One Green Bottle

by Curtis Bausse

  His eyes met hers and for several seconds they looked at each other in grave, mutual assessment. Then he gave a brief nod. ‘Dessert?’

  ***

  Walking back to the hotel, Vincent carried the shopping bag, leaving Magali free to slip her arm round his, which she did. So now everyone looking at us sees a couple. The oddness of it disturbed her, like walking over strange, uncertain terrain, but with each step she grew more used to it, wanted it to be true. And she realised he was right: it was a pleasant moment, and part of the pleasure was letting go of the obsessional fear, handing over the responsibility to him. Let him be right, let them all be right, and the prowling killer vanish. And even if they were wrong, let her, just for a while, lean her head against his shoulder and relax.

  But now they stood on the landing, each with their own key, and Vincent, eyes bright with affection, was thanking her for a full and perfect day. It was just at that moment, the pair of them hovering on the cusp of a kiss, that her telephone tinkled and, unaccustomed as she was to the priorities of romance, she instinctively reached out a hand. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…’ She pressed her fingers to her brow. ‘I’m just on edge, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s all right, you can take it.’ He turned to open his door.

  ‘It’s only a text.’ She seized the phone, read the message twice and thrust it back in her bag. ‘From Bernard Marty,’ she said. ‘Paul Daveney’s confessed.’

  He turned back to face her. ‘Well… That’s a relief.’

  ‘Yes.’ But in her mind the young man Charlotte had described smiled slowly. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Only suppose?’ He raised his eyebrows, smiling a little sadly. Can’t you let go of all this? What’s the matter with you?

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it is. Definitely.’

  Then she pulled his head towards hers, kissed him fiercely on the mouth, and the two of them tumbled into the bedroom.

  Chapter 23

  Who was the man who came to Enzo’s house? Of all the unanswered questions, this was the one that troubled Magali the most. Not because it was any more puzzling than the others, but to know that the killer could go back there and speak so warmly to his victim’s mother made her more afraid of him than ever. Before, she had thought of him as human. Evil, twisted, vicious, yes, but still a man of flesh and blood, who had to eat and sleep like everyone else. Now she began to imagine something more sinister, a force that moved and left no trace, taking whatever human form it fancied.

  Nonsense, of course. Horror-film stuff she had to ignore, rip out of her unruly imagination. But although she could do that for hours at a stretch, there always came a moment when she felt the killer’s disembodied presence, suddenly there in the creak of a door or the ghostly whisper of the wind.

  She drew him. Based on Charlotte’s description, she produced an identikit picture which went back and forth between them, Magali adjusting this or that feature till Charlotte declared it to be a perfect likeness.

  It made him human again. She propped the portrait on the piano and studied the lines of his bland, unexceptional face. At first she’d made the eyes cold, small round bullets of hatred and bile, but in fact they were gentle. That was a detail on which Charlotte insisted: the kindliness of his eyes. Sometimes she looked at the portrait and that was what she saw: a gentle young man, not dissimilar to Luc, who would never wilfully hurt anyone. Then a couple of minutes later, though the features were the same, the intention behind them shifted. Kindness gave way to menace, a dark, irrational force swirling around her.

  What did it mean? That he wore a mask perfected over many years to hide the cruelty within? Or that the prospective buyer of Enzo’s house was nothing but that – a man who happened to be passing through and thought it might be a pleasant place to live.

  The second interpretation was her refuge, a trick she performed to switch into security mode, relax: Benamrouche was guilty after all, Paul was a homicidal nutter, Balland would find his burglar and Vincent, as he had ably demonstrated in room 310 of the Hotel Voltaire, knew exactly what he was doing. Even if it didn’t do it for me. No need to worry, everything under control.

  But she knew it was a trick because she was both conjuror and spectator. Split personality disorder. Another label to add to the collection.

  She’d done it because at that particular moment, she was ready to say yes. Because he’d prepared the right ingredients – windy beach, Christmas glitter, candlelit dinner – and they worked. And because she wanted to prove to herself there was life – well, sex at any rate – after Dickhead. Not, of course, that he’d ever been generous with either.

  Yes. I believe you. Yes, Enzo was flustered when he poured that glass of white wine. Yes, she killed him. Yes, now, please, because Paul has confessed and Luc is safe, so yes, now is the moment, let’s do it.

  The morning after, boarding the train – thick, dark clouds of doubt overhead – looking down from the carriage steps at Vincent’s bright, expectant face, she promised nothing. ‘I’ll give you a call.’ And she raised her hand and turned away. What did that mean? Maybe, sometime, don’t hold your breath? Or: this is the start of a deep, fulfilling relationship? To her it didn’t seem like the start of anything, except a protracted dither.

  She waited. From Roudy there came nothing, except confirmation that Albert Roncet’s computer was still with the police, and that Roncet, ever cautious, had deleted none of his emails. But the investigating judge considered the case closed and passed the buck back to the police, whose ears, when it came to Roudy, were bunged with bureaucracy and indifference.

  Emboldened by her dinner with Balland, she sent him a gentle reminder: Any news of Lucie Terral’s purse? You said you’d find out where it came from.

  When no reply came, she cast her mind back over their talk. What, he’d objected, if she got it from a shop in Royan? Or anywhere else for that matter. The search would be fruitless. No, she’d argued, it had to be online. Couldn’t he get hold of Lucie’s emails? Or better still, all her online activity over the past eight months, say. That should be enough.

  And what else? he grumbled. Her supermarket shopping lists maybe?

  After three days, she wrote again. After all, he wouldn’t have made the promise about the purse just to get rid of her. Or would he? His sighs and mutterings over dinner had given the impression he was dealing with a particularly irksome mosquito. All she got this time was the brusque reply: Nothing on her computer. Y.B.

  She pondered the meaning of this. Lucie’s whole computer had been wiped clean? Her emails had been deleted? Or there was simply no mention of the purse? Whatever it meant, Balland was clearly too busy running after Roma to bother with her ridiculous theory.

  She tricked herself back to security mode: Balland was surely right. Unlike Enzo and Roncet, the Terrals had been burgled. And the killer, if there was one, didn’t go after couples anyway, he targeted lone individuals.

  Then, escaping through some unsealed vent in her mind, her anxiety bubbled up again and she phoned him.

  ‘I thought the message was obvious,’ he said. ‘She didn’t delete her emails. But there’s nothing about a purse.’

  ‘Well… No, it wasn’t that obvious. You mean she didn’t delete any? She kept them all?’

  ‘There’s stuff going back a couple of years. Train tickets, party invitations, all sorts.’

  ‘And there’s nothing about an account with top-vente-achat? Or another site like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK. But if the order was through the website itself, it wouldn’t actually appear in her emails. Which is why I need the list of her online activity.’

  ‘That’s computer forensics. I don’t have the resources here and I need a good reason to ask.’

  ‘Isn’t solving a murder good enough?’

  She heard him muttering to himself. ‘I’ll see what I can do. They won’t be too happy when it turns out she got it in a shop.’

  ‘A damaged purse? Who’d go in
to a shop for a purse like that?’

  ‘There were two purses, weren’t there? So she bought the one, got the other thrown in. Maybe thought she’d repair it. Then she put it in a drawer and forgot about it.’

  Was stubbornness, she wondered, the quality most required in order to be a gendarme? Did they take a special exam? You believe the world is flat. Provide an instant answer to every objection put to you.

  She’d stopped keeping track of the score. She just knew she was stuck on nil. ‘And your own theory?’ she asked. ‘Any progress?’

  ‘Plenty. Got a lad the right size, in the area at the time. Admitting nothing of course, but I wouldn’t expect him to at this stage.’

  ‘The area? You mean the village itself? Rondas?’

  ‘Spotted not far away. Of course he’s got a dozen mates who swear blind he was with them all evening. In three or four places at once, to go by them.’

  ***

  Another day in security mode. The Terrals were killed by a burglar, of course they were. She imagined him in the bedroom, rummaging through the drawers. The sound of the car, the front door opening. Voices. He freezes. Tiptoes to the door. Listens. Water running in the kitchen, a saucepan on the hotplate. He looks around, sees the knife in the baby’s room. He doesn’t intend to use it but he picks it up anyway – it reassures him. Walks downstairs, making no sound, hoping to escape unnoticed. At the bottom he peers to the left, sees the woman peeling carrots. To his right, the man is sitting at the table, reading. Both have their backs towards him but there’s no way he can get past the man without being seen. He takes a couple of steps, the man lets out a cry, rises from his chair. They stare at each other in bewilderment. The man moves towards him – he sidesteps, grabs the man from behind, sticks the knife in his neck. The woman has heard, she’s coming out – he flattens himself against the wall by the kitchen. The woman sees her husband, screams – he has to stop her. It’s over in a matter of seconds.

  But why, before he went back to his car with the loot, did he switch off the oven and the hotplate? And why, if the Terrals had just got back, was Lucie’s purse on the dining-room table empty?

  ***

  ‘What on earth has that got to do with it?’

  Not hostility but a wail of incomprehension: why would a woman she’d never heard of call her out of the blue to ask where her daughter got her purse?

  For a moment, Magali was about to apologise and ring off. What right did she have to go stoking the flames of a mother’s grief because of a saucepan of carrots? Gently, though, she persisted, and when she later called Balland, it wasn’t with a sense of triumph but foreboding that she was able to inform him: Lucie didn’t buy the purse, Michel got it for her birthday, five months previously, off the Internet. And when it arrived, they’d been astounded to see that a corner was missing.

  Balland listened with his usual blend: nine parts scepticism, one part detached curiosity. She pictured him the other end, playing with his cigarette, vaguely wondering why he’d ever allowed her to get involved in the first place. At the end he left a long pause, punctuated by a few soft grunts, like someone slowly drifting off to sleep. Then all of a sudden he snapped awake: ‘Right. Thank you. We’ll look into it.’ And with that, she supposed, he lit the Gauloise, took a long drag and returned to more urgent matters.

  Chapter 24

  On behalf of my client, Mme Carole Borde, née Pessini, I hereby inform you that she has instructed me to lodge a complaint against you with the appropriate authorities for the usurpation of the title of psychotherapist.

  ‘Does it mean I’ll go to jail?’

  ‘I’ll visit you. Bring you oranges.’

  ‘No, seriously. Does it?’

  ‘I doubt it. I don’t know that particular legislation. But it does sound as if you might be well advised to get a lawyer.’

  The letter had arrived that morning. The way Antoine’s sister had looked at her at the funeral, it wasn’t a huge surprise but it shook her all the same. A few months hence, she’d be standing in court, failing miserably to convince the judge that really she wasn’t deceitful, it was just a bit of fun. Fun, Madame Rousseau? I find you extraordinarily flippant. As a result of your bit of fun, the plaintiff’s brother is dead.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother. I don’t know any lawyers. Xavier knows lawyers, not me.’

  ‘So ask him to recommend one. A good one.’ Vincent put the letter down and rolled towards her. ‘It could make all the difference.’

  She didn’t answer. She stared at the ceiling as he kissed her neck and her breasts. She almost laughed out loud, picturing Xavier’s expression. A lawyer? You think you can be as daft as you like and then ask me to find a lawyer?

  No, the endless lectures would be too wearisome to bear. And why, in any case, have someone defend her when she was guilty as charged? A serial usurper. The sister was right. A spell in jail would be utterly deserved. Penance for Antoine’s death.

  She continued to stare at the ceiling as Vincent worked his way towards her tummy.

  ***

  He’d phoned after lunch to say he was on his way and now here he was, at half past five, in her bed. Six days had passed since they’d said goodbye in Montpellier. Not very long in her opinion but an age, apparently, in his. Initially she was relieved. If he hadn’t called, she’d still be wondering how long to leave it and what to say when she did. Now, though, she realised that leaving it up to him solved nothing.

  Proactively, she swung herself out of bed. ‘A walk,’ she said to her startled lover. ‘Coming?’ For want of anything better, she took him round the landmarks of her life: the running track, Antoine’s house, Daveney’s house, the Spar. They popped inside to buy some coriander and she introduced him to Monsieur Retsky, who pumped his hand energetically. A fine woman, he said of Magali, a lucky man you are.

  Not to Luc and Sophie’s though. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  What was missing? She hadn’t expected to be sighing and swooning as she had, once upon a time, with Xavier. But shouldn’t there at least be a lightness, a little balloon of joy, lifting her spirits? Was Vincent in love? She glanced across to observe his gait, spot the spring in his step. But it wasn’t immediately obvious, he certainly wasn’t bouncing along the pavement. A gendarme, presumably, refrains from skipping even when he’s in love. On the other hand, he did appear to be walking a little taller than when she first saw him in Padignac.

  She took him into the studio. She didn’t particularly want to – showing him her body was one thing, her paintings were quite another. But he asked, so she did. She only showed him the Cézanne imitations, not the ones of Enzo’s house, but even so, it was more of her life revealed than she was comfortable with.

  She hadn’t been in since Antoine died. Vincent said she painted remarkably well but she knew very well what she did and he wasn’t telling the truth. In the neon light, the colours were garish and sinister.

  Then they had pumpkin soup. Antoine’s birthday gift to her, defrosted, blended, seasoned. She hadn’t intended to eat the pumpkin at all, thinking she couldn’t bring herself to, she’d have to throw it away. But when Vincent called, she said, ‘Fine, I’ll make some pumpkin soup,’ so now here she was, sharing the puréed orange flesh with her lover. A cannibalistic ritual.

  It was over cheese that Vincent said, ‘I’ve got news.’ His lips upturned in a little smirk of satisfaction. ‘You know we were waiting for the DNA results on Brigitte’s bag and pullover? They came through this morning. An exact fit with Enzo’s.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her spoon stopped midway to her mouth. ‘So that means –’

  ‘We’ve got her. Enough to indict her anyway.’ He was having trouble containing his delight. ‘All over bar the shouting.’

  ‘Well… that’s good.’ It was like in Mulhouse when he’d called to say he’d blown Brigitte’s alibi: the room was suddenly devoid of colour, the shapes of things became blurred.

  ‘You don’t look happy.’

  ‘I�
�m very happy,’ she said automatically. ‘It means there’s nothing… I can relax. There’s no one going after Luc after all. Nor me.’

  ‘Well, exactly. Magali.’ He rose and came to stand behind her, hands on her shoulders. ‘You don’t look happy. You’re all tensed up.’

  ‘I know, I’m just…’ What? Crazy? In a world of her own, with special rules that suited her: where she could go chasing psychopaths but the psychopaths didn’t kill for real because that would be too scary. It was just a film inside her head and now Vincent was turning up the lights and saying the projection was over.

  ‘You can’t get this out of your mind, can you?’ He massaged her shoulders. ‘It’s as if you’ve invented this character and convinced yourself he exists.’

  She turned her head to the side. ‘That’s him over there.’