After the Crash: A Novel

by Michel Bussi

  It was all there.

  The detective’s mind started working frantically. He had come up with so many theories over the years of the investigation, hundreds of them. But now he knew where to begin, which thread to pull, and the whole tangled web came apart with disconcerting simplicity.

  It was all so obvious.

  He lowered his pistol and laughed like a madman.

  11:59 p.m.

  He had done it!

  The solution to the mystery had been here, on the front page of this newspaper, from the very beginning. And yet it had been absolutely impossible to discover this solution at the time, eighteen years ago. Everyone had read this newspaper, pored over it, analyzed it thousands of times, but no one could possibly have guessed the truth, back in 1980, or during the years that followed.

  The solution was so obvious: it jumped out at you… but on one condition.

  The newspaper had to be looked at eighteen years later.

  2

  October 2, 1998, 8:27 a.m.

  Were they lovers, or brother and sister?

  The question had been nagging at Mariam for almost a month. She ran the Lenin Bar, at the crossroads of Avenue de Stalingrad and Rue de la Liberté, a few yards from the forecourt of the University of Paris VIII in Saint-Denis. At this hour of the morning, the bar was still mostly empty, and Mariam took advantage of the quiet to clean tabletops and arrange chairs.

  The couple in question were sitting at the back of the café, as they usually did, near the window, at a tiny table for two, holding hands and looking deep into each other’s blue eyes.

  Lovers?

  Friends?

  Siblings?

  Mariam sighed. The lack of certainty bothered her. She generally had a keen instinct when it came to her students’ love lives. She snapped out of it: she still had to wipe down the tables and sweep the floor; in a few minutes, thousands of stressed students would rush from the metro station Saint-Denis–Université, the terminus of Line 13. The station had only been open for four months, but already it had transformed the local area.

  Mariam had seen the University of Paris VIII slowly change from its rebellious beginnings as the great university of humanities, society, and culture into a banal, well-behaved suburban learning center. Nowadays, most professors sulked when they were assigned to Paris VIII. They would rather be at the Sorbonne, or even Jussieu. Before the metro station opened, the professors had had to cross through Saint-Denis, to see a little of the surrounding area, but now, with the metro, that, too, was over. The professors boarded the metro on Line 13 and were whisked off toward the libraries, laboratories, ministries, and grand institutions of Parisian culture.

  Mariam turned toward the counter to fetch a sponge, casting a furtive glance at the intriguing young couple: the pretty blond girl and the strapping, spellbound boy. She felt almost haunted by them.

  Who were they?

  Mariam had never understood the workings of higher education, with its modules and examinations and strikes, but no one knew better than she what the students did during their break time. She had never read Robert Castel, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Jacques Lacan, the star professors of Paris VIII—at most, she might have seen them once or twice, in her bar or in the campus forecourt—but nevertheless she considered herself an expert in the analysis, sociology, and philosophy of student love affairs. She was like a mother hen to some of her regulars and an advice columnist to others, helping them through their heartaches with professional skill.

  But despite her experience, her famous intuition, she could not fathom the relationship between the couple at the window.

  Emilie and Marc.

  Shy lovers or affectionate relatives?

  The uncertainty was maddening. Something about them didn’t fit. They looked so alike, yet they were so different. Mariam knew their first names: she knew the first names of all her regulars.

  Marc, the boy, had been studying at Paris VIII for two years now, and he came to the Lenin almost every day. A tall boy, good-looking, but a little too nice, like a disheveled “Little Prince.” Daydreamy, and somewhat gauche: the kind of provincial student who still didn’t know how things worked in Paris, and who lacked the money to look cool. As for his studies, he wasn’t a fanatic. As far as she understood, he was studying European law, but for the past two years, he had seemed very calm and thoughtful. Now Mariam understood why.

  He had been waiting for her. His Emilie.

  She had arrived this year, in September, so she must be two or three years younger than he.

  They shared certain traits. That slightly low-class accent, which Mariam could not locate, but which was indisputably the same. And yet, in Emilie’s case, the accent somehow seemed wrong; it did not fit her personality. The same could be said of her name: Emilie was too ordinary, too bland for a girl like that. Emilie, like Marc, was blond and, like Marc, she had blue eyes. But while Marc’s gestures and expressions were clumsy, simple, unoriginal, there was a je-ne-sais-quoi about Emilie, a strikingly different way of moving, a kind of nobility in the way she held her head, a purebred elegance and grace that seemed to suggest aristocratic genes, a privileged education.

  And that was not the only mystery. In terms of money, Emilie’s standard of living appeared to be the very opposite of Marc’s. Mariam had a knack for evaluating, in an instant, the quality and cost of the clothing worn by her students, from H&M and Zara to Yves Saint Laurent.

  Emilie did not wear Yves Saint Laurent, but she wasn’t far off. What she was wearing today—a simple, elegant orange silk blouse and a black, asymmetrical skirt—had undoubtedly cost a small fortune. Emilie and Marc might be from the same place, but they did not belong to the same world.

  And yet they were inseparable.

  There was a complicity between them that could not be created in only a few months at the university. It was as if they had lived together all their lives, perceptible in the countless protective gestures that Marc made toward Emilie: a hand on her shoulder, a chair pulled out for her, a door held open, a glass filled without asking. It was the way a big brother would behave toward a little sister.

  Mariam wiped down a chair and put it back in position, her mind still churning over the enigma of Marc and Emilie.

  It was as if Marc had spent the previous two years preparing the ground for Emilie’s arrival, keeping her seat warm in the lecture hall, a table near the window in the Lenin. Mariam sensed that Emilie was a brilliant student, quick-witted, ambitious and determined. Artistic. Literary. She could see that determination whenever the girl took out a book or a folder, in the way she would skim confidently over notes that Marc would take hours to master.

  So, could they be brother and sister, in spite of their social differences?

  Well, yes. Except that Marc was in love with Emilie!

  That, too, was blindingly obvious.

  He did not love her like a brother, but like a devoted lover. It was clear to Mariam from the first moment she saw them together. A fever, a passion, completely unmistakable.

  Mariam did not have a clue what this could mean.

  She had been shamelessly spying on them for a month now. She had glanced furtively at the names on files, essays, placed on the table. She knew their surname.

  Marc Vitral.

  Emilie Vitral.

  But ultimately, that did not help. The logical supposition was that they were brother and sister. But then what about those incestuous gestures? The way Marc touched Emilie’s lower back… Or perhaps they were married. She was only eighteen: very young for a student to marry, but not impossible. And, of course, it was technically possible that they just happened to have the same name, but Mariam could not believe in such a coincidence, unless they were cousins or belonged to a more complicated kind of family, with stepparents or half siblings…

  Emilie seemed very fond of Marc. But her expression was more complex, difficult to read. She often seemed to stare into space, particularly when she was alone,
as if she were hiding something, a deep sadness… It was that melancholy that gave Emilie a subtle distance, a different kind of charm from that of all the other girls on campus. All of the boys in the Lenin stared hungrily at her, but—probably because of that reserve—none of them dared to approach her.

  None except Marc.

  Emilie was his. That was why he was here. Not for his courses. Not for the university. He was here purely so he could be with her, so he could protect her.

  But what about the rest? Mariam had often tried talking with Emilie and Marc, chatting about any old subject, but she had never learned anything intimate. But one day, she was determined she would find out their secret…

  She was cleaning the last tables when Marc raised his hand.

  “Mariam, could you bring us two coffees, please, and a glass of water for Emilie?”

  Mariam smiled to herself. Marc never drank coffee when he was alone, but always ordered one when he was with Emilie.

  “No problem, lovebirds!” Mariam replied.

  Testing the water.

  Marc gave an embarrassed smile. Emilie did not. She lowered her head slightly. Mariam only noticed this now: Emilie looked awful this morning, her face puffy, as if she hadn’t slept all night. Was she worrying over an exam? Had she spent the night revising, or writing an essay?

  No, it was something else.

  Mariam shook the coffee grounds into the bin, rinsed the percolator, and made two espressos.

  It was something serious.

  As if Emilie had to give Marc some painful news. Mariam had witnessed so many conversations like that: farewell dates, tragic tête-à-têtes, with the boy sitting alone in front of his coffee while the girl left, looking embarrassed but relieved. Emilie looked like someone who had spent the night thinking and who, by early morning, had made her decision and was ready to accept its consequences.

  Mariam walked slowly toward them, the tray in her hands bearing two coffees and a glass of water.

  Poor Marc. Did he have any inkling that he was already doomed?

  Mariam also knew how to be discreet. She placed the drinks on the table, then turned and walked away.

  3

  October 2, 1998, 8:41 a.m.

  Marc Vitral waited a few moments for Mariam to move away. Then he bent down over his backpack, which he’d left on the floor next to his chair, and took out a small cube wrapped in silver paper.

  “Happy birthday, Emilie,” he said cheerfully.

  He handed her the package.

  Emilie rolled her eyes.

  “Marc!” she scolded him. “You’ve wished me happy birthday three times in the last week. You know I don’t need all that…”

  “Shhh. Open it.”

  Frowning, Emilie unwrapped the present. Inside was a piece of silver jewelry: a complicated-looking cross, with each arm ending in a little diamond shape, except for the top one, which featured a large circle surmounted by a crown. Emilie held the cross in her hands.

  “You’re mad, Marc.”

  “It’s a Tuareg cross. Apparently there are twenty-one different kinds. One shape for each city in the Sahara. This one is from Agadez. Do you like it?”

  “Of course I like it. But…”

  Marc went on, unstoppable: “Apparently, the diamond shapes represent the four cardinal points. Whoever gives someone a Tuareg cross gives them the world.”

  “I know the legend,” Emilie whispered softly. “‘I offer you the four corners of the world because you cannot know where you will die.’”

  Marc smiled, embarrassed. Of course Lylie already knew all about Tuareg crosses, just as she knew about everything. There was silence for a moment. Emilie reached out for her cup of coffee. Instinctively, Marc did the same. His fingers moved toward hers, hoping they would touch. Suddenly, Marc’s hand stopped dead. Lylie was wearing a ring. It was gold, beautifully wrought, and set with a pale sapphire; a magnificent antique, and undoubtedly worth a fortune. Marc had never seen it before. He stared at it in confusion for several seconds, overcome by the jealousy he always felt when confronted with something that seemed to distance him from Emilie. Finally he managed to stammer: “That… that ring, is… is it yours?”

  “No. I stole it this morning from a shop in the Place Vendôme!”

  Marc still felt floored and his eyelid fluttered slightly. The Tuareg cross he had given her had cost him all the money he’d earned from two days and three nights working as a switchboard operator for France Telecom, his student job, but it looked like cheap junk compared to that ring. And Lylie had already put the African jewel back in its canvas box, whereas the ring sat proudly on her finger.

  He forced himself to swallow a mouthful of coffee, then said: “That… your ring… was it a birthday present?”

  Emilie lowered her eyes. “Sort of. It’s a bit complicated… Beautiful, though, isn’t it?”

  She paused, trying to find the right words.

  “I’ll explain it to you, don’t worry, at least not about this ring…”

  Emilie put her hand on Marc’s.

  Don’t worry. At least not about this ring…

  The words reverberated inside Marc’s head. What did she mean? Lylie looked awful this morning, as if she had not slept all night, even though she was trying to smile at him. Suddenly, as if she had made an important decision, her eyes lit up. She took a few sips of coffee then bent down over her schoolbag. She pulled out a notebook with a pale green cover and slid it across the table toward Marc.

  “Now it’s my turn, Marc. This is for you.”

  Marc felt another wave of vague anxiety rise within him.

  “What is it?”

  “Grand-Duc’s notebook,” Emilie replied instantly. “He gave it to me the day before yesterday, the day after my birthday. Well, actually, he left it in my mailbox, or got someone else to leave it there. I found it in the morning.”

  Marc cautiously touched the notebook with his fingertips. His eyelid was fluttering again.

  That notebook. Grand-Duc’s investigation… Now he understood. Emilie had spent the last two days reading and rereading it. The eighteen-year investigation carried out by that mad old private detective. A lifetime’s work. Emilie’s lifetime. Almost to the day.

  Some fucking birthday present!

  Marc looked for clues in Emilie’s expression. What truth had she discovered in the notebook? A new identity? A calm acceptance of everything, at last? Or nothing at all? Only questions without answers…

  Emilie was not giving anything away. She was too good at this game. She poured a few drops of water into her coffee, her little ritual, and drank it slowly.

  “You see, Marc, he did give it to me in the end, just like he always promised. The truth. For my passage into the adult world.”

  Emilie laughed nervously. Still Marc did not pick up the notebook.

  “And…?” he asked. “What does he say, in this notebook? Anything important? Do you… do you know now?”

  Emilie looked away, out through the window, where small groups of students were crossing the Paris VIII forecourt.

  “Know what?”

  Marc began to feel exasperated. The words formed in his head but he did not say them aloud: Know what that stupid detective was paid, for so many years, to find out! Know who you are, Lylie. Who you are!

  Emilie played distractedly with her ring.

  “Well, now it’s your turn. You need to read it, Marc.”

  Marc’s mind was in turmoil. He picked up the notebook and heard himself say: “All right, little dragonfly. I’ll read your damn notebook…”

  He was silent for a moment, then added: “But what about you? Are you OK?”

  “Yes, don’t worry. I’m fine.”

  Emilie sipped her coffee again. She looked as if she were forcing herself to drink it.

  “Did Grand-Duc leave a note?”

  “No, nothing. But it’s all in the notebook.”

  “And…?”

  “It’s better if you read
it yourself.”

  “So where is Grand-Duc now?”

  Emilie’s eyes clouded over again, as if she were hiding something. She made a show of looking at her watch.

  “Are you leaving already?”

  “I don’t have classes this morning, but you do. At ten o’clock. Constitutional European Law. You have a tutorial with the young and fascinating Professor Grandin. I really have to go.”

  Emilie poured the last drop of water into her coffee, drank the rest slowly, then bent down over her bag again.

  “I… I have another present for you.”

  She handed him a little gift-wrapped package, slightly larger than a box of matches.

  Marc froze. He was filled with foreboding.

  “You mustn’t open it now,” Emilie continued breathlessly. “Only after I’ve gone. One hour later. Promise me? It’s like hide-and-seek: you have to give me time to disappear. So close your eyes and count to, let’s say, a thousand…”

  Emilie seemed to be putting all her energy into convincing Marc that her request was just some foolish lovers’ game, but Marc was not fooled.

  “Promise?” Emilie insisted.

  Resigned, Marc nodded. They looked at each other for a long time. Emilie blinked first.

  “No, you won’t do it. You’re stubborn, Marc, I know you. You’ll tear into it as soon as my back is turned.”

  Marc did not contradict her. Emilie lifted a slender hand.

  That damn ring sparkled in the light.

  “Mariam?”

  The landlady reacted instantly, as if she had been watching them, just waiting for such a command. She stood in front of Marc and Emilie’s table.

  “Mariam, I have a favor to ask you. I want to leave this package with you. You must give it to Marc in one hour, and not a moment sooner! Even if he begs you, bribes you, or blackmails you. And, now that I think about it, you must send him off to his class in one hour, too—room B318!”