the cars jolt and shake over ruts. The ditch that Francis mentioned is a space where the earth has collapsed under an uprooted pine tree. At least three meters deep. They strip the corpses of their papers, rings and watches, and drag them over to the hole, then shove them both in.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow with the lime,” says Francis.

  He rubs his hands, shakes the sand off his trouser legs and puts the collection of papers, rings and watches in his pocket.

  Darlac stares into the hole without saying anything. The two bodies are slumped, sprawled over each other with that indecency dead bodies have when you throw them on top of each other like that.

  He takes the A-10 back to Bordeaux. Twice he nearly falls asleep, dragged from his torpor by the vibrations and the swaying of the car as it drifts into the verge, and he stops at a roadside café, in a car park packed with trucks, and staggers like a drunkard into a room where the hubbub of conversations and laughter dies instantly, making him hesitate in the doorway. He approaches the counter and leans on it, and that is when he sees his hands covered with blood, his shirtsleeves marked with brownish stains, and he hurriedly thrusts them in his pockets as a fat bald man walks over and asks him if he’s here to eat. He’s not hungry, hasn’t even thought about food, but says yes because he doesn’t know what else to say, so the man gestures to a table set for two, over there, in a corner near the window. The man mentions that the plat du jour is lentils with sausages, and Darlac says yes, that’ll be fine, and asks where the toilets are.