Inhuman Resources

by Pierre Lemaitre

  “Well, best of luck, Officer.”

  And off I went into the courtyard. I’d hoped he would call me back, but nothing. The bell sounded, and after falling in line with the others, I turned to see that Morisset had disappeared.

  29

  In summer it gets very hot in prison. The air doesn’t circulate, bodies sweat, the atmosphere grows heavy, electric, and the men become even more aggressive. Prison life has started to gnaw away at me like a cancer. I don’t know how I’m going to endure the misery of finishing my days here.

  Twice a week I go and correct Officer Morisset’s executive summaries. He works like a Trojan. Every Tuesday and Thursday, he uses three hours of his time off to do his homework under exam conditions. Luckily for me, he’s still way off the money, and his technique is appalling. He’s fallen for the whole thing about making him stand out from his rival candidates.

  The last topic I gave him was about the state of prisons in France. No less an authority than the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture had published a report on our prisons. When I handed it to him, he asked if I was mocking him, even though he knows full well that this is the sort of thing that might come up in the exam. I take care to drip-feed my pointers nice and slowly so that he requires my services for as long as possible. He’s more than happy with the setup. Twice a week, he summons me to his office and we work on technique. I give him plans, advising him on how to structure his summaries. He doesn’t get any support from the administration, so he’s bought a flip chart and some felt-tips out of his own pocket. We work in two-hour sessions. When I leave his office, the other inmates joke around and ask me whether I’ve taken it up the ass from him or just sucked him off, but it doesn’t bother me: Officer Morisset is respected, everyone knows where they stand with him. Most importantly, though, I’ve found my protection. For the moment.

  Lucie was a good call, too. She’s very proactive. There have obviously been a few issues with the investigating magistrate, who’s a little skeptical about seeing such an inexperienced lawyer taking a case to the high court. She must be putting the hours in, because at every meeting with the magistrate she has the answer to any question put to her, expressing her views clearly, taking endless notes, and citing case law. Plus her face looks almost as tired as mine, even though we’ve still got months and months to go. The slow pace of the investigation suits her because it means she can keep up to speed. She’s enlisted the support of a certain lawyer, Maître Sainte-Rose, and speaks about him regularly. If I express any doubt or start quibbling, she invokes him like some incontrovertible authority—must be a bigwig. He may well know his stuff, but he’s not my lawyer. To him, my case is nothing but theory. Anyway, apparently he’s got lots of experience and knows what he’s doing. I’d be grateful if he could throw some of his legal jargon at the co-prisoner in the canteen who insists on devouring half my tray while his two cronies look on indifferently.

  Lucie is going to an extraordinary amount of trouble. She’s working even harder than when she was training, and she’s never been under so much pressure.

  She alone can save her father. It reads like a tragedy. And I trust no one but her, which is a drama in itself.

  What’s worrying her is the Pharmaceutical Logistics kerfuffle.

  “The prosecution will be quick to point out that you floored your supervisor—head-butted him, no less—just a few days before taking these people hostage. He was off work for ten days. You’ll come across as a violent man.”

  Hardly a shocking revelation to a guy who held twelve people at gunpoint with a loaded Beretta . . .

  “Depends on your approach,” I suggest.

  “There is a chance,” she says, flicking through her yellow folder, “that we’ll go down the Logistics route. It would all be much easier if your former employer withdrew their claim. Sainte-Rose says . . .”

  “They’ll never agree. They even extracted a formal apology from me, the vampires. They’re the sort who’ll bleed a corpse dry before ditching it . . .”

  Lucie has found the document she was looking for:

  “Maître Gilson,” she says.

  “Yeeees . . .”

  “Maître Christelle Gilson?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know, we were never that close . . .”

  “Well, I was . . .”

  I look at her.

  “She was a friend of mine in college.”

  My heart skips a beat.

  “A good friend?”

  “Yes, best friends, in fact. Close enough to ‘borrow’ each other’s boyfriends,” Lucie says, grimacing.

  “Who borrowed whose boyfriend?”

  “I borrowed hers.”

  “You can’t be serious . . . You didn’t!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Papa, but at the time I didn’t know my father was planning on becoming a gun-toting maniac and that I’d need to defend him at the high court!”

  “Okay, okay!” I say, holding up my hands in surrender. Lucie calms down.

  “Anyway, I did her a favor. That guy was a complete jerk.”

  “Yes, but he was her jerk . . .”

  This is a perfect example of the sorts of conversations Lucie and I have.

  “Well then,” she says. “I guess I’ll have to pay her a visit.”

  Lucie explains that if she manages to convince her ex–best friend to mediate on her client’s behalf to drop the charges and the damages claim, then I’ll need to try the same tactic with Romain, our key witness. I hold my tongue. I make out that I understand, but for the moment, I’d prefer it if Romain was still officially an adversary. Keep it under wraps that he gave me a massive helping hand. It mustn’t get out that he was complicit.

  Over the course of our conversations, Lucie gives me news about her mother, who is terribly lonely. Early on I managed to call her on the phone. Lucie tells me she’s worried because I don’t anymore. I pretend that it’s harder now, but the fact is that when I call Nicole, just hearing her voice makes me want to cry. It’s unbearable.

  Lucie informs me that her sister will be visiting soon. I don’t believe it for a second. But it unsettles me, because I’m dreading the moment I have to confront her.

  It’s not easy to feel so ashamed in front of your children.

  I have decided to start writing my story. It hasn’t been easy, because it takes concentration, and wherever you are in this place, the TV is blaring all day long. At 8:00 p.m. it’s a fucking racket, with everyone switching on their favorite news show at full volume. The headlines overlap and become virtually incomprehensible. France 2 (With annual salaries of 1.85 million euros, French CEOs are the best paid in Europe) vies with TF1 (Unemployment is expected to reach 10 percent by the end of the year). It’s a complete shambles, but at least it gives you the overall picture.

  It’s almost impossible to escape the endless torrent of series, clips, and game shows. They drill into your head and follow you everywhere you go. Television ends up as part of your being. I don’t get along well with earplugs, so I’ve bought a pair of real noise-deadening ear protectors. I forgot to specify a color, so I’ve ended up with a bright-orange set, which makes me look like one of those people who directs planes at the airport. The guys call me the “air traffic controller,” but it doesn’t bother me . . . I work better with them.

  I’m not a great writer—always been better at speaking rather than writing. (My hope is that this skill will come in handy at the trial, even though Lucie tells me I have to let her do all the talking and that I can only say what I’ve learned by heart in the run-up to the hearings.) I’m not writing my memoirs, I’m merely trying tell my story. Mainly for Mathilde’s sake, though I’m doing it for Nicole, too, since she doesn’t understand the full extent of it. And for Lucie, because not even she knows everything. Seeing it in on paper, it’s unbelievable how mundane I find my story. It is original, though, I’ll give it that. Not everyone turns up to a job interview with a fully loaded Beretta.

  Maybe that’s
a shame in itself. Surely one or two people have thought about it.

  30

  Ever since my arrival, and since Alexandre Dorfmann’s first appearance on TV the day after the hostage taking, I’ve found the lack of word from Exxyal dispiriting.

  It doesn’t feel right. There’s no way they can stay quiet for months on end.

  Those were my exact thoughts when the word finally did arrive, as I was heading into the laundry room at about 10:00 this morning.

  The inmate in charge took my bundle and disappeared into the bowels of the room.

  A few seconds later, he was replaced by the hulking Bébétâ. I smiled at him and raised my right hand, as if I were taking an oath, which had become my way of greeting him. But my mind started racing when the figure of Boulon emerged from behind him. The guy they call Boulon is much smaller than Bébétâ, but infinitely more disturbing. A real sicko. He gets his nickname from the bolts he fires from his weapon of choice, a slingshot: a highly sophisticated piece of equipment with a tubular elastic armrest, which he likes to load with stones. But bolts are his favorite. When he was a free man, he carried bolts of every size around in his various pockets, and could hit targets dead-on from incredible distances. His final exploit was to bury a 13mm bolt right in the middle of a man’s forehead from fifty yards. The bolt lodged itself in the center of his brain—a nice clean shot. He is known to have committed countless unspeakable acts but boasts that he’s never spilled a drop of blood. Deep down, despite appearances, maybe he does have some heart.

  As soon as I saw him emerge alongside Bébétâ in the laundry room, I realized I was about to receive some news from my ex–future employer. I turned to flee but Bébétâ’s outstretched arm grabbed me by the shoulder. I tried to scream but in a fraction of a second he had spun me around and pinned me against him, his hand across my mouth like a gag. He lifted me off the ground without any effort whatsoever and squeezed me tight. I flailed my arms and legs in every direction as I tried to cry out. These men were going to kill me, I knew it. My efforts were in vain. Bébétâ carried me as though I were a living-room cushion. We were behind the counter, between the rows of sheets and blankets. He tried to put me down but I was so terrified that my legs couldn’t bear my weight, and he had to support me. I carried on screaming with his hand over my mouth, emitting an inhuman wail in which I couldn’t even recognize my own voice. I was like a car at the junkyard waiting to get crushed. Bébétâ held my head in place with one arm, still gagging me, and with the other he grabbed my left wrist and thrust it toward Boulon, who stared at me calmly, not saying a word. I thrashed my elbows, arms, legs, but all resistance was futile. I kept trying to scream. It was an utterly desperate situation. I felt appallingly alone. I was willing to give anything, to surrender. Anything. Nicole’s face suddenly flashed before me. I held on to her image, but the Nicole before me was crying, about to watch me suffer and die as her tears fell. I tried to beg but no sound came from my mouth. Everything was happening in my head. Boulon said:

  “I have a message for you.”

  That was it.

  A message.

  Bébétâ forced my hand flat on a shelf. Boulon took my thumb and snapped it back on itself. The pain was searing. I screamed. I felt like I was going mad. I tried to fight back, kicking my feet everywhere, especially behind me to make Bébétâ loosen his grip a bit, but Boulon had already taken my index finger and snapped it back, too. He grasped the finger and bent it until it reached the back of my hand. It made a sinister sound. The pain was blinding, nausea overwhelmed me, and I vomited, but Bébétâ kept hold of me, as if the capacity to be disgusted didn’t enter his excuse for a brain. When Boulon took my third finger, I fainted. I think I fainted. But no, I was still conscious when the next finger was snapped back, sending an electric shock right through me. I couldn’t even scream—I was well beyond that. My body was like a wet rag in Bébétâ’s vise-like grip. I was sweating like a forsaken soul. I think that was when I shit myself. But Boulon wasn’t finished. There were still two fingers. I thought the pain would kill me. It was so complete I thought I was going mad. Waves of it ran from my head to my feet; even the agony was wild and panic stricken. When Boulon did the little finger, the last one, my mind fled, my stomach churned, and it hurt so badly I wanted to die. Bébétâ let me go, and I collapsed to the ground screaming. I tried to clasp my hand. I couldn’t even hold it against me, couldn’t even touch it. I wailed. I was nothing but a giant surge of pain. I could no longer control myself—I’d been undone.

  Boulon leaned down to me and, his voice still calm, said:

  “That’s the message.”

  I don’t know what happened next because I fainted.

  When I woke up, my hand was swollen like a pumped-up football. I was still crying, stretched out on a bed in the infirmary. I don’t think I’d stopped crying since they’d taken me.

  The pain was terrible, terrible, terrible.

  I turned onto my side and curled up like a baby, my bandaged hand pressed into the hollow of my stomach. I cried. I was afraid. Horribly afraid. I didn’t want that. I must get out of here. I don’t want to die here.

  Not like that.

  Not here.

  31

  The good thing about prison is that the hospital stints are short. Four days. Reduced service. My disarticulated metacarpophalangeals, fractures, and dislocations were operated on and reset by a perfectly pleasant surgeon (as pleasant as the surgeon species permits, at least).

  Several months of splints and casts lie ahead before I can expect a return to normality, something the specialist thinks unlikely anyway. I will live with the aftereffects.

  As I come into my cell, a young man stands up and holds out his hand. He can’t resist a smile as he notices the mass of bandages and offers me the other one. We shake the wrong way around—great start.

  The only thing I want is to lie down.

  Until yesterday, my hand was giving me unbearable shooting pains, and the nurse didn’t have any painkillers that were sufficiently powerful. Either that or he didn’t want to give them to me. Officer Morisset didn’t just secure me a transfer, he brought me some tramadol, too. It makes me drowsy, but at least it eases the pain and lets me sleep every now and then. Morisset assured me they’ll open an inquiry and told me I must hand over the names of my attackers, but he didn’t even wait for an answer before leaving my cell.

  Jérôme, my new roomie, is a professional conman of about thirty. He’s got a handsome face, wavy hair, a reassuringly natural bearing, and if you picture him in a suit, he’d be the consummate executive. Face on, he’s your bank manager; from behind, your real estate agent; right-hand side, your new GP; and from the left, your childhood friend who’s nailing it as a stockbroker. He’s got fewer qualifications than a shepherd from Sierra Leone, but he is very well spoken and has bags of personality and charisma. There’s a bit of the young Bertrand Lacoste about him, perhaps by virtue of the fact they’re both crooks. Since I have more than twenty years of management experience, we get along pretty well despite the age difference. He’s a talented guy. Not talented enough to avoid prison, but a wily one nonetheless. He already has plenty on his CV: dozens of forged checks, tons of imaginary commodities sold for cash, genuine fake documents traded for an absolute fortune, fictitious jobs complete with bribes and state subsidies, and even shares transferred to foreign markets. What landed him in here was the presale of some nonexistent apartments just north of the Riviera—property of a hitherto-unseen luxury, quite literally in this case. He explained the whole ruse, but it was all far too clever for me. The guy is loaded. He could buy anything he wanted (well, with the exception of his freedom). His line of work must have been lucrative. I feel like a hobo by comparison.

  I don’t say anything.

  Jérôme observes my head and my right hand, which is still very swollen indeed. He wants to know how I managed to get myself into such a fucking mess. It intrigues him. He’s sniffing out a good business opportuni
ty. I have to be careful of what I say and how I say it; what I don’t say and how I don’t say it.

  My encounter with Boulon and Bébétâ has left me with post-traumatic stress, and I am terrified the moment I leave my cell. I scan my surroundings with apprehension, watching my back and all around me, permanently on the lookout. From a distance, I see Boulon going about his business, his dealings. He turns but doesn’t seem to notice me. As far as he’s concerned, I’m nothing but another transaction. I won’t exist in his eyes until he receives a new order, at which point the only question he’ll ask himself is how far he’ll have to go, and whether he’ll be paid enough for it. As for Bébétâ, when we cross paths he smiles, raises his hand with the palm facing me, the way I showed him, delighted to say hello to me, as if pulverizing each finger on one of my hands had somehow created a new emotional bond between us. What happened in the laundry room has already been driven out of the hole at the top of his spinal cord that serves as a brain.

  Jérôme doesn’t find me at all talkative. He, on the other hand, is extremely chatty. He needs to talk all the time. My thoughts are dark (possibly a side effect of my medication), and I obsess about the “message.” The thing that worries me, of course, is the follow-up. That was the essence of the message: this is just the beginning.

  Good Lord, I have absolutely no idea what to do.

  Right from the start, I’ve been acting without any real notion of how this will finish. I’m improvising. I react when I’m staring a situation in the face.

  I got a fist right between the eyes the second I arrived, but afterward I found Officer Morisset and earned his protection. They broke my fingers, but I managed to get a transfer into a two-man cell in a safer section.

  At worst, I’ll have to endure my fate.

  At best, I’ll manage to shorten my sentence.