Talking to Ghosts

by Hervé Le Corre

  “I believe you knew Nadia Fournier?”

  Lataste shook his head.

  “She worked for S.A.N.I., the industrial cleaners. You know them?” Lataste again glanced at his wife who was staring at him intently, willing him to answer but terrified of what he might say.

  “Ah yes, I do vaguely recall someone of that name. A dark-haired girl. We sometimes ran into each other if I was working late. And?”

  “Perhaps you might prefer to …”

  “No, no, we can talk here … There’s not much to tell anyway, I have nothing to hide.”

  Mireille Lataste suddenly seemed to emerge from her daze and took a few steps up the stairs. From the floor above came the sound of children chattering.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” she said weakly. “You can tell me about it later. I’d rather give you some time to think about your version of events, it might make it a little less hard on me.”

  Vilar wanted to hurt them, and he did not wait for the woman to reach the top of the stairs before saying, “You know Nadia is dead?”

  Lataste’s wife stopped, but did not turn.

  “How would I know that?”

  “It was in the papers, it made the local news.”

  “I don’t take much interest in the local news. I never read the paper.”

  “You’ve got a short memory,” his wife interrupted. “We were watching T.V. together the other night, you got home early for once. They even showed her picture. A pretty girl, as I remember. I made a point of mentioning it.”

  She came back downstairs and planted herself directly in front of her husband.

  “Why are you lying?”

  “I don’t think there’s much point me staying,” Vilar said. “I’m not going to get any straight answers.”

  Lataste stepped towards Vilar.

  “What do you mean? Go ahead, ask your questions and let’s get this over with, I haven’t got all day.”

  “I’ve got all day, and all night too if you’re going to lie to me. It’s up to you. But since we got off to a bad start, maybe it’s better if you come down and explain it to me at the station, where we can write up a formal statement. But let’s be clear: a young woman has been murdered. Now you don’t seem to care too much about that, which is a little strange since you knew her pretty well to judge by the witness statements we have … If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t be so arrogant and dismissive. But that’s up to you. Now, we can do this the easy way or keep up the cocky attitude and I’ll call for backup, have you dragged out of here and personally call the procureur’s office to inform them that you made false statements.”

  Madame Lataste turned and ran up the stairs, a door slammed, and the children’s chatter trailed off.

  Vilar had taken out his mobile and was about to call Pradeau, who was probably transferring the three suspects in the stabbing case to court.

  “No, that’s O.K., I’ll come with you,” Lataste said, patting his pockets to make sure he had his wallet, mobile, whatever.

  Before he followed Vilar, Lataste stood for a moment staring up at the landing, now utterly silent. He hunched his shoulders as though about to step out into the rain, muttered, “Let’s go,” and slammed the door behind him.

  When Vilar explained why he had decided to bring Lataste in, Daras insisted on conducting the interview. She sensed that that man was more likely to respond to a woman, which would save them time. They left Lataste to sit and stew for a quarter of an hour while they had coffee and talked about how good it would be to get a week away from all this bullshit.

  Daras went through Lataste’s I.D. papers, then laid a picture of Nadia Fournier on the desk in front of him, followed by several photographs taken at the crime scene. Vilar was sitting at the computer, taking down the statement.

  “Can you confirm that we are talking about the same person?”

  Lataste could not bring himself to look at the close-ups of Nadia’s lifeless body, ravaged from the beating and bloated from the early stages of decomposition. When he did not answer, Vilar said:

  “We are agreed, aren’t we? That’s her?”

  “Yes … that’s her,” Lataste said in a whisper.

  Daras slipped the pictures back into a file and ramped things up a notch.

  “A routine question, but a crucial one: when did you last see her?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. Friday, maybe …”

  He spoke in a distracted voice, his head bowed, his hands clasped between his thighs, as though thinking about something else, perhaps the repercussions of this whole business for him.

  “What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

  “What exactly was the nature of your relationship?” Vilar interrupted.

  “I …”

  “So when did you last see her?” Daras said. “I trust you realise how important it is that you answer truthfully.”

  “Were you having an affair? That might explain the tension between you and your wife.”

  Lataste looked from one to the other. He had begun to cower a little.

  “Yes. We—”

  “What do you mean when you say ‘yes’?” Daras said.

  “Yes, we were sleeping together,” he said more loudly. “And we saw each other last Friday – I mean the Friday before last.”

  Vilar checked the calendar.

  “That would have been the eighth. O.K., when and where?” Lataste slumped back in his chair.

  “We were together the whole day. I took her to Hossegor, I was supposed to be looking over a couple of houses we’re selling there.”

  Daras came up behind him and hissed into his ear:

  “And where were you on Monday, 11 June?”

  He turned around and looked into her eyes. She jerked her chin, demanding an answer.

  “Why the eleventh?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I was in the office, obviously.”

  “You didn’t visit any houses that day?”

  “Only in the city itself, you can check with my colleagues or with the clients I saw.”

  “Oh, we will check, Monsieur Lataste,” Daras said. “Make no mistake.”

  “You’re saying you’re going to turn up at my office and question everyone about my schedule? Put calls in to my clients? That’s going to start people talking. Basically you’re going to destroy my reputation in a business that’s completely dependent on trust.”

  “Yeah, because you’re really trustworthy, aren’t you?” Vilar said. “In our little meeting earlier today, you were – how shall I put it? – economical with the truth.”

  “My wife was there, I was hardly going to confess that I was having an affair with that girl.”

  “That girl, as you call her, how did you meet her?”

  Daras had sat down behind her desk as she asked the question and now cupped her chin in her hands as she waited for an answer, obviously prepared for anything.

  Lataste told the story in a monotone, betraying no emotion, and it was impossible to tell whether he felt nothing or whether he was struggling not to let it show. He and Nadia had met at the office one night. He was working late and they had slept together that same night. She had made all the running, and even now he wondered what it was about him that she had been attracted to, although at the time he had simply made the most of the opportunity and surrendered to a sort of feverish passion, watching himself live out the sort of sex scenes he thought only existed in movies.

  The affair had gone on for about four months, made easier by Lataste’s frequent trips in the region and the fact that they could use the properties he had to visit for his work: empty houses, quirky old cottages, luxury or dilapidated apartments, barely completed studios in buildings where labourers would sometimes be finishing work on the other side of the partition wall … It had been his idea, this sort of furtive, itinerant existence which he found exciting and which Nadia seemed to get a taste for, though it was hard for him to know what she really thought or felt, sh
e could be secretive, sometimes mysterious, lost in her own thoughts, and there were days when she just let him drive her around and fuck her, as though she were not really there at all.

  No, she had never asked for money – what a ridiculous idea. Although thinking about it, perhaps she had been expecting something else, she was never completely happy, but for the most part cheerful enough during their jaunts together.

  “It turns out you didn’t know her very well, then,” Daras said. Lataste stared at her, mulling over what he was about to say.

  “I don’t think I gave a shit about knowing her. For me it was almost a dream, meeting this young girl who put the moves on me and going … well, going around and screwing in all these different places, you can’t imagine the freedom, the excitement … she was just a fuck buddy, really. That’s all. If she had wanted to stop, I wouldn’t have insisted on keeping it going. We didn’t talk about our lives. I knew she had a thirteen-year-old son, she knew that I was married, and that’s it.”

  “How did you feel when you heard she’d been murdered?”

  Lataste shrugged slowly. He could not bring himself to look up at Daras and he stared down at the desk.

  “I don’t know. It felt weird. Like I was still in some sort of movie. Obviously I wasn’t about to say anything in front of my wife. For me, it was like a break from the real world, something that happened once or twice a week, that’s all. A sort of forbidden thrill.”

  “With death at the end, just like in the movies? Is that why you didn’t get in touch with the police? Nadia’s death was the inevitable fate of a misspent life, in some way? You must have known that we’d track you down, surely?”

  Lataste bowed his head and sighed.

  “Obviously, I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

  Vilar tapped away at the keyboard for a few seconds, then, unexpectedly, all was silence. The printer suddenly clicked and whirred. It was Lataste who finally spoke.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “We’re not bound to answer, but ask away,” Vilar said.

  “Why did you ask if she’d ever asked me for money?”

  Vilar and Daras exchanged a look, found themselves in agreement.

  “We have every reason to suspect that Nadia Fournier was working, at least some of the time, as a prostitute. When a girl like that hooks up with your type, she usually shakes him down one way or another.”

  “And what exactly is ‘my type’?”

  “Filthy rich and dumb enough to mistake your life for a fantasy. I thought you were an arrogant prick, but right now I think you’re just a pathetic fucker.”

  “Well you’re half right … I have been a bit of a fucker, and when my wife finds out about it I’ll be royally screwed.”

  “Very good,” Daras said. “Nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour. You’re resourceful. Here we are practically standing over the body of the woman you were fucking not two weeks ago, and you’re making jokes.

  “Maybe I’d make a good cop.”

  “For that you’d need to know which side you’re on …” Vilar said.

  He and Daras exchanged another look, and Vilar pushed the statement across the desk to Lataste. The man read through it and signed with a sigh.

  “This statement will be on the case file,” Daras said. “I hope you haven’t forgotten anything, or kept anything from us. We’ll call you in again if we need clarification. And obviously if we do call, you’d better make sure you come. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Lataste said in a low voice. “Can I go now?”

  The irony and superciliousness seemed to have drained from him. He trudged out slowly, closing the door softly behind him.

  “So?” Daras said.

  “So? We’ve found ourselves a true romantic, don’t you think? Led around by his dick with his brain in his Y-fronts.”

  “Like most guys …”

  Vilar smiled.

  “Maybe … But he knows more than he’s letting on, at least about how Nadia supplemented her income. I can’t believe he didn’t suspect.”

  “Agreed. We can keep up the pressure, but he doesn’t look like the type to buckle easily. Just when you think he’s about to spill his guts, he suddenly gets a grip. Funny guy.”

  The mobile in Daras’ pocket rang. She took the call, heaved a sigh, and said she was on her way.

  “I’ve got a meeting with Judge Dardenne in five minutes. I’d completely forgotten. It’s about the two corpses we found two years ago, the couple we found bled dry in Montalivet a couple of months dead? Chaintrier has been working on the case. From the witness statements, we’d assumed it was a woman who cut their throats, turns out it was a transvestite, the husband’s boyfriend! Sounds like it’s turning into a bit of a farce – Dardenne and I always did have trouble taking the case seriously.”

  She went out, trailing a ribbon of citrus scent. Vilar slumped into his chair and sat motionless in the perfumed atmosphere, savouring the smell until the last fragrant molecules had dispersed. He thought again about Lataste, who had just had the shock of his life, a shock from which he might never recover because, at the end of the day, he was simply a middle-class pillock slumming it. An ignorant arsehole for whom ignorance was no longer bliss.

  7

  The two boys were forced to shake hands. They eyed each other suspiciously. Between clenched teeth, Nicolas muttered something by way of apology. His nose was still swollen, his cheek bruised, his hair had been cropped short to disguise the spot where Victor had ripped out a hank. They filed out into the hallway. Nicolas went first, and Victor stared at the muscular shoulders that moved as he swung his powerful arms. Outside, sitting in the shade, Nicolas’ friends Lucas and Fabrice were waiting: the three boys hung around together, snickering and intimidating the younger kids or talking about pranks they had pulled or were about to pull. The two stooges got up as their leader swaggered out, and the three boys watched Victor head off towards the trees. He could feel their eyes burning into the back of his neck.

  Once again the days began to pass in a muggy heat relieved only by the occasional thunderstorm, but by the following morning everything was parched again, tiny plumes of dirt rose from the footsteps of anyone walking along the garden paths, and football matches were enveloped in a grey dust cloud that looked as though it had been drummed up by stampeding herbivores pursued by predators on a sun-baked savannah.

  Nothing changed. Victor was looked on with fear or respect, it all depended. Some younger kids came up, shook his hand and introduced themselves, waddling on their spindly legs but trying to swagger, like panicky wrestlers. One day the two brothers, the silent fraternal twins, asked permission to eat at the table where he had been sitting on his own. Without looking at each other, with synchronised movements, they sat down. Their names were Éric and Cédric, and, yes, they were twins.

  “But fraternal twins,” Éric, the dark-haired one, insisted. “My mother always said that we were fraternal, that that’s why we don’t look like each other, and why we only look like our father.”

  “Where are they, your parents?”

  The two boys looked at each other and buried their noses in their tomato salads. Victor was sorry he had asked.

  “Papa is in Gradignan prison,” Cédric said after a moment.

  “Is he coming out soon?”

  “He’s only just gone inside,” Cédric said. “And this is his second stretch, so …”

  Victor did not dare ask about their mother. Here they were, too small for the chairs, there was no need to know the rest.

  Nothing else happened. In the evening he liked to watch the night draw in over the grounds and to catch the stars as they appeared in the sky, surprise them at the very moment they began to shine or to flicker, like the one he had spotted just above the lime tree, not far from Venus. It was so delicate, its quavering light so easily masked by the thinnest veil of cloud, that he expected to see it suddenly gutter out in the terrifying darkness, snuffe
d out by the breeze, and no-one but he would notice. He wondered whether people reported the disappearance of stars the way they reported their discovery, whether you had to telephone the astronomers and announce your observation, or whether it was better to keep such an insignificant yet colossal death a secret.

  He had been watching for a long time, waiting for it to appear, letting the star-spangled heavens wheel about him. The high clouds blowing in from the west meant that he could barely make out its quivering light. Just as he finally saw its tremulous glow, someone knocked at the door. Three faint knocks, followed by Cédric’s plaintive

  “Open up!”

  He was begging. The door shook with the weight of his body pressing against it, desperate to come in.

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s the other boys. Let me in and I’ll tell you.”

  “What boys?”

  “Nicolas and his friends. They want to kill me.”

  Victor heard the little kid snuffling and pushing against the door with his whole body.

  “Open up, they’re coming for me.”

  “What about your brother?”

  There was a silence. Victor heard the kid swallow painfully.

  “I don’t fucking know. I don’t know where he is.”

  “Tell the social workers, I can’t do anything.”

  “The social workers don’t give a shit.”

  The kid let out a continuous wail, the lock juddering under his attempts to get in.

  When Victor unlocked the door, the kid flinched and stood frozen in the middle of the hallway. Then he vanished, swallowed by a confusion of shadows that Victor did not understand.

  “Shut your mouth, or I’ll skin you alive.”

  Hands grabbed his shoulders and gripped his throat. He staggered back onto the bed, someone knelt on his chest, and he could no longer get air into his lungs. He wondered how long he could last without being able to breathe – or only barely. He focused on what was going on around him: he heard his door shut, saw Nicolas lean over him, whip out a flick knife, and press the blade to his throat. There were three of them. They were breathing shallowly, almost panting, like dogs. Soundlessly, wordlessly, the third boy rummaged through the wardrobe.