Blood Wedding

by Pierre Lemaitre

  Frantz wonders what is going on in Sophie’s mind right now. What if she tries to kill herself again? No, in that case she would not have run away. There are lots of ways to end your life in a clinic, in fact it is probably the easiest place to die. She could have slashed her wrists again. Why run away? Sophie is completely disorientated. The first time she tried to escape, she sat for almost three hours in a café and came home without even remembering where she had been. He can think of only one answer: Sophie left without the faintest idea of where she might be going. She did not leave, she fled. She is trying to outrun her madness. She will eventually find sanctuary somewhere. And though Frantz has considered the problem from every angle, he cannot think where a wanted murderer like Sophie Duguet could turn for help if not her father. Sophie was forced to cut all ties in order to become Marianne Leblanc. Unless she has simply picked a destination at random (in which case she will have to come home soon), the only place she can come is here, to her father’s house. It is simply a matter of being patient.

  Frantz adjusts the binoculars and watches as M. Auverney parks his car in the garage.

  *

  She still has work to do, but it has been a very long day and she is eager to get back. Since, as a rule, she starts late in the morning, usually she does not leave before 8.30 p.m., sometimes 9.00. As she leaves, she calls out that she will come in early tomorrow, though she knows that this will not happen. On the drive back, she reminds herself over and over of the things she can and cannot do, the things she should and should not do. It is very difficult when you have never had much self-discipline. In the back of the taxi, she leafs through a magazine. In the street, she does not look around her. She keys in the door code and pushes it open. Since she never takes the lift, she does not do so today. She gets to her landing, takes out her keys, opens the door, goes inside, closes it and turns around. Sophie is standing in front of her, still wearing the clothes she arrived in the night before. Sophie flaps her hands impatiently, like a flustered policeman directing traffic. Keep doing exactly what she would usually do! Valérie gives a thumbs up, walks further into the apartment and tries to think what it is she usually does. But now she has a complete mental block. She cannot remember a thing. Despite the fact that Sophie made her repeat the list of actions several times, she can think of nothing. Pale as a ghost, Valérie stares at Sophie. She cannot move. Sophie places her hands on her friend’s shoulders and sits her on the chair next to the door where she usually leaves her bag. A second later, Sophie is on her knees, has taken off Valérie’s shoes and put them on herself. Now she moves about the apartment. She goes into the kitchen, opens and closes the fridge, goes into the bathroom, leaving the door open, waits for a moment, flushes the toilet, then goes into the bedroom. Valérie, meanwhile, has managed to regain her composure. She feels guilty. She is not equal to the task. Sophie reappears in the doorway. She gives her a nervous smile. Valérie closes her eyes, relieved. When she opens them again, Sophie is holding out the telephone and giving her a worried, quizzical look. For Valérie this is a second chance. By the time she has dialled the number she is walking around the apartment herself. Be careful, Sophie has told her, nothing would be worse than overplaying things, so in a casual tone she says no, she doesn’t fancy going out tonight, she has a deadline, she gives a little laugh, spends longer than usual listening then says her goodbyes, yes, yes, you too, O.K., see you soon, then she goes back into the bathroom, washes her hands and takes out her contact lenses. When she re-emerges, Sophie has her ear pressed to the front door, she is staring at the floor, her face rapt as though praying.

  They have not exchanged a word.

  When she came in, Valérie noticed a faint smell of urine in the apartment. The smell is more pungent now. While putting away her contact lenses she noticed that Sophie has peed in the bath. She gives her a questioning look, gesturing towards the bathroom. Sophie abandons her listening post for a second, gives Valérie a sad smile and spreads her hands helplessly. She was determined not to make the slightest noise all day and had no choice. Valérie smiles in turn and mimes taking a shower.

  Over supper they are silent. Valérie has read the long document Sophie spent the day writing in longhand. From time to time, as she reads, she hands her a page and gives a dubious frown. Sophie picked up the pen and carefully wrote more words in the margin. Valérie read slowly, shaking her head again and again, it all seems insane to her. Sophie turned on the television, allowing them to talk in low voices beneath the sound. Valérie finds these precautions excessive and faintly ridiculous. Sophie squeezes her arm and looks her in the eye. Valérie swallows hard. In a barely audible whisper Sophie says, “Can you buy me a laptop, a little one?” Valérie rolls her eyes. What a question!

  She gave Sophie everything she needed to change her bandages and watched as she did so. Sophie seemed thoughtful. She looked up for a moment and murmured:

  “Are you still going out with that girl from the pharmacy?”

  Valérie nodded. Sophie smiled.

  “And she still can’t say no to you?”

  A little later Sophie yawns, she is so tired her eyes are watering. She smiles by way of apology. She does not want to sleep alone. Before she dozes off, she puts her arms around Valérie. She wants to say something, but the words will not come. She hugs harder.

  Sophie is sleeping like a stone. Valérie holds her close. Every time she sees the bandages she feels her stomach lurch and a shudder run through her body. It is strange. For more than ten years, she would have given anything to have Sophie here in bed with her. “But it had to be now, like this,” she thinks. It is enough to make her cry. She knows how much that desire played a part in her instinctive act of hugging Sophie when she showed up last night.

  It had been almost 2.00 a.m. when Valérie was woken by the doorbell: Sophie had spent two hours making sure the building was not being watched. When she opened the door, Valérie immediately recognised that shadow of what was once Sophie in the woman standing in the doorway, arms dangling by her sides, wearing a black vinyl jacket. She looks like a smack addict, was Valérie’s first thought. Sophie looked ten years older, her shoulders sagged, she had dark rings around eyes that spoke of utter desperation. Valérie took her in her arms.

  Now she lies listening to her steady breathing. Without moving, she tries to see Sophie’s face, but can make out only her forehead. She wants to turn her over, to kiss her. She feels tears welling. She opens her eyes wide, determined not to succumb to such facile temptation.

  She has spent most of today turning over in her mind the information, the interpretations, the signs, the theories that Sophie rattled off when she arrived last night. Valérie remembers the countless telephone calls, the anguished e-mails Sophie sent her over several months. Months when she thought her friend was going mad. In the nightstand beside the bed, she can sense the presence of a passport photograph that is Sophie’s most treasured possession, her spoils of war. It is not much: the sort of dreary photograph you realise looks awful the second it is spat out of the booth, but you think “It doesn’t matter” because it is only for a travelcard and you find yourself having to stare at it for a whole year, dismayed by how ugly you look. In the photograph, which Sophie has carefully preserved with layers of Sellotape, she has a slightly inane expression, a forced smile. The flash makes her complexion deathly pale. But in spite of these flaws, this photograph is the one thing Sophie values above all others. She would give her life for that photograph, if she has not already done so.

  Valérie imagines Sophie’s bewilderment on the day she stumbled across it, imagines her turning it over and over in her hands. In that first instant, Sophie is too distraught to understand: she has slept for ten hours straight and woken with her brain more fogged than ever, her skull feels as though it is about to explode. But this discovery has such an effect on her that she drags herself to the bathroom, clambers into the bath, angles the shower nozzle above her head and, after a flicker of hesitation, grimly
opens the cold tap. The jolt is such that the scream sticks in her throat. She almost faints, but steadies herself against the tiled partition, her pupils dilate, but still she stands in the freezing spray, her eyes wide open. A few minutes later, wrapped in Frantz’s bathrobe, she is sitting at the kitchen table cradling a steaming bowl of tea and staring at the photograph. Though she has gone over and over it in her mind until her head aches, what she is staring at is literally impossible. She feels like throwing up. On a sheet of paper she jots down dates, reconstructs the logical timeline, correlates the events. She scrutinises the photograph, making a note of her haircut, of the jacket she was wearing when it was taken. But the conclusion is always the same: this is the photograph from the travelcard she kept in the handbag that was stolen in 2000 by a motorcyclist at the traffic lights on rue de Commerce.

  Question: how can she have found it in Frantz’s flight bag? It is impossible that Frantz could have found it among the affairs of Marianne Leblanc because it has been missing for more than three years.

  She had been looking for a pair of old sneakers in the hall cupboard when she slipped her hand into the lining of one of Frantz’s old travel bags and came out with a small photograph three centimetres square. She glances at the clock on the kitchen wall. Too late to start now. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

  *

  The next day, and in the days that follow, Sophie scours the apartment from top to bottom, leaving no trace of her movements. She suffers vicious waves of nausea. Ever since she began to force herself to vomit up the various medications Frantz gives her (this one for migraine, this one to help her sleep, this one to keep her calm, “don’t worry, they’re just herbal remedies . . .”), she finds herself retching and just has time to run to the bathroom. Her insides are churned up. Despite all this, she searches, she probes, she turns the apartment upside down: nothing. Nothing but this solitary photograph, but that in itself is something major.

  It leads her to other questions which date from much earlier. Sophie racks her brain for hours on end, looking for answers that never come. Sometimes she is literally blazing, as though truth is a flame she cannot quench, that burns her hands.

  Then, without warning, it comes to her. It is not a revelation, more an intuition, a bolt from the blue. She stares at her mobile on the living-room table. Calmly she picks it up, removes the back, takes out the battery. With the point of a kitchen knife, she unscrews a circuit board and discovers a tiny orange microchip stuck on with double-sided tape. She removes it using tweezers. With a magnifying glass, she manages to make out a code, a string of letters, some numbers: SERV.0879, then: AH68-(REV 2.4).

  A few minutes later, Google has led her to an American electronics website, to the page for the AH68 which it lists as a “G.P.S. Tracker”.

  “Where were you?” Frantz asks her, panicked. “Four hours! Can you believe it?” He says it over and over as though he himself does not believe it.

  Four hours.

  Just enough time for Sophie to leave the house, take the bus the eighteen kilometres to Villefranche, order a coffee in a café, hide her mobile in the toilets before leaving and going upstairs to the restaurant above the Marché Villiers, which offers panoramic views of the city, of the street, and of the café past which, less than an hour later, a cautious but plainly anxious Frantz rides slowly on his motorbike.

  *

  Of everything Sophie told Valérie last night, this is what she remembers most: the man she married in order to escape her nightmare is her torturer. This man she sleeps next to every night, who climbs on top of her. This time, Valérie’s tears encounter no barrier, they trickle silently down her face and fall into Sophie’s hair.

  *

  M. Auverney, wearing blue overalls and work gloves, is stripping the paint off his gate. For two days, Frantz has been watching his every move, monitoring his comings and goings, but he has nothing to compare them to, he cannot tell whether there has been any change in the man’s routine. He has kept a close watch on the house for any sign of life when the man is away. Nothing stirs. The man seems to be alone. On a number of occasions Frantz followed him when he went out. Auverney drives a large, metallic grey Volkswagen. Yesterday he went to the supermarket, then filled up with petrol. This morning, he went to the post office and then spent about an hour at the préfecture before heading home via the garden centre, where he bought bags of compost which he has still not unloaded. The car is parked in front of a shed that serves as a garage. It has two very wide doors, one of which would offer more than enough space for the car to drive in. Frantz forces himself to ward off his nagging doubts: after two days, it seems pointless to carry on waiting and more than once he has considered changing tactics. But whichever way he looks at the problem, this is the only place where Sophie can be. At about 6.00 p.m., Auverney seals the tin of paint stripper and goes to wash his hands at the outside tap. He opens the boot of his car to unload the compost but, remembering their weight, he changes his mind and drives the car into the shed to unload them.

  Frantz scans the sky. It is clear for the moment, and his hiding place is safe.

  *

  Once he had reversed into the shed and opened the car boot for the second time, Patrick Auverney looked at his daughter, who had been curled up behind the bags for the past five hours, and he came within a whisker of speaking to her. But Sophie has already raised her hand in warning and is staring at him authoritatively: he said nothing. When she crawled out, she did a few stretches to ease her aching limbs, but already she was scanning the shed. Then she turned to her father. She has always thought him handsome. He cannot bring himself to admit that she is scarcely recognisable. Haggard, drawn. There are purple rings around her glittering, feverish eyes. Her skin is the colour of parchment. He is upset, and she understands this. She pressed herself against him, closing her eyes and sobbing in silence. They stood like this for a moment. Then Sophie took a step back and, smiling through her tears, fumbled for a handkerchief. He offered her his. She has always thought he was strong. She took a sheet of paper from the back pocket of her jeans. Her father took his reading glasses from his shirt pocket and began to read attentively. From time to time, he pauses and looks up at her, shocked. He looks at the bandages on her wrists: it makes him feel ill. He shakes his head as if to say, “It’s not possible.” When he has finished reading, he makes the thumbs up sign mentioned in the document. They smile at each other. He puts away his glasses, straightens his clothes, takes a deep breath and leaves the shed to work in the garden.

  *

  When Auverney emerged from the shed, he moved the garden seat and the table into the shade, then he went into the house. Through the binoculars, Frantz saw him walking through the kitchen and into the living room. He re-emerged a few minutes later with his laptop and two cardboard folders stuffed with files, and settled himself at the garden table to work. He rarely consults his notes. He types quickly. From his vantage point, Frantz can see only his back. From time to time Auverney takes out a map, unfolds it, checks a figure, scribbles rapid calculations on the cover of the folder. Patrick Auverney is a serious man.

  The scene is excruciatingly static. Any other sentry would be caught off guard, but not Frantz. No matter the time, he will not leave his post until long after the last light in the house has been turned off.

  *

  p.auverney@neuville.fr has just logged on

  You there?

  souris_verte@msn.fr has just logged on

  Papa? I’m here.

  Phew!

  Pls don’t forget: you need to look natural, check your notes, act like a professional . . .

  I am a professional!

  You’re a professional Papa.

  Are you alright????

  Don’t worry.

  Are you kidding?

  I mean: don’t worry anymore. I’ll be fine.

  You gave me a hell of a fright.

  I gave myself a hell of a fright. But stop worrying, everything will be alright now. U rea
d my mail?

  Reading it now. Open in another window. But first: I love you. I miss you so much. SO MUCH. I love you.

  I love you too. It’s so good to see you again, BUT STOP IT NOW PLS YOU’LL HAVE ME IN TEARS!!!

  OK. I’ll stop for now. Until afterwards . . . You sure there’s a point to what we’re doing right now, because otherwise we look like idiots . . .

  Read my mail: I’m SURE he’s here, he’ll be watching you RIGHT NOW.

  It feels like acting in an empty theatre.

  If it makes you feel better you have an audience of ONE. And he’s riveted.

  If he’s here . . .

  I KNOW he’s here.

  And you think he monitors EVERYTHING?

  I’m living proof that he monitors everything.

  Makes you think . . .

  What?

  Nothing . . .

  Hey?

  . . .

  You there, Papa?

  Yes.

  You had time to think yet?

  Not really . . .

  What U doing?

  Pretending to work. Reading your mail.

  OK.

  It’s completely insane but strangely it makes me feel much better . . .

  What?

  Everything. Seeing you, knowing you’re here. Alive.