Mme Gorski chatted merrily to him as he set about preparing a salad and some tinned sardines he had bought. He laid everything out on the table in the living room and they sat down to eat. He poured each of them a small glass of the sweet white wine his mother liked to drink.
Monsieur and Madame Gorski would speak little during the working day. On the rare occasion that a particularly interesting item was brought into the shop, it was only over the evening meal that it would be discussed. It was not businesslike to show enthusiasm or even interest in the presence of customers. Monsieur Gorski had perfected a tone of complete monotony, which he used whether making an offer on a valuable painting or a worthless piece of costume jewellery. After dinner, he would peruse the day’s newspaper for half an hour, before leaving the house for the Restaurant de la Cloche, where he would drink two or three glasses of red wine and perhaps take part in a game of cards with some of the other local shopkeepers.
Once a month Mme Gorski took herself to Mulhouse for the Saturday market. From the age of twelve, the young Gorski was charged with keeping the ledger. Saturday was an important day for the business. Fewer items were brought in – customers preferring to commit this shameful act when the shop was quiet – but Saturday was Selling Day. From six o’clock in the morning Gorski and his father would sort through the items that had reached their redemption date and display them prominently in the shop. On Saturdays, Monsieur Gorski cast off his tedious tone and spoke lyrically about the craftsmanship, rarity and beauty of the items for sale. He did not press customers to buy, instead, allowing his enthusiasm and expertise to lure them into a purchase. He never explained his strategy, but he knew his son was observing everything. Gorski understood he was being subtly instructed in the running of the business and that in due course he was expected to take over.
However, as Gorski reached his teenage years he was drawn in a different direction. He became aware of another side of his father’s business. Now and again, policemen came into the shop. These were not uniformed gendarmes, but world-weary detectives in crumpled raincoats. They would ask if Monsieur Gorski had recently come into possession of such-and-such an item. He would invariably give such queries careful consideration before shaking his head slowly or calling over his shoulder to his wife: ‘Madame Gorski,’ – as he always addressed her in the shop – ‘Could you bring out the silver necklace that came in on Wednesday?’
If the article turned out to be what the detective was looking for, Monsieur Gorski would provide the name he had been given by the customer and furnish the detectives with an invariably vague description. The policeman would thank him and leave with the item. Monsieur Gorski never betrayed any emotion after these encounters. He had, after all, been left out of pocket, but Gorski came to realise that he regarded such things as an occupational hazard, or perhaps more accurately as an inevitable business expense.
Gorski began to recognise certain customers, each of whom had their own speciality. He noticed that his father always offered these characters a lower price for their items than he would to other customers, but they never haggled or stormed out with their goods. They merely accepted whatever Monsieur Gorski was prepared to offer. Gorski realised that his father was an intermediary in a dance between the cops and the curiously meek burglars, thieves and opportunists who made use of his services.
Gorski began to look forward to the visits of the detectives. He admired the dignity with which they conducted their business with his father. Each party knew exactly what was going on, but betrayed none of this in the manner with which they dealt with one other. One cop in particular fascinated Gorski. He was in his fifties and a little more talkative than the others. Before he came to the point of his visit, he would browse for ten minutes or so, commenting on certain items. He appeared to know a little about art and would sometimes embark on a lengthy critique of a landscape or portrait that caught his eye. He appeared to like Monsieur Gorski and it was in the company of Inspector Ribéry that Monsieur Gorski came closest to letting his sober weekday manner slip. He enjoyed discussing paintings with the detective and would join him in front of a particular picture and contribute his own remarks about the brushstrokes or the way the artist had captured the light. These discussions sometimes became quite animated before the inspector abruptly brought them to a halt and broached the real subject of his visit. Then the two men would resume their professional demeanours as if nothing else had passed between them.
At the age of sixteen, Gorski was expected to leave school and gradually take over the running of the business. Neither his father nor mother had ever asked their son what he planned to do, but as the end of the school year approached, it became clear that it had never occurred to them that he might wish to continue his studies. They were not people to whom education meant a great deal. Comments were passed about how useful it would be to have him around the shop more often.
The knowledge that he meant to disappoint his father weighed heavily on the young man. He brooded for weeks about how to broach the subject. Certainly, it would not come up in the course of conversation. The Gorskis were not a family for chit-chat. In the shop they only spoke about business, and the evening meal was eaten for the most part in silence. The young Gorski began to resent his father for taking him for granted, for not considering that he might have other – loftier, he thought – aspirations. He became surly and uncooperative, in an immature attempt to provoke his father into enquiring what the matter was. But he never did.
In the end, Gorski’s hand was forced. One evening, as the plates were being cleared, he made his announcement: ‘I mean to become a policeman.’
Monsieur Gorski raised his head from his paper and looked at his son over the rims of his reading glasses. He pursed his lips and nodded slowly, as if he had been expecting this all along.
‘An excellent profession,’ he said. ‘I know many fine policemen.’
He returned his gaze to the newspaper and after half an hour, put on his coat and went, as usual, to the Restaurant de la Cloche.
A week later Gorski was summoned upstairs on his return from school. Inspector Ribéry was seated at the dining table with a small glass of cognac. Monsieur Gorski stood nervously by the window as if it would be impolite to sit in the presence of his social superior. Gorski stood at the table in front of the inspector. He had a large equine face and small beady eyes.
‘Your father tells me that you wish to become a policeman.’
‘Yes, monsieur,’ Gorski replied.
The inspector nodded approval as if he was hearing this information for the first time.
‘A detective,’ said Gorski, overcoming his shyness, ‘I want to be a detective.’
The inspector nodded again. ‘You should stay on at school. Come and see me when you’re eighteen and we’ll see what we can do.’
And that was that. Gorski remained at school. His father no longer had him help out in the shop. Perhaps he no longer saw the point, or perhaps he did not want the future detective training his eye on his more questionable dealings. It was never discussed. Instead, Gorski spent his weekends labouring on the farm of a family acquaintance. He enjoyed being outside, away from the stale atmosphere of the shop. He spent the money he earned on detective novels and books on criminology and psychology. He devoured Simenon, learning, he thought, the subtle arts of detection from the inscrutable Maigret.
When the time came, Gorski presented himself at Ribéry’s office. Of course, he would have to serve his time on the beat like any other cop, the inspector explained. The statement puzzled Gorski, as it seemed to suggest that he was not like any other cop. Gorski did indeed spend three years on the beat, but Ribéry often pulled him from the rota and took him to inspect a crime scene or to observe the questioning of a suspect. He realised that he was the inspector’s protégé. At first it was thrilling to be called to the scene of a burglary or assault, but he quickly realised that his knowledge of criminology easily outstripped that of the inspector, who, it tur
ned out, was a slow-witted man more interested in his lunch, which he invariably took at the Restaurant de la Cloche, than in pursuing criminals. He also realised that there was little in the way of crime to be solved in a town like Saint-Louis and the life of a provincial inspector did not unduly impinge on the practice of drinking a carafe of wine over lunch and spending the afternoons drifting from bar to bar, sharing a snifter with the proprietors. Gorski began to see his life unfolding beyond Saint-Louis. Once he made detective, which he did in his mid-twenties, he would move to more exciting pastures – Strasbourg, Marseille or even Paris, somewhere alive with crime, violence and murder.
When he joined the police, Gorski moved into a small apartment near his parents. He dutifully attended Sunday lunch, but conversation was as stilted as ever. Monsieur Gorski never asked his son about his work. Gorski naturally enquired about the pawnshop, but it became apparent that his father’s heart was no longer in it. His health was failing and without a son to whom he could pass on the business, what was the point in slaving away? The shop, through which Gorski still entered on his visits, had always been cluttered, but there had been an order to the clutter. Monsieur Gorski could locate an item procured years before in a matter of seconds, but now stock was piled higgledy-piggledy or left unsorted in boxes. Gorski scuttled through the shop as quickly as he could. He had broken the old man.
It was inconceivable that Monsieur Gorski would retire. In the end he simply could not continue. He died of pneumoconiosis, caused, the doctor told him, by years of working in the dusty, ill-ventilated shop. He spent two dismal years sitting in his chair by the window above the premises. It was at this time that Gorski investigated the murder of Juliette Hurel. Not only was this the most sensational thing to have occurred in Saint-Louis for as long as anyone could remember, it was the only case in which Monsieur Gorski ever betrayed an interest. During the years of his father’s confinement, Gorski visited more frequently, bringing round a little shopping and sometimes some flowers to spruce up the dreary room.
‘You got the bastard yet?’ Monsieur Gorski would wheeze as soon as his son was over the threshold.
‘Not yet, Dad,’ Gorski would reply. He continued to answer this way even after Malou was convicted.
Mme Gorski never asked her son about his work. She made no secret of how proud she was of him, but she would not consider it her place to inquire about the day-to-day business of his job. Naturally she would be aware that he was now investigating the disappearance of Adèle Bedeau. She watched television and read the papers like everyone else, but she did not allude to it. Instead she sustained a monologue about the various people who had looked in on her since his last visit. Gorski, for his part, had no wish to discuss his investigations with his mother. It was relaxing to listen to her stream of gossip about these people he didn’t know.
Gorski washed up the crockery and put on his jacket.
‘See you soon,’ he said.
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ she said.
Gorski let himself out through the shop and walked back to his car. The light was fading and the streets were quiet. Gorski pulled up outside the police station. As he was locking his car, he saw someone raise an arm to him from the opposite side of the street. It was a young man, in his late teens or early twenties. He threw a cigarette onto the pavement and trotted across the road.
‘Monsieur Gorski?’ he said. He looked nervous. He kept his eyes trained somewhere around Gorski’s midriff as if he expected at any moment to receive a blow to back of the head. Gorski knew immediately he was the boy on the scooter.
‘Yes.’
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he said. ‘You’re investigating Adèle’s disappearance.’
‘That’s right,’ said Gorski. ‘You know something about it?’
The boy nodded. Gorski lead him up the steps into the station. Schmitt was at the counter behind the glass partition. He looked up disinterestedly and buzzed the door open. The boy followed Gorski into the corridor. Gorski took him to an interview room and went off to fetch some coffee.
Eleven
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED Juliette’s death, Manfred was numb. Sorrow, guilt and fear vied for his attention. Fortunately his grandparents were accustomed to him spending long hours alone in his room. That first evening he did not join his grandparents for dinner. How could he sit there when his sweetheart lay crumpled and dead in the woods and he, with whom she had only moments before exchanged the most passionate exhortations, had killed her? And yet, even then, there was an instinct of self-preservation that kept him in his room. It would surely be obvious to anyone who set eyes upon him that he was the guilty party.
During the storm that broke that evening, Manfred spent the night rigid on his bed, imagining Juliette’s body on its sodden deathbed. He saw the wind whipping up the cotton of her dress, the rain plastering her hair to her forehead. It was all he could do to prevent himself from rushing back out to the woods to cradle her drenched body. But he did not do so. And, at some point, he must have fallen asleep, because when he awoke the next morning, he experienced a brief moment of nothingness before the events of the previous day flooded back into his mind.
The storm had left a heavy smell of wet earth in the air. Manfred went downstairs at ten o’clock. His grandmother was in the garden. In the kitchen, the housekeeper ignored him as he spread a piece of bread with butter. He took one bite, which he was unable to swallow, and put it in the bin. Then he returned to his room. Later, there was a flurry of voices downstairs as news of the murder filtered through the household. Normally, the servants talked only in hushed tones, as if they were in a library. Manfred lay on his bed awaiting the police, but no one came. He realised it had been a mistake not to appear for dinner the previous evening. From now on he must act as if nothing had happened. He must at all times act naturally.
His grandfather looked askance at him when he appeared at the dining table. Manfred did what he always did when someone looked questioningly at him. He cast his eyes down and said nothing. He could hear the servants in the kitchen discussing the murder, but the matter was not mentioned at the dinner table. Instead, the meal was passed with a few banal remarks about the storm and Monsieur Paliard’s day at work. It seemed to Manfred a sick joke that his grandparents could behave as if nothing of note had occurred, as if his entire world had not come to an end. It seemed, furthermore, beyond belief that nobody could see that he was the killer. Manfred forced down a few mouthfuls of food before excusing himself at the earliest opportunity. He went upstairs and threw up.
Within two or three days, Manfred accustomed himself to behaving normally. He presented himself at mealtimes, skulked in his room and even forced himself to leave the house during the day, although he did not, of course, go near the woods. He betrayed no particular curiosity about the murder, nor did he pretend that it was of no interest to him. He began to think of himself as an actor preparing for the role of his former self. He drew no satisfaction as each day passed without his arrest. He was indifferent to his fate. But he came to understand why no one could see that he was guilty. All the talk in the papers and among the servants was of a monster, some beast abroad in the woods or further afield who could and, undoubtedly would, strike again. The maids were nervous of leaving the house and women were advised not to walk the streets unaccompanied. Amid this talk, Manfred was just a boy. Nobody was looking for a boy.
In the early evening of the fourth or fifth day Manfred heard a detective being ushered into the parlour at the front of the house. It was some minutes before Monsieur Paliard made his way to where the policeman was waiting. Manfred’s grandfather had a low opinion of the police and he would have made a point of keeping the detective waiting. The murmur of voices reached Manfred in his bedroom. He pictured the detective, in his fifties, wearing a crumpled raincoat over a crumpled suit, neatly parted grey hair, narrow darting eyes. The voices subsided then he heard footsteps and his grandmother calling his name from the bottom of the st
airs.
Manfred sat on the edge of his bed. He imagined being led handcuffed down the drive to a waiting police car, a crowd of onlookers greeting his appearance with catcalls. As he drew nearer, their cries would subside and he would hear them stage-whisper, But he’s no more than a boy. Not even a man.
Manfred stood up and walked slowly down the stairs. He felt relieved that his burden was about to be lifted. He wondered if the detective would accuse him straight off or slyly question him, slowly drawing the truth from him. There was no need for such a strategy. Manfred had no intention of denying anything.
The detective was not as he had imagined. He was young, thirty perhaps, with a modest, unthreatening air. He stood, looking somewhat ill at ease, with his back to the large stone fireplace. There was a tray of coffee things untouched on the table. The parlour was rarely used. It was a large formal room, which even at the height of summer retained a chill.
‘Our grandson,’ said Monsieur Paliard by way of introduction. His tone was apologetic. Manfred stood with his back to the wall next to the door. The detective did not invite him to sit down.
‘I’m investigating the murder of Juliette Hurel,’ he began. Manfred was surprised that his cheeks did not colour at the mention of Juliette’s name.
‘Your grandparents say that you often go walking in the woods where her body was found.’
‘Yes,’ said Manfred, ‘Sometimes I go there to read.’ Revealing this additional information suggested, Manfred thought, that he was willing to co-operate fully.
‘I don’t suppose you ever came across the girl when you were in the woods?’
Manfred was surprised at the way in which the detective phrased his question. It seemed an invitation to denial, as if he had already made up his mind that the response would be negative. It seemed easier to agree.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I understand you were in the woods the day Juliette was murdered,’ the detective went on.
The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau Page 10
