I don’t know. I’ll never know now. But I think so. I didn’t enjoy it at the end. I just wanted the last bottle to fall.
You kept on even though it was unpleasant? Just to get to ten?
You think I’m mad, don’t you?
That’s not for me to judge. There’ll be psychiatrists for that. Why do you say you’re not?
Nutters don’t know what they’re doing. They hear voices. God, the devil, whatever. I don’t get voices. I’m me. I’m in control all the time. (Silence) At the beginning, maybe… Not voices, but I felt close to god. Like I said, peaceful. I think the universe is a very peaceful place.
The universe?
I don’t believe in god, to be honest. It just felt that way. For a while.
And then it got unpleasant. In what way?
I don’t like blood. Hurting other people. (Silence). I don’t like killing them.
You mean you felt bad about it? Remorse?
(Long silence). Remorse… Maybe. It was tough on them, I suppose. But they asked for it. They complained.
About what you sent them, you mean? The Terrals complained about the purse?
Yes. (A brief laugh). So it wasn’t as if I was choosing them at random. Just for the hell of it. I’m not saying they deserved it but… Some complain and some don’t. They chose themselves.
And Rousseau? What did she complain about?
She didn’t, not to me. But I’ll bet she complained to everyone else. About my very existence. (Silence) She was right.
How do you mean?
The world would be a better place without me. If this was America, I’d be on death row.
You think you deserve to die?
No. (Short silence). I think I should never have been born.
The rest of the interview concerned the preparations he undertook prior to the murder of the Terrals. As reported by my colleagues involved in the other cases, these were meticulous, complex and thorough.
My conclusion, which I will state at the trial, is that at the time of the offense, neither his discernment nor the control of his actions was affected by any form of mental disorder. In fact I believe his clarity of thought at the time of the offence was not only intact but enhanced by the urgency of the situation.
Another possible condition for a finding of abolition of discernment may be causal, i.e. a direct and exclusive relationship between the offence and a pathological mental state. While I leave it to you as psychiatrists to decide on that, I see no evidence of it myself. While the defendant’s deep-seated motivations remain unclear to me, he appears to have undertaken his preparations in full knowledge of the atrociousness of his acts. While this in itself may point to a form of pathology, I can only state what I believe, namely that David Sollen was, and remains, both morally and legally responsible for what he did.
***
‘What do I make of it? I’m a nitwit, that’s what.’
‘Well, well! The first time you’ve admitted as much in thirty-six years. Wonders never cease.’
Yves Balland shared many things with his wife. Including a sense of humour, a love that grew stronger the older they got, and the conviction that he wasn’t, and never had been, a nitwit. All the same, it would have been nice not to be shown up by a rank amateur like Rousseau. As far as self-esteem went, he was perfectly well-endowed, but still it had taken a bruising which he wasn’t about to forget.
‘A fluke, mind you,’ he said to Maryse as he poured out the coffee. ‘She goes to three different crime scenes and lets her imagination rip. “It’s the same killer!” Rookie stuff. No one would bet a cent on it. If she was that good, she’d have spotted Fourlin too. And Treboulay. She missed them entirely. Huh!’
He hadn’t put it in quite the same way, but Yves’s account to the commission set up to enquire into the investigation’s failings had delivered more or less the same message. The focus of the enquiry was on SALVAC – software based on the FBI’s Violent Crime Analysis Program, designed to identify possible links between crimes committed far apart, both in time and geographically. But SALVAC was only as good as the staff that operated it, who in turn depended on the information they received. Nothing had been transmitted about Roncet or Treboulay, while the Perle report had been ridiculously brief. At least Yves’s report had been thorough. But when you’re looking for a local burglar, you don’t run a search through a national serial killer database.
‘Not even,’ he was asked, ‘when Madame Rousseau put her theory to you? It didn’t strike you as worthy of consideration?’
He remembered well. The seafood platter in Narbonne, the smoothness and aroma of the Chablis Grand Cru, and Rousseau getting hot under the collar. Had he been guilty of not taking her seriously? Perhaps he’d teased her a little.
‘I asked her to come and explain it. So I did consider it, of course.’ He didn’t add that dining with Rousseau was a more pleasant prospect than sitting in a restaurant on his own. ‘At that point, it was little more than conjecture. Imaginative, but nothing solid behind it.’
To her credit, Rousseau was thoroughly decent about it all. She could have laid into him, run to the press and spouted all manner of hogwash – they’d have lapped it up. But she’d been more inclined to hide. The way she behaved, you’d think she’d done nothing at all. She even defended Darlier, though heaven knows, there was precious little there worth defending. Yves suspected there’d been something going on between them, but even if there was, he doubted it was the reason she stuck up for him. It was just the way she was. Do all the slog and then take none of the glory.
That was the strange thing about her. She was cheeky, stubborn, infuriating, bolshie – basically an almighty pain in the ass – but at the same time remarkably humble. Her one redeeming feature. It was why he’d agreed to take her for her internship. He’d been reluctant at first, but then he thought that if she was serious about it, she needed to learn how it was done. And on the whole, she learned well. He’d been afraid she’d be full of herself, one of those dreadful women who think the only way to prove themselves is to be abominably feisty, but she turned out to be sensible. Most of the time, anyway. Still got a bee in her bonnet every so often, but generally ended up deferring to his better judgement.
‘A good sport,’ he’d told Maryse – a word hardly used these days, but it summed Rousseau up exactly. ‘Just needs to be kept in hand and she’ll do all right.’
‘I hope she realises how lucky she is to have you to keep her in hand,’ Maryse observed drily.
Yves declined to answer. Maryse could be a little caustic at times.
‘In fact,’ she continued, ‘now that she’s been trained so well, she’d surely make a very good personal assistant.’
Yves decided it was time for his first cigarette of the day. Till then he was grumpy at the best of times; Maryse winding him up was the last thing he needed. Retorting with an inarticulate grunt, he poured himself another cup and stepped outside. Behind him, Maryse broke into a cough as she cleared the breakfast table. A smoker’s cough like his own, though she didn’t smoke. Something else he’d shared with her. Generous to a fault. ‘Work with Rousseau again?’ he called through the door. ‘When hell freezes over! And get that cough of yours seen to, I’ve told you before!’
He didn’t smoke the cigarette. He held it between his fingers and stroked it, slid its smoothness beneath his nostrils, letting his fingers play with it.
He looked out over the garden. It was the last day of summer, overcast and chilly, disagreeable as his mood. How long before this craving ceased? He held the Gitane in front of his eyes and practised hating it. He was in the middle of this exercise when his phone rang.
He didn’t recognize the number and he answered with a bad-tempered, ‘Yes?’ Who the hell was calling him at this hour?
‘Yves? It’s Magali Rousseau.’
He let a couple of seconds pass. The garden, he noticed, was quite spruce at this time of year. In a softer voice, he said again, ‘Yes?’
‘Aren’t you on holiday? Indian Ocean or somewhere?’
‘Yes. We’re in Mayotte right now. Charlotte and I. But something’s cropped up. I need your help.’
‘Not out there, I hope.’ He only had a hazy notion of where Mayotte was. Too far was all he knew.
‘No, out here’s covered. It won’t take you long, I promise.’
Yves brought up the day’s schedule in his mind: three meetings, two reports to write, a new raft of anti-terrorism measures to implement. Not a minute to himself today, tomorrow, ever.
He held the cigarette to his nostrils again, the anticipation spreading through his body. He smiled. ‘Let’s hear it, then,’ he said.
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Perfume Island
If you’d like to read more about Magali and Charlotte, how about Perfume Island?
People come out here, they do things they wouldn’t do back home…
All they wanted was a quiet evening together. Then came the phone call. And a chain of events which would take Magali Rousseau into the sinister heart of the tropical island of Mayotte. Where a gloss of beauty hides a tangle of contradictions and fears. Where the scent of perfume covers the stench of poverty. And where Magali goes on a perilous search for the truth.
In 2011, Mayotte became France’s 101st department. Generosity? Or the cynical occupation of a colony? Perfume Island – a mystery story where the setting itself is a mystery. A geopolitical oddity seething with tension. A wonderland waiting to explode.
And everyone is paying the price.
Read the beginning of Perfume Island.
Chapter 1
Not enough oil. And the knife’s too small. Damn!
Tossing the knife aside, Magali slid her fingers into the gash and pulled. With a sound of creaking leather, the two halves of jackfruit came apart. She set to work with the knife again, jabbing at the core to prise it away. Meeting resistance, she grabbed and tugged, ripping out chunks the size of golf balls. Bits of it clung to her fingers, covered her hands in slime. She poured on more oil, rubbed them together. The slime turned into a slippery, viscous syrup. She sighed, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her arm.
Not a good idea, this. What had she been thinking? Still, at least they’d have a laugh when she told Charlotte.
Where is she, anyway? Should be back by now.
She stepped out onto the balcony. Here and there in the puddles of light from the rare, feeble street lamps, gaggles of youths were wandering moodily about, gesticulating and shouting. On the market square where she’d bought the fruit, a couple of men, urged on by supporters, appeared to be spoiling for a fight. Magali’s breath quickened. She ought to ring Charlotte, tell her to be careful. The riot still wasn’t over.
Unless they’d already got her. Stopped the car and dragged her out and… No, don’t be silly. They wouldn’t do that to a tourist.
She went back in, tore off a strip of kitchen roll, and wiped her hands. It made little difference. She was rubbing and scraping, wanting to giggle, inclined to groan, when the phone rang.
‘Charlotte?’ Gingerly, she held it between the tips of her fingers.
‘Just to let you know I’m on my way. Shouldn’t be long.’
Magali let out a quiet sigh. ‘How was it? Did you find everything?’
‘Mmm. Took me a while to find the mozzie coils. But the supermarket was fine. Still not a lot of choice, but more than Sofidep. A bit pricey, though. How about you? Feeling better?’
‘Yes, it seems to be easing.’ An attack of cystitis she’d overplayed in order to do the cooking. ‘I went out, actually. Thought I’d get something special for dinner.’
‘Special? What for?’
‘Do you know what day it is? Anniversary?’
‘Um... Your divorce?’
‘Not far off,’ she said with a laugh. ‘You and I met a year ago today.’
‘Wow! That’s nice. Nice of you to remember.’
‘Well, it changed my life quite a bit. To put it mildly.’
‘Mine too.’ A couple of seconds passed. ‘So what’s on the menu?’
‘Fish curry. Skipjack.’ There was so much more that could have been said, but then, she thought, they’d have time over dinner. Twelve unforgettable months. ‘And there was going to be jackfruit but I’m afraid it’s got the better of me.’
‘You mean you actually bought one? Whole?’
‘Yeah, I went overboard a bit. Thought it’d last the whole holiday if I freeze it. But right now it’s staring up at me like something out of Alien. And emitting this musty smell that stinks out the whole flat.’
‘We’ll do it together when I get back,’ Charlotte said. Then muttered an expletive. ‘God, this road’s dodgy!’
‘Take care when you get into town. There’s some sort of riot going on. Nothing serious, or at least... It’s got a bit quieter now but there are still some men roaming around. Or boys.’
‘Really? I didn’t notice anything.’
‘Not when you left, no. It started after. Just a demonstration, but then it got out of hand. You know they had that festival or whatever before we arrived? Well, someone –’
A sudden thud, a shriek of surprise. A succession of crunching and cracking, followed by another thud.
Then silence.
‘Charlotte!’
No answer.
‘Charlotte? What happened? Are you all right? Charlotte!’
A few seconds of crackle. The line went dead.
She’d gone off the road. There was no other explanation. She was in a ditch somewhere, maybe the car had turned over.
No, not a ditch, just the verge. She’s all right. Maybe a little concussed, she’ll ring any moment.
Several minutes passed. Magali called the number a dozen times. Nothing. She paced the room, phone in hand, whimpering. Finally reached a decision. Rather confront a horde of Muslims in a frenzy than stay here stupidly staring at her phone, waiting for a call that never came.
She drew down the blinds, shut all the windows, hid the laptops in the cavity behind the washing machine. Even in the midst of panic, the procedure had to be followed. And then, half sobbing, she was outside. Lost. Alone. 5000 miles from home. Running about in the dark, telephone stuck to her hand, useless. No one to call, no one to come to her help. The world reduced to this seething pit of hostility.
No. Calm down, get a grip. You’re not alone if you speak the language. This is France for God’s sake! The people are friendly.
That, at any rate, was what she’d been led to believe. Except they weren’t. Not now. She’d been in the country – no, France – just two days and the way things were going, if they spotted her, they wouldn’t help her, they’d lynch her.
She needed a car. A taxi. Where are they? God damn it! Where are the bloody taxis?
Any car. Just stop the first that comes along and ask the driver... what? My friend’s in trouble, please can you help? I need you to drive me...
Where? She had no idea. Up the road. There was only one. Charlotte was on it, she had to be. Somewhere.
A car came up the street, picking her out in the headlights. Magali cautiously raised a hand, the driver slowed as he passed, staring. Her hand dropped back to her side.
Alone. Scared.
Outside the Sofidep supermarket, she dithered. Walk up to the road above the town? There’d surely be cars passing there. Or down to the centre? She’d seen a couple of police vans by the mosque. Too busy to help her? Are you mad? Can’t you see we’ve
got a riot on our hands?
But the road above was dark and uninviting. She chose the centre, striding down the street and taking a right above the market square. Then she turned towards the mosque. She was halfway down the street when a group of youths appeared at the other end, brandishing sticks. Looking for a reason to use them. Car windows? Already done that. Let’s find someone to kill!
For a moment, they were as surprised as she was. What the fuck? A mzungu woman here on her own? One of them saw her phone, took a step towards her.
One Green Bottle Page 33
