After the War

by Hervé Le Corre

  Laborde finally moves towards him. Handshakes. Introductions. Desclaux, the commissaire from Dax, a tall, skinny four-eyes with a bony face who reminds Darlac of Crabos. The capitaine of the gendarmerie, Guillou, tall and broad-shouldered, and a young, scared-looking man: Monsieur Gérard, the sub-prefect. Darlac forgets these stooges’ names as soon as he’s heard them. He glances over at the hole, sees a spade leaning against a tuft of broom, and some objects placed on a khaki blanket.

  “Come and see.”

  Laborde takes his arm and leads him towards the bodies. He doesn’t dare pull away from the chief super’s grip. Finally Laborde lets him go and he walks to the edge of the ditch. The bodies are mummified, tangled together beneath a grayish dust. Darlac tells them apart by their clothes; their dead faces look the same. He tries to remember Jeff’s large, round face, but can’t. Not that it makes much difference right now.

  “We haven’t moved them. But on one of them you can see a bullet hole in his jacket. There, you see? The rip.”

  Darlac leans over Jeff’s corpse. Yep, that’s where it entered, the bullet he shot in his heart. He remembers.

  “We found this too. Just next to them.”

  Laborde shows him the contents of a wallet spread out on the khaki blanket.

  “These are Inspecteur Mazeau’s papers. There’s even his police I.D. We don’t know who the other guy is. You wouldn’t have any idea, would you? That big guy, who must have been pretty fat?”

  Darlac feels his heart start to race. He shakes his head, turns to the bodies again, tries to look absorbed like a good, conscientious cop.

  “Why would I know?”

  He speaks without looking at Laborde, practically turning his back on him, to conceal the pallor he can feel in his face.

  “I thought you knew everyone. A good cop like you knows people whose existence we don’t even suspect. He reminds me of Joseph Laclau—you know, fat Jeff? You know him well, don’t you?”

  “He’s been useful to me. Especially against Crabos’ team, who are now out of the business and not bothering anyone. But I haven’t seen him for a while. I heard he left Bordeaux because of some scandal.”

  “Put his cock in one hole too many, did he?”

  “That’s what I heard. I haven’t had time to check the story. That’s how we kept him under control. I knew what he got tup to . . . Problem is, if I’d taken him down, he’d have taken some of the top brass down with him.”

  Laborde nods. He looks thoughtful and puts a hand on Darlac’s shoulder.

  “That’s the difficulty with our profession: all these shameful compromises we make with shits like that. As if the only way we can fight evil is with evil, if you know what I mean . . . But there’s no such thing as a good cop who doesn’t keep bad company, is there?”

  He takes a pack of Gitanes from his pocket and offers one to Darlac, who refuses with a hand gesture.

  “I don’t know if it really is Jeff down there, but I know who did this. That’s a pretty good start, isn’t it? And he used to be part of my ‘bad company’ at one time too.”

  “Oh, the guy who came back from the concentration camps? What’s his name again?”

  “Jean Delbos.”

  The gendarme capitaine walks over.

  “They’re going to move the bodies. We’re finished here.”

  Laborde turns his back on Darlac and starts to speak with the officer. They exchange notes, talk about procedures, the prosecutor.

  Darlac takes advantage of their conversation to move away. Gendarmes and ambulance men come over carrying two stretchers covered with thick canvas blankets. The young sub-prefect observes these comings and goings with a dazed look on his face, arms dangling at his sides. The Dax commissaire lights a cigarette and blows smoke out noisily as Darlac passes.

  “It happens sometimes, round here.”

  Darlac turns towards him. The other cop stares at him from behind his glasses. Sharp face, sharp gaze.

  “What?”

  “Bodies in the woods. Hangings sometimes. In barns, in winter. They’re not always suicides.”

  Darlac shrugs.

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “One day we’ll find one at the top of a pine tree.”

  “Find one what?”

  “A body, hanging!”

  Darlac looks up to the tops of the pines, twenty meters above them. The man from Dax smiles.

  “You don’t think that’s funny? That’s how we test the newbies round here. We tell them a story about someone hanged twenty meters above the ground. And we watch how they react. Some of them don’t see the problem. We keep them in the office, typing and filing, cos they’re not good for much else.”

  Darlac has no idea why this prick is telling him all this. He shrugs and walks away.

  “By the way,” he hears behind his back, “you looked up.”

  Darlac turns around.

  “Are you all like this round here, or did I just get unlucky?”

  The Dax super smiles slyly, cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Darlac has come across a man like this before, in court. He’d killed his parents and his sister with a billhook, in the Médoc, before running away into the marshes with his dog and his hunting rifle, and he smiled just like that when he was in the dock, like he was trying to be clever. Didn’t even seem to understand where he was or what they wanted from him.

  “I don’t believe it personally, this story about a rubber-tapper finding stiffs at the bottom of a hole. Neither do the gendarmes, for that matter.”

  Darlac takes a step towards him. So . . . maybe he’s not the simple crackpot he appears.

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because this part of the forest isn’t tapped. We checked. There’s not a jar of resin within fifty acres of this spot. So what would this rubber-tapper be doing here?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, it’s a poacher, isn’t it? Rubber-tapper my ass! That bastard was shooting deer, I bet you anything!”

  Darlac tries to work out if this man is completely nuts or if he’s fucking with him. He stares into the grinning face, the eyes vigilant behind those glasses, and can’t tell either way. Commissaire Divisionnaire Laborde signals Darlac over, while staring at him and walking towards him.

  “Meeting in my office, first thing tomorrow. I’m going to put everyone on this Delbos. We have to arrest him as soon as possible. We’ve wasted too much time already.”

  He sounds out of breath as he speaks. Walking thirty meters in the sand seems to have got his ticker pounding. Darlac waits a few seconds for him to recover.

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes,” Laborde breathes.

  Darlac turns on his heels and walks away.

  He knows Laborde is watching him. He only brought him here to observe his reactions. To plant a few banderillas in him. Laborde the crafty bullfighter, acting clumsy but hiding a collection of swords behind his red cape, ready to stab them deep in his back the first chance he gets.

  The sun is shining on the forest now, awakening a few cicadas. June. Darlac couldn’t care less about the coming summer or any other season, but he is surprised that it is already so late in the year. And the heat that hangs heavy over him now, as his feet twist on the soft, shifting ground, as his shoes fill with sand, only adds to his oppression, shining a white, burning light in his face.

  In his office, the telephone rings as he arrives and he snatches it up. It’s Molinier, one of the coppers he’s assigned to watch over madame.

  “So?”

  “So, it’s like you said: she went to Blanquefort. An old woman opened the door. Her aunt, you told us. She came back just afterwards. And your daughter got in five minutes ago. We’re outside your place now. Apart from that, nothing to report. No tail, nomotorbike, nothing. Just like yesterday.”


  “Alright, you can go. Nothing can happen to them at home.”

  He is about to hang up when he hears Molinier saying something.

  “Oh yeah, just one more thing. It doesn’t help us much, but at noon we had a bite to eat in a little bistro at the corner of your street. We were chatting with the owner, and he told us about a guy on a motorbike who used to go there a couple of times a week, for about the last two months. Tall, skinny, not very talkative. Always sat near the window. And guess what? There’s a good view of your house from that café. The owner had talked to this guy quite a bit, seemed to like him. He always had a notebook and a pen with him and he would write things down. He hadn’t been there in the last week.”

  Darlac forces himself to breathe slowly. This dick of a cop almost forgot to tell him! He’s searching for a murderer, he finds one of his hideouts, and he doesn’t even bother mentioning it. Jean Delbos was there, less than fifty meters away, for hours on end, watching them come and go. He tries to make some saliva. His mouth is dry.

  “What else did he say?”

  The commissaire is furious. He’s going to summon this prick to his office and give him a piece of his mind.

  “Nothing. He thought he was a writer. The guy told him that he was writing a detective story.”

  “Go home. That’ll be all for today.”

  He hangs up, and walks over to the window, as he always does. He looks up at the sky where the last clouds are fraying and dissolving in the sunlight, and trembles with rage at the idea that Delbos is still able to enjoy such a sight, safely hidden, somewhere in this fucking city, calculating his next move.

  He spends the rest of the afternoon checking procedures, calls the prosecutor’s department twice, chews out a lazy detective, smokes and goes to the bathroom three times to wash his clammy hands.

  As he sits down and dries his damp fingers on his waistcoat, he is startled by the ringing of the telephone. He grabs the receiver.

  Francis. Son of a bitch. What are you playing at when you’ve already lost? He gets his breath back, concentrates his attention on the file about two women found dead in their home. Mother and daughter. Murder-suicide.

  “What happened to you? I was beginning to wonder . . .”

  “I was in Lille. At my fucking mother’s funeral.”

  Darlac raises his eyebrows. His face twists into a malicious grin.

  “I didn’t even know you had a mother.”

  “Everyone’s got one.”

  Darlac listens to Francis breathing heavily on the end of the line.

  “I’ll tell you the story of my life, if you like. You’ll enjoy that. Anyway, we need to talk.”

  “Dead right we do. I have some news for you.”

  “Oh really? What’s that?”

  Darlac’s vision blurs. Tears run down his cheeks. Hatred can overflow, just like grief.

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. You’ll enjoy that. Where shall we meet?”

  “My place.”

  “What time?”

  “Whenever you want. I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.”

  Nearly six. He leafs through two files—breaking and entering, unpaid bills—that can wait till tomorrow. He takes the pistol from its shoulder holster, plays with the breech, takes out the magazine, reinserts it. Click, clack. There is no point to this, except to use up some nervous energy, maybe to reassure himself. He holsters the gun under his arm again. He likes feeling its weight pulling gently on the strap. He takes a .30-calibre pistol from a drawer; he got it ages ago, from some loser. He does the same checks, then slides it into his pocket and leaves the office.

  In the corridor he bumps into Carrère, who asks him if he’s seen the bodies, if it really is Mazeau. Darlac puts on an appropriate face. Yeah, it was tough seeing a colleague in a state like that.

  “We need to turn over every fucking stone in this city till we find that guy, whatever-his-name-is. What did the chief say?”

  “Meeting tomorrow morning in his office.”

  “Ah, finally, cos . . .”

  Darlac checks his watch, although he knows perfectly well what time it is.

  “I have to go. Need to meet someone.”

  He leaves, feeling Carrère’s disappointed gaze on his back, and walks downstairs. Relieved, almost light-hearted. Then out to pick up his car.

  Francis lives in a huge apartment on the first floor of a rundown building overlooking the place des Chartrons. He opens the door to him in shirtsleeves and slippers and hastily shakes his hand before preceding him into the living room, which looks like an antique dealer’s backroom: cluttered with old furniture, lamps, trinkets, sombre-colored paintings hung on the walls, some of them askew. Gifts, most of them, from Gestapo officers in cahoots with Cloos, the head of the requisitions department for Jewish goods, in return for Francis’ help in tracking down Resistance networks. Some of them he took himself, in payment, from the empty apartments for which Darlac had keys.

  Darlac tells him, as he often has before, that it’s imprudent to keep this mess of objects, which could become compromising if the law ever decided to investigate what some might consider plunder, but Francis reassures him with the observation that the law would have difficulty investigating what the law itself made possible: in Bordeaux, as elsewhere, everyone keeps his mouth shut, pretending to forget the dead and ignoring the survivors. Sitting in a red velvet armchair with twisted feet, he adds, “That was the war. And it’s over.”

  Darlac wishes he was more convinced of this. He sits across from him, on a loveseat that groans under his weight and gives way slightly. Francis leans over an inlaid coffee table. He picks up a bottle of wine and pours it into two tasting glasses. He turns the label for Darlac to see.

  “Deuxième grand cru classé de Pauillac. 1937.”

  Darlac sniffs, closes his eyes, concentrates. Hunting the aromas. A cellar master once told him that people find the smells they want to find in a wine. That there was a whole range from which one could choose, proceeding by elimination. A bit like a cop who can’t find any solid proof, so ends up fabricating evidence. Ever since then, Darlac has mistrusted wine buffs. He takes some in his mouth and rolls it around while Francis crudely shoves his nose in the glass then swallows a big mouthful as if quenching his thirst.

  “Good, isn’t it? I got two crates of six. A gift. So? What’s this news you wanted to tell me?”

  Darlac signals with his hand that the news can wait. This moment is important. He keeps his nose inside the glass a little longer, pretends to sniff, eyes closed, then drinks some more. It’s true: it is good. He puts his glass down and leans back, watching Francis as he puts on a show of concentrating on his wine. He wants to coax him out, get him to talk about those ten days when he was nowhere to be found.

  Darlac continues acting out the tasting ritual while he waits for the next move. Francis pours himself some more, and drinks it like it’s Ribena. A silence falls between them, undisturbed even by sounds from outside. Darlac stands up, takes a few steps and plants himself in front of an eighteenth-century engraving of Bordeaux’s port. He examines the details, trying to recognize the city amid this chaos of ships and boats of all kinds, of goods piled high on the bank that slopes down to the river.

  “So?” he says finally. “You wanted to see me?”

  The sound of a throat being cleared. The dull clink of a glass placed on the tabletop.

  “Yeah . . . My mother died, as I told you. Fucking bitch. An uncle called me to tell me she wanted to see me before she kicked the bucket, so I went over there. Roubaix—it’s not exactly next door.”

  Darlac turns around to see his lying eyes. Yeah, right. Give me a sob story. Play your little violin. I’ve heard others, and more in tune than this one. A lie, a trap—trembling in the eyes, dulling their sparkle. I know about lies.

  Francis’ eyes shine a
nd his breathing is shallower, his voice less steady. Darlac is no longer sure.

  “You never mentioned her before. I thought you’d been an orphan for years.”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re not the kind of guy anyone would necessarily want to talk to about their mother. And for another, I’m not an orphan but I was something pretty similar: a welfare kid. She didn’t want to take care of me anymore—too busy getting shagged—so she dumped me in a boarding school and then with some old people. But the man used to beat me up, so I got sent somewhere else. And so on. Ended up in juvie. And the rest is history! Now you know the sad story of my shitty life. Although I’m sure you knew it all anyway: you had me investigated, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t go back that far. All I knew was your legal antecedents. I couldn’t care less about the rest. I’m not like one of those idiot lawyers who’ll go digging around in diaper shit to find excuses for their clients’ guilt. Childhood doesn’t count. Everyone’s too soft and too stupid when they’re a kid. Afterwards we change, for better or worse, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Well, anyway . . . I wanted to know how I’d feel about it, after all these years . . . almost a lifetime.”

  Darlac sighs. He couldn’t give a toss about this bitch and the moods and feelings of her son of a. Is this really Francis spouting all this womanish crap? Francis, who is bothered by nothing, about as sentimental as a dog of war? Francis, who he’s seen kill two men with his bare hands? Francis, who has double-crossed him and is going to die, whatever crap he spouts.

  “So?”

  “So nothing. It got me down, going back there. But I didn’t even recognize the old woman. And she didn’t recognize me either. She opened her eyes, and she looked frightened. I went for a walk round the places I used to hang out when I was a kid, all those streets of brick houses, all that shit. You should never do that.”

  Darlac sits down again. He drinks some more wine, notices that he’s hungry and that the wine is making him feel slightly ill. He watches Francis visibly unravelling and begins to guess how all this is going to end.

  “Is that all you have to tell me? You said we needed to talk. I came. You’re not going to start telling me about the first bike you stole, are you?”