After the Crash

by Michel Bussi

  Crédule Grand-Duc’s Journal The tiny gold link was sent, carefully wrapped in a plastic packet, to the best forensics laboratory in France, at Rosny-sous-Bois. The cigarette butts and beer cans were sent there too. I still had friends in the police, and I had Mathilde de Carville’s money. There was nothing illegal about it. Not very illegal, anyway. It was just a parallel investigation.

  I got the results eight days later. The link I had found in the grave was definitely made of gold. That was the only certainty, however. The smallness of the sample made it impossible to tell whether the link had come from a baby’s bracelet or any other kind of jewellery. It might even have come from a dog’s name tag! There was also no way of knowing when or where it had been manufactured.

  But still, a gold link from a piece of jewellery . . . it deepened the mystery. Why would that link have been buried in a grave marked by a pile of stones? Who could have buried it there?

  The reward for information leading to the discovery of LyseRose’s bracelet, meanwhile, had risen to seventy-five thousand francs. It was a ludicrous sum, particularly for a bracelet that would, I very much hoped, be missing a link from its chain. But by that point, the prize seemed entirely theoretical. I had long ago given up hope that anyone would claim it.

  I was wrong. The line would dangle in the water for another two years, but a fish would finally bite. A big fish. But be patient for a while longer, and I will tell you all about that. In terms of suspense, I don’t think you really have anything to complain about: an interminable year for me is summarised for you in a few pages.

  The cigarette butts and other debris found in the hut on Mont Terri were not particularly useful. After seven years, that was to be expected. Dozens of teenage drinkers and lovers must have spent nights in that cabin since Georges Pelletier stayed there in 1980.

  So we were back to square one: I had to find Georges Pelletier. I spent many nights in Besançon, talking to homeless people and winning their trust. I realise this might seem quaint: a few drunks and tramps, sleeping on the streets of a small provincial town, sharing their stories around the campfire. Believe me, it was nothing like that! Living on the streets of Besançon is extremely tough. Imagine sleeping on a mattress made of damp cardboard during winter in the coldest town in France. There is no underground there. And the train station is closed at night.

  I only spent about ten nights with them, between January and March 1988, and I thought I was going to die of the cold. I would go back to my hotel room in the early morning and had to spend three hours in a hot bath before I could feel normal again. Now do you believe me when I say that I was still earning that money the de Carville woman gave me after seven years of the investigation? As to whether my hard work was worth it . . . I’ll let you be the judge of that.

  Georges Pelletier’s former neighbours and fellow junkies told me that he had reappeared after 23 December, 1980. He was alive and well when he came down from the mountain, so clearly the Airbus had not crashed into him. He had not been wearing a bracelet around his wrist, and he was no more talkative than he had been before he went to Mont Terri. He had stayed in Besançon for six months, doing the usual things – drug-dealing, shoplifting – then had fled to Paris before the police could nail him for anything. Or before his brother found him. According to his street friends, Georges was more wary of his brother’s charity than he was of going to prison.

  I will add just one more detail. Georges Pelletier’s dog did not come back from the mountain with him. But Augustin was wrong about the size of his brother’s mutt: it was not a little mongrel, but a very large Belgian Shepherd. Certainly too big to fit in the tiny grave next to the cabin. Unless he chopped it up into pieces. But why would he do that? Why not simply dig a bigger hole? *

  As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I did not give up. All I had to do now was pick up Georges’s scent in that concrete jungle of lunatics and lost souls that people call Paris. Nazim and I spent three months there, working full-time on the investigation. Small ads in the papers; talking endlessly to the police and social services; more nights spent on the streets, with a torch and a photograph of Georges; an evening in Augustin’s living room, everyone smiling politely around the Christmas tree, just so that we could ask him to provide us with the most recent photograph of Georges that he could find.

  It was good, methodical work. I am a pro, after all.

  Nazim and I managed to follow Georges Pelletier’s tracks as far as a man called Pedro Ramos. I met this man in June 1989 at a fairground in Trone, standing in front of the Tagada ride.

  ‘Georges worked for me for two seasons,’ Pedro told me, while keeping an eye on his ride. Hysterical teenage girls and boys paid five francs each to have their bottoms bruised for two minutes on a whirling bench.

  ‘I didn’t ask him for his CV. I knew he’d be off when the season was over. He wasn’t lazy, and he was clean when he came to work. I couldn’t have cared less what he did with his time off.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ I asked.

  Pedro did not even have to think about it. He just waved his hand commandingly at a girl in a pink dress who was working the till. Her head changed colour in time with the neon lights.

  ‘Autumn 1983. Mid-November, to be exact. After the SaintRomain fair, the last fair of the season. In the train station at Rouen. We had all packed up for the winter and everyone was going their separate ways. Pelletier knew where to find me if he wanted to work the following season, but he never turned up. That’s pretty normal in this line of work. Two seasons is not bad at all, really. I never saw him again.’

  Another dead end.

  I asked Pedro Ramos a few more questions, but I didn’t learn anything of substance. The track ended in the train station at Rouen. Not very far from Dieppe, when you think about it. Not far from the Vitrals . . .

  A coincidence? Probably.

  I hung around the fairs during the months that followed. Nazim enjoyed that. Some weekends, Ayla came with him. After all, Mathilde de Carville was paying for the rides: the ghost trains and the tunnels of love. It would be a long, long time before we learned anything new. Years.

  2 October, 1998, 4.19 p.m. ‘It’s a wedding!’ Judith’s little hands gripped the iron bars of the fence that surrounded the playground.

  ‘No, silly, that’s not a wedding! Look, they’re all dressed in black. That means somebody’s died . . .’

  The procession moved slowly away. Judith was not convinced by what her friend Sarah was telling her. Sarah was always making stuff up. And Judith knew that when people wore nice clothes and walked in neat lines down the street, when the bells rang as they came out of church . . . that meant a man and a lady had just got married. She’d been to lots of weddings – at least two – so she knew all about them.

  ‘It’s a wedding, Sarah!’

  Sarah, annoyed, shook the iron bars. ‘No it’s not, it’s a dead person! They’re going to put him in a hole in the ground. They did the same thing to my grandmother.’

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘So where’s the bride then?’

  ‘We missed her. She must have gone past already.’

  ‘Don’t be silly! Today is Friday. Nobody gets married on a school day. But when you die, it doesn’t matter what day they bury you.’

  Judith had to admit that this made sense.

  ‘And people at weddings aren’t that old,’ Sarah went on. ‘Can’t you see how old they all are?’

  ‘Not all of them!’

  ‘Yes they are.’

  ‘No! Look. She’s not old. Miss! Miss!’

  Lylie was startled from her daydream. She saw two very cute girls, about five years old, standing behind an iron fence, wrapped up in hats, coats, gloves and scarves.

  ‘Miss, is that a wedding or a dead person?’ Lylie smiled. It was striking, the contrast between the happy shouts coming from the playground and the funereal silence of the procession. She crouched down so that her face was level with
the girls’.

  ‘It’s a funeral,’ she told them.

  ‘Told you!’ Sarah gloated.

  Judith pulled a face. Three other kids came over to see what all

  the fuss was about.

  ‘Who was the dead person?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lylie said. ‘I just happened to be passing. I came

  from that big white building over there. I have to go back there, actually.’

  ‘But why are you sad if you didn’t know them?’ Judith asked.

  ‘What makes you think I’m sad?’

  ‘Your eyes are all red. And why else would you follow a dead person when you could go to the park or go shopping?’

  There was now a whole crowd of children watching Lylie from behind the fence.

  ‘You’re right, I am sad,’ Lylie whispered into Judith’s ear. ‘But don’t tell anyone, will you? What’s your name?’

  ‘Judith. Judith Potier. What’s your name?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Judith bit her lip, as if worried she had said the wrong thing. She looked thoughtful for a moment. This was almost certainly the first time she had met someone who didn’t have a name.

  ‘Is that why you’re sad?’

  2 October, 1998, 4.39 p.m. The train stopped at Vernon. Marc watched the passengers disembark and walk along the platform. There were no tearful farewells or happy reunions, just a dozen busy people rushing off to their homes. When the train started up again, the platform was empty and the cars were already lining up to leave the station car park.

  The sun had not yet set behind the hills on the horizon. Marc drew the curtains so he could read Grand-Duc’s notebook without the glare of sunlight in his eyes. The detective had now been investigating the case for ten years. Marc’s memories of the events described were no longer vague and imprecise. He had his own personal version to set alongside Grand-Duc’s.

  Crédule Grand-Duc’s Journal In September 1991, Emilie Vitral was about to go to secondary school. I have not mentioned Emilie very much so far in this account, but it is important to understand how she changed during those years, to the point where Nicole Vitral would finally yield and Mathilde de Carville would triumph, in her way.

  Emilie was about to turn eleven. I think she always liked me. And the feeling was mutual. I think she liked my gruff, solitary side. Kids tend to enjoy talking to adults who don’t say very much.

  For her, I was Crédule-la-Bascule.

  I think Marc was fascinated by me too. Not only because I knew a lot about football, but mainly, I think, because of my job. Private detectives hold a sort of glamour for young boys. I would tell him tall tales, and Nicole would laugh at my exaggerations and inventions. And while we enjoyed this time together, I would watch Emilie closely.

  Secretly, I was hoping to see some kind of physical resemblance. If only she could have woken up one morning and suddenly looked as if she belonged to one family or the other. All I wanted was something definite; it didn’t matter to me which side won.

  But there was nothing. The colour of her eyes still favoured the Vitrals, but that was all.

  Not all resemblances are physical, however. Nicole Vitral did her best to hide it, at least to begin with, but over time it became obvious: in Rue Pocholle, Emilie was so different from those around her that you might easily have believed she had been left next to the burning Airbus by extraterrestrials. For a start, she loved school. She was first in her class every year, while Marc struggled to achieve mediocrity. Emilie loved music. Emilie loved art. Emilie loved stories. She quickly consumed all the records, pictures and books she could find in the Vitral home. There were a reasonable quantity of these, but they were there almost out of obligation, rather than any personal need, the way people keep a bicycle or a set of bowls in their garage. Just in case.

  Emilie grew up different; you could see it from a million miles away. She became adorable, adoring and adored, but she was suffocating. The mobile library would stop in Dieppe every Tuesday evening and little Emilie would clean it out, so desperate was she for new literary and artistic experiences. She would ask her grandmother about Roald Dahl, Igor Stravinsky, Rudyard Kipling, Sergei Prokofiev and dozens of other foreign names that meant nothing to Nicole.

  It is not unusual for one person in a family to stand out from the rest. That is what I told myself. The flower that flourishes surrounded by weeds. The autodidact from a poor State school. The French version of the American Dream. The gifted youngster who climbs every ladder, without any helping hands, without a safety net below, to graduate from one of the best universities. Reaching so high, from so far below, yet remaining proud of their origins. Because that domestic prison in which they grew up marks them forever as different from all the ‘sons of ’ who surround them, the well-born children from the poshest Parisian arrondissements, the clones from Lycée Henri IV. Their background is the fuel that drives them onward, forward, upward. Their standards. And that is what they become: the standard-bearer for their family, their neighbourhood. And how proud their family and neighbours are of them. The kid who made it. Is that why the poor have so many children? To increase their chances of a winning lottery ticket?

  Anyway, that’s enough of my half-arsed ode to social determinism. All I wanted to say was that Emilie flourished. The little girl with the big talent, protected by her family. And by Nicole in particular. But you have to imagine the nagging doubt that lay just below the surface of Nicole’s pride and admiration.

  Did Nicole have the right to be proud of her granddaughter? Was she her granddaughter? Ten years after the Airbus tragedy, the Vitral family was still living in its shadow. If this girl really was Emilie Vitral, Nicole’s own flesh and blood, then yes, it was wonderful – a true miracle. But what if she were Lyse-Rose de Carville, erroneously sent to live with a poor family, in a very different world to the one that was her birthright? What if she were being stifled by her environment? What if she did not belong there?

  ‘It’s normal,’ Nicole would say to me sometimes. ‘A child raised by her grandmother. Alone. There’s bound to be a difference, a gap between us.’

  And she was right. Partly.

  At eleven years old, when she finished primary school, Emilie became more demanding. Well, no, that’s not true: Emilie never demanded anything. But she expressed her desire to see further than the end of Rue Pocholle. She wanted to discover new places, do new things. Most of all, she wanted to advance in her piano-playing. Not because she was talented, or because her teachers were encouraging her, but simply because it was something she wanted to do. Or, more accurately, something she needed to do.

  The dilemma was a simple one. Emilie could not continue to progress as a musician unless she was able to practise every day. But that meant having a piano at home. Emilie did her best to persuade her grandmother. She took measurements in the living room, and she knew that there was – just – enough space for a piano. And it would look nice. You could even put a vase on top of it.

  But then there was the price. A good piano would cost about thirty thousand francs. Say twenty thousand for a second-hand one.

  Nicole tried to explain the reality to Emilie: ‘A piano! My poor Lylie, it’s already difficult enough for me to clothe you and feed you. I had to work every Sunday in May and June just so we could go on holiday to Saint-Quay for a week, and I still don’t know how I’m going to pay for your school things. And now I have to pay for your music lessons too, because they’re not free anymore. So, darling, you can see why it’s not possible . . .’

  Emilie could see. She understood, and she did not complain. She was almost preternaturally mature. At least, she appeared to understand. She went to her room, and through the thin dividing walls Nicole heard a tune, played on the plastic recorder that they had bought for Marc. It was the only instrument in the house. Nicole recognised the song, a hit at the time: ‘Leidenstadt’ by Goldman.

  Her heart ached.

  When Marc came home fr
om his rugby training, he found his grandmother in tears on the sofa. Marc was thirteen years old. He did not know how to react. He could hear Emilie playing the recorder. It sounded nice. And a bit sad . . .

  Nicole patted the cushion next to hers on the sofa. Marc sat down and she hugged him tightly.

  ‘You mustn’t be jealous of Emilie. Ever.’

  Of course not, Marc thought. Why would he be jealous?

  ‘You have to keep behaving the same way towards her. She will always be your little sister . . . Even if I treat you differently. You’re a big boy now, Marc. I think you’re old enough to understand.’ Treat them differently? What did she mean?

  Nicole stood up, and so did Marc. She was smiling again, or pretending to. She asked Marc to help her move the sofa.

  ‘I need to check if we really can fit a piano in here.’

  The purchase, in cash, of the brand new Hartmann-Milonga piano barely made a dent in the pile of money that had accumulated over the years in Emilie’s bank account.

  And Emilie was right: it did fit in the living room, between the sofa and the television, even if it was a tight squeeze.

  Everything followed from that. Music courses in Paris, first of all, lasting a few days. Then longer stays in the capital. Then concerts, and tours, in France and abroad: London, Amsterdam, Prague. Records and books were bought for Emilie. And clothes, of course. Why should Emilie be deprived of the latest fashions? It was only human. She deserved the best. Nicole no longer felt able to deny her anything. Just in case . . .

  Now you understand Mathilde de Carville’s strategy. She had known what she was doing, right from the start. The bank account she opened for Emilie was a cuckoo’s egg left in a sparrow’s nest. Now it had hatched, the bird that emerged was big enough to kill the nest’s other inhabitants.

  A gulf opened up between Emilie and Marc. I mean, a gulf in material terms. I will talk more about the other differences between them later on in this account. Emilie could ask for anything she wanted, no matter how silly or how costly. Nothing was too much for her, whereas Marc had to make do with hand-me-downs and second-hand things. The neighbours’ clothes. His grandfather’s bicycle. Rugby boots from his older teammates.