—What was it?
She leaned closer.
—AIDS … No one dares speak the word …
—AIDS! That’s no joke. I’ve heard that you could catch it from the dentist, or from an unsterilized acupuncturist’s needle … Did they get it because of their work?
—No, a crazy woman infected them five years ago … They weren’t the only ones: the two doctors in Bonvix and a surgeon from Niort who stayed in town were also infected, as well as a retired forest ranger … They won’t last much longer …
A pickup artist in a grey suit with polished dress shoes, Ray-Bans glued to his face, and a husky on a leash greeted the vet enthusiastically, hoping for an invitation to join them. He had to settle for a brief nod, and disappeared toward the dock, towed by his sled dog.
—She would sleep with them, to give it to them?
—No … She was a nurse …
Gabriel kept up the questions, to see to what extent André Sloga’s fiction was based on reality.
—How could someone pass on AIDS other than by unprotected sex? Did they shoot up together without changing the needle? It’s crazy, almost all of the doctors …
The vet frowned.
—That’s the rumor … Each of them, for one reason or another, needed shots, and the nurse took the opportunity to fill the syringe with contaminated blood …
—Unbelievable! She’s been arrested, I hope …
—The police didn’t have to lift a finger: she was found murdered late one night in a stream, not two steps from here … To this day nobody knows who killed her, no more than they know why she was so angry at the forest ranger and all the medical professionals of Bonvix.
—You must be very brave to take over!
—Not really … I have two diplomas: veterinarian and nurse!
11
LUMINARIES AND LOUTS
The Parisian papers had fattened their headlines to announce a fresh pipe bomb attack in the streets of the capital city. This time, the anonymous terrorists had deposited their deadly parcel in a supermarket, in the meat aisle. As Gabriel was buying up a fistful of daily papers, his eyes were drawn to a local tabloid, the Voice of the Marshes, set on a shelf dedicated to the news of the region. The first page was almost entirely devoted to the resumption of the highway project that was mutilating a regional park, and below it were the election cards for the game of liar’s poker that was playing out between Niort’s socialist mayor and its socialist deputy, Ségolène Royal. A small box placed at the very bottom, to the right, which referred readers to the back pages, contained this bit of text: “The Return of the Audiat Affair: Valérie’s Vengeance.” He left the newsstand and walked a hundred or so meters along the riverbank until he got to one of four benches that had been installed beneath the plane trees surrounding the monument to Bonvix’s dead. The full article comprised just a few hastily composed lines:
The Bonvix police recently received a visit from a man of about sixty whose identity is being withheld. This man, who apparently lives in the vicinity of Maillezais, gave the judicial authorities reliable information that may strongly influence investigations into a crime that put an end to a series of revenge-killings by the nurse Valérie Audiat, daughter of the eminent manufacturer Eugène Audiat. The examining magistrate, Pierre Tiercelet, is refusing to comment, recalling that the case was damaged early on by the effects of an overzealous haste to bring it to a close.
The piece was signed austerely by one “Fred. Lf.,” whose full name, Fred Ledoeunf, Gabriel found deep in the paper’s guts, on the second-to-last page.
In the center of the square, the bronze statue immortalizing victorious infantrymen pointed unwittingly, with an outstretched hand bearing a laurel branch, to the public toilets and telephone booth. Gabriel opened the shatterproof glass door and inserted his credit card into the slot. A sudden intuition made him dial the number of the hair salon. He didn’t immediately recognize Cheryl from the distant “hello” that she reserved for clients making appointments. The usual warmth returned to her voice once she’d identified him.
—You could have called me earlier, I didn’t sleep all night … Where are you this time? Chechnya, East Timor, Rwanda?
—Even worse … In the swamps of Poitiers!
He reassured her, promising to be back within a couple of days, and then dialed the number for the Voice of the Marshes.
An hour later he parked his Peugeot in the elevated lot in Fontenay-le-Comte, then took the pedestrian streets back into the historic district. The vaulted passageway the journalist had described opened up into a large interior courtyard paved with stone. The buildings around its perimeter were still recognizably those of an old farm: stables, grange, family home. A former barn was home to the offices of the Voice of the Marshes, and a meticulously restored sign reminded visitors that the paper, founded in 1868, had once been called The Vendée Echo.
Gabriel pushed open the glass-paned door that had been installed between two supporting posts and found himself in a vast, unpartitioned space into which a narrow glass transom cast a bit of diffused daylight. A worker was busy on an antique offset printer: running from the ink plates to the receiver, climbing onto the catwalk to give the rollers two or three turns by hand, continually adjusting the pressure of the grippers, the power of the suctions. The machine alone occupied three-quarters of the space; the piles of paper reams, pallets stacked with final editions, and disorganized heaps of back issues left only a tiny space for a newsroom, carved out of the most well-lit corner. Gabriel took advantage of a paper jam in the offset, caused by a sheet of paper falling prey to a sucker, to make his approach.
—May I see the editor in chief?
The printer gestured vaguely toward the piles. Gabriel circumnavigated the boxes of research; cases of film, ink, and photosensitive plates; sleeves and rubber blankets; and finally caught a glimpse of the journalist, who was, with one finger, pounding out an article on the keyboard of a new-model laptop set on an ancient marble shelf. He lifted a hand to make it clear that he knew someone was there but that he was in the midst of a crucial moment of composition. He coughed up a full paragraph before closing the computer and stretching out with a yawn. Gabriel took the time to observe him closely. Frédéric Ledoeunf looked like he had about sixty years and a hundred kilograms under his belt. The most immediately noticeable thing about him was the pair of enormous, thick glasses that sat as much on the bulge of his cheeks as on the tip of his nose; after that, it was the absence of his neck, which seemed to have been engulfed half by successive waves of his chin, and half by the mass of his shoulders.
—Are you Frédéric Ledoeunf?
—Since I was a boy, I’ve been trained by others to answer yes to that question.
He had a thin voice that contrasted comically with the voluminous form from which it emanated.
—Gabriel Lecouvreur. I telephoned about an hour ago … About the nurse …
He nodded.
—So you’re interested in the Audiat affair? I thought everyone in Paris had tabled it. Which rag do you work for?
Gabriel came to sit on the edge of the sunlit table.
—I’m a private detective, not a journalist …
The man’s eyes lit up behind the cathedral glass protecting them.
—There’s no need for such contrition! A private detective: it’s the dream of every self-respecting journalist … You’ll say there aren’t many of them these days, okay, but the ones we have left are the very best! So, you’ve been hired to look into the Audiat affair?
—Not really … I’ve hired myself …
Ledoeunf contorted his mouth into an exaggerated frown that caused a good half of his double chin to disappear.
—That’s not an auspicious starting point. I’ve never done the job myself, but I’ve read a lot about it, mostly in the Série Noir books … You should probably stay away: in those stories, when a detective feels personally invested in a mission, usually nothing good happens to him …
Gabriel liked the guy. He glanced at his watch.
—I try to survive on cigarettes and whisky, but I’m in the mood to cheat on my diet … I saw an inn, just up the way from here … How about we keep talking in front of a plate of your regional dishes?
—What’s it called, this inn?
—I wasn’t paying attention … the terrace overlooks the Sèvre Niortaise …
—Here, it’s called the Vendée … You may be clueless about geography, but you’ve got an eye for food and drink. That’s an excellent spot …
Ledoeunf took a minute to copy his text onto a diskette, which he gave to the offset operator before leaving the Voice of the Marshes printshop.
The well-appointed inn, with its tiled floor and exposed beams, was called, curiously, the Yes-But. In a short paragraph that appeared on the menus, the owner explained that the name had come to him after he’d repeatedly heard customers say, when asked if they wanted wine or a digestif: Yes, but I’m driving.
The journalist didn’t need to look at the menu; he knew it by heart. They were served eel au gratin in dishes hot from the oven, accompanied by some Bonnezeaux, a white wine that doesn’t travel well and is only drunk within a radius of fifty kilometers. Lost in a world of flavor, they ate in silence, their minds in their mouths. It was Ledoeunf who started the conversation up again, while using his fork to scrape the tiny crust of scorched cheese that had adhered to the inside of the dish.
—How about we show our hands right away? Do you have some kind of connection with the Audiat family, or with one of the people Valérie offed?
—No, I’ve been a Parisian since the beginning of time. My paternal ancestors from the iron age probably lived in a cave in Montmartre … On my mother’s side, it would have been a grotto in Belleville. This is the first time I’ve set foot in the marshes of Poitiers.
The journalist savored the last gulp of wine.
—By now we know almost everything about what made Valérie Audiat inject contaminated blood into the arteries of her lovers and clients … We’ve established a fairly convincing hypothesis to explain how she herself was killed. This very evening, I wrote a detailed piece which should take up most of an upcoming edition of the Voice of the Marshes. Saturday’s …
Gabriel ordered a half-carafe of Bonnezeaux for the journalist and treated himself to a Tsingtao.
—Would it be possible for me to see it?
—I don’t see any major inconvenience there. I would impose just two conditions …
—Go ahead, I’ll see if they’re within my means.
—First, and even though I don’t think anyone would take it, I’d want you to promise not to give the information to one of your journalist friends as soon as you leave here …
—You are in a position to know that “friend” and “journalist” aren’t words that go together very well …
Ledoeunf acquiesced, batting his batrachian eyelashes.
—Noted. Second, I would like to be enlightened as to what brings you here, five years after the first-class cover-up of a considerable scandal, and three days before its denouement which, in my extreme pessimism, I suspect will be surrounded by the profoundest media silence … To be completely frank, and it might be the alcohol talking now, I have to admit that I don’t believe your story about being a self-employed detective for a minute! Are you independently wealthy?
Gabriel lifted his eyes to the sky and sighed.
—Strictly speaking, that is not far from the truth. I’m not rolling in it, but I manage to live comfortably from my job. If I wanted to show off, I could even tell you that I’m the owner of a small private plane that I keep at the Moisselles airport, but that would be unnecessary, wouldn’t it?
—Life is like poker. You’ve got to play your hand … What kind of bird is it?
—A Polikarpov I-16 …
Ledoeunf set down the glass of Cognac that he’d been warming in his hands.
—Seriously? The one Malraux writes about in Man’s Hope?
—One and the same! You’re one of the few people who remembers that … I bought mine in Catalonia, a few years back … The Soviets had sold it to the Spanish Republic in 1937, through France-Navigation, the Communist Internationale’s maritime company, which acted as an intermediary. It was part of the Fourth Squadron, Mosca 31 …
—Are you allowed to fly a fighter plane?
—Yes, once it’s been disarmed … For the moment, I’m restoring it, piece by piece. The reason I’m here is that someone whose work I love was badly beaten, just the day before yesterday, by some thugs, and I have every reason to believe that they wanted to prevent him from divulging what he’d learned about the Audiat affair …
The journalist leaned back to drink his liqueur. The chair creaked beneath the force of his weight.
—What does your friend do? Is he also a private dick?
—No. He does what I’ve always dreamed of doing. He’s a writer.
Ledoeunf nearly choked.
—Don’t tell me you mean André Sloga!
—You know him too?
—What do you mean, do I know him! I know him better than anyone! We ate together at this very table three months ago … I haven’t seen anything about him being attacked. What happened?
Gabriel told him the little he knew about the attack on Rue Jeanne d’Arc, recounted his visits to the Pitié-Salpêtrière, and invented a plausible story to explain his acquaintance with Moon over the Marshes, the novelist’s manuscript-in-progress. Ledoeunf listened to him attentively while indulging in a genuine cinnamon-scented Davidoff cigar.
—I don’t want to discourage you, but I think you’re on the wrong track. I don’t see who would want to risk reviving the Audiat affair by attacking a Parisian writer …
Gabriel interrupted him.
—But it’s obvious: the murderer!
Ledoeunf sent a stream of Caribbean smoke up toward the ceiling.
—I can assure you that he is no longer capable of doing so!
—How can you be so sure?
—For the simple reason that he, too, is dead! The hand of justice has been dealt. That’s the story I’m preparing for my paper.
Gabriel was stunned. The scenario he’d constructed while driving on the Aquitaine melted into nothing. If what the journalist was saying was true, then the trail of Valérie-Yolanda had ended abruptly, a red herring in a cul-de-sac. His dining companion planted his elbows on the table.
—This is a strange place, both endearing and repellent. When I arrived here in ’73, still glowing from my brief stint at the crown jewel of the Parisian press—that’s what they called France-Soir back then—my goal was to transform the old Vendée Echo into the Vendée Fury! I went public with some real scoops. That continued for two, three months … Then in one fell swoop, every source went silent. I lost access to everything from the civil registry to the cafeteria menu!
Gabriel waved his credit card to call for the bill.
—And then?
—And then nothing … I waited for it to pass, and then I joined the ranks … I just needed to learn that around here, people will tell you anything as long as you assure them you won’t use it … It’s the way the regional press works, but they don’t explain that to you in journalism school: they take advantage of the naïveté of novices … The Audiat affair could easily be a case study for deciphering these invisible practices of censorship and self-censorship … I didn’t speak about it to André Sloga when he came to see me at the paper, but I’m thoroughly convinced that the police arrested that innocent vagrant, when the investigation had barely begun, for the sole reason of covering up the trail … They had to put out the fire and offer a bogus story to the public so that everyone would be thinking the same thing!
—This would be plausible if it was your local celebrity Ségolène Royal who’d been found in the swamp … But Valérie Audiat doesn’t justify such a conspiracy of silence!
Ledoeunf let out a hiccup that made his shoulders sha
ke.
—You’re losing sight of the context. From the point of view of a Parisian, a man who is directly responsible for five hundred jobs, and indirectly for just as many, is nothing special. And it wouldn’t mean anything that he is also the heir of one of the oldest families in the region. The fact that, in addition, he’s vice president of the chamber of commerce, president of the Rotary club, and a councilman for the marshland’s most important city, Bonvix, would only make him more of a rube in your eyes … And yet, from the point of view of the people here, that’s a considerable amount of power. Everyone is indebted to him for something: a job for their youngest child who’s been acting out, help getting a loan from the Agricultural Credit Union, an intervention with a congressman or tax collector, a dispensation for a driver’s license …
—A powerhouse.
—Exactly. He can get anything done. And after we learned about the murder of his daughter, the entire region was walking on eggshells, starting with the cops. It was of the most urgent importance to disconnect this heinous crime from the family of the region’s biggest benefactor. Hence the arrest of the wild coypu breeder … Rumors had started to spread when the illness struck all of Bonvix’s medical professionals, who shared the additional distinguishing feature of having been seen by Valérie: the pharmacist, the two doctors, the surgeon, and the vet, one after the other …
—You’ve forgotten the forest ranger, the one Sloga called Fernand in his book …
The journalist tapped his forehead with the tip of his index finger.
—Don’t worry, I have the whole story here, perfectly intact! In reality, his name wasn’t Fernand but Alfred Tourneur. He died first, from AIDS, less than a month after Valérie’s murder. I knew her well as a child. Her father paraded her about like a mascot. Pretty as a picture, cunning as a fox; she conquered everything in her path. He talked about how he would make a scholar of her, how she’d be in line for a Nobel Prize, but at around seventeen, eighteen, things took a turn. She shut down and started to keep to herself, she let her studies go completely and settled for a shitty job as a nurse in the district run by her own father!
Nazis in the Metro Page 6
