Don't Turn Out the Lights

by Bernard Minier

  * * *

  Night was already falling, dark and bitter cold, by the time Servaz got back to his own centre. It was just after five. Bloody December.

  He switched off the ignition, climbed out of the car, and the gravel crunched beneath the snow as he walked towards the entrance, where he was greeted by the echo of voices from the grand salon. Here, too, there were workshops: drama workshop, belote workshop, gossip workshop, tirade workshop, memory workshop …

  He climbed the stairs two by two to his room under the eaves. The little room was thick with shadows and chill, and he switched on the desk lamp rather than the ceiling light, which only gave off a paltry and infinitely dreary clarity.

  Then he turned on the computer, and clicked on the icon with the portrait of Gustav Mahler in one corner of the screen. The music immediately filled the air, fluid, pure and limpid, falling into the silence like drops of icy water. The peace that emanated from this music was contagious. One lied. Ich Ging Mit Lust.

  He checked the time. Five sixteen p.m. He took out his telephone.

  ‘Hey, Martin,’ said the voice on the line.

  Desgranges, a cop from Public Safety whom he’d been teamed with in the past, before he ended up on the crime squad. Desgranges was a thorough, methodical officer, with a sense of smell worthy of a bloodhound. He was also a discreet person, and Servaz trusted him completely.

  ‘It’s been ages,’ he said.

  He must have heard what had happened to Servaz. The story about the box sent from Poland had made the rounds of all the departments. But he was too tactful to mention it directly.

  ‘I’m on sick leave,’ said Servaz.

  No comment on the line. Purely out of politeness, Servaz asked for news about his daughters. Desgranges had two girls, both as pretty as pictures. They had grown so quickly they would soon be towering over him, and everyone around was charmed by their presence.

  ‘You haven’t called me just to talk about my daughters, have you, Martin?’ said Desgranges when they had said all there was to say about the children.

  Servaz took the plunge.

  ‘Célia Jablonka, does that name mean anything to you?’

  ‘The girl who slit her own throat at the Hôtel Thomas Wilson? Of course.’

  ‘I’d like to see the file.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  Straight to the point. Servaz knew that his former colleague was expecting an equally frank reply. He decided to tell the truth.

  ‘Someone sent me the key to the room where she killed herself.’

  Silence on the line.

  ‘And do you have any idea who?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  Another silence.

  ‘A key, you say.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you told your superiors?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Martin! You can’t keep that to yourself! You’re not going to reopen the investigation just because of that?’

  ‘I just want to clarify a few points. If it’s worth it, I’ll have the information sent up to Vincent and Samira. In the meantime, I just need to verify a few facts.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Which facts?’

  Servaz hesitated.

  ‘To be honest, I really want to find the man or woman who sent me this key. And I figure the answer might be in the file.’

  Desgranges didn’t say anything and Servaz realised he must be thinking it through.

  ‘Hmm. That makes sense. Up to a point. And you didn’t ask yourself the other question?’

  ‘What other question?’

  ‘Why you? I mean, you weren’t even on the investigation. It’s not the sort of matter you habitually deal with and this – this person knew very well where to find you, apparently. A depressed cop isn’t the sort of information you can get from the papers. Don’t you find it strange?’

  So Desgranges knew about his depression. As, in all likelihood, did virtually every police officer in Toulouse …

  ‘That’s precisely why I want to see the file,’ he said. ‘The person who sent me this thing seems to know as much about me as about the case.’

  ‘At the same time, you’ve been in the headlines more than once recently, between the case in Saint-Martin and the one in Marsac. If I were a resident of this city looking for a competent cop, you would probably be at the top of my list. I’ll see what I can do. Just drop by tomorrow. We’ll go for lunch. And talk about the good old days.’

  * * *

  It was almost six p.m. when Christine typed in the security code, pushed open the heavy glass door and hurried to switch on the lights in the shadowy hallway. Her heels rang out on the tiled floor as she walked over to the rows of mailboxes.

  As on the previous night, she held her breath on opening her box. Just the new set of keys from the young locksmith, she saw, relieved. She closed it again. Headed over to the lift. The tiny cabin came down to her, screeching and rattling in its wire cage, the cables curling under the floor like snakes hanging from branches. She pulled the metal gate abruptly, entered the tight space and pressed the button for the third floor. The cabin set off again. She watched the patches of shadow that carved shapes on the stairway as it wound its way around the lift shaft – a weave of light and darkness that for a second made her think of the heart of a prison. Her heart, already heavy, began to beat more quickly. And yet she had had a quiet day. At last. Since yesterday and the incident with Denise, life seemed to have gone back to normal. The lift stopped after one last judder and she pushed the gate. As she went out onto the landing she listened carefully. Nothing, except a vague sound of classical music from somewhere deep in the building. She went up to her door.

  And stopped with her hand on the lock.

  Opera.

  From inside her flat.

  The voice was coming through her door. For a split second she almost turned around. She put in her new key, unlocked the door and stood on the threshold: the music was coming from the living room, from her stereo. The woman’s voice was vibrating loudly throughout the flat, accompanied by violins. A soprano.

  She switched on the light, took a hesitant step forward, leaving the front door open. Ready to beat a hasty retreat. There was no one in the living room, but she saw it right away. On the coffee table: a CD. It hadn’t been there this morning, she was sure of that. She would have put it away before leaving. And besides, she hated opera. She didn’t have a single opera CD in her entire collection.

  She breathed slowly. Took a step and stopped. Tosca, Puccini. She thought about the CD that had been addressed to her at the radio station.

  So it wasn’t a mistake.

  It was part of the plan.

  The nightmare – here again.

  Her first thought, as she rushed over to the kitchen, was that he was still in the flat. She opened the top drawer in haste and grabbed the biggest knife she could find.

  ‘Show your face, bastard!’ she cried. ‘Go on, come out!’

  She went from one room to the next, the blade held out before her, trembling like a divining rod at the end of her arm.

  The gloom of winter had flooded the rooms and every time she flipped the light switch she froze, expecting to see a figure rise up and jump on her.

  Where are you, fuck?

  And how do you know these things about me?

  He seemed to know her perfectly. What was even more worrying was that he had managed to get into her place in spite of her new locks. She thought again about the young locksmith. Was he in on it?

  You are getting paranoid, girl.

  Then she remembered the new keys had been left in the mailbox. What an idiot she was! She went back to the door, looked at the inner bolt and bolted it – something she had obviously not been able to do on leaving. Finally, she went and kicked open the door to the bathroom. A final shudder of disgust and horror when she saw that someone had urinated without flushing – something she never for
got to do – and that a solitary, taunting cigarette butt was floating in the middle of a yellow puddle. Furious, she flushed the toilet. She bent double while the water was rumbling beneath her. She gagged, and gagged again. But as in the toilets at the radio station, she couldn’t throw up.

  She stood up straight, her face damp with sweat.

  Empty. The flat was empty.

  Then she suddenly realised something, and it was like a fist to her stomach: Iggy … he wasn’t here.

  ‘Iggy? Iggy? Iggy! Please, answer me! Igggyyyyy!’

  The silence still vibrating with her cry bounced back like a squash ball with the echo of her fear. She went on throwing open cupboard doors, then drawers, which she tossed to the floor, as if her tormentor might have trapped Iggy in one of them.

  ‘You scumbag,’ she moaned. ‘If you have done anything to my dog, I’ll kill you, you bastard…’

  She pounded her fists on a door. Spun round, disorientated. She had searched through everything. She had even opened the shoe boxes at the back of the wardrobe. She had looked under the sink. She had opened the recycling bins. She had looked everywhere. Or almost everywhere. The fridge. Oh, no, no, no, anything but that … She took a deep breath. Walked around the bar of the open-plan kitchen, summoned her courage and reached out towards the fridge handle.

  As she pulled the door, the magnets offered a brief resistance. She closed her eyes.

  And opened them again.

  Her lungs filled with air and relief. Nothing but packs of yogurt, sugarless fruit desserts, two bottles of semi-skimmed milk, low-fat butter, cheese from Chez Xavier, a bottle of white wine and another of Coke Zero, microwave dinners, and then tomatoes, radishes, apples, mangoes and kiwis in the salad drawer.

  Then her gaze dropped lower down: the door to the freezer. She pulled on it gently.

  The drawers were full of food, items she had recently had delivered by an online supermarket.

  Nothing else.

  She had to face facts. Her dog was nowhere to be found. Christine rushed to the front door, opened it, called out to Iggy several times, but the only answer was the distant, indifferent sound of someone’s television. She slammed the door and went back into the living room. Her gaze fell upon the litter tray full of clean newspaper. Something inside her snapped, like a spring giving way, and she let herself slide limply down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. Her face distorted, she could not hold back her tears, which began to flow as they had not done since that day she had come back from the secondary school at La Teste, not long after the Easter holidays. She had been thirteen years old, they were living by the seaside, and her father still went up to Paris three times a week to record his last programme worthy of the name. Thunder was rumbling above the sea that afternoon, the storm was threatening, and she had hurried home on her bicycle, pedalling flat out. So she did not understand why her father and mother, who were waiting for her in the kitchen, looked so sad, and why her father was holding her so tight that he almost suffocated her, why her mother had that ravaged, unrecognisable face. Until her father, holding back his tears, informed her that Madeleine had had a terrible accident. There had been a strange gleam of madness in his gaze, and she instinctively understood that she would never see her sister again. She thought she would never get over the grief. The kind of grief that could break you in two, that could make you want to die.

  She wept. With her chin on her chest, and her arms around her knees, she wept.

  * * *

  Her mind had begun to wander. Forty minutes after she had swallowed a double dose of sleeping tablets, they were beginning to take effect: she felt her eyelids grow heavy, and her head was bobbing as her anxiety gradually released its grip. Perhaps, too, because she was exhausted, at the end of her tether, because sorrow and fear had completely scoured her mind and all that was left was stupor and apathy.

  Before she would no longer be able to, she pressed the button on the phone one last time.

  The one that corresponded to Gérald’s number.

  And got his voicemail, yet again.

  For a brief moment fear overcame the effect of the sleeping tablet. Why wasn’t he answering? Because he is with Denise, answered the nasty little voice inside her, becoming further and further away the more the chemical hypnosis performed its tranquillising massage on her neurons. Because he is fucking the bitch. And, consequently, he cannot pick up, sweetheart. There was a knot in her gut. But the Stilnox had not said its final word – and she felt the knot come undone, irresistibly, under the cottony fingers of sleep.

  The police.

  She should call the police. She was in danger. But what would she tell them? That her dog had disappeared? After the incident with the letter, she knew what they would think. That you’re raving … certifiable … A last sob, like a spasm, then an immense peace came over her. Fucking blissful pharmaceutical peace, but peace nevertheless.

  One last thought.

  Had she locked the door? She frowned, while her head grew heavier and heavier. Yes. Yes, she must have done. She even thought she could remember shoving a piece of furniture in front of it. Had she actually done it, or only intended to? She wasn’t sure any more. She was overcome by indifference. She put the telephone back down on the night table. And yawned. Put her neck on her pillow.

  Closed her eyes.

  At last.

  12

  Leçon de Ténèbres

  From deep in the night, from deepest sleep, come voices we hope never to hear. They are like reminders of childhood fears – how, once the light has been switched off and the door is closed, every object in the room, every shape can change into a monster; when, snuggled deep in one’s bed – that life raft upon the disquieting waters of night – we become horribly aware of how very small and vulnerable we truly are. These voices remind us that death is part of life, and that the void is never far away.

  That night, Christine had nightmares where she heard voices. She tossed and turned in the damp sheets of her night sweat; she moaned and pleaded in her sleep. Then she opened her eyes wide. All of a sudden. Something had woken her up.

  A sound. A yapping! Christine threw back the duvet. She concentrated with all her strength and again she heard it: far away but distinct, indisputable. A clear, imploring little bark. There could be no doubt: it was him. Iggy! She leapt out of bed.

  The sound was muffled, but real. It sounded as if it was coming through the wall. Yes, that was it. She tried to get her bearings. The kitchen. Iggy went on barking. Yes, it was coming from over there. She slipped behind the counter; it was coming from behind the wall! Her neighbour: Iggy was calling her from her neighbour’s! Her neighbour who hated animals. Christine was filled with panic at the thought.

  ‘Iggy!’ she called, her face against the wall, her lips a few inches away. ‘I’m here! I’m here, my sweet!’

  She realised all the same how absurd the situation must seem: it was after three o’clock in the morning and Iggy was in the flat next door, barking. It simply didn’t make sense. How could Iggy have got from her flat to the neighbour’s? And yet … She placed her ear against the wall once again and she could hear him very distinctly. Beyond a doubt. That was Iggy – right there, behind the wall. She had to get him out of there, right away! She could not bear to wait until morning. She knew it would cause a fuss, but it was out of the question to leave Iggy even a minute longer. Who knew what that old bag might do? She went back to her room, put on a jumper and a pair of jeans and headed to the front door, barefoot. All the same, once she was on the landing, she had a moment of doubt: the barking had stopped.

  She went up to her neighbour’s door, took a deep breath and pressed hard on the bell. Once. Twice. Her thumb was crushing the bell for the third time, and she could hear the shrill echo of the ringing in the silent flat, when finally there was some noise inside.

  ‘It’s your neighbour!’ she shouted, her face up against the door.

  She could hear the security chain bei
ng removed, the click of the bolt in the lock, and then the door opened a few inches. A patch of face showed in the gap, sleepy and worried, framed by a prickly bush of grey hair.

  ‘Christine? Is that you? What’s going on?’

  Shit, that’s a good question, she thought: What is going on? Maybe you can tell me?

  ‘I – I’m sorry to wake you up this early.’ She realised how furry her mouth felt, and her elocution was approximate, given the sleeping tablet and what she was about to say – it was crazy, ludicrous, absurd. ‘Well, um, my dog is in your place.’

  ‘What?’

  The door opened wide. Christine could read the stupor and incomprehension in her neighbour’s eyes.

  ‘Iggy … he’s not in my flat. I can hear him barking for help. It’s coming from your place, I’m sure of it.’

  Michèle’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Christine, you’re imagining things. You’re not in your right mind, are you? Have you been drinking? Or taking drugs?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t! I just took a sleeping tablet, that’s all. Iggy is in your flat, I can hear him.’

  ‘There’s no dog here, don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘Let me come in…’

  She pushed her way through the door and past the little woman at the same time.

  ‘… I’m sure he’s here.’

  Before her neighbour had time to react, Christine was inside, headed towards the source of the sound.

  ‘Stop! You have no right to barge into someone’s home like this!’

  ‘I just want to get my dog!’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ asked Michèle’s husband, a round, bald little man, blinking his eyes like a barn owl.

  ‘She’s gone completely mad!’ yelped Michèle behind Christine’s back. ‘She says her dog is here. Charles, either you get her out of here, or I’m calling the police!’

  The barking … she could hear it again.

  ‘Listen! Can’t you hear it?’

  They all fell silent.

  ‘It’s coming from your place,’ said the little man, his tone severe. ‘The bloody dog is at your place: you’re losing your mind, my girl!’