by Vargas, Fred
That said, the advantage of belonging nowhere was that you could be from anywhere. If he chose, and he often did, he could be Turkish, Chinese, Berber, why not, Indonesian, Malian, or from Tierra del Fuego, hands up if you object, Sicilian, Irish, or of course French or German. And the practical thing about that was that you could then lay claim to a whole gallery of ancestors, heroes or villains.
Louis took his hand out of the water and looked at it. Wiping it on his wet trousers, he thought for the thousandth time that he’d lived for fifty years in France, and for fifty years people had been calling him ‘the German’. People didn’t forget, nor did he. Standing upright again, he thought he ought to call his father. It was a month since he had heard from him. Over there, in Lörrach, across the Rhine, the old man would be amused to know what he was chasing now. From the fountain, Louis surveyed the whole of Port-Nicolas. He knew why he was hesitating. Should he start with Pauline or, less upsettingly, with the mayor?
XIII
ARRIVING AT THE bunker at ten in the morning, Marc had prepared all possible responses to any future requests by Louis Kehlweiler. So he went in calmly, kissed Marthe hello, and was surprised not to find a note on the desk. Surely Louis would have left a message, asking him to go haring off to the other end of the country. Or perhaps Marthe was supposed to act as go-between. But Marthe wasn’t saying anything. Ah, right, everyone was keeping quiet. Just as well.
Marc had never managed to hold to a resolution, good or bad, for more than about ten minutes. Impatience always made him lower his guard and his most ferocious sulks could be ruined in a few moments by the need to rouse himself and deal with something that was hanging fire. If there was one thing he couldn’t tolerate, it was letting something hang fire. He wriggled on his chair before finally asking Marthe if she had any messages for him.
‘No messages,’ said Marthe.
‘No matter,’ said Marc, resolving again to keep his mouth shut. ‘But you know what?’ he began again. ‘Louis wants me to be a runner for him. Well, no, Marthe, I’m not cut out for that. Not that I can’t run, that’s not it. I can run very fast if I have to, well, fairly fast, and I’m especially good at climbing. Not mountains, no, too depressing, I get fed up, but walls, trees, fences. You wouldn’t think so to look at me, would you? Well, actually, I’m very gymnastic, Marthe, not strong, but gymnastic. You don’t just need strong men on earth, do you? You know something, my wife left me for this guy, a big hunk. Yeah, a hunk, but he couldn’t have balanced on a stool, and what’s more –’
‘You were married?’
‘Why not? But it’s all over now, don’t talk to me about it, please.’
‘It was you brought it up.’
‘Yes, OK, you’re right. What I’m saying, Marthe, is I’m not cut out to be in anyone’s army, even Kehlweiler’s, and he recruits you very subtly and gently. I just can’t fucking well obey orders, they drive me mad, my nerves can’t take it. And this criminal case, I can’t be bothered, no idea who to suspect. Understanding, studying, deducing, OK, but suspecting living people, can’t do that. On the other hand, I can suspect dead people, that’s my job. I suspect the lord of Puisaye’s steward of cheating in his records of the tithe barns. He must have been fleecing him over the number of sheepskins. But he’s long dead, you see? Big difference. In real life, I don’t suspect anyone much, I believe what people tell me, I trust them. Oh shit, I don’t know why I’m rabbiting on like this, I do it all the time, I spend my life going over what I’ve done, it’s exhausting for me, and it bores everyone else. All that to tell you that as a soldier, or a snooper, I’m completely useless, that’s all. Useless as a strong man, or a suspicious man, or a powerful man, or any other kind of superman such as your Ludwig seems to be. Kehlweiler or no Kehlweiler, I’m not going off to Brittany to be a dog that runs after another dog. It distracts me from my work.’
‘You’re hysterical this morning,’ said Marthe with a shrug.
‘Ah, you can see something’s wrong too.’
‘You talk too much for a man, it damages your image. Listen to my advice, because I know about men.’
‘I couldn’t care less about my image.’
‘You couldn’t care less, because you don’t know what to do about it.’
‘Maybe. But what difference does it make?’
‘I’ll explain to you one day how not to tie yourself in knots by chattering. You go too far. Look, next time you want to choose a woman, show her to me first, because I know about women. I’ll tell you if she’s the right one for you, then if you were going too far or getting in too deep, no harm will be done.’
Oddly enough, this idea was not displeasing to Marc.
‘What should she be like?’
‘Oh, there aren’t any rules, don’t imagine things. We can discuss it when you bring one along. Apart from that, I can’t see why you’re so worked up this morning. You’ve been talking about yourself for a quarter of an hour, God knows why.’
‘I told you. I don’t intend to go off with Louis.’
‘Don’t you think the job’s worth it?’
‘Good grief, Marthe, of course I do! And I’ve already done a job like that before.’
‘Ludwig said you did it well.’
‘I wasn’t alone. Anyway, that’s not the point. I’m surrounded by corrupt ex-cops and would-be prosecutors, and I don’t want to be dragged around with a ring through my nose, I’ve done it all week, that’s enough.’
‘Well, naturally, when you’re only thinking about yourself, you won’t understand anything about other people.’
‘I know. That’s a problem.’
‘Let’s see your nose.’
Without thinking, Marc leaned towards Marthe.
‘No room for a ring, it’s too thin. Believe me, I know about men. Anyway, having you hanging about him all day can’t be much fun either.’
‘Ah, you see.’
‘And nobody’s asking you to go with Ludwig.’
‘Not in so many words. He’s tempting me with this piece of crap, yes, effective, and subtle, and then he’ll drag me away to Brittany because he knows I can’t give up on something once I’ve started. It’s like a bottle of beer. Once you open it, you’ve had it, you’ve got to drink the lot.’
‘This isn’t beer, it’s a crime.’
‘I know what I mean.’
‘Ludwig went yesterday. Without you, young Vandoosler. He very respectfully left you to carry on with your studying.’
Marthe smiled at him, and Marc had nothing left to say. He felt hot, he’d talked too much. On New Year’s Day, he’d make a resolution. He asked in a calm voice if it wasn’t perhaps time for some coffee.
They made their usual little cup of coffee without a word. Then Marthe asked him for some help with her crossword. Exceptionally, because he was feeling rather weak, Marc agreed to put aside his work. They both sat on the sofa bed, now a sofa. Marc put a cushion behind his back and fetched one for Marthe, got up to look for an eraser, you can’t do a crossword without one, fiddled about with the cushions again, took off his boots, and wondered about 6 across: ‘Form of art’ 10 letters.
‘Plenty of choice,’ said Marthe.
‘Don’t talk, think.’
XIV
BEFORE TACKLING THE town hall, Louis went for breakfast at the Market Cafe facing him on the other side of the square. He was waiting for his jacket to dry off a bit. At a glance, Louis had judged the cafe to be the kind he liked: untouched for forty years. It had an original pinball machine, and a billiard table with a notice on a dirty scrap of cardboard: ‘Caution, new cloth’. Hitting one ball in order to pocket another was a system whose subtlety had always pleased him. Calculating the cushions, the angles, the rebounds, aiming left to catch the right. Very clever. The games room was large and dark. They must only put the lights on when people were playing, and this Monday morning at eleven thirty, it was too early. The feet of the little players on the table football game were worn away with use. Feet,
ah yes, feet again. He would have to see about this big toe, and not let himself be drawn into a catechism class with the pinball machine holding out its arms towards him.
‘Would I be able to see the mayor today?’ Louis asked the old lady dressed in black and grey who was behind the bar.
She thought about it, then leaned her thin hands on the counter.
‘If he’s in his office, no reason why not. But if he’s not there . . .’
‘Yes?’ said Louis.
‘Tell you what, he usually comes in for his aperitif at about twelve thirty. If he’s out on a site, he won’t come. But if he isn’t, he will.’
Louis thanked her, paid, picked up his still damp jacket and went across the square. Inside the little town hall, he was asked if he had an appointment because monsieur le maire was working in his office.
‘Can you tell him I’m passing through and would like to see him? Kehlweiler, Louis Kehlweiler.’
Louis had never had any visiting cards made, it didn’t suit him.
The young man spoke on the phone, then told him he could go up to the first floor, the door at the end of the corridor. There was only one more floor in the building anyway.
Louis had no memory of this mayor, who was also a member of the French Senate, apart from his name and label of ‘non-aligned’. The man who received him was rather heavily built, but flabby, with one of those faces you have to concentrate hard to remember, always in motion. He bounced a little when he walked, and without making them crack, he had a disturbing habit of twisting the fingers of one hand with the other. As Louis was watching this movement, the mayor put his hand in his pocket, and asked him to sit down.
‘Louis Kehlweiler? To what do I owe the honour?’
Michel Chevalier was smiling, but not all that much. Louis was used to this. An unexpected visit by an emissary from the Ministry of the Interior never put elected politicians at their ease, whoever they were. Apparently Chevalier wasn’t aware that Louis’d been dismissed, or else his dismissal was not enough to reassure him.
‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘I’d like to believe you. You couldn’t hide a pin in Port-Nicolas. Too small.’
The mayor sighed. He must be bored stiff in his office here. Nothing to hide and not much to get involved in.
‘Well, then?’ the mayor went on.
‘Port-Nicolas may be small, but it scatters its belongings. I’ve brought you something that might come from down here, something I found in Paris.’
Chevalier had large blue eyes which he couldn’t narrow, but that’s what he was trying to do.
‘I’ll show you,’ said Louis.
He fumbled in the pocket of his jacket, and his hand encountered the bumpy skin of Bufo, who was snoozing there. Shit. He had brought him out for a walk this morning to the calvaire and had forgotten to drop him off at the hotel. It certainly wasn’t the moment to bring Bufo out, since the mayor’s sagging face was already looking anxious. He found the screw of newspaper under Bufo’s belly: his toad had no respect for exhibits in a case, and had snuggled down on top of it.
‘It’s this little thing,’ said Louis finally, putting the fragile piece of bone on Chevalier’s wooden table. ‘It bothers me enough to have brought me all the way to you. But I hope it may be a big fuss about nothing.’
The mayor leaned forward, looked at the object and slowly shook his head. A patient, plastic type, thought Louis, he operates in slow motion, nothing panics him and he’s not stupid, in spite of those big eyes.
‘It’s a human bone,’ Louis went on, ‘the top joint of a big toe, which I had the bad luck to find on the Place de la Contrescarpe, on the grid round a tree, and you’ll have to pardon my being explicit, monsieur le maire, but it was in the excrement of a dog.’
‘So you go poking around in the excrements of dogs?’ said Chevalier calmly, and without irony.
‘There’d been a torrential rainstorm in Paris. The organic matter was washed away, leaving this bone sitting on the grid.’
‘I see. And the connection with my little municipality?’
‘I thought it unusual and worrying. So I paid attention to it. It was quite possible that it came from an accident, or in an extreme case, a dog could have got inside where a body had been laid out. But one couldn’t rule out the possibility that this bone came from a murder.’
Chevalier didn’t budge. He listened, without intervening.
‘And the connection with this place?’ he asked again.
‘I’m getting there. I waited in Paris. And nothing happened. You must know that you can’t hide a corpse for long in the capital. Nothing turned up in the suburbs either, and there’ve been no reports of missing persons for twelve days. So I checked the movements of dogs in the area, found two that lived outside, but had left their excrement on a Paris street. I’m following the trail of Lionel Sevran’s pit bull.’
‘Go on,’ said the mayor.
He remained his usual flaccid self, but his concentration was progressively increasing. Louis leaned one elbow on the table, but put the other hand in his pocket, because his blessed toad didn’t want to go back to sleep and was wriggling around.
‘At Port-Nicolas,’ he said, ‘there was an accident down by the shore.’
‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.’
‘Yes. I’ve come to check it really was an accident.’
‘Oh yes,’ Chevalier interrupted him. ‘It was an accident all right. The old lady slipped on the rocks, and fractured her skull. It was in the papers. All the necessary statements were taken by the gendarmes from Fouesnant. There’s no doubt about it being an accident. Old Marie always went to the same spot, rain or shine, all weathers. It was her special place for gathering winkles, she collected bags full of them. Nobody else would have gone to look for winkles there, because it was her patch. She must have gone out as usual, but it was raining that Thursday, the seaweed was slippery, and she fell over, alone, in the dark. I knew her well, and nobody would have wished her any harm.’
The mayor’s face clouded. He stood up with his back to the wall behind the desk, listlessly, fiddling once more with his fingers. In his eyes, this interview was coming to an end.
‘They only found her on Sunday,’ he added.
‘That’s very late.’
‘Nobody missed her on the Friday because it was her day off. By Saturday midday, she hadn’t been seen in the cafe, so someone went to her house, and to the people she worked for. Nothing. So it was four o’clock before they started to look for her, a bit amateurishly, people weren’t seriously concerned. Nobody thought to go along to Vauban Cove. It had been such bad weather for three days that they didn’t think she would have gone gathering winkles. Finally, they called in the Fouesnant gendarmes at eight that night. And they found her next morning when they extended the search. Vauban Cove isn’t that near the village, it’s along at the point. That’s all. As I said, the necessary formalities were gone through. An accident. So?’
‘So, art begins where the necessary formalities leave off. Did anyone notice anything about her foot?’
Chevalier sat back down with apparent docility, glancing briefly at Kehlweiler. It wouldn’t be easy to throw Kehlweiler out of his office, and he was not a man to throw people out without taking precautions.
‘Well, look now,’ said Chevalier. ‘You could have spared yourself a lot of trouble and kilometres if you’d just telephoned me. And I’d have said, Marie Lacasta slipped over, and there was no injury to her feet.’
Louis looked down and thought.
‘Really? Nothing? You’re sure?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Would it be indiscreet of me to ask you for the report?’
‘Would it be indiscreet of me to ask you if you’re here officially?’
‘I’m not working at the Interior any more,’ said Louis with a smile. ‘And you knew that, didn’t you?’
‘I merely suspected it. So you’re here unofficially.’
> ‘That’s right, you have no obligation to answer me.’
‘You might have told me that at the start.’
‘You didn’t ask me.’
‘True. All right, go and take a look at the report, if it sets your mind at rest. Ask my secretary for it, and please consult it without taking it out of the office.’
Once more, Louis wrapped up his piece of bone, which obviously nobody else wanted to be bothered with, as if it was a matter of little moment that a woman’s toe should be found on the grid round a tree in Paris. He read the gendarmes’ report attentively. It had been prepared that Sunday evening. Nothing about the feet, quite true. He thanked the secretary and returned to the mayor’s office. But Chevalier had now gone for his aperitif at the cafe over the road, the young man in reception explained.
The mayor was playing an energetic game of billiards, surrounded by a dozen of his constituents. Louis waited until he had missed a shot before going up to him.
‘You didn’t tell me Marie worked for the Sevrans,’ he whispered from behind his ear.
‘What does that matter?’ the mayor whispered back, his eyes on his opponent.
‘Well, for heaven’s sake, the pit bull! It belongs to the Sevrans.’
The mayor had a word with his neighbour, passed him his cue and took Louis into a corner of the games room.
