Apocalypse Baby

by Virginie Despentes

  ‘Where are you going to start?’

  ‘That’s just what I’m wondering. This kid is half-crazy. I’ve no idea what’s happened to her. And the grandmother is so scary that I can’t lean on her about it. Honestly, I don’t know. Her biological mother, I suppose.’

  He looks at me without saying anything. I think he is waiting for me to outline my plan of attack.

  I ask, ‘You’ve done missing persons, haven’t you? Aren’t you sometimes afraid you’ll find something grim?’ I’m trying to sound casual, but just pronouncing these words opens up a hollow in my chest. I hadn’t realized how scared I was.

  ‘Well, five thousand euros reward, what can I say? I don’t ask myself if I’m afraid of what I’ll find, I ask myself how I’m going to track down this kid. If you can’t see how to handle it yourself, just delegate. Everyone else does. You can share the bonus. Do you need some contacts?’

  ‘I thought about that. I’m going to put a proposal to the Hyena. She knows the ropes.’

  It’s the first name that comes into my head that might impress him. I let it drop in the tone of voice of a girl who calls up the Hyena every time she loses her house keys. It’s true that I know this guy who knows her, but actually, I’ve never set eyes on her.

  Jean-Marc utters a slightly choked laugh. He doesn’t look anxious and concerned any more, he looks distant. The Hyena has a reputation. Declaring I could work with her is tantamount to saying I have clandestine activities. I’m already regretting the lie, but I go ahead with my yarn.

  ‘I often meet people in this bar where she hangs out. The barman’s a pal of mine, and he’s a big friend of hers.’

  ‘So one way and another, you’ve got to know her.’

  I don’t answer. Jean-Marc blows on his coffee then says, thoughtfully, ‘You know, Lucie, it’s just a matter of luck and perseverance. It may look impossible at first, but somehow or other a lead opens up, and then it’s just a matter of sweating it out.’

  I agree, as if I could see what he means.

  Jean-Marc has long been the star of our outfit, not just because he composes his reports in such a dazzling style that even when he fails on a case, by the time you reach the end you would think he had succeeded. He was the right-hand man of our old boss, and everyone thought he’d be the official number two, and go off to direct a big branch. Then Deucené was appointed director, and Jean-Marc made him ill at ease. Too tall, probably.

  Jean-Marc closes the door quietly behind him. I look for the index card for Cro-Mag. I’ll call him from a cabin when I go down to lunch in a while. I don’t trust the phone lines in the office, they’re all tapped, although I can’t think who’d have the time to listen to our conversations. It’s a professional reflex, I only use my mobile to text birthday greetings and I avoid sending emails altogether. I know what they can cost you if there’s an enquiry or a lawsuit. And I know they can be hacked by anyone who’s nosy. I still often send letters by snail mail. To guess the contents of an envelope is a skill most agents don’t have nowadays. I’ve never had anything important to conceal, but in this job you develop a degree of paranoia.

  Cro-Mag doesn’t burst out laughing when I tell him I want to contact the Hyena. I’m grateful to him for that. He tells me to call back later. I head for Valentine’s school, to have a coffee in the bar where the kids go every lunchtime. This little private school doesn’t have a canteen or a playground, it wasn’t designed for the children’s needs. I don’t try to talk to them, I just eavesdrop on their conversations. Nobody mentions Valentine. They don’t know she’s missing, which means the police haven’t been called in yet. Though I’d have been willing to bet that the Galtans are well-connected enough to get the police to give this case more priority than they would for some ordinary missing person. The kids go back in to class. They’re empty-headed, noisy and over-excited. Interchangeable profiles. I’m not interested in them. It’s mutual, I haven’t registered on their field of vision. That’s my strength: I’m dispensable. I stay there most of the afternoon, reading every word of a newspaper a customer has left on a table, and ordering more coffees. Guilt at hanging about instead of starting the enquiry nags at me a bit, but not enough to prevent my enjoying the afternoon off.

  On the pavement outside the bar where Cro-Mag works, a group of Goths are smoking, and laughing a lot, which seems contrary to their philosophy to me, but then I’m no specialist. None of them takes any notice as I push through the throng to go in.

  Cro-Mag welcomes me warmly. Given his lifestyle – alcohol, hard drugs, up all night, surviving on kebabs and fags – he’s looking good. He still has the kind of loopy energy most people lose after thirty, and in him it doesn’t look forced. His ear lobes are deformed by the huge earrings he wears, his teeth are nicotine orange but at least he’s got them all, that’s something. He leans across the counter to whisper that she’ll be along soon. From a distance, it must look as if I’ve come in looking for drugs and he’s telling me where to find a dealer. Scratching his chin, and tipping back his head in a virile but unattractive movement, he adds, ‘These days, she’s sniffing around this girl who comes in often. It wasn’t hard to get her to drop by.’

  I order a beer at the counter, I’d have preferred a hot chocolate because it’s cold outside, but I’ve got a date with the Hyena and I don’t want her to think I’m a wimp. I don’t often touch alcohol in bars, it gives me a headache and I don’t like losing control. You never know what you might be capable of once you lose your inhibitions.

  I’ve known Cro-Mag a long time. Over one winter, about fifteen years ago, we slept together. I’d thought him rather ugly, but after we’d had a lot to drink, he’d insisted so much that we should go home together that it was tempting. Then one day he turned up with a girlfriend in tow, from some distant province, dark-haired and pretty enough not to be ashamed to be seen with a type like him. Cro-Mag avoided me for a while after that, feeling guilty and afraid I’d ask for explanations or make a scene. But I’d stayed calm, so he’d become affectionate towards me, and could always be counted on to call and ask me to go for a coffee if he was in my neighbourhood, or to invite me if he threw a party. It was via him, two years ago, that I’d heard they were looking for staff at the Reldanch agency.

  He tips out some peanuts, puts one saucer down beside me, gives me a friendly wink and goes back to filling glasses behind the bar. He’s only too willing to talk about the Hyena: he loves describing their adventures. They used to work together. They even started off in partnership. Debt collecting. Their first customer was a so-called textile merchant, in tiny premises in the 12th arrondissement, who’d ‘forgotten’ to pay a supplier. Their job was to suggest that he paid this longstanding bill off as soon as possible. Before they went there, the Hyena proposed to Cro-Mag that she’d be the bad cop and he could be the good cop, and he’d felt insulted. ‘Have you seen what I look like?’ A reasonable response: Cro-Mag is built like a colossus and with his small, dark, close-set eyes, his expression veers between a scary stupidity and bestiality. Being more impressed by his mission than he wanted to admit, he’d given the guy a brutal shaking, counting on his energy to make up for his lack of experience. The guy was whining, but you could see that he was playacting just to get them to stop. The Hyena had stayed in the background, not saying a word. Then just as they were leaving, she had wheeled round, grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck, smiled and snapped her teeth three times in his ear. ‘If we have to come back here, you turd, I will personally bite your cock off with my teeth, got that?’

  The way Cro-Mag tells it, it was like coming into contact with the Incredible Hulk, only not green: she’d mutated into a monster, anyone would have run a mile from her. And yet afterwards, she was depressed, and thought it hadn’t worked. ‘Couldn’t smell fear on him. Smells like fucking ammonia, it’s so gross if you smell it on someone, makes you want to hit them at once.’ Cro-Mag had been even more worried than during the confrontation itself: ‘You’re sick,’ he
said, ‘you’re really sick.’ The moment she’d grabbed the man by the neck, he’d felt as if something had splashed on to him. He called it ‘the urge to kill, naked, something you can’t fake’. The man had paid up that same evening. Gradually, they’d found their rhythm: he’d make the first approach, she’d go in to underline the message. A sort of alchemy surrounded them, so they made excellent persuaders. He liked to recall that it was him who’d given her the nickname: ‘if you’d seen her in action, in those days, you couldn’t think of anything else. A hyena; the more vicious and sadistic she was, the more she enjoyed it.’ Cro-Mag was full of theories about that period in his life, and I guess he’d worked them out by talking to her. ‘Fear’s something animal, it’s beyond language, even if some words spark it off more than others… you have to feel your way, it’s like with a girl, you’re on a date but you don’t know her, you move your hands around in the dark until the precise moment when it starts to work, all you have to do then is hold it there and you can reel her in. So whether you’ve got someone who’s dumb but obstinate, or someone who’s imaginative and nervy, you have to make them get the message loud and clear: next time we’ll go for the jugular, you won’t get away, and you know that.’ He’d loved working with her, he boasted about it willingly to the kids who hung around his bar as if he was giving them important lessons for life: ‘We made a good team, we were agreed on the basics, such as: take long breaks often, the job works better if you’re feeling relaxed; always accept a bribe if it’s substantial, and, above all, when in serious danger, running away is not harmful to your health. We talked a lot about girls too. It’s important to have interests in common. You can’t talk about the job all the time, too stressful.’ And then one rainy morning, in the 13th arrondissement, they were going after a Russian – Russians had started arriving in Paris, this was a long time ago – and Cro-Mag had complained about his stomach ulcer. The Hyena had asked him, ‘Are you fed up with this job?’ and it had been like a light bulb going on: yes, he was fed up of getting up every morning not knowing who he was going to threaten next, whether there would be many of them, whether he’d be frightened or, worst of all, whether he’d feel sorry for them and ashamed of what he was doing. He was fed up with clenching his buttocks every night when he put the key in his front door, with a hollow in his stomach at the thought of finding some men waiting for him in the sitting room, or his girlfriend’s body lying mutilated in the kitchen, or being pinned to the ground by a squad of cops. Yes, he was fed up with living in constant terror, without earning enough to move out of his thirty square metres in Belleville. The only reason he was hanging on was to work with her. She had said, ‘If you give it up, yes, I’ll miss you. But you’re capable of doing something else. I’m not. I can’t stand being crossed. Whereas you can adapt, it’s a shame for you to wear your health out doing a job you hate.’ Cro-Mag says that made him want to cry, because he realized at that moment he was going to give it up and that it was over, being a team with her. But also because he knew she was telling the truth: she was beyond saving, unfit for normal life. The difference between the truly tough and those who opt for redemption is that some people have the choice, others don’t. Every time he reached this part of their story, he got emotional, spontaneously, as if he’d abandoned an injured teammate on top of a mountain, knowing he couldn’t last long, and was now feeling guilty at being able to escape on his own two legs and get back to normal life. ‘The Hyena, she’s pure tragedy, when you get close to her, you really understand what it is to be lonely, sad, and unfit for the world.’ When he went on like this, it was obvious that he loved her. Not ‘loved’ as in I want to eat your pussy, but like when someone’s whole attitude is dear to you and every memory you share is covered with a fine golden sheen. Well. In the two years I’ve been doing my present job, I’ve had many occasions to hear things about her, and I’ve learnt that she has inspired the same feelings in many people, so don’t try to tell me she suffers from loneliness…

  They’d carried on meeting, in the usual Cro-Mag way, for a coffee from time to time. This guy must spend a crazy amount of energy keeping up with old friends. Over the years, the Hyena had become a star among private investigators: there aren’t many of those in the trade, outside crime novels. Her speciality was missing persons. Since then, the stories told about her have evolved into various, contradictory versions, some of them pure fiction. Everyone has their own tale to tell, lawyers, informers, special branch, the cops, other PIs, journalists, hairdressers, hotel staff and prostitutes… anyone who’s involved in our little world has their own story about what she’s up to, where, how, and who with. She provides drugs for government ministries, with cover from the secret service, she recruits call girls for officials, she has ultrasecret information about ex-French Africa, she speaks Russian fluently and gets on fine with Putin, she’s on a mission to rescue hostages in Turkestan, she’s trafficking on behalf of South American countries, she’s spying on the Scientologists, she’s involved with synthetic medicines imported from Asia, the big agro-industrial firms have hired her to defend their interests, nuclear power holds no secrets for her, she’s protected by radical Islamists, she’s got a house in Switzerland, she often travels to Israel… But the stories all agree on one point: she’s never been sentenced in any court, because her files are too explosive for her not to be covered in any circumstances. And it’s a fact that over the past five years, when lawsuits and trials have mushroomed, no legal practice has boasted of having her as a client. She hasn’t worked for any single outfit for a long time now, but her name crops up – occasioning scorn, admiration, anger or amusement – whenever people are looking for something vaguely sensational to talk about.

  I watch the door out of the corner of my eye, with growing nervousness. I repeat over and over the sentences of introduction that I’ve prepared. I keep telling myself for reassurance that she can’t have done a tenth of the things people say, and that in times of economic crisis, five thousand euros cash bonus is a sum worth discussing. At regular intervals, Cro-Mag asks me if I want anything else, I refuse, and he shuts his eyes and nods several times, a mysterious smile floating across his face, all meaning, I presume, that she’ll be along soon, you have to be patient, she’s no doubt on some top-level mission. The bar has filled up, a hoarse-voiced male singer is croaking something out of the speakers, I’ll never understand the appeal of that kind of music, you’d think you were on a building site. Suddenly Cro-Mag’s face lights up, and the Hyena is right beside me. Very tall, hollow cheeks, Ray-Bans, men’s style, a figure-hugging white leather jacket, she must think she’s a film star. Cro-Mag points towards me, and she holds out her hand.

  ‘Lucie? You wanted to see me?’ She doesn’t take the glasses off, doesn’t smile, and doesn’t give me time to say anything. ‘Five minutes if you don’t mind? I’ve got to say hello to some friends, then I’ll be back.’

  Seen close up, she doesn’t look at all like the mythical person I’ve heard so much about. I wait, while conscientiously sipping my half-glass of beer, clench my teeth, and tell myself that even if this is a ridiculous attempt, it won’t kill me to have made the effort.

  ‘Shall we sit down over there? It’ll be quieter to talk.’

  She goes ahead of me, confident and casual, her legs are long and slender in her tight-fitting white jeans, she’s fashionably slim, a body that tends to vanish and carries clothes well. I feel like I’m short and fat, my jumper is damp with nervous sweat, I realize my hands are shaking, and I reckon I’m lucky not to fall on my face as we go over there. She sits down facing me, arms draped over the back of her chair, legs apart, as if she’s trying to take up the maximum of space with the minimum of body mass. I collect my wits and wonder how to begin. She takes her shades off at last, and gives me a long cool look up and down. She has very big dark eyes and an expressive face, lined like an old Indian woman’s.

  ‘I work for the Reldanch agency.’

  ‘Yeah, Cro-Mag told me.’


  ‘I’ve sort of specialized in checking up on minors.’

  ‘On to a good thing there, I gather.’

  ‘Yes, it’s one of our best lines. I’ve been tailing this girl, she’s fifteen, and I lost her, in the metro, the morning before yesterday on her way to school. She didn’t come home, she hasn’t been in touch. Her grandmother’s offered five thousand euros if we can get her back in a fortnight. And…’

  ‘Five thousand euros, alive or dead?’

  I suppose that’s the kind of question I ought to have thought of asking.

  ‘I hope we’ll find her alive.’

  ‘What do you think, runaway or kidnap?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘What kind of girl?’

  ‘Difficult, sex-mad, off the rails.’

  ‘What’s the family like?’

  ‘The father’s a writer, with a private income, from the family pharmaceutical company somewhere near Lyon. He brought the kid up on his own, with the grandmother being around a lot. The mother took off when Valentine was two years old, doesn’t see her, and nobody seems to know at the moment where she is.’