by Vargas, Fred
Louis had also turned slightly towards Blanchet, and Marc noted with satisfaction that he was easily the taller. He had drawn himself to his full height, so that, alongside him, Blanchet looked squat. An advantage without real merit, but an advantage all the same. Louis was staring at the other man, and his profile, at that moment severe and vaguely scornful, was not at all attractive.
A buzz arose in the room. Some people stood up, others came out of the games room, craning to see what was going on at the counter.
‘Not everyone has a simple name, Monsieur Blanchet,’ said Louis slowly, and Marc detected a whole gamut of dangerous politeness in his tone. ‘But I’m sure that with a little effort, intelligent as you seem to be, you will manage to pronounce it. It only has three syllables.’
‘Kehlweiler,’ Blanchet said, exaggerating his lip movements.
‘My compliments, you are gifted for foreign languages.’
‘In France we were given a lot of practice, and some people remember, even after fifty years.’
‘So I see that you took the opportunity to get an education.’
Blanchet gritted his teeth, hesitated and drank some of his white wine.
‘Will you be staying long with us?’ he asked. ‘Or have you done enough damage to these people who didn’t ask you for anything?’
‘Since you suggest it, it’s possible I might stay around. Indeed, I feel I may not yet have done enough for Marie Lacasta, who didn’t ask for anything either, and who was battered to death with a rock. To be honest, you provide plenty of distraction and it’s very pleasant in this cafe. It would be amusing to get to know you better. Madame Antoinette, could you give me another beer please?’
Louis had remained outwardly calm, but René Blanchet was making no effort to keep his composure, indeed the opposite.
‘He’s going to pounce,’ said Sevran. ‘That’s how he works.’
Antoinette put a beer on the counter, and Blanchet grabbed Louis’s lapels, making a sign towards the skipper of the Atalante. But the trawlerman hesitated.
‘Monsieur Blanchet,’ said Louis, detaching the fingers which were holding his jacket, ‘some manners, please. We hardly know each other. I’m willing to come and see you, of course. The big white house after the town hall, isn’t it? A bit further down on the right.’
‘I’ll be the one who chooses my guests, Monsieur Kehlweiler. My door is not open to you.’
‘A door – what’s that? Just a symbol really. But as you like, at your place or somewhere else, but now, may I ask that you let me drink my beer in peace, you’re warming it up.’
Marc smiled and at last, apart from some indifferent faces, the audience had stopped taking sides and were enjoying the show.
‘That’s right,’ Antoinette intervened suddenly, since she was very sensitive to any slight on the service at the Market Cafe. ‘Don’t warm the gentleman’s beer. Give it a rest, René. And for the love of God, what are you complaining about? If Marie really was murdered, then this gentleman better do whatever he’s got to do, nothing wrong with that. If there’s some monster in Port-Nicolas, best we find out. People here are no better than anywhere else. You’re getting on our tits.’
Marc looked at Sevran in astonishment.
‘She always talks like that,’ said Sevran with a smile. ‘Wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you?’
‘Antoinette,’ said Louis, ‘you are a woman of good sense.’
‘I’ve sold fish on the marketplace in Concarneau, and I know what people can be like. A rotten fish can turn up in any harbour, in Port-Nicolas like any other place.’
‘Antoinette,’ said Blanchet, ‘you don’t –’
‘That’ll do, René, go and do your shouting outside, if you must, I’ve got my customers to see to.’
‘And you’ll let any riff-raff in as a customer?’
‘I let in any man who’s thirsty, what’s wrong with that? Nobody’s going to say Antoinette didn’t serve a man with a thirst on him, never mind where he comes from, hear what I’m saying? Never mind where he comes from.’
‘I have a thirst on me,’ said Louis. ‘Antoinette, can I have another draught beer.’
Blanchet shrugged his shoulders, and Marc saw him change tactics. He gave Antoinette a warm pat on the arm with a sigh, acting like a man who’s been beaten at dice, but is prepared to let things lie, without making a fuss, because he’s a good guy at heart. He took his glass over to the fishermen’s table and sat himself down. Antoinette went to open a window to air the smoke-filled room. Marc admired the little woman, with her black dress and puckered face.
‘Here comes the dozy bastard,’ Blanchet was saying to Guillaume.
The mayor came into the cafe. It was three o’clock. He waved a vague greeting, and with tired steps, headed for the back room, gathering Louis up on his way through. Louis motioned to Marc to follow him aside.
‘Just a minute, Chevalier, I’ve got something I need to say urgently to Vandoosler.’
Marc found that Louis was looking unusually strained. He tried to fathom the reason for such tension, since he could detect neither anger nor exasperation, nor even worry. It was as if Louis’s face had been stripped down into a rigid state, removing the shadows and soft tissue, leaving only the bone structure. All his habitual charm, kindness, nuance and vagueness had gone. Marc wondered whether it was the face of someone who has been badly hurt.
‘Marc, I need someone to fetch me something from Paris.’
‘Me?’
‘No, I need you here to run.’
‘Something from the bunker? What about Marthe?’
‘No, not Marthe, she’d fall over in the train, she’d lose the stuff, anything could happen.’
‘Vincent?’
‘Vincent is guarding bench 102 and he won’t leave it. I don’t have anyone who can get around. What’s he called, your friend, not the talkative one, the other one?’
‘Mathias.’
‘Is he free?’
‘At the moment, yes.’
‘Is he reliable, really reliable?’
‘The hunter-gatherer is as solid as an aurochs. And much cleverer. But it depends whether the subject interests him.’
‘He’d have to bring me a packet of papers clipped together in a yellow folder marked “M”, and not lose it whatever happens.’
‘We can always ask him.’
‘Marc, the less you know about this folder the better, tell him.’
‘OK. How will he find it?’
Louis took Marc into a corner, and Marc registered his instructions with a series of nods.
‘Go now,’ said Louis. ‘If Mathias can do it, and as soon as possible, tell him thank you. Warn Marthe he’ll be coming round. Hurry.’
Marc didn’t try to understand. Too much secrecy, it was pointless to protest, better wait for it all to become clear. He found an isolated phone box and called the cafe in the rue Chasle in Paris, which was their way of sending messages. He waited five minutes and got his uncle on the line.
‘I need Mathias,’ said Marc. ‘What are you doing on the phone?’
‘Finding out what it’s about. Tell me.’
Marc sighed and explained briefly.
‘A file marked “M”, you say, in the bunker? What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Must be about the murderer, what do you think? I think Louis must be on to something, he looks gaunt.’
‘I’ll fetch St Matthew for you,’ said Vandoosler the elder, ‘but don’t get yourself too mixed up in all this.’
‘I already am.’
‘Let Kehlweiler go chasing after his own hares.’
‘I can’t,’ said Marc. ‘I’m his right leg. And I think there’s only one hare.’
Vandoosler muttered something and put the phone down. After a wait of ten minutes, Marc had Mathias on the line. And since the hunter-gatherer was quick on the uptake and a man of few words, the call ended in three minutes.
XXI
; SO THAT WRETCHED busybody has poked his nose in. And all because of the damned dog. And now the cops are here. Not that it matters, I don’t care, plan B all ready to go in case there was a hitch. I’m no fool. That grumpy little inspector, Guerrec, will go wherever he’s pointed. He may look like a man who does what he wants. But he’s like everyone else, really, that’s just on the surface. With a bit of help, he’ll go where he’s directed, like an ant. He’s no exception. People talk a lot of nonsense about ants being intelligent. They’re blind slaves to instinct, nothing else. You just have to put your finger in their path, and off they go in another direction. Until the light changes. Foreseeable result: the ant has no idea how to get home, it’s lost, it dies. Done it plenty of times. Guerrec’s the same. All you have to do is put a finger in his path, send him off on a trail. Not that everyone would be clever enough. An ordinary murderer, one who panics the moment the cops arrive, who’s never thought about the ant and the sun, they’ll get caught in a couple of days.
No, I’m not stupid. And as for that guy from Paris with his story about dogs and dog shit, he’ll find that out to his cost, if he doesn’t lay off. Though he doesn’t want to lay off. He wants to be everywhere, see everything, find everything, be in charge. Who does he think he is, pathetic meddler? All the same, he’s less pathetic than the others, keep an eye on him. Still, never mind, I know the type. Thinks he’s so clever, with his intellectual airs, they can be the blindest of the lot. If he tries to start a forest fire to smoke out the rat, he’ll get a quick blast from the extinguisher. Fast and deadly. He’ll disappear into the landscape, and never know what hit him. I’m in control here. First better deal with the little squirt of a cop, then the poet. Big deal. In fact if I’d never done anything else in my life, I’d have made a good murderer. Well, I am one already, yes, but I could have made a career of murder. I’m a genius at it. And killing makes me feel so good inside. But careful, don’t let it show. Do what you have to do now, and then look concerned, interested. But make sure to relax all over, eyes, cheeks, hands, everything.
XXII
WHILE MARC WAS torn between going to fetch the lord of Puisaye’s accounts from his bedside table and having another go at the big Port-Nicolas machine – the question he’d prepared was ‘How do we get the earth out of the solar system when the sun explodes in five billion years?’ – the mayor had shut the door leading to the back room in the Market Cafe and was telling Louis about his session with Guerrec, the inspector from Quimper. Guerrec had worn the mayor out with questions about Marie Lacasta, he’d taken the electoral register away with him, and he wanted to find out what Kehlweiler had to say, and to take possession of the bone.
‘They’re at the Fouesnant gendarmerie now. Then he’ll start questioning people generally.’
‘And why are you telling me all this?’ asked Louis.
‘Guerrec asked me to. He wants to question you before nightfall. I’m just passing on the message.’
‘Does he have a theory, a plan?’
‘Guerrec can only see one thing that’s significant in Marie’s life: the disappearance of her husband Diego Lacasta, five years ago.’
‘He’s dead?’
‘We don’t know, he was never seen again, dead or alive. His gun was found abandoned on the quayside, and a boat was missing. What’s certain is that Marie avoided talking about his disappearance, and that she was still waiting for him to come back. She didn’t touch a single thing in his den.’
‘They’d married late in life?’
‘Yes, both over sixty.’
‘Did he meet her here then?’
The mayor gave an impatient little twitch. It’s so tedious to have to repeat these stories that everyone knows by heart. But Guerrec had told him not to annoy Kehlweiler, they might need him. He’d heard of the man by reputation, and he was wary of him.
‘He met Marie at Lina’s house of course, when she still lived in Paris. In the days of Lina’s first husband. Marie worked for them, she looked after the children, simple as that.’
‘What was he called, the first husband?’
‘Marcel Thomas – his name won’t mean anything to you. He was a physics teacher.’
‘So Diego knew Lina then?’
‘No, no, give me a break, Diego worked for Sevran, that was the connection.’
‘So what was the link with Lina?’
The mayor sat down and asked himself how this man could have done all the things he was supposed to have done without being capable of understanding how Diego had met Marie, for fuck’s sake.
‘Sevran,’ the mayor said, articulating clearly, ‘was an old friend of the couple, well, of Marcel Thomas. They both collected those old typewriters, and the engineer always called on them when he was in Paris, and visited his friend’s collection. Diego worked for Sevran. So, he would accompany him to Lina’s. So, Diego got to know Marie.’
‘What did Diego do for Sevran then?’
‘He went all over France for him, searching out machines. Sevran had found Diego in some dead-end job in the antiques trade, and he hired him. So, to cut a long story short, Diego married Marie, two months after Sevran married Lina. And they all came back here to live.’
Louis now sat down in turn, patiently. He was wondering how anyone could be so bad at telling a story. Chevalier really did have a woolly mind.
‘So Lina divorced her husband to marry Sevran?’
‘No! Give me a break. It was after the accident. Her husband fell from their balcony, vertigo. She was a widow.’
‘Ah. Tell me about that then.’
‘She was a widow, like I said. Her husband had fallen from their terrace. I only got the story from Marie because Lina doesn’t like anyone to talk about it. She and Marie were inside with the children, Lina was reading in bed, and Marcel Thomas was having a final cigarette on the terrace. Lina still blames herself for letting him go out there, because he had drunk a lot that night. But that’s stupid, how could she have foreseen?’
‘And that was where in Paris, do you know?’
‘In the 15th, rue de l’Abbé Groult, and don’t ask me the number for God’s sake, because I don’t know it.’
‘Don’t blow a fuse, Chevalier, I’m just trying to get it clear in my head, not to annoy you. So Lina was a widow with her two children, and Marie. So what next?’
‘A year later she turned to the family friend Sevran, and married him.’
‘Right.’
‘She had the kids to bring up, no job, no money. All her husband had left her were the machines, beautiful ones, but she had no idea what to do with them. So she married again. I suppose she must have been in love with the engineer, in fact I’m almost sure of that. At any rate he certainly rescued her. So be that as it may, everyone got married. And Sevran settled them all here. And now Guerrec is interested in this Diego, about whom we know nothing, any more than Sevran did, he’d just found him selling junk in some provincial antiques fair. I told Guerrec I thought well of Diego, a reliable chap, a bit sentimental but steady, strong, he got up every morning at six. He was missed by everyone when he disappeared. And as for Marie, two weeks ago she was still waiting for him to come back.’
‘Sad.’
‘Very, and just between ourselves, a nuisance for the local authority.’
‘Where does Guerrec want to start?’
‘With you, then Sevran, then everyone else. He and his sidekick will have the devil’s own job sorting out alibis, and they won’t add up to anything. People are always on the move round here.’
‘Did they ask you for yours?’
‘Why would they?’
‘Did they ask you?’
‘No, of course not, come on.’
‘Well, they will.’
‘Right, you want to land me in the shit now? That’s your idea of fun?’
‘And don’t you think you may have landed Marie in the shit? What about René Blanchet? You got her to poke about in his dustbins. That was your idea of fun?’<
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The mayor pouted a little, bent back his fingers without cracking them, but didn’t shift on his chair. This man was incredible, just like a fish pond or a pool of water. Louis had always been intrigued by the liquid element. You pour it into a cup and the surface is flat. You tilt the cup and the liquid tips too, but the surface is still as flat as before. Even when you turn it in every direction, the water stays flat. The mayor was like that. You would have had to cool him down to freezing point to get hold of him. But Louis was sure that even if you deep-froze the mayor, he would manage to frost over his surface and stop you seeing inside.
‘Is it cold here in winter?’ he asked.
‘Not often,’ Chevalier replied, on automatic pilot. ‘It’s exceptional for it to freeze.’
‘Pity.’
‘How do you know about Marie and Blanchet’s dustbins, anyway? Did you look in a crystal ball, or perhaps in some dog shit?’
‘You did get her to do her spying then?’
‘Yes, I did. But I didn’t force her to do it, and I paid her.’
‘What were you after?’
‘It was Blanchet who was after me, so don’t get the wrong end of the stick. He’s bent on getting to be mayor instead of me. I’m well established here, but knowing the man, I’m sure he wouldn’t shrink from dirty tricks. I wanted to know what he was planning for me.’
‘And did you find anything out from the dustbin?’
‘I found out that he eats chicken twice a week, and a lot of tinned ravioli. That no one knows where he really comes from. No family, no party, no known political contacts, nothing. His past is buried in the mist.’
Chevalier frowned.
‘He burns all his papers. It was when I noticed that that I got the idea of getting Marie to look in the bin, in case some scraps escaped. Because a man who burns his papers? Eh? A man who refuses to have anyone come in to clean his house? But Blanchet is meticulous, he cleans all the meat off his chicken bones and he scrapes out his ravioli tins, he smokes his cigars down to his fingers, not one escapes. His rubbish bins are a quintessence of rubbish, no body or soul, just ash, nothing but ash. And if you think that’s normal, I don’t.’
