Don't Turn Out the Lights

by Bernard Minier

  ‘Mmm.’

  He went over to the window, pressed his forehead against the cold glass, and looked out at the night streaked with lights. He could see his own face, so close, superimposed on the image. A worried face. Something was out there, outside. Something evil. Cunning. He must not underestimate it. The victims were not easy prey: they were women who were strong and intelligent. But their torturer was all that, too, and more: a formidable adversary, even for someone like Servaz. This thing manoeuvring in the shadows was just waiting for the next move, for new signals. Like a shark. They must be careful to give off as few signals as possible from now on.

  ‘I know a place,’ he said. ‘A wonderful place. In the Montagne Noire. Above the lake at Saint-Ferréol. It’s magnificent in autumn and in spring. And in winter, too, under a fine layer of snow. In fact, it’s beautiful in every season. We could bury him up there, what do you think? It doesn’t take much more than an hour to drive there.’

  ‘Will you come with me?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  He put Iggy’s body in the freezer compartment, which he had emptied out beforehand. A makeshift morgue …

  ‘The bottom drawer,’ he said. ‘Don’t open it again, all right? Until I come back.’

  ‘All right.’

  He checked his watch.

  ‘He won’t come tonight,’ he said. ‘He probably won’t come again with the police hanging about.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘Are you sure? Once all your colleagues have gone home? And everyone in the building is asleep again? And the street is deserted? How can I be sure?’ He saw her hesitate. ‘Can’t you stay? Just for tonight. The time it will take me to get organised.’

  He knew he could not ask for a surveillance team: he was not supposed to be on duty.

  ‘I have someone to see tomorrow morning,’ he replied, looking for Beaulieu’s number in his contacts. ‘First thing.’

  ‘You can use my alarm clock. Please.’

  He hesitated, then stopped.

  ‘All right, I’ll stay. But I’m taking the bed: I hate sleeping on sofas.’

  She smiled.

  * * *

  The woman lit a cigarette. The flame from her lighter briefly showed her features. She was parked a hundred metres further down the road, and she had watched the entire scene from her car without anyone noticing. The moment she’d heard the sirens, she had stopped strolling around and gone back to her car on the third floor of the Carmes car park.

  Then she came to the street, far enough away to remain unnoticed, but close enough to see the entrance to the building.

  The woman calmly switched on the ignition, put the car into gear, pulled out and went to park a bit closer, now that the forensic team and bystanders had left and the street was quiet again. Three o’clock in the morning. The cop had not come back out. She sat there, motionless, smoking one cigarette after the other, blowing the smoke towards the roof, in the dark, thinking that Christine had turned out to be tougher than expected. She would never have believed that bitch could withstand such a cataclysm. And even less, that she would fight back. Cordélia had called her earlier that day. She would have to deal with that, too. Things were getting out of hand. But it was all just a question of adjustments, corrections. The most annoying thing was that Christine had met this cop. She now had a forceful ally; she was no longer cut off and left to her own resources; they could no longer count on her to commit suicide. Shit. Perhaps it had been a mistake to put the cop on Célia Jablonka’s and Léonard’s trail. But she knew very well why she had done it. Except that now, it no longer seemed like such a good idea. Even if the cop was bound to suspect Léonard. This time, Léo would not get off so easily; she had left plenty of little clues that led straight to him.

  Christine would not commit suicide. The woman felt a rush of hatred welling up in her throat.

  Stay calm.

  The time had come to finish her off. In a more … radical way.

  She took one last puff, sending the delicious poison through her lungs; hatred, jealousy and anger were poisons, too, every bit as delicious.

  38

  Exit the Stage

  It was seven o’clock when the alarm went off but Servaz was already in the shower: he didn’t want to be late for his meeting with his daughter. If Margot went to the rest home and he wasn’t there, she would surely try to find out where he had spent the night.

  The solution: get there early.

  He looked at himself in the mirror as he came out of the shower. He would have liked to shave, but he had nothing to shave with. He didn’t even have a change of clothes. He would change quickly when he got to the centre: his clothes had got wet and now they were dry they looked like cardboard. He combed his damp hair with his fingers and left the bathroom. In the living room, he glanced at the framed photograph on one of the few pieces of furniture. A picture of Christine with a bespectacled man in his thirties.

  She was sitting on a stool lifting a mug of coffee to her lips, both elbows on the bar, when he asked:

  ‘Who’s this?’

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  ‘Gérald. My … partner.’

  ‘Is everything going well with him’?

  Again, a glance over her shoulder. Hesitant. Then she nodded.

  ‘Well, like every couple, I suppose … there are ups and downs. But Gérald is a good man.’

  ‘What does he do for a living?’

  ‘Research … Space research.’

  One drawer opening, another closing. Gérald. A name on a mental label. And a little light blinking: Space … Servaz felt restless.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Don’t open the door to anyone but me or Lieutenant Beaulieu. You have my number. You can call me at any time. And here is Beaulieu’s, just in case you can’t get through to me. And if someone comes to the door with a police badge, tell them to get lost: there are a multitude of fake cards out there.’

  She nodded, worried.

  ‘What if we tried to trap him?’ she said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘If I leave the flat and someone waits for him inside?’

  Servaz shook his head.

  ‘He won’t fall for it. He’ll know we’re here. He’s far too clever.’

  These last words seemed to make her nervous. With a thrust of her chin she showed she had understood, not looking at him, her jaw clenched. Then she picked up her coffee cup again, eyes down, her back turned.

  ‘I’ll drop by again later,’ he said. ‘We’ll come up with a strategy.’

  That last word sounded a bit too grand, he thought. And not necessarily reassuring: it meant he hadn’t got one yet.

  * * *

  There was fog, that Thursday morning. Dense, damp fog.

  He climbed quickly up to his room then came back down just as a red Citroën with a white roof pulled into the car park. He emerged from the lobby and saw Margot give him a luminous smile as she locked her car.

  He felt his heart contract on seeing her. But he liked the feeling.

  Her long, lanky legs strode across the car park, her slim figure in tight jeans and a chunky jumper. To say she had changed over recent years was a momentous understatement. Three years earlier – when Margot had found herself at the epicentre of an affair that had ended with the suicide of one boy in her class and the imprisonment of another – she had been pierced and tattooed, and had dyed her hair a colour that was unusual, to say the least, and stuck up in unruly tufts. She had been admitted to the most prestigious prep school in the region (he still remembered that magnificent summer’s day when he had driven her to Marsac for the first time): a place steeped in ancestral traditions and an almost monastic rigour; but for all that, during that period Margot still papered her walls with posters from horror films, and listened to music like Marilyn Manson. He didn’t know what she was into nowadays, but he did know that in hardly longer than it takes for a tadpole to become a frog, his daughter had
transformed into a woman.

  ‘Papa,’ she said simply as she gave him a kiss (even her voice had changed: the first time he had noticed he had thought it was her mother on the telephone).

  And yet her face was the same. She would always look like a little wild animal, which could hardly fail to charm all the young men conquered by her poise and her rebellious side. She was carrying a handbag, from which she took a little gift-wrapped package tied with golden ribbon and a bow. He smiled like a kid.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it.’

  The damp fog enveloped him.

  ‘Come, let’s go inside,’ he said. ‘It’s too cold out.’

  He took her to the little lounge on the northern side of the building; as he expected, there was no one there.

  He tore off the paper. A box set. Mahler, The Complete Works. A profile of the master against a background of very Klimtian inspiration: very kitsch. Sixteen CDs. EMI Classics. He had heard about this box set, released in 2010; he seemed to recall that there were none of the interpretations he preferred, no Bernstein or Haitink or Kubelik; but a quick look revealed, to his relief, names such as Kathleen Ferrier, Barbirolli, Christa Ludwig, Bruno Walter, Klemperer and Fischer-Dieskau.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s absolutely marvellous. I could not dream of a better gift. Thank you.’

  His words sounded exaggerated, but she pretended not to notice. They hugged again.

  ‘You’re looking better than last time,’ she said.

  ‘I’m feeling better.’

  ‘I’m going away, Papa.’

  He looked up.

  ‘Really? Away, where?’

  ‘Québec. I’ve got a temporary job there.’

  Québec? He felt something like an air pocket in his stomach. He could not stand plane travel.

  ‘Why not … here?’

  No sooner had he said it than he realised how naïve his question was.

  ‘In one year at the job centre, I have applied for 140 positions. End result, ten actual replies, all negative, and that’s all I got. Last month, I sent four emails to companies in Québec. I got four answers, two of them positive. It’s dead here, Papa. There is no future in this country. I’m leaving in four months. On a work-holiday permit.’

  He knew his daughter wanted to work in communication. But he had no idea what that meant. Baker, cop, firefighter, engineer, mechanic, even dealer or contract killer: those were concrete trades. But communication? What did that mean?

  ‘For how long?’ he asked.

  ‘A year. To begin with.’

  A year! He pictured himself crossing the Atlantic for hours on board a commercial airliner, stuck against the window in economy, nothing but ocean as far as he could see, and clouds, and turbulence, and flight attendants looking at him pityingly and condescendingly.

  He looked down at the photograph of Mahler again. And thought of the picture of Christine’s boyfriend in her living room. Gérald. He’d got a funny feeling when he saw him.

  ‘… but if I get a young professional permit, I’ll stay on, and then I…’

  ‘Stay’ … the word rang out as if it were tolling the knell of their father–daughter relationship.

  That face. A thought suddenly struck him: it was familiar. He was sure he’d seen it somewhere before. He hadn’t recognised it at the time because … because what? And suddenly, he knew: because in the other photograph, he was pictured in profile and not face on. The gala evening at the Capitole: the man in the mirror, wearing glasses, the one who was handing his business card to Célia Jablonka.

  Did it mean anything? Of course it did! This Gérald had known Célia, and he knew Christine: he was another link between the two, along with Fontaine. Yes, but there was nothing to show he had crossed paths with Mila. And her journal was all about Fontaine. Still, the detail bugged him. He was a cop: he didn’t believe in coincidence.

  ‘You know, in Québec,’ his daughter was saying, ‘if you make an effort, they start giving you responsibility in no time. You can rise quickly. You—’

  His mobile vibrated in his pocket.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  She gave him a dark look. It was Beaulieu. He felt a tingling at the back of his neck.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve got a real problem.’ Beaulieu’s voice was tense. ‘I’ve lost Marcus. This morning he left for the Métro. I followed him. Along the entire line. Except that his car, or someone else’s, was waiting for him at the Balma car park. He got away. I just had time to write down the number plate.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said his daughter. ‘Have you started working again? I thought you were on sick leave.’

  And what he heard in her voice was more of a reproach than a question. Disappointment that once again he didn’t have time for her, just when she was telling him she had made one of the most important decisions of her life.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

  But it wasn’t nothing. There was a knot in his stomach.

  * * *

  In the bathroom, she let a scorching flow of water from the shower wash away all the tension and pain from spending a night on the sofa. She had bolted the front door. Locked the door to the bathroom. Next to the sink she had her club, her tear-gas key ring and the stun gun.

  She relaxed for a moment until she thought she heard something through the noise of the water. She turned off the tap, on the alert, but it must have been a sound from within the building or the pipes. She got back out, dried off with the huge towel hanging from the towel rail, and was about to brush her teeth when the telephone rang. Not her official telephone. The one with a prepaid card.

  Léo.

  ‘Christine, are you there? At home? I have to see you.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ll explain. Something is going to happen today. Listen carefully: here’s what we’re going to do.’

  She wrote down the place and the time. What was he driving at? She wondered if she should tell the cop, but Léo had told her not to mention it to anyone for the time being. She left the bathroom and went to the living room. Her laptop was open on the bar. She had a moment of doubt: had she opened it this morning? She went back to get the stun gun and the club then walked over to the open-plan kitchen. A new email had arrived. Her pulse sped up.

  She climbed up onto the bar stool and saw that it was from Denise. There was a lump in her throat as she opened it:

  I’m sorry: I didn’t believe you, I thought you were crazy. I was wrong. I have to see you. It’s about Gérald. Don’t tell anyone. Here’s my address. I’ll wait for you all day.

  Denise

  ‘Will you come and see me?’

  Aeroplanes: turbulence, clouds breaking open against the aircraft, vibrations in his seat and his spine to remind him that there were 11,000 metres of void beneath him. He felt his throat seize up.

  ‘Of course I will, sweetheart.’

  He knew his daughter. It was pointless trying to make her change her mind. And anyway, what kind of excuse could he give? The cold? The snow? The endless winters? His fear of flying?

  For a moment, they looked at each other in silence, then Margot spoke.

  ‘Take care of yourself, Papa.’

  She pressed her remote key ring and the red and white car beeped.

  ‘Will I see you again before you leave?’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  He watched her turn around and give him a little wave, and he waved back, then she pulled out onto the narrow, straight road and vanished. He knew that what had just happened was important, but his mind was completely absorbed by other things. He took out his mobile. Dialled Christine’s number. It rang, then he heard it go into voicemail.

  * * *

  He parked in a prohibited spot, leapt out and ran to the door of the building through the fog. 1945. When the lift reached the third floor, he flung the cage door open. Rammed his finger on t
he doorbell. Once, twice. No answer. He pounded on the door. Called out. Was tempted to break the door down.

  He put his ear up against the door. Silence. Only the pounding in his chest. A door opened on the landing behind him.

  ‘Are you looking for Mademoiselle Steinmeyer?’

  A stern, shrill voice. He swung round and saw a tiny little grey-haired woman looking daggers at him.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, showing her his card.

  ‘She went out.’

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  A scornful sniff.

  ‘What Mademoiselle Steinmeyer says or does is of no interest to me whatsoever.’

  ‘I thank you,’ he replied, his tone implying just the opposite.

  Shit! He did not know which was more infuriating. That Beaulieu had let Marcus get away, or that Christine had gone out without telling him. His mind was racing. Why the hell didn’t she answer her phone? It was as if his veins were being injected with regular doses of adrenaline; he no longer felt fatigue, only an ever-increasing anxiety. A feeling of imminent catastrophe. He went back downstairs and out onto the pavement. A warden was slipping a parking ticket under his windscreen wiper. He showed her his warrant card, not saying anything. She gave him roughly the same look as the old biddy upstairs. His daughter leaving for the ends of the earth, Marcus on the loose, Christine vanished into thin air … Bloody fucking waste of a morning.

  * * *

  By noon, they still hadn’t found her. Or Marcus. And she wasn’t answering their calls. There was something wrong. In his mind, alarm signals were going off one after the other.

  ‘What shall we do?’ said Beaulieu on the phone. (This was definitely his favourite question.)

  ‘I’ve got her number. Start an urgent requisition … for “preservation of human life”. We’ll inform the public prosecutor’s office after that. One for the network provider and one for Deveryware. Go through Lévêque at Operational Documentation: he knows them; it will be quicker. Tell him the request is from me.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Beaulieu.

  ‘Keep me posted.’

  Beaulieu hung up. Servaz was nervous. Very nervous. He hoped that Lévêque would understand the urgency of the matter, and allow them to gain precious time: as a criminal analyst, he had a privileged relationship with the three network providers. Deveryware, on the other hand, was a company that specialised in the geolocation of smartphones: they had sold their software to the police. Once the network provider had sent them the coordinates, the company would forward Lévêque a link to a map-based portal, where the analyst could keep constant track of Christine’s mobile. Normally this took three or four hours to set up, but it could be done in thirty or forty-five minutes if they put the pressure on. Even so, Servaz was under no illusions: if Christine was in town, it would mean hundreds or even thousands of possible addresses and hiding places. It would be impossible to check them all. It would be impossible even if they could pinpoint the position by triangulating several relays, on the assumption they could put enough pressure on the provider to do that. All they could do was pray that the zone would be out in the sticks. Or would correspond to the address of someone he already knew: Fontaine, Gérald or Cordélia.