After the War

by Hervé Le Corre

  If they were alone, he would grab Laborde by the back of his jacket and hang him on the coat rack, force him to swallow the glee with which he had, for the last quarter of an hour, been detailing the errors committed during the failed arrest of that bastard Jean Delbos. But there is another cop here, a bigwig down from Paris, Commissaire Belcher, a special envoy from the minister, who is concerned by the growing scale of this case. Nine murders in ten months; a notably determined and violent killer still at large: that’s a lot for a city like Bordeaux, generally considered quite calm and orderly, the capital of political moderation, with a past marked by an efficient Gestapo and a formidable, much-feared secret police, a Resistance movement chopped into small factions, the Jews duly deported, and with a good proportion of bastards, traitors and crooks, most of whom slipped through the net during the purge, and now led by that young, handsome mayor who looks like a vacuum-cleaner salesman, an irreproachable Resistance fighter, tasked by De Gaulle with transforming this whore back into a virgin, with cleaning up its snot-nosed brood of bourgeois hypocrites, wine merchants, cops, and local journalists still happy at the end of their new leash. Nine murders that appear, seen from Paris, to carry the stench of the bad old days, as if someone had set to stirring up that marshy backwater with a big stick in order to bring everything up to the surface: the thick, heavy shit at the bottom, the stiffs, the trunks filled with secrets and accommodations, the suitcases overflowing with denunciations and plunder, the hastily falsified certificates of Resistance, the casually signed deportation orders.

  A killer who is violent, determined, and perhaps uniquely motivated. Who must be stopped urgently, by any means necessary. Whose motives must be kept quiet. Otherwise, if he continues his vendetta, there could be a serious risk to public order, particularly in these troubled times caused by the Algerian War.

  Darlac mentally reviews his tourist brochure for the city with its gallery of rogues, because of course the memories are flowing now, the names echoing in his mind. Laborde and the Parisian are powerless against him. He is in control of the situation. All the ins and outs. They can go fuck themselves.

  “All the same,” insists Belcher, “I think you’re treating this too lightly. Even if no-one’s likely to come across this man, with a dangerous killer like this we must establish a more substantial police presence.”

  “I’ve caught guys like this before with just two or three coppers, sometimes by chance. That’s part of police work too, you know, or maybe you’ve forgotten? These sorts of things happen when you step out of your office occasionally. But so what? He has no money, no papers. He was practically barefoot when he got away. He has nowhere else to stay. Abel Mayou was his last possible refuge, and he’s probably breathing his last in hospital at this very minute. I see that as a sign. It’s time to go in for the kill. His other friends, or rather his wife’s friends, refuse to have anything to do with him, cos of all his shady dealings before and during the Occupation. I’m keeping an eye on the garage where his son works; he’s in Algeria at the moment. We’re going to get this man, no doubt about it. It’ll be wrapped up in a matter of days.”

  Belcher stands up, walks over to the window and looks up at the sky, hands in pockets. Without turning around, he says:

  “This Delbos was your friend at one time, wasn’t he? How can you explain his hatred of you?”

  “All the people who made it back from the camps are a bit bonkers. They have trouble accepting what they went through, and sometimes they tend to blame any Tom, Dick or Harry for no good reason. I suppose it helps reduce their own guilt.”

  “Their guilt? Surely you’re not . . . ?”

  Belcher turns around and stares at Darlac with curiosity.

  “You’re not suggesting that they deserved what happened to them?”

  Laborde and Belcher exchange a glance. Darlac suddenly feels himself cast in the role of a suspect, being grilled by two clowns. Keep your cards close to your chest. He feels his heart speed up a bit. He forces himself to calm down, unwind a little.

  “No, of course not. But he must have thought that, being pals with a policeman, he’d be safe from what was happening at the time. He wasn’t the kind of guy who cared about politics. He was a bit of a gambler: horses, cards. He went to the same bars and clubs as me, and that’s how we met. I got him out of a few scrapes, it’s true. I liked him. He was intelligent, which made a nice change from the morons I was dealing with back then. His wife Olga was Jewish and a communist sympathizer. She was on the list, obviously. When they were arrested, he must have thought it was my fault, that I hadn’t done anything to prevent it.”

  “Do you have a man outside that garage?” Laborde asks.

  “Yes. I put two men there that evening. But there’s been nothing. Anyway, I find it hard to imagine the boss sheltering him. He’s not the forgiving kind. I think we just have to wait. I’m telling you: wait for him to fall into our hands.”

  Darlac watches these two fools who think they can order him around. He catches them exchanging another look, filled with irritation and collusion and for a second he wonders what exactly they know and are not saying.

  “And that former German officer . . . Müller, is it? What’s he even doing in France? You were talking about a man who was going after you, your friends, your family . . .”

  “He came here in ’49,” Laborde interrupts. “We had him watched straight away. We heard about this wounded soldier crossing the border; given the way he looks, he was hardly likely to go unnoticed. He was from a family of industrialists who made a fortune during the war, like lots of others . . . When his father died, the mother sold her shares in the company and brought her son here so he could be close to his daughter, Elise, conceived with Madame Darlac in ’42, before he left for the Eastern Front. He kept himself to himself, so we stopped the surveillance after a year. Madame Darlac used to visit him regularly, which was a way of keeping an eye on him, I suppose?”

  Commissaire Divisionnaire Laborde turns to Darlac. He smiles. Pleased with himself. Darlac feels the skin on his face tighten, as if he dried off in the sun after swimming in the sea. So, those bastards knew a year before he did. They investigated him, they had his wife followed. Half the cops in the city must have known about it. He stands up and the other two watch him as he takes a few steps towards a metal locker with an old departmental schedule stuck to the door. He feels as if he is walking over a frayed rope bridge with crumbling wooden slats, suspended over a river full of crocodiles. His imagination never normally allows this kind of horrific fantasy, but he feels powerless to fight against the vertigo that has seized him, the vision that fills his mind. He punches the locker door, leaving a dent in the metal and making the whole thing vibrate for a few seconds. He grits his teeth as the pain rises through his arm, then wraps his grazed knuckles in his handkerchief and turns around, chest thrust out, acting tough.

  “This all seems a bit disloyal to me.”

  This is all he can think to say, and instantly he feels pathetic. He’s losing his grip. He looks at the door, filled with a sudden desire to get out of here as fast as he can, to grab his gun from the desk drawer and then come back for a proper discussion with these two bastards.

  “Oh yeah,” says Laborde. “Loyalty. I forgot how important that is to you. You . . .”

  Commissaire Belcher claps his hands as if to calm down two kids who are about to start fighting.

  “Commissaire Darlac, I have to make a report to the minister later today by telephone. This is still your investigation: what should I tell him? This case stinks. The Paris press is beginning to report on it. I need a deadline. For the moment I feel like this is one huge can of worms and it’s better not to open it up. So unless you want me to get my can-opener out, tell me something I want to hear. And I need results. Understood?”

  “Three days,” says Darlac.

  This seems like a good number to him. A prime numb
er. The perfect balance of a triangle. He could have gone for seven too, but he doesn’t need to recreate the world.

  “In three days, I’ll have him. If not, the minister will receive my letter of resignation. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “There’s no need for that.”

  “I think there is. Are we done?”

  The other two exchange a look.

  “Gentlemen . . .”

  He leaves, taking care to close the door slowly. Out in the corridor, a current of cooler air makes him realize what a furnace he has just escaped. His shirt is soaked with cold sweat, sticking to his swollen belly, where he can feel his lunch still fermenting. As soon as he enters his office, he takes off his jacket and rolls up his shirtsleeves. Standing in front of the sink, he drinks from the tap, splashes water on his face, exhales, then coughs and spits and rinses his mouth again because he feels as if the mingled stench of their colognes and their sweat are stuck to his tongue and the back of his throat. In the speckled mirror he examines the drawn features of his face and thinks that, this time, maybe it really is over, that he should think about taking off. Sell his house and buy a place in Périgord, for instance, a small business, a newsagent’s maybe, where he could see all the nobodies from the village file past every day, where he could listen to their secrets, hear all the local gossip, the slanders and scandals . . . He would be at the center of the tiny local shit heap, watching them all eat their hearts out, and that would be great entertainment for him, all those malignant people, all that vileness, like a rural concentration of human nature. He also imagines himself with his ass parked on a riverbank, a fishing rod in his hand, or sitting by a hearth with a hellish fire blazing . . . Alone, of course. Or with a dog. A faithful companion, always happy to see him, obedient and sweet-natured. Madame and her daughter? Try as he might, he can find no place for them in the happiness he dreams up for himself beneath the yellowish lamp hung above the washbasin.

  He remains for a moment in front of his reflection, not really looking at it, his hands still wet, burning pains in his stomach, attempting to project himself into the future the way you might try to spit as far as possible, and then the telephone rings.

  “Someone to see you, commissaire.”

  “Who is it? What do they want?”

  “Some kid. He says his name’s Norbert and he wants to talk to you.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Life is good. You think it’s nearly over, curled up at the end of a cul-de-sac like a dying dog, and suddenly up it gets and shakes itself off and starts barking again, full of vigour, as if nothing ever happened. The Dordogne can wait, and so can the fishing trips. I’ll bury myself later. Right now I’m going to fuck them all and make them thank for me it. He grabs his gun from the drawer, puts on his jacket, tightens the knot of his tie and goes downstairs jauntily, like a young man.

  Norbert is sitting on a bench facing the counter where two uniformed cops—an old fat one and a tall blond one who looks like a drunkard—are sweating as they give directions to two men, pointing out the floor and office number that they must report to. The boy stands up when he sees the commissaire, and Darlac grabs his arm and leads him outside. He takes him to a busy, noisy bar on rue Judaqueï.

  Darlac orders a beer, Norbert a shandy. Beer is too strong, he says. This amuses Darlac. If you say so. Then he remembers the violent pisshead father and takes a better look at this boy with bluish, swollen eyes under his constantly frowning eyebrows, sipping his soft drink.

  “So, you wanted to see me?”

  Norbert lights a cigarette, blows the smoke up at the ceiling. Acting like a man.

  “He came back. The boss is letting him stay in the flat above the garage.”

  Darlac knows what he means, but he wants to be sure. He downs half his beer in a single gulp and shakes his head to ward off the giddiness that is starting to numb his brain.

  “Who came back?”

  “Um . . . Daniel’s father. Jean Delbos. You know, the one who brought a motorbike to be repaired back in November. He got there the day before yesterday, around noon. Didn’t look too good. I take his food up sometimes. He doesn’t say anything. Just lies on his bed and writes in a notebook.”

  “He writes? You think he’ll be there for long?”

  “No idea. Apparently he doesn’t know where to go. But my boss never tells me much. Just the bare minimum.”

  Darlac just wants to know that he was right about this kid. Confirm his intuitions. Savor yet another victory over the weakness of men.

  “Why did you decide to tell me? You don’t owe me anything, after all.”

  “Yeah, I do, a bit. You kept your word. You brought my father in. That calmed him down for about three weeks and then it started up again, but I didn’t dare come and disturb you for that. I hoped the chance would present itself. And that man, Daniel’s father, I don’t have any respect for him. If you have a son, you should look after him. He abandoned his. And I remember Daniel often talked about his parents, even though he barely remembers their faces. I mean, can you believe it? He didn’t recognize his own father when he brought that bike to be repaired! How is that even possible?”

  Darlac shakes his head, twists his face as if to say “beats me”. He finds the boy so sincere, so touching, a little prince with greasy hands, that he wants to say something kind to him.

  “Well, don’t worry about your father: I’ll take care of him. I’ll see what I can do, but in a month or two you’ll be rid of him, for a while at least, you and your mother. Enough time for her to change her life and for you to become a man. I won’t forget what you’ve done.”

  The boy begins to shift about on his chair. He looks around as if afraid that someone might have heard them. Darlac knows this sort of embarrassed impatience. All informers are like that: they wallow in the denunciation, the details, and then after a moment they feel dirty, almost regretful. It’s a bit like whores with morals: their virtue is like a small stone in their shoe, making them limp home every morning.

  “One other thing: how do you get into his hideout?”

  “Through the garage. There’s a door that you can hardly see because there are shelves in front of it. You go up some stairs and it’s there, on the second floor. But there’s also a door to the street behind. Number 8, Passage Bardos. That’s where the boss and his wife used to live. But no-one goes through there anymore. It’s closed up.”

  “What do you mean, closed up?”

  “I don’t know . . . the shutters and all that . . . The boss kept the room where that man is pretty clean. There’s a washbasin in there. But downstairs it must be full of mice and spiders, I reckon.”

  Darlac thinks about the two detectives staked out in the street. If Delbos goes out through the back, they could wait until retirement before they see him. A moment of doubt. Is it possible the garage owner and Delbos have some sort of trick planned that the kid doesn’t know about?

  “When was the last time you saw Delbos?”

  “At noon. I took him up some food.”

  “And what time does the garage close?”

  “About seven in the evening. Earlier sometimes.”

  Darlac checks his watch: ten past six. He gets up abruptly. He has to go. He’s heard enough for today. Then Norbert slides something across the table. A large key. The cop pockets it and walks towards the exit. The boy follows him. He senses him on his heels and ups his pace. But the boy is still behind him. What’s he doing, waiting for Darlac to sing him a lullaby? The cop turns around:

  “What do you want?”

  The words come out harsher than he meant them to, and the boy recoils almost imperceptibly, as if Darlac was about to hit him.

  “Nothing, I . . . This is my turn here. Goodbye, monsieur.”

  Darlac watches him jog across the street, hands in his pockets, his little workman’s bag
slung over his shoulder. He thinks that the police works, in the end, because there are sad cases like that, overwhelmed by their own emotions. As if all the lazy suckers desperate for easy money were not enough! And then there are those who break the law because they don’t know how to do otherwise at a given moment, because they’re helpless, cornered, enraged, up shit creek, off their rockers, hypnotized by all that glitters. And also those who talk, betray, rat on their friends, for money or for vengeance or for no reason at all, because they are mad with jealousy, anger, hatred, love . . . Being a policeman is a job stuffed to the gills with feelings, in fact: good feelings and bad. And to be a cop you have to be a romantic, in a way: you must consider every possible passion, without actually feeling any of them. You have to stay safe in the shelter of your contempt for this human confusion, the way a soldier might lie flat on the ground to escape a burst of gunfire.

  37

  Abel died yesterday. Claude Mesplet called the hospital this morning. When I found out, I felt the tears well up in my eyes, then I slapped myself in the face to stop them falling—or to give them a good reason to fall—and my vision blurred and I felt so sad that I collapsed on the bed and lay there, motionless, unthinking, for maybe an hour. A real sadness. A child’s sadness, inconsolable, immune to reason. I’d forgotten how it felt to be sad like that. I have been through states of despair, melancholy, the blues, whatever you want to call it, but I recall always trying to think, to fight the feeling, at least to putwords to what I was experiencing, usually by writing in my notebooks. But this feeling of absolute solitude and suffering, this slow fall into a bottomless abyss, this inability to explain anything even to myself . . . I didn’t know what it was.

  I slept a bit. I sleep a lot here. I sleep and I write in this accounts book that Claude gave me. A twist of fate? A final settling-up? I have been writing in school exercise books since 1946, since I found the strength to do it, as a way of keeping a few beacons lit in my dark night, to help guide my memory. Since more or less the same date, I have kept records of my earnings and expenses, just to balance the books. It was my job, before. I always hated it. Hated my bosses: their obsession with profit, their natural propensity for fraud, their instinct for cheating. I think any boss, big or small, is a cheat who has managed not to get caught.